IMAGE OF THE WEEK
This photo illustrating an aspect of urban agriculture is on the cover of the forthcoming book Global Urban Agriculture: Convergence of Theory and Practice between North and South, edited by Antoinette WinklerPrins. WinklerPrins, NSF program director of the Geography and Spatial Sciences DDRI, will be leading a workshop on Applying for DDRIs on March 23. She will also be the Coffee Hour speaker on March 24. Her visit is sponsored by Penn State Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG). There is still time to register for the March 23 Workshop on NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., 319 Walker Building, Penn State, University Park campus.
GOOD NEWS
- There is still time to submit your essay about mentorship for SWIG’s Jennifer Fluri and Amy Trauger Student Essay Competition. Submissions are due March 27, 2017. For more information and to submit your work: http://www.geog.psu.edu/swig-essay-contest
- Megan Baumann has received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
- Eden Kinkaid has received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Graduate Fellowship to study advanced Hindi and conduct preliminary fieldwork this summer in India.
- Yanan Xin, Lauren Fritzsche, Ramzi Tubbeh, Peter Ryan, Eden Kinkaid, and Renee have completed painting the PLACE Lab landscape mural.
- Eden Kinkaid has been awarded the NSF Graduate Research Program Fellowship.
- Jamie Peeler received an Honorable Mention for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
- ChoroPhronesis members Mark Simpson and Jiayan Zhao both got their 3rd peer-reviewed paper accepted for this academic year. Simpson’s paper “Quantifying Space, Understanding Minds: A Visual Summary Approach” will be published in the Journal of Spatial Information Science. Zhao’s paper “Immersive Virtual Reality for Geosciences” will be published in the proceedings of the 2017 IEEE VR Workshop on K-12 Embodied Learning through Virtual & Augmented Reality (KELVAR)
- Carolyn Fish won the CaGIS Doctoral Scholarship Award for demonstrated excellence in cartography or GIScience and the potential to contribute to cartography or GIScience research.
- Liping Yang and Guido Cervone won the 2017 NCAR/CISL summer research grant titled “Experiments with TensorFlow and Apache Spark on Cheyenne and Yellowstone Supercomputers for Image Classification and Segmentation”
NEWS
Coffee Hour with Antoinette WinklerPrins: Global Urban Agriculture: Convergence of Theory and Practice between North and South
Urban agriculture (UA) is the practice of cultivating in cities and other non-rural places, an activity that is increasing as the world becomes more urbanized. The topic has seen growing attention as a topic of investigation by academics and practitioners, but research and writing about UA has often been partitioned between that which is practiced in the Global North (GN) and how it is practiced in the Global South (GS). The focus in the GS has typically been on the role of UA in providing food security and limited employment for the (newly) urban poor. Investigations of UA in the GN have focused on issues of social justice and community empowerment as well as grass-roots and countercultural actions, including a focus on relocalizing food sources.
- Refreshments are offered in 319 Walker Building at 3:30 p.m.
- The lecture begins in 112 Walker Building at 4:00 p.m.
- Coffee Hour to go webcast
- Next time: April 14 The Miller Lecture with Anthony Bebbington
RECENTLY (OR SOON TO BE) PUBLISHED
Qualitative Spatial and Temporal Representation and Reasoning
By Klippel, A. and Wallgrün, J. O.
In The International Encyclopedia of Geography. 1–8.
Access DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0940
The representation of and reasoning with spatial and temporal information are central to spatial sciences. Formalizations of both allow the design of efficient computer programs that enable artificial intelligence (AI). The area of knowledge representation, as a subfield of AI but with contributions from the spatial sciences, is playing a leading role in these developments, and a strong subfield exists that is dedicated to qualitative spatial and temporal representation and reasoning (QSTR). The focus on qualitative approaches to reasoning is inspired by an interest in understanding how humans represent, think, and reason with spatial and temporal information from a commonsense, that is, intuitive, perspective. This entry provides an overview on the motivation behind QSTR, with explanations of central concepts such as qualitative calculi and conceptual neighborhood, as well as on cognitive evaluations of proposed approaches and current trends in this area of research.
Spatial Thinking, Cognition, and Learning
By Downs, R. M.
In The International Encyclopedia of Geography. 1–10
Access DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0700
Spatial thinking is a distinctive, universal, and powerful form of thinking used in problem solving in multiple disciplines and in real-world activities. Space, representation, and reasoning are inseparably integrated in spatial thinking and therefore it is, and has always been, central to the teaching and practice of geography in schools, academia, and occupations. Spatial thinking can be learned and should be taught at all levels in the formal education system because life in our spatial world is inconceivable without the aid of spatial thinking. After providing a definition of spatial thinking, this entry sets it into three contexts: geography, psychology, and education.
Climatic Modes and Teleconnections
By Carleton, A. M.
In The International Encyclopedia of Geography.
Access DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0494
Recurring spatial anomaly patterns of climate variability on intraseasonal, interannual, and decadal timescales (“climatic modes”) express associations with atmospheric and oceanic circulations, modulated by land surface–atmosphere interactions. These teleconnections range in influence from global (El Niño Southern Oscillation) to hemispheric (Arctic Oscillation, Antarctic Oscillation) to continental/regional (e.g., North Atlantic Oscillation, Pacific–North America pattern), and originate both in the tropics (e.g., Madden–Julian Oscillation) and extratropics (e.g., Antarctic Circumpolar Wave). Climate variables influenced by – and characterizing – teleconnections include temperature and precipitation, sea level pressure/geopotential height, winds, outgoing longwave radiation, and sea surface temperature. The opposing (i.e., extreme) phases of a teleconnection are evident as distinct patterns of heat and cold, droughts and floods, wildfires, synoptic circulation activity (tropical cyclones, frontal cyclones), and subsynoptic weather (e.g., tornadoes, “polar lows”). Contemporary climate change (“global warming”) may be altering both the internal attributes and frequencies of teleconnections.