[Thought] Integrating Elements into Geographic Science

During the past few weeks, I have facilitated two discussion sessions for two elements, one on water and the other on fire. These are two contrasting yet interconnected elements that I have paid close attention to in my study, research, and life over the past years. At this moment, I find myself thinking deeply about how to organize my future studies so that they can better reflect the rudimentary influences of these elements in exploring human–nature interactions through the lens of GeoAI. AI is the hot topic these days that people are flooding into, yet most people end up without really knowing what they are doing with it. I know that I have to start from the elements.

When I was in my first year of the master’s program, we once had a small gathering with professors and students. When it was my turn to introduce myself, I said that I defined myself as “a water person.” At that time, many of my peers were working on environmental planning projects related to fire resilience, particularly those concerning wildfire prevention and recovery in California. Coming from a background where forest fires were rare but floods were frequent, I had always been drawn to studying how water shapes the environment and human life and shaping my identity.

The Water of My Childhood

I was born in Yueqing County on the coastline of Zhejiang Province, and grew up in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province’s largest and capital city, in eastern China. That is a region known for its humid climate and abundant precipitation. During the summer, we were often affected by typhoons, called hurricanes in the Western Hemisphere. I remember clearly that when I was a child in my hometown on the coast, typhoons often brought severe flooding. The electricity would be cut off during the storm, and the next morning we would wake up to find the water level half a meter deep throughout the streets. At that time, my family did not own a car yet, but my father would still ride his motorcycle through the flooded roads to buy groceries. This scene remains vivid in my earliest memory: the power and unpredictability of water, the way it shapes people’s lives, and how we, not adapt, but coexist with it, without complaint. These early experiences left me with a deep respect for the forces of nature, particularly water’s dual ability to sustain and to disrupt.

As I grew older and moved to the larger city of Hangzhou, the risks of flooding became less visible (but still immediate and significant). My hometown had also changed dramatically, with new infrastructure projects being developed, some based on heavy civil engineering, others on nature-based solutions. I would not say the risks have been completely eliminated, but at least we no longer experience large-scale power outages or city-wide flooding as we once did.

When I was in middle school, around 2013, the Zhejiang Provincial Government released a plan called “Five Waters Co-governance” (五水共治), which sought to address five major water issues they identified simultaneously: sewage/waste water, floodwater, urban inundation, clean water supply, and water resource conservation. I was in middle school at that time and we conducted a small social analysis project at school. Twelve years later, as we are in 2025, the plan is still relevant. I am not here to comment on its full effectiveness, but I have personally witnessed significant efforts to tackle many of these challenges. Across the province, I have seen new parks designed with nature as a central consideration, projects that embody the concept of coexistence with water rather than resistance to it. Many projects were done by Kongjian Yu’s group or influenced by his ideology, who unfortunately passed away accidentally last month.

Water, Culture, and Identity

Water has also defined our provincial identity. Zhejiang, as a coastal province, is known not only for its inland waterways but also for its long-standing relationship with the ocean. Historically, China’s civilization development was largely oriented toward the land, while the ocean remained peripheral in the collective imagination of the empire. Yet Zhejiang and its people were somehow an exception. They embraced the ocean, exploring trade routes and connecting with the international world, especially since the 1980s after the opening up of the economy.

Water also shapes personality. I do feel that people perceive differently. When people today think about Zhejiang, they often associate it with maritime openness, entrepreneurship, and global connection. This worldview, rooted in proximity to the sea, has shaped our collective character and continues to influence how we interact with the rest of the world, through water as the medium.

Hangzhou, the city where I grew up, is home to the famous West Lake. However, it is in fact listed as a World Cultural Heritage Site, not a Natural Heritage Site. The reason is that the beauty of West Lake—its calm water, pagodas, gardens, and willow-lined paths—was not created by nature alone. It is the result of centuries of human effort, landscape design, and artistic cultivation. What was once a swamp was gradually transformed through the deliberate work of scholars, engineers, and artists. West Lake thus represents the harmony between humans and water, a perfect example of how nature and culture intertwine in the oriental context.

Encountering Water Again in California

After coming to the United States, I was introduced to a completely different set of water-related issues and environments, especially in California, ones deeply tied to infrastructure, governance, and environmental risk. I spent four years in California, a place where the contrast between water scarcity and flood risk is especially striking.

In my first year, during an environmental planning studio, our project focused on flooding in Sacramento, the capital of California. Sacramento sits at the confluence of rivers and is surrounded by an extensive levee system. Ironically, while the levees are meant to protect the city, they also conceal a troubling reality that much of the land behind them lies below the water level. When you drive along a levee, the water on one side can appear higher than the rooftops of houses on the other side.

It was difficult to believe that this was the situation for the capital city of California. Yet, many residents had grown accustomed to this false sense of safety (the residual risk). Over the decades, FEMA’s flood insurance maps for Sacramento have been revised several times, each revision moving further away from what scientific evidence would suggest. Once a levee is built, the surrounding land is often marked as “safe,” even though the residual risk remains.

In another study, we examined Montecito, near Santa Barbara, an affluent community that experienced catastrophic mudslides in 2018. The event was preceded by a wildfire that burned large portions of the forest in the mountains above. When the rainy season arrived, heavy precipitation triggered deadly mudslides, demonstrating how fire and water are ecologically linked. The fire altered the forest’s structure, which in turn changed how water flowed through the landscape. The result was devastating. This experience made me realize how these natural elements are not independent forces, but part of a deeply interconnected system that fascinates me to study.

The Other Element: Fire

Although water has always been at the core of my research, I have also grown increasingly interested in the role of fire—its ecological, cultural, and symbolic dimensions. Many of my peers in California dedicated their work to wildfire resilience. One of my friends was a forest firefighter before joining our master’s program.

Fire is an ancient force that has shaped human civilization. It has provided light, warmth, and the means to cook food, but it has also caused destruction. For much of modern history, people have tried to suppress fire entirely, viewing it as something to be eliminated. Yet in recent years, especially in California, we have begun to realize that complete suppression is neither possible nor desirable.

For thousands of years, Indigenous communities have practiced cultural burning—small, controlled fires that clear the land, recycle nutrients, and prevent larger, catastrophic wildfires. These traditional practices demonstrate that coexistence with fire is possible and even beneficial. It is a profound lesson in humility and ecological wisdom: fire is not the enemy of humanity, but an integral part of the ecosystem.

Elements, AI, and the Future of my Journey in Geography

As I think about my future research, I increasingly view water and fire (heat) as more than just physical phenomena; they are elements that embody the complex relationships between humans and the environment. When I worked on urban microclimate modeling, for example, I realized how essential water is to understanding evapotranspiration—the process by which vegetation exchanges heat and moisture with the atmosphere—reaching a balance that humans would benefit from. Without acknowledging these processes, any study, no matter how advanced the methods used, would lack both interpretability and accuracy.

Now, as I continue learning about AI, I see the need to establish a clear and meaningful identity within this rapidly growing field. Many people talk about AI, but not everyone truly understands how it transforms the nature of scientific inquiry itself. At this year’s ACSP 2025 Conference, I noticed that many urban planners are both fascinated by and skeptical of AI. Some view it as a black box—powerful but opaque.

I believe that to make AI meaningful for planning and environmental science, we must reconnect it with the elements, the tangible forces that shape the world we study. AI should not be used merely to generate predictions; it should help us interpret and explain the complex interactions between the physical world, human perception, and behavior. Physics-informed AI would be a direction I would explore in the future.

In my future work, I want to study how elements like water and fire exist and interact in space, how they influence environmental conditions, and how humans perceive and respond to them. Only by bridging these layers—physical, ecological, psychological, and technological—can we move toward a deeper understanding of coexistence between humans and nature. It is not about fighting natural hazards with force. We must recognize both our power and our limits, and learn from the balance that nature itself maintains. Ultimately, the goal of my research, and perhaps of geographic science as a whole, is to rediscover harmony among the elements.