IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Graduate students (Pictured left to right: Owen Harrington, Mary Roberts, Nebraska Hernandez, Alejandra Bonilla) from Louisa Holmes’ fall graduate seminar, GEOG 560 Place Race and Health Inequality, visit the turtle pond by the Hintz Family Alumni Center. Several students also submitted images of the turtle pond or turtles. Turtles are considered sacred among Native American tribes; you can read the Haudenosaunee creation story. Students collected images during the week of October 11–15, when the Department of Geography hosted a Campus Adventure to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which many states, cities, and institutions are now choosing to celebrate as an alternative to Columbus Day. Many Native Americans view the celebration of Columbus’ arrival in the America’s as disrespectful: for them it marks the start of 500 years of colonial oppression that they continue to carry the consequences of today. The event was an effort to mark our solidarity with our Indigenous colleagues, including the Indigenous People Student Association (IPSA) and the Indigenous Faculty and Staff Alliance (IFSA). Image: Louisa Holmes
GOOD NEWS
Zachary Goldberg published, “’Harvesting a participatory movement’ Initial participatory action research with the Jewish Farmer Network,” in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.
Tara Mazurczyk published, “Native biodiversity increases with rising plant invasions in temperate, freshwater wetlands,” in Wetlands Ecology and Management.
Christopher Fowler published, “How to make voting districts fair to voters, not parties,” in The Conversation and was interviewed on A VerySpatial Podcast – Episode 678 about boundaries, specifically related to redistricting.
If you were unable to attend GIS Day on November 16, recordings of the talks are now available.
Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) extends a “huge thank-you” to all who contributed to the Centre Safe Holiday Sponsorship Program this year. SWIG donated $420 (far exceeding the goal of $250) to support a family in the program.
The Department of Geography staff is collecting donations for Toys For Tots. Anyone is invited to participate by donating a new, unwrapped toy or by making a monetary donation and a staff member will shop for you. Drop off gifts with Darlene Peletski in 302 Walker Building by December 15.
COFFEE HOUR
UROC Presentations
Students participating in Undergraduate Research Opportunities Connection (UROC) will give short presentations on their research projects. Speakers include Gillian Russell, Bram Woolley, Camila Pena, and Noah Rogers.
- 4 p.m. EST, Friday, Dec. 3
- 112 Walker Building
- Coffee Hour to Go on Zoom
NEWS
Urbanization not always bad for food and land use diversity
Widely accepted myths that urbanization negatively impacts food and land use biodiversity are incorrect, according to a team of researchers who developed a framework for evaluating this intersection. Their results could also affect nutrition and food insecurity in urban areas.
- Related: The research was also covered on earth.com, “Urbanization does not always decrease food diversity.”
The Department of Geography annual printed newsletter, GEOGRAPH, is now online
Highlights from the summer 2021 issue
Van Meter seeks solutions to historical water quality challenges
Kimberly Van Meter joined the department this summer as an assistant professor of geography specializing in water systems. She is a co-hire with the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI).
Take her to the river: Gaertner reads climate change warnings in water
Brandi Gaertner joined the department this summer as an assistant teaching professor of spatial data science in the online geospatial education program.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
‘Harvesting a participatory movement’ Initial participatory action research with the Jewish Farmer Network
Anika M. Rice, Zachary A. Goldberg
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2021.111.010
The Jewish Farmer Network (JFN) is a North American grassroots organization that mobilizes Jewish agricultural wisdom to build a more just and regenerative food system for all. This paper presents methodological findings and reflections from the initial stages of a participatory action research (PAR) collaboration led by the authors and JFN organizers centered on Cultivating Culture, JFN’s inaugural conference in February 2020. For this early iterative phase, we used a PAR approach to guide event ethnography to both facilitate and understand collective movement building and action. This work included pre-conference collaborative research design, a participatory reflection and action workshop with roughly 90 participants, evaluative surveys, short ethnographic interviews, and ongoing post-conference analysis with researchers and movement organizers. While this data was first analyzed and organized for JFN’s use, we present findings to demonstrate the effectiveness of foregrounding event ethnography within a PAR research design at an early stage of movement formation, especially how elements of event ethnography can address some of the limitations of using PAR with a nascent network of farmers. Our work revealed themes in the movement of Jewish farming: the politics of identity in movement building, the tensions around (de)politicization, and the production of Jewish agroecological knowledge. We reflect on the utility of using PAR to frame scholar-activism and propose future inquires for Jewish agrarianism.
Urbanization and agrobiodiversity: Leveraging a key nexus for sustainable development
Karl S. Zimmerer, Chris S. Duvall, Edward C. Jaenicke, Leia M. Minaker, Thomas Reardon, Karen C. Seto
One Earth
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.10.012
Expanding urbanization affects food biodiversity and broader agrobiodiversity, which are essential nutrition and ecosystem resources for sustainable development but are threatened globally. The increasingly influential nexus of urbanization-agrobiodiversity interactions has not been systematically researched. Here we design an interdisciplinary perspective to identify and understand the bidirectional interactions of agrobiodiversity in four major linkages: urban and peri-urban land use, urban food supply chains, urban food access, and urban food retailing. Agrobiodiversity is evident to varying degrees amid urbanization globally, rather than the previously assumed blanket incompatibility or unspecified partial compatibility. A proposed conceptual framework is used to hypothesize how these linkages create configurations of combined conditions that support agrobiodiversity amid expanding urbanization. These key conditions contain leverage points of the urbanization-agrobiodiversity nexus for policies to address nutrition insecurity and vital environmental functions. We conclude that the urbanization-agrobiodiversity nexus is a crucial new focus of interdisciplinary research to strengthen sustainable development and food systems.
Native biodiversity increases with rising plant invasions in temperate, freshwater wetlands.
Mazurczyk, T., & Brooks, R. P.
Wetlands Ecology and Management
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-021-09842-4
Plant invasions change the landscape in unprecedented ways, influencing not only local wetland native biodiversity but also the regional homogenization of plant communities. Freshwater wetlands are particularly vulnerable to invasive plant impacts, but few studies provide a longitudinal assessment encompassing native biodiversity, plant invasions, and anthropogenic disturbance. We investigate the effects of invasive plant richness and abundance on wetland native biodiversity in 16 temperate, freshwater wetlands in central Pennsylvania. We calculate several commonly used plant community structure and wetland condition indices by site and sampling period across a 20-year timeframe. Results indicate that environmental stimuli had a significant impact on invasive plant abundance through time. Native plant richness and abundance was influenced more by shrub richness, non-native plant cover, and environmental stressors than by invasive plant dominance. This relationship was made evident by the high rate of dominant species turnover and prevalence of dominant native species. If an invasive plant dominated a wetland site, it was replaced by a different dominant native and/or invasive plant in 10 to 15 years, a key finding that relates to the replacement rate of dominant species in the herbaceous layer. This discovery suggests that under certain conditions, invasive plants may provide the necessary means by which a system can recover from a disturbance, which historically goes against the current dogma in the scientific community. Moreover, this supports the idea that some invasive plants serve as a type of secondary pioneer species of succession, aiding in the development of a more stable and biodiverse system over time.