Department of Geography (DoG) News and Events Where it's at!

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Milan Liu was selected to represent the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences as the student marshal for Penn State’s summer 2020 commencement. Liu graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade-point average with a double major in geography and international politics, a minor in Chinese and a certificate in geographic information science. Her faculty marshal was Roger Downs, professor of geography. Image: Courtesy of Milan Liu

GOOD NEWS

Graduate Seminars in geography covering physical geography, human geography, environment–society interactions, and GISciences are being offered for the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters. Register for fall 2020 semester by August 23.

The 2020 AAG Guide to Geography Programs in the Americas has been published and is available for free to all users at www.aag.org/guide. It also includes an interactive map of geography programs listed within the Guide, which allows users to search and filter programs by, degree type, program specialties, regional focus, and more.

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Connection (UROC) is now accepting applications for research and professional development projects for Fall 2020. 

NEWS

Milan Liu selected Earth and Mineral Sciences 2020 summer student marshal

Milan Liu was selected to represent the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences as the student marshal for Penn State’s summer commencement, which was held virtually on  Aug. 15.

Liu is graduating summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade-point average with a double major in geography and international politics, a minor in Chinese and a certificate in geographic information science. Her faculty marshal is Roger Downs, professor of geography.

Doctoral candidate’s research explores human, agricultural interactions in Nepal

Marie Louis Ryan, doctoral candidate in Penn State’s Department of Geography, received the Graduate Student International Research Award from the Graduate School for her research exploring human and agricultural interactions in Nepal.

Specifically, Ryan examines how the labor force outmigration of working age men in Nepal’s midhills impacts labor, land use, and the agricultural biodiversity of rice and finger millet — two key crops in the region.

Open education website connects teachers, learners with quality resources

A parent in Philadelphia needs information to help her daughter with a class project on wet weather pollution control in the school yard rain garden.

Elsewhere in the U.S., a furloughed government worker seeks professional development during a shutdown. In Brazil, a woman is interested in learning more about the changing climate, and in Zimbabwe, a GIS technician wants a reliable source of professional information.

They all turned to OPEN.ED, a website hosting high-quality learning materials written by faculty in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. The content, created though the Open Education Resources (OER) initiative launched in 2007 by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) at Penn State, is free for educators and learners under a creative commons license.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Space-Time Patterns, Change, and Propagation of COVID-19 Risk Relative to the Intervention Scenarios in Bangladesh

Masrur, Arif; Yu, Manzhu; Luo, Wei; Dewan, Ashraf
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17165911
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to be a significant public health threat worldwide, particularly in densely populated countries such as Bangladesh with inadequate health care facilities. While early detection and isolation were identified as important non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) measures for containing the disease spread, this may not have been pragmatically implementable in developing countries due to social and economic reasons (i.e., poor education, less public awareness, massive unemployment). Hence, to elucidate COVID-19 transmission dynamics with respect to the NPI status—e.g., social distancing—this study conducted spatio-temporal analysis using the prospective scanning statistic at district and sub-district levels in Bangladesh and its capital, Dhaka city, respectively. Dhaka megacity has remained the highest-risk “active” cluster since early April. Lately, the central and south eastern regions in Bangladesh have been exhibiting a high risk of COVID-19 transmission. The detected space-time progression of COVID-19 infection suggests that Bangladesh has experienced a community-level transmission at the early phase (i.e., March, 2020), primarily introduced by Bangladeshi citizens returning from coronavirus epicenters in Europe and the Middle East. Potential linkages exist between the violation of NPIs and the emergence of new higher-risk clusters over the post-incubation periods around Bangladesh. Novel insights into the COVID-19 transmission dynamics derived in this study on Bangladesh provide important policy guidelines for early preparations and pragmatic NPI measures to effectively deal with infectious diseases in resource-scarce countries worldwide.

Can Social Media Anti-abuse Policies Work? A Quasi-experimental Study of Online Sexist and Racist Slurs

Diane Felmlee, Daniel DellaPosta, Paulina d. C. Inara Rodis, and Stephen A. Matthews
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World
DOI: 10.1177/2378023120948711
The authors use the timing of a change in Twitter’s rules regarding abusive content to test the effectiveness of organizational policies aimed at stemming online harassment. Institutionalist theories of social control suggest that such interventions can be efficacious if they are perceived as legitimate, whereas theories of psychological reactance suggest that users may instead ratchet up aggressive behavior in response to the sanctioning authority. In a sample of 3.6 million tweets spanning one month before and one month after Twitter’s policy change, the authors find evidence of a modest positive shift in the average sentiment of tweets with slurs targeting women and/or African Americans. The authors further illustrate this trend by tracking the network spread of specific tweets and individual users. Retweeted messages are more negative than those not forwarded. These patterns suggest that organizational “anti-abuse” policies can play a role in stemming hateful speech on social media without inflaming further abuse.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

The 2020 Department of Geography Recognition Reception website listing award winners, graduates and other notable accomplishments is here:  https://sites.psu.edu/geogrecrec20/

GOOD NEWS

Graduate Seminars in geography covering physical geography, human geography, environment–society interactions, and GISciences are being offered for the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters. Register for fall 2020 semester by August 23.

The 2020 AAG Guide to Geography Programs in the Americas has been published and is available for free to all users at www.aag.org/guide. It also includes an interactive map of geography programs listed within the Guide, which allows users to search and filter programs by, degree type, program specialties, regional focus, and more.

This map quantifies the Sheetz versus Wawa turf war.

The virtual 2020 Esri Education Summit will be held from August 6 to 7. Registration is complimentary. For more information and to register.

The American Association of Geographers’ annual meeting will have both in-person and virtual aspects in 2021. Attendees including geographers, GIS specialists, environmental scientists, and other leaders will share and discuss the latest in research and applications in geography, sustainability, and GIScience. The meeting will be held from Wednesday, April 7 – Sunday, April 11, and will feature more than 6,900 presentations, posters, workshops, and field trips by leading scholars, experts, and researchers. September 14 is the early bird deadline.

NEWS

Penn State professor receives AAG award for service to women in geography

Lorraine Dowler, Penn State professor of geography and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, is the 2020 recipient of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Feminist Geographies specialty group’s Jan Monk Service Award.

This award is named in honor of Jan Monk, a past president of AAG, and “recognizes a geographer who has made an outstanding service contribution to women in geography and/or feminist geography.”

Ecology Institute announces grant recipients

Erica Smithwick is director of the Ecology Institute and associate director of the Institutes of Energy and the Environment

The Ecology Institute has awarded 11 proposals from across the University as part of its Flower Grant program, including five projects submitted by faculty at Commonwealth Campuses.

The funds provided by the Flower Grant aim to support ecology research focused across the institute’s five core themes: resilience and adaptation; provision of ecosystem goods and services; ecology at the interface; rapid evolutionary change; and ecological foundations.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Fostering Penetrative Thinking in Geosciences Through Immersive Experiences: A Case Study in Visualizing Earthquake Locations in 3D

Mahda M. Bagher, Pejman Sajjadi, Julia Carr, Peter La Femina and Alexander Klippel
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN 2020)
https://immersivelrn.org/resources/proceedings/
Thinking in and understanding of three-dimensional structures is omnipresent in many sciences from chemistry to geosciences. Current visualizations, however, are still using two-dimensional media such as maps or three-dimensional representations accessible through two-dimensional interfaces (e.g., desktop computers). The emergence of immersive virtual reality environments, both accessible and of high-quality, allows for creating embodied and interactive experiences that permit for rethinking learning environments and provide access to three-dimensional information through three-dimensional interfaces. However, there is a shortage of empirical studies on immersive learning environments. In response to this shortcoming, this study examines the role of immersive VR (iVR) in improving students’ learning experience and performance in terms of penetrative thinking in a critical 3D task in geosciences education: drawing cross-sections. We developed a pilot study where students were asked to draw cross-sections of the depth and geometry of earth-quakes at two subduction zones after visualizing the earthquake locations either in iVR or 2D maps on a computer. The results of our study show that iVR creates a better learning experience; students reported significantly higher scores in terms of Spatial Situation Model and there is anecdotal evidence in favor of higher reflective thinking in iVR. In terms of learning performance, we did not find a significant difference in the graded exercise of drawing cross-sections. However, iVR seems to have a positive effect on understanding the geometry of earthquake locations in a complex tectonic environment such as Japan. Our results, therefore, add to the growing body of literature that draws a more nuanced picture of the benefits of immersive learning environments calling for larger scale and in-depth studies.

A spatial analysis of COVID-19 period prevalence in US counties through June 28, 2020: Where geography matters?

Feinuo Sun, Stephen A. Matthews, Tse-ChuanYang, Ming-Hsiao Hu
Annals of Epidemiology
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2020.07.014
Purpose: This study aims to understand how spatial structures, the interconnections between counties, matter in understanding COVID-19 period prevalence across the US.
Methods: We assemble a county-level dataset that contains COVID-19 confirmed cases through June 28, 2020 and various sociodemographic measures from multiple sources. In addition to an aspatial regression model, we conduct spatial lag, spatial error, and spatial autoregressive combined models to systematically examine the role of spatial structure in shaping geographical disparities in COVID-19 period prevalence.
Results: The aspatial ordinary least squares regression model tends to overestimate the COVID-19 period prevalence among counties with low observed rates, but this issue can be effectively addressed by spatial modeling. Spatial models can better estimate the period prevalence for counties, especially along the Atlantic coasts and through the Black Belt. Overall, the model fit among counties along both coasts is generally good with little variability evident, but in the Plain states, model fit is conspicuous in its heterogeneity across counties.
Conclusions: Spatial models can help partially explain the geographic disparities in COVID-19 period prevalence. These models reveal spatial variability in model fit including identifying regions of the country where fit is heterogeneous and worth closer attention in the immediate short term.

Seed source pattern and terrain have scale-dependent effects on post-fire tree recovery

Jamie L. Peeler & Erica A. H. Smithwick
Landscape Ecology
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01071-z
Context: Distance to seed source is often used to estimate seed dispersal—a process needed for post-fire tree recovery. However, distance, especially in mountainous terrain, does not capture pattern or scale-dependent effects controlling seed supply and delivery. Measuring seed source pattern (area and arrangement) could provide insights on how these spatial dynamics shape recovery.
Objectives: We tested metrics and investigated how seed source pattern, tree regeneration traits, scale, and terrain interact to shape post-fire tree recovery. Our research questions were: Does seed source pattern outperform distance when modeling tree species presence and regeneration density? If yes, does seed source pattern have scale-dependent or terrain-dependent effects on regeneration density?
Methods: We measured seed source pattern at nested spatial extents around 71 plots and related measurements to local post-fire tree recovery. We used generalized linear models to test metrics and visualize scale-dependent and terrain-dependent effects on regeneration density.
Results: Distance sufficiently modeled presence, but seed source pattern outperformed distance when modeling regeneration density. Relevant spatial extents and relationships were species-dependent. For wind-dispersed species, regeneration was associated with more seed source area and more complex arrangements, but terrain mediated these relationships. For serotinous and resprouting species, regeneration was associated with less seed source area and less complex arrangements, which are consistent with high-severity burn sites that promote recovery.
Conclusions: Seed source pattern supports spatial resilience and interacts with scale and terrain to shape regeneration density. Accounting for these spatial dynamics could help steward forests facing changing fire regimes.

Informal food chains and agrobiodiversity need strengthening—not weakening—to address food security amidst the COVID-19 crisis in South America

Karl S. Zimmerer & Stef de Haan
Food Security
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-020-01088-x
The COVID-19 crisis is worsening food insecurity by undermining informal food chains. We focus on impacts involving the informal food chains that incorporate the resilience-enhancing biodiversity of food and agriculture known as agrobiodiversity. Our analysis addresses how informal food chains and agrobiodiversity are impacted by policies and interventions amidst COVID-19 disruptions. Our methodology relies on research in Peru with a focus on the cites and surrounding areas of Lima, Arequipa, Cusco, Huancayo, and Huánuco. We extend these insights to similar challenges and opportunities across western South America and other word regions. We utilize the four-part Agrobiodiversity Knowledge Framework to guide our examination of agrobiodiversity-related processes that interconnect governance, nutrition, agroecology, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results detail three links of informal food chains that are being disrupted and yet can offer resilience. These are food retailing, logistics and transportation, and seed systems. Utilization of the Agrobiodiversity Knowledge Framework cuts through highly complex issues to elaborate key food-security difficulties facing informal systems and how they can be strengthened to provide more resilience. We identify the specific roles of agrobiodiversity in resilience-enhancing processes that need strategic policy and program support. Results identify ways to augment the resilience of informal food chains using agrobiodiversity and the empowerment of social groups and organizations in urban food systems and rural communities. We conclude that the disruptions triggered by the global COVID-19 pandemic highlight the need to use agrobiodiversity as an instrument for resilience in informal food chains.