Geography in the classroom
Joshua Stevens was invited to give the presentation for the Geo Club at Radio Park Elementary School in May 2014. Students were given an overview of what cartography is, what cartographers do, and how art and science are important to map makers. The students were shown examples of thematic and reference maps, in addition to some map facts that had them questioning the maps they encounter. Afterwards, students spent time asking some really great questions (“How do we really know where one country ends and another begins?” “Why are map symbols always so small?” “If I’m an artist, can I make maps?”). Of all the maps students were shown, the classroom favorite was a map of the amount of snowfall required for school to be cancelled.
GOOD NEWS
• Courtney Jackson was selected to receive a Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Scholarship.
• Alex Klippel and his wife Melina announced the birth of their second child, Feliks Julius Peter Czymoniewicz Klippel, on June 18, 2014.
NEWS
How is Buruli Ulcer spread?
PI Petra Tschakert, co-PI Erica Smithwick, and Vincent Ricciardi (M.S. ‘14) are investigating strong links between land disturbance and transmission of the disease. See the video on the department home page.
Former student honored posthumously with Sustainability Leadership Tree Award
Penn State’s Sustainability Institute, in conjunction with the Student Sustainability Advisory Council (SSAC), dedicated a dogwood in the Leadership Tree Award grove in memory of former Penn State student Jon Taiclet. Taiclet, a 21-year-old geography honors student and sustainability leader, passed away in 2006 during his tenure as a student at Penn State.
Recently published
Downscaling reveals diverse effects of anthropogenic climate warming on the potential for local environments to support malaria transmission
By Krijn P. Paaijmans, Justine I. Blanford, Robert G. Crane, Michael E. Mann, Liang Ning, Kathleen V. Schreiber and Matthew B. Thomas
The potential impact of climate warming on patterns of malaria transmission has been the subject of keen scientific and policy debate. Standard climate models (GCMs) characterize climate change at relatively coarse spatial and temporal scales. However, malaria parasites and the mosquito vectors respond to diurnal variations in conditions at very local scales. Here we bridge this gap by downscaling a series of GCMs to provide high-resolution temperature data for four different sites and show that although outputs from both the GCM and the downscaled models predict diverse but qualitatively similar effects of warming on the potential for adult mosquitoes to transmit malaria, the predicted magnitude of change differs markedly between the different model approaches.
Final draft: IPCC Working Group 2, Fifth Assessment Report Chapter 13, Livelihoods and Poverty
Coordinating Lead Authors: Lennart Olsson, Maggie Opondo, Petra Tschakert
This chapter discusses how livelihoods, poverty and the lives of poor people, and inequality interact with climate change, climate variability, and extreme events in multifaceted and cross-scalar ways. It examines how current impacts of climate change, projected impacts up until 2100, and responses to climate change affect livelihoods and poverty. The Fourth Assessment Report stated that socially and economically disadvantaged and marginalized people are disproportionally affected by climate change. However, no comprehensive review of climate change, poverty, and livelihoods has been undertaken to date by the IPCC. This chapter addresses this gap, presenting evidence of the dynamic interactions between these three principal factors. At the same time, the chapter recognizes that climate change is rarely the only factor that affects livelihood trajectories and poverty dynamics; climate change interacts with a multitude of non-climatic factors, which makes detection and attribution challenging.
Related: See Petra Tschakert’s Coffee Hour talk on this experience.
Cookbook to raise money for EMS Centennial Fund
We are currently taking orders for the EMS Cooks cookbook, which can be ordered online at: http://www.geog.psu.edu/cookbook-order-form. Over the past few months, the EMS Staff Advisory Committee collected recipes for a cookbook to raise money for the EMS Staff Centennial Fund and many of you sent in recipes in support of this work. Thanks to generous cooks throughout the college, we have over 120 recipes, including vegetarian and gluten-free. The cost of the cookbook is $12 for one, or $10 each for 2 or more, plus postage (if needed).
Tags: Josh at Radio Park