Psychoterratic geographies of the Upper Hunter region, Australia

•We identify the importance of emotion in environmental contests.•We introduce and define a range of psychoterratic emotions.•We demonstrate how emotions can be incorporated into impact assessment.•We provide a vocabulary for intimate emotional relations with the earth.•We use this approach in a contest between coal mining and thoroughbred breeding.

In May 2010 the proposed Bickham coal mine near the Pages River in the Upper Hunter region of Australia was formally rejected because of its potentially deleterious impacts on hydrology and the likely negative impacts on a valuable thoroughbred breeding region. In this paper we focus on the 'psychoterratic' mental states of topophilia and solastalgia and highlight how people's intimate personal relationships with the river and “the environment” were concealed through the formal assessment process. We argue that these relationships and the emotional states they sustain are critical, are at present little understood by geographers, that geography is well placed to develop and incorporate these understandings, and that the formal impact assessment system could be greatly improved by the incorporation of psychoterratic geographies.