17
Aug 21

Doug Miller retires | Averting megafires | Welcome new students

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Creek Fire 2020

The Creek Fire burns in California’s Sierra National Forest in 2020. The megafire burned more than 379,000 acres. Image: Ryan Waugh

GOOD NEWS

The deadline is October 21, 2021 at 5 p.m. for undergraduate and graduate student fall academic enrichment award applications 

The Bike Den, a community space that offers DIY bike repair and maintenance, located on the ground level of the new West Deck at West Campus, is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, 1–6 p.m., during the fall semester.

Welcome to the new cohort of geography graduate students who have their orientation this week.

NEWS

From Penn State student to professor, landscape scientist Douglas Miller retires

Douglas Miller, who earned three degrees from Penn State; worked as a research assistant, research associate and professor in two colleges; and created and led the Center for Environmental Informatics for 20 years, retired in July and was granted emeritus status.

Historic fire regimes lay groundwork for future forest management in western US

Fires in semi-arid forests in the western United States tended to burn periodically and at low severity until the policy of fire suppression put an end to these low-intensity events and created the conditions for the destructive fires seen today. Understanding the benefits of these periodic fires and the forest structure that they maintained may help land managers and communities avert megafires in the future, according to researchers.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Emic Views of Community Resilience and Coastal Tourism Development

Ryan S. Naylor & Carter A. Hunt & Karl S. Zimmerer & B. Derrick Taff
Societies
https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v11y2021i3p94-d611607.html
Coastal communities are among the most rapidly changing, institutionally complex, and culturally diverse in the world, and they are among the most vulnerable to anthropogenic change. While being a driver of anthropogenic change, tourism can also provide socio-economic alternatives to declining natural resource-based livelihoods for coastal residents. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of small-scale cruise tourism on coastal community resiliency in Petersburg, Alaska. Exploring these impacts through resiliency theory’s lens of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, we employed ethnographic research methods that emphasize emic viewpoints to determine how residents see this form of tourism affecting the resiliency of valued community culture, institutions, and traditional livelihoods. Findings indicate that with purposeful engagement in niche cruise tourism involving boats with 250 passengers or less, and an active rejection of the large cruise ship industry, Petersburg exhibits increased adaptive capacity to promote the resilience of valued community institutions and heritage. This work draws needed recognition to the diversity of activities that fall under the label of cruise tourism, including the distinct implications of smaller-scale, niche cruise tourism for the resilience of coastal communities. It also highlights the need to capture emic perspectives to understand the politics of community resiliency.

Regionally divergent roles of the South Korean state in adopting improved crop varieties and commercializing agriculture (1960–1980): a case study of areas in Jeju and Jeollanamdo.

Hong, Y.
Agriculture and Human Values
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10232-y
The South Korean government’s historical efforts to introduce improved crop varieties have been ambiguously successful. State-bred rice varieties helped achieve national food production goals during the Green Revolution of the 1970s, but these varieties were highly unpopular and were abandoned soon, as the government stopped promoting them. This paper contrasts that experience with the simultaneous successful introduction of an improved variety of tangerine (Citrus unshiu) as a cash crop in Jeju Province. Smallholders of Jeju found space for the high-return fruit in the existing land use system, including the partial conservation of agrobiodiversity without critically risking their subsistence-based food security. Citrus in general was a spatially less-demanding crop that farmers could partly co-cultivate with subsistence crops, while state-bred rice varieties occupied farmland exclusive of other varieties and rice’s double crops. Additionally, by employing political ecology, this paper asserts that the different roles of the state in introducing the two crops and the different regions were other factors behind such divergent adoption outcomes. Considering rice, the state was highly interventionist, because the government depended on rice-producing regions to “feed the nation”; with regard to non-staple-crop production in low-productivity, hard-to-develop regions like Jeju, in contrast, the government gave farmers more autonomy, thus allowing farmers to determine their own space and pace for citrus adoption. The study critically investigates the variable of spatial compatibility between a crop and the land system and sheds light on the current development mission to harmonize the cultivation of food and cash crops.

Visualizing water-energy nexus landscapes

Robb, D., Cole, H., Baka, J., & Bakker, K.
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water
https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1548
Over the past decade, the water-energy nexus (WEN) has emerged as a prominent framework with which to analyze and visualize interconnections between energy production, freshwater resources, and the hydrological cycle. The WEN is a fundamentally geographic concept embedded in landscapes. WEN analyses often include landscape visualizations, yet these are rarely conceptually rigorous; consequently, the visual-representational dimensions of WEN analyses remain relatively weak. Our paper addresses this gap through a meta-review of 503 WEN visualizations sourced from 336 scholarly articles. Based on this analysis, we argue that WEN visualizations often depict complex landscapes as technical systems, while eliding broader considerations of the multiscalar, spatiotemporal, and hydrosocial dimensions of water and energy. In response to these limitations, we offer an alternative approach to visualizing hydrosocial landscapes that draws upon parallel work in geography and cognate disciplines. In the concluding section of the paper, we formulate a set of interdisciplinary recommendations to guide the production of more theoretically-informed nexus visualizations grounded in the concepts of spatiality, temporality, and hydrosociality.


27
Jul 21

Alum pilots new funding effort | Fight fire with fire | Fowler testifies on redistricting

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Jim McCroryJim McCrory, who graduated with a degree in geography in 1973, said his education has guided him during his decades-long career as a helicopter pilot. McCrory often fights and plans wildfire missions. Here, he’s flying experts to an offshore oil rig. Read more about him.

GOOD NEWS

Christopher Fowler testified at the State Government Public Hearing, Stakeholder Input on Congressional Redistricting on July 22. You can view video of his testimony online. He starts at the 102-minute mark.

Karl Zimmerer and co-PIs Kathleen Sexsmith, assistant professor of rural sociology and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and Paige Castellanos, assistant research professor in the Office of International Programs and program manager for the Gender Equity through Agriculture Research and Education Initiative, received a seed grant for biodiversity research as part of the 2021 “Mainstreaming Biodiversity in a Decade of Action” symposium, for their project, “A Gender-Sensitive Analysis of the Global Biodiversity of Food and Agriculture (Agrobiodiversity) and Values to Food/Nutrition Security in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences of Indigenous Communities in Latin America.”  Erica Smithwick was on the steering committee that developed the symposium.

Fritz Kessler, teaching professor of geography, will serve as interim director of Penn State’s Online Geospatial Education while director Anthony Robinson is on sabbatical. Fritz’s appointment began July 1.

Angela Rogers completed the NVivo Academy training course and is a certified expert on the NVivo 2020 release.

NEWS

Wildfire helicopter pilot steers project to honor former geography professor

Jim McCrory, the senior line pilot at Aspen Helicopters in Oxnard, California, has always been fascinated with location. That’s something that drew him to Penn State to earn his geography degree in 1973, and a belief in the importance of location has continued to guide him in his 33-year career as a helicopter responder to Western U.S. wildfires.

Fire operations-prescribed burning combo reduces wildfire severity up to 72%

Firefighters battling wildfires in the western United States use a variety of suppression tactics to get the flames under control. Prescribed burns, or controlled fires intentionally set to clear shrubs and forest litter before a wildfire ever ignites, can make fire suppression operations almost three times as effective in limiting wildfire severity, according to a new study by researchers from Penn State, the U.S. National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Exploring descriptions of movement through geovisual analytics

Scott Pezanowski, Prasenjit Mitra, Alan M. MacEachren
Visual Informatics
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visinf.2021.07.003
Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) is a sub-domain of both Information Retrieval (IR) and GIScience that has emphasized retrieval of documents that mention or are about places along with some focus on geographic feature extraction. GIR advances have created an as yet mostly unrealized potential to leverage text documents as sources for information about geographic-scale movement. Geographic movement described in text documents can complement detailed movement data, provide an alternative when precise data does not exist, and provide the added benefit of rich context about the movement. As an initial large-scale effort to derive meaningful information from textual data describing geographic movement, we applied multiple computational techniques to hundreds of millions of statements. First, we identify and geolocate the geographic places mentioned. Next, we predict those that describe geographic movement. Finally, because the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of global movement disruptions, we predict if the statement describes not moving or restricted movement. Since the data is messy and complicated and the prediction techniques are not perfect, we designed and implemented a geovisual analytics system through which a visual interface enables humans to explore initial statement classifications, the places mentioned in them, and co-occurring place mentions to assess the validity of computational methods and provide direct feedback toward improving results. We include two user scenarios that show how a human can derive meaningful information about geographic movement through the geovisual analytics system. The user scenarios constitute systematic case studies to demonstrate the utility of the approach.

Reparative Accumulation?  Financial Risk and Investment  across Socio-Environmental  Crises

Cohen, Dan, Sara Nelson, and Emily Rosenman
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211030432
With the growing global recognition that environmental and social crises are pushing systems of social and ecological reproduction to their breaking points, governments, philanthropists, and the private sector are proposing a variety of strategies that aim to shift the social and environmental role of finance capital from an extractive process to a reparative one. A frequent refrain is that only finance capital promises the scale of investment necessary to address Earth’s complex social and environmental problems, and that trillions of private investment dollars wait in the wings ready to mobilize for the right kinds of projects. A hallmark of these approaches is their promise of “triple bottom line” outcomes, with social, environmental, and financial benefits—what the industry refers to as “responsible investing.” This symposium interrogates the political dynamics and financial mechanisms underlying ongoing experiments in so-called responsible finance, including various forms of impact investing and financial “solutionism” to social and environmental problems. We develop the term “reparative accumulation” to conceptualize the divergent forms and continuities in how these new financial devices function across sectors, what types of futures the industry is attempting to create, the effects on socionatures, and what resistance might look like both within and outside these systems.

Troubling False Care

Bartos, A.
ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/2093
Despite sustained scholarly attention on care ethics across the social sciences, little attention has been paid to the politics of care practiced in the Western academy. In this provocation, I bring care ethics into dialogue with critical pedagogy to explore seemingly benign caring practices in the university. I draw on analyses of ‘false hope’ to provide a framework to better identify and nuance examples of ‘care’ throughout universities. While some caring practices in the academy may provide opportunities for resistance to its neoliberal corporatisation, I argue that examples of ‘false care’ and even uncaring practices can simultaneously flourish. More attention is needed by care scholars to unpack and untangle fraught caring relations throughout the academy in order to help our universities become more caring, equitable and inclusive.


13
Jul 21

Brian King now HoD | Taylor to direct EESI | Research round-up

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

EESI space renovation

Earth and Environmental Systems Institute staff members Francisco Tutella (left) and Tam Rankin converse in the newly renovated space on the second floor of the Earth and Engineering Sciences Building.

GOOD NEWS

Christopher S. Fowler and Linda L. Fowler published the article, “Here’s a different way to fix gerrymandering,” in The Washington Post.

Brian King has been named a co-editor of Human Geography and Nature & Society for The Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Zachary Goldberg and Anika Rice published the article, “How Jewish Farmers are Divesting from White Supremacy,” in Edge Effects, a digital magazine produced by graduate students at the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE), which is part of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. It was founded in 2014.

Jodi Vender won the Staff Outstanding Service Award for the 2020–21 academic year.

The department’s 2021 Recognition Reception website is live. Visit to see all the awards for faculty, staff, and students over the past year.

Hannah Perrelli was awarded an Erickson Discovery Grant for her research project, “Weaponizing Water: How Colonial Policy Has Exacerbated the Disproportionate Devastation of COVID 19 in the Navajo Nation.”

Vivian Rodriguez Rocha received an award from the Society for Woman Geographers to support fieldwork leading to her dissertation, “Coutertopographies of Care,”  which charts the development of care-activism [activismo de cuidados] in the Movement for Women’s Lives in Mexico.

NEWS

Brian King named head of the Department of Geography

Brian King, professor of geography and associate head for the department’s resident graduate programs, has been appointed head of the Department of Geography. He began on July 1.

King succeeds Cynthia Brewer, who will remain an active member of the faculty after serving as department head since 2014.

Taylor to serve as interim director of Earth and Environmental Systems Institute

Alan Taylor, professor of geography and ecology, will serve as interim director of the Penn State Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI) while director Susan Brantley is on sabbatical. His appointment began July 1.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Social Reproduction Theory: State of the field and new directions in geography

Rodríguez-Rocha, V.
Geography Compass
https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12586
Interest in social reproduction theory (SRT) has been revived in the in the last ten odd years. This paper positions SRT, and its refraction through a geographic lens, as particularly well placed to address emerging issues in the context of ongoing crises—economic, environmental and of care—which have been enhanced by the Covid-19 pandemic. I present an overview of the Marxist-feminist traditions that constitute the basis for modern SRT. Through a survey of recent literature, I discuss the potential for extending contemporary SRT through intersectionality theory and suggest the need to draw on theoretical insights originating in the global periphery towards a postcolonial, decolonial SRT. Finally, I contextualize social reproduction theories within geography and suggest three emerging areas of scholarship in which combining a geographic and SRT perspective would yield productive understandings of the current moment and signal towards the construction of alternative, livable futures. These areas are debt and the financialization of social reproduction under neoliberalism; a turn towards a socioecological understanding of reproduction; and resistance, transformation and visions of the future through a “conscious appropriation” of life’s work and life sustaining practices at large.

Reference frames and geographic scale: understanding their relationship in environmental learning

Jiayan Zhao, Xiaochuan Ma, Mark Simpson, Pejman Sajjadi, Jan Oliver Wallgrün & Alexander Klippel
Cartography and Geographic Information Science
https://doi.org/10.1080/15230406.2021.1942219
Reference frames provide structure for spatial cognition and support spatial knowledge development across different scales. This study sheds light on the relationship between geographic scale, defined as the spatial extent visually accessible from a single viewpoint, and the preferential use of different reference frames (egocentric vs. allocentric) for environmental learning. Participants learned target locations by teleporting through a virtual maze. Leveraging the flexibility and potential of immersive technologies, we manipulated geographic scale using two perspectives, a ground-level view and a pseudo-aerial view, to examine how reference frame proclivity (determined by an established test) affects spatial learning at each scale. The results of a pointing task show that participants who preferred an allocentric reference frame benefited from the pseudo-aerial perspective, whereas participants who preferred an egocentric reference frame made more efficient use of the ground perspective. A fine-grained behavioral and cognitive analysis provides concrete explanations for differences in task performance and offers evidence for the existence of egocentric survey representations. The results are essential for understanding how immersive technologies change spatial learning.

“It’s not enough:” Local experiences of social grants, economic precarity, and health inequity in Mpumalanga, South Africa

Margaret S. Winchester, Brian King, Andrea Rishworth,
Wellbeing, Space and Society
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wss.2021.100044
South Africa has received international recognition for taking an active role in addressing extreme poverty by establishing a national social grant program. Lauded as one example to alleviate poverty, the operating assumption is that these strategies provide alternatives to mainstream development assistance. Notwithstanding their potential effects, the pathways generating livelihood change and their long-term implications for processes of citizenship formation and state society relations remain unclear. Drawing from an interdisciplinary study of social and economic change in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, we analyze household surveys and qualitative interviews to examine how individuals manage their limited income through a balance of social grants, economic remittances, labor migration and strategic task-shifting. Though more than half of the households receive some form of pension support from the national government, many continue depending on remittances from household members living elsewhere. Social grants additionally interrelate with health maintenance in complicated ways, evidenced by high HIV rates within the study region. We argue that while the distribution of grants helps alleviate financial stress, the structure of assistance programs is more symbolically than materially significant for many families. Despite government assistance, families require social network mobilization and resources to access and secure healthcare and other basic needs.

Advancing equitable health and well-being across urban–rural sustainable infrastructure systems

Pearsall, H., Gutierrez-Velez, V.H., Gilbert, M.R. … Jennifer E. Baka … et al.
npj Urban Sustainability
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-021-00028-8
Infrastructure systems have direct implications for how health and well-being evolve across urban–rural systems. Scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers use domain-specific methods and tools to characterize sectors of infrastructure, but these approaches do not capture the cascading effects across interrelated infrastructure and governance domains. We argue that the development and management of sustainable urban infrastructure must focus on interactions across urban and rural places to advance equitable health and well-being. We call for a research agenda that focuses on urban–rural infrastructure systems, addressing trade-offs and synergies, decision-making, institutional arrangements, and effective co-production of knowledge across the diverse places connected by infrastructure.

Influence of HMD Type and Spatial Ability on Experiences and Learning in Place-based Education

Sajjadi, J. Zhao, J. O. Wallgrün, P. L. Femina and A. Klippel
2021 7th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN)
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9459405&isnumber=9459239
With the emergence of different types of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), researchers and educators must make informed decisions on what HMDs best support their needs. When performing experiments with relatively large populations, these decisions are largely affected by the sensing-scaling tradeoff between high-end tethered HMDs and lower-end standalone systems. Higher sensing affords a richer experience, but it is also associated with higher costs in terms of the HMD itself and the need for VR-ready computers. These limitations often impede instructors from using high-end HMDs in an efficient way with larger populations. We report on the results of a study in the context of place-based immersive VR (iVR) Geoscience education that compares the experiences and learning of 45 students after going through an immersive virtual field trip, using either a lower-sensing but scalable Oculus Quest or a higher-sensing but tethered HTC Vive Pro. Our results indicate that students who used the Quest reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction but also more simulator sickness (although still a very low number on average) compared to those who used an HTC Vive Pro. Our findings suggest that with content design considerations, standalone HMDs can be a viable replacement for high-end systems in large-scale studies. Furthermore, our results also suggest that in the context of place-based iVR education, the spatial abilities of students (i.e., sense-of-direction) can be a determining factor in their experiences and learning, and therefore an important topic of study for designing effective place-based iVR experiences.

Place-Based Learning Through a Proxy – Variations in the Perceived Benefits of a Virtual Tour

O. Wallgrün, E. Knapp, A. Taylor, A. Klippel, J. Zhao and P. Sajjadi
2021 7th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN)
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9459380&isnumber=9459239
Place-based and fieldwork learning play a key role in higher education in environmental sciences and other geospatial disciplines. We report on a study in which we evaluated a web-based virtual tour application for teaching natural resource management in fire-prone western forests in two undergraduate classes. The virtual tour uses 360°-image-based virtual scenes and pre-recorded audio commentary by a domain expert to lead participants through the Stanislaus-Tuolumne Experimental Forest where forest treatments were implemented to reduce fire hazard. We present results from assessing students’ overall perception of the virtual tour, their views towards its application in undergraduate education, and their feedback for improving the design of future virtual tours. Furthermore, we discuss the collected data from the perspective of gender differences and differences in familiarity with the topic of the tour.

Virtual strike and dip – Advancing inclusive and accessible field geology

Natalie Bursztyn, Pejman Sajjadi, Hannah Riegel, Jiawei Huang, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Jiayan Zhao, Bart Masters, Alexander Klippel
Geoscience Communication Discussion
[preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2021-16, in review
Accessibility and inclusivity in field geology have become increasingly important issues to address in geoscience education and have long been set aside due to the tradition of field geology and the laborious task of making it inclusive to all. Although a popular saying among geologists is “the best geologists see the most rocks”, field trips cost money, time, and are only accessible for those who are physically able to stay outside long hours. With the availability of 3D block diagrams, an onslaught of virtual learning environments is becoming increasingly viable. Strike and dip is at the core of any field geologist’s education and career; learning and practicing these skills is fundamental to making geologic maps and understanding the regional geology of an area. In this paper, we present the Strike and Dip virtual tool (SaD) with the objective of teaching the principles of strike and dip for geologic mapping to introductory geology students. We embedded the SaD tool into an introductory geology course and recruited 147 students to participate in the study. Participants completed two maps using the SaD tool and reported on their experiences through a questionnaire. The SaD tool was overall perceived positively by students. Furthermore, some individual differences among students proved to be important contributing factors to their experiences and subjective assessments of learning. When controlling for participants’ past experience with similar software, our results indicate that students highly familiar with navigating geographical software perceived the virtual environment of the tool to be significantly more realistic and easier to use compared to those with lower levels of familiarity. Our results are corroborated by a qualitative assessment of participants’ feedback to two open-ended questions, highlighting both the overall effectiveness of the SaD tool, and the effect of geographical software familiarity on measures of experience and learning.

Embodied digital twins for environmental applications

Klippel, A., Sajjadi, P., Zhao, J., Wallgrün, J. O., Huang, J., and Bagher, M. M.
ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-V-4-2021-193-2021
The synergies of advances in environmental sensing and modeling and the mainstreaming of immersive technologies lay the foundation for a theoretical grounding of embodied digital twins. Embodied digital twins draw on an established understanding of the importance of place for environmental sciences as well as a paradigmatic shift in the cognitive sciences toward embodied cognition. Nonetheless, the excitement of realizing embodied experiences through immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality stands in stark contrast to a lack of consistent terminology and empirical research. In this vision paper, we are proposing to draw more deeply on the theoretical basis of embodied cognition and to establish research frameworks for advancing embodied digital twins. We discuss several examples for turning environmentally sensed and modeled information into high-fidelity immersive experiences and provide a discussion and outlook on critical topics to address.


29
Jun 21

MacEachren retires | Water systems science faculty hire | King gets mentoring award

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Alan MacEachren SWIG
Alan MacEachren (center) shares best practices at a Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) panel on grant proposal writing during the 2016 American Association of Geographers annual meeting. MacEachren, professor of geography and information science and technology and longtime director of the GeoVISTA Center from its formation in 1998 until 2020, retires this summer after 36 years at Penn State.

GOOD NEWS

Colonel Brett DeAngelis, USAF, who earned his B.S. in geography in 1999, graduated from the U.S. Naval War College with distinction. His essay “B-25 Gunships in the Pacific: Lessons in Innovation, Risk, and Failure” won the Lt Gen George Kenney Prize for writing on air or space power.

Ruchi Patel received a Fulbright US Student Award to conduct her dissertation research in El Salvador for the project, “Development, conservation, and change on El Salvador’s Balsamo Coast.”

Kimberly Van Meter has accepted the assistant professor of geography position, specializing in water systems science, a co-hire with EESI. Her start date is July 16, 2021.

Jennifer Baka, Gregory Jenkins, Alexander Klippel, Louisa Holmes, and Emily Rosenman are among the 22 groups of interdisciplinary researches to receive The Institutes of Energy and the Environment seed grands for the 2020-21 award cycle.

Mid-Atlantic Open Hours for users to connect with Esri and each other will he held July 8, 2021, noon to 2 p.m. online. Use this link for more information and to register.

The Middle states Division of the AAG will hold its annual 2021 meeting at Rutgers University on the Livingstone campus in Piscataway, NJ from October 29–30, 2021. Use this link for more information or to register.

NEWS

Geographic visualization trailblazer Alan MacEachren to retire

Alan MacEachren, professor of geography and information science and technology and longtime director of the GeoVISTA Center from its formation in 1998 until 2020, announced his retirement this summer after 36 years at Penn State.

MacEachren was hired from the University of Colorado by then-department head Greg Knight in 1985 to join the faculty and lead the Deasy GeoGraphics Lab. At the time, the focus of the lab was making custom maps to support research and teaching.

Online geospatial education faculty member receives mentoring award

Beth King, associate teaching professor and assistant program manager of the online geospatial education program received the 2021 Carolyn Merry Mentoring Award from the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS).

“It was a pleasant surprise,” King said. “And I am thankful to my colleagues who nominated me.”

Diana Sinton, the executive director of the UCGIS, said King received the award due to her mastery at building rapport.


15
Jun 21

Outstanding TA award | Administrative Fellow | Opioid epidemic

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Saumya VaishnavaSaumya Vaishnava, shown here in this pre-pandemic photo, gets students actively involved when she teaches. Vaishnava received a 2021 Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award, which is sponsored jointly by the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice President and Dean for Undergraduate Education. See the story below.

GOOD NEWS

The Cities’ COVID Mitigation and Mapping (C2M2) Virtual Symposium, hosted through Harvard University’s Center for Geographic Analysis, in partnership with the American Association of Geographers, is being held June 22­–25, 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. EDT via Zoom.  The event is free but registration is required.

Jiawei Huang successfully defended her dissertation.

Yale Climate Connections interviewed Alexander Klippel about using virtual reality to ground conversations about climate change. The audio story is about 90 seconds long.

Alumnae Aparna Parikh and Karen Paiva Henrique are offering a virtual workshop, June 14–18, 2021 on “Critical Visual Methods for Fieldwork at a Distance” for graduate students. Use this link for more information or to register.

The Esri Virtual Education Summit will be held June 21 to 22, 2021. Use this link for more information or to register.

The Middle states Division of the AAG will hold its annual 2021 meeting at Rutgers University on the Livingstone campus in Piscataway, NJ from October 29–30, 2021. Use this link for more information or to register.

NEWS

University award fuels graduate student’s love for teaching

Saumya Vaishnava, a doctoral student in the Penn State Department of Geography, has received a 2021 Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award, which is sponsored jointly by the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice President and Dean for Undergraduate Education. Vaishnava received the department’s Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award in 2020.

New Administrative Fellow will bring ecological approach to her experience

Erica Smithwick, Penn State distinguished professor of geography and associate director of the Institutes of Energy and the Environment, was selected as an Administrative Fellow for the 2021–22 academic year.

Climate change a bigger threat to landscape biodiversity than emerald ash borer

The emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle native to Southeast Asia, threatens the entire ash tree population in North America and has already changed forested landscapes and caused tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue to the ash sawtimber industry since it arrived in the United States in the 1990s.

In Memorium: Dr. Robert P. Brooks

There are those for whom the joy of science is in its ability to observe the smallest details of a problem; some who delight in its ability to untangle knotted threads of variables; some who use it to chase cures for something that threatens; some who use it to uncover patterns; some who use it to organize the world.  And then there are some who use science to make the earth that they love a more beautiful place, and to help others to do the same. Robert P. Brooks was one of the latter.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Opioid overdoses spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, data from Pennsylvania show

Brian King, Andrea Rishworth, Ruchi Patel
The Conversation
https://theconversation.com/opioid-overdoses-spiked-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-data-from-pennsylvania-show-161635
Since the first diagnosed case of COVID-19 in the United States on Jan. 20, 2020, news about infection rates, deaths and pandemic-driven economic hardships has been part of our daily lives.

But there is a knowledge gap in how COVID-19 has affected a public health crisis that existed before the pandemic: the opioid epidemic. Prior to 2020, an average of 128 Americans died every day from an opioid overdose. That trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


01
Jun 21

Mapping student housing | EMS alumni connections | New SWIG officers

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

landlord mapA screen capture of part of a map showing State College landlords property locations.  The project was done for GEOG 420Y Comparative Urbanism by students Christopher Long and Hope Thatcher along with Professor Emily Rosenman. They presented their research on the growth of LLC housing providers in the off-campus student rental market in State College for Housing Transitions at Centre Gives in May, 2021. Anyone can use their website to research a potential landlord. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/99d656168c7d42cdba33ad12350a64a2

GOOD NEWS

Darlene Peletski is collecting old maps and atlases for a project she is working on in the office.  If anyone has any old maps or atlases that they would like to get rid of, I will be happy to take them and repurpose them.  Any kind of map is welcome. Send materials to Darlene Peletski, Department of Geography, Penn State, 302 Walker Building University Park, PA  16802. Contact Darlene with questions.

Postdoctoral Scholar Tatiana Gumucio and her partner Ray welcomed their son Oliver Paul Miller into the world on May 20, 2021. Everyone is doing well.

Joshua Inwood was promoted to professor of geography, Department of Geography, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

New SWIG officers elected: Vivian Rodriguez Rocha, Timothy Prestby, and Casey Hamilton have been elected to succeed Susan Kotikot and Mei-Huan, serving from fall 2021 to spring 2022.

NEWS

Alumni connections help EMS students gain employment edge

Hannah Perrelli knows exactly what drew her to the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS). It was the camaraderie between students and the engagement with faculty, staff and alumni who frequented the University Park campus.

Obituary for Robert Brooks

Port Matilda, Pennsylvania – Dear Family and Friends,
With heavy hearts, we announce the passing of Dr. Robert Brooks. Rob was a dedicated son, brother, husband, father, grandaddy (doodoodaddy), friend, colleague, mentor, professor, scientist, and all around wonderful person. Rob was, and remains, a light in our lives.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Assessing the Relationships Between COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders and Opioid Overdoses in the State of Pennsylvania

King, B., Patel, R., & Rishworth, A.
Journal of Drug Issues
https://doi.org/10.1177/00220426211006362
COVID-19 is compounding opioid use disorder throughout the United States. While recent commentaries provide useful policy recommendations, few studies examine the intersection of COVID-19 policy responses and patterns of opioid overdose. We examine opioid overdoses prior to and following the Pennsylvania stay-at-home order implemented on April 1, 2020. Using data from the Pennsylvania Overdose Information Network, we measure change in monthly incidents of opioid-related overdose pre- versus post-April 1, and the significance of change by gender, age, race, drug class, and naloxone doses administered. Findings demonstrate statistically significant increases in overdose incidents among both men and women, White and Black groups, and several age groups, most notably the 30–39 and 40–49 ranges, following April 1. Significant increases were observed for overdoses involving heroin, fentanyl, fentanyl analogs or other synthetic opioids, pharmaceutical opioids, and carfentanil. The study emphasizes the need for opioid use to be addressed alongside efforts to mitigate and manage COVID-19 infection.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Progress and Prospect for Spatial Demography

Matthews, S.A., Stiberman, L., Raymer, J. et al.
Spatial Demography
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40980-021-00084-9
To help identify past achievements, research priorities and gaps, and emerging themes we reached out to several members of the Spatial Demography’s editorial board who attended the 2011 meeting as well as to other members of the journal’s editorial board who did not. We wrote to each contributor asking them to write a short commentary on their thoughts and insights, with requests to identify some of the publications, software, methodological developments, and data products that may influence the field going forward.

Controls on spatial patterns of wildfire severity and early post-fire vegetation development in an Arizona Sky Island, USA

Taylor, A.H., Poulos, H.M., Kluber, J. et al.
Landscape Ecology
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01260-4
Context: Spatial patterns of vegetation change and fire severity are influenced by fire exclusion, topography and weather conditions during a fire. Since the late nineteenth century, fire exclusion has increased vegetation cover which could influence fire severity and post-fire vegetation composition.

Objectives: We use field measurements and remote sensing of a 2011 wildfire to answer the following questions: (1) How did twentieth century vegetation change influence fire severity patterns? (2) What were the key drivers of wildfire severity? (3) Did initial post-fire development indicate stability or a shift in woody plant composition.

Methods: Repeat aerial photography and pre and post fire field measurements were used to quantify twentieth century vegetation change and measure wildfire effects. Spatial controls on 2011 fire severity were determined using geospatial layers of vegetation type and change, topography, fire weather, daily fire extent, and fire severity.

Results: Vegetation changes since 1935 increased area of closed woodlands and shrublands and the 2011 fire reversed this trend and increased heterogeneity of vegetation types. Vegetation in plots experienced a post-fire shift towards resprouting species. At the landscape scale, terrain and weather were the main variables controlling fire severity with modest contribution by vegetation type and areas with vegetation change since 1935.

Conclusions: Our findings indicate that wildfire severity in this landscape is strongly influenced by weather and terrain and wildfires reverse the effects of fire exclusion. Using terrain based landscape compartments for prescribed and wildfire management would help maintain the heterogeneous effects of the 2011 fire into future.


18
May 21

Getting to negative on May 19 | Smithwick named Administrative Fellow | EMS awards

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Cindy Brewer

Cynthia Brewer and others attending The Graduate School in-person commencement ceremonies in Beaver Stadium at University Park on May 7, 2021.

GOOD NEWS

June 2, 2021, Esri’s first Mid-Atlantic Open Hours—an overview and demonstration of ArcGIS Field Maps, Additional topics for this Open Hours session will include general community and technology updates, extended Q&A, and discussion. For more information and to register: https://www.esri.com/en-us/lg/events/mid-atlantic-open-hours

Department associate heads named
Lorraine Dowler will remain as the associate Head for DEI, and Roger Downs will remain as the associate head for the undergraduate program. Trevor Birkenholtz has agreed to be the new associate head for the resident graduate program.

New department graduate representatives elected
To serve from this summer through the following spring, Ruth Buck and Matt Bauerlin will be replacing Chanel Lange-Maney and Hannah Caudill.

Angela Rogers was invited to be a panelist for the May session of the American Association of Geographers Early Career and Department Leadership webinar series

Chanel Lange-Maney has been selected to receive the Nancy Brown Geography Community Service Award from Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG). The award is a SWIG tradition that recognizes students who are involved in service in the department and the community.

Erica Smithwick was selected as an Administrative Fellow for 2021–22. Her mentor will be Lora Weiss, senior vice president for Research.

NEWS

Getting to Negative: Strategies, Ethics and Co-benefits’ webinar on May 19

Erica Smithwick is the moderator and Jennifer Baka is a panelist

Five Earth and Mineral Sciences students awarded at Graduate Research Exhibition

Amy Farley, a Penn State World Campus master’s student in Geographic Information Systems, earned first place in the engineering category.

EMSAGE laureates make mark at Penn State, look to continue in careers

Geography spring EMSAGE laureates include: Shane Leister and Jenna Pulice

Faculty and student excellence celebrated at EMS virtual awards celebration

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Simulated fire regimes favor oak and pine but affect carbon stocks in mixed oak forests in Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

Anthony Zhao, Alan H. Taylor, Erica A.H. Smithwick, Margot Kaye, Lucas B. Harris
Forest Ecology and Management
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119332
Changes in fire regimes can alter patterns of species dominance and forest carbon stocks by amplifying or diminishing fire vegetation feedbacks. The combined influence of 19th century forest harvesting followed by 20th century fire exclusion has caused a shift in species composition in fire adapted mixed oak forests toward fire sensitive shade tolerant hardwoods that reduce flammability of surface fuels. Prescribed fire is a tool with potential to restore fire adapted oak forests with a history of fire exclusion, but outcomes from the practice of prescribed burning are unclear due to a paucity of studies that apply prescribed fire over multi decadal periods. Here we use simulation modeling to investigate how variation in fire frequencies and period of burning influence simulated dominance of oak, pine, and other hardwoods and forest carbon stocks in Pennsylvania mixed oak forests. Single burns had little effect on basal area (BA) or species composition while more frequent burning increased pine BA, especially when pine was initially abundant. Simulated fire regimes with fire intervals of 10–20 years applied for multiple decades maintained high oak BA and reduced fire sensitive hardwoods. Average BA at the end the 60-year simulation period was inversely related to fire frequency and live carbon stocks decreased with more frequent burning. Simulated fire effects suggest implementation of prescribed fire regimes over periods of decades may be a feasible strategy to maintain or increase oak and pine dominance where management objectives are compatible with fire use. Moreover, several simulated fire regimes seem capable of maintaining BA of fire adapted species and maintaining or increasing overall live C stocks providing a range of management options for maintaining oak and pine, and live carbon stocks using prescribed fire.

Prescribed fire and fire suppression operations influence wildfire severity under severe weather in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, USA

Harris Lucas B., Drury Stacy A., Farris Calvin A., Taylor Alan H.
International Journal of Wildland Fire
https://doi.org/10.1071/WF20163
Fuels treatments and fire suppression operations during a fire are the two management influences on wildfire severity, yet their influence is rarely quantified in landscape-scale analyses. We leveraged a combination of datasets including custom canopy fuel layers and post-fire field data to analyse drivers of fire severity in a large wildfire in the southern Cascade Range, California, USA. We used a statistical model of tree basal area loss from the fire, factoring in weather, fuels and terrain to quantify the extent to which prescribed burning mitigated wildfire severity by simulating potential wildfire severity without prescribed fire and comparing that with modelled severity from areas burned with prescribed fire. Similarly, using a map of operations intensity, we calculated predicted fire severity under a scenario with no operations and used these predictions to quantify the influence of operations. We found that prescribed fires and operations reduced tree basal area loss from the wildfire by an average of 32% and 22% respectively, and that severity was reduced by 72% in areas with both prescribed fire and operations. Our approach could be applied to other wildfires and regions to better understand the effects of fuel treatments and fire suppression operations on wildfire severity.

Conceptualizing the Remote Site Experience through Immersive Technology: Unraveling the Santa Marta Favela from Students’ Perspectives

Danielle Oprean, Debora Verniz, Jiayan Zhao, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Timothy Baird, José P. Duarte and Alexander Klippel
Landscape Journal
http://lj.uwpress.org/content/39/2/31.short
As projects become more globally dispersed, site visits and analysis become challenging, often leading to the use of secondary information (e.g., photos, plans, and videos). Immersive technology offers embodied, visual, and spatial perspectives, providing unique information about a site that could be beneficial. Our research examines how virtual environments (VEs) can help landscape architects understand a site by exploring immersive technology for a remote site visit in a joint landscape and architecture studio. Students explored an informal settlement (favela) in Brazil first using a VE through three separate technologies:HTCVive,MobileVR, and WebVR, and then in person. Students’ responses helped identify perceptions toward technology and future improvements to the VE. Therewere four key findings. (1) VE establishes familiarity with a site; (2) VE is used for checking details; (3) walking is desired over realism; and (4) control of the VE experience is enjoyable. The findings suggest that VE cannot replace an in-person experience but provides familiarity when used alongside common secondary materials. Future research is needed to discern what VE features generate site familiarity.

Does the relationship between racial, ethnic, and income diversity and social capital vary across the United States? A county-level analysis using geographically weighted regression

Samantha L. Powers, Stephen A. Matthews, Andrew J. Mowen,
Applied Geography
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2021.102446
Social capital provides important health, economic, and community benefits. While there are several types of social capital, that which is characterized by connections between diverse individuals from different social groups is thought to be particularly valuable. Despite the fact that both socio-demographic diversity and social capital exhibit significant spatial variation across the United States, there remains a lack of research investigating the relationships between these variables at the county level. This study utilized geographically weighted regression to explore the potential non-stationarity of the relationships between racial, ethnic, and income diversity and social capital. Results indicate spatial non-stationary with regard to all three types of diversity, with statistical significance, strength of association, and direction of the relationships varying notably across the United States. These findings underscore the need for more attention to local variation in the relationships between forms of diversity and social capital. The local spatial modeling strategies used here offer a different perspective on these relationships.


27
Apr 21

Faculty research videos | Box migration | Geography on YouTube

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

website mega menu

The Department of Geography has a YouTube channel with playlists for the Activism and Academic Series, Graduate Admissions Process, Geography Alumni Profiles, and select Coffee Hour lectures. For easy access to all these resources, the channel link is in the News & Events mega menu of the department homepage.

GOOD NEWS

DoG enews milestone

This is the 250th issue of the department’s weekly news blog. The first post was published on July 2, 2014. Prior to that date, DoG enews was distributed by email only and not saved anywhere. It was the suggestion of Guido Cervone to maintain an archive of the department’s news that led to the creation of the “dogblog” using the Sites at Penn State web publishing platform. DoG enews is emailed weekly to more than 1,000 subscribers including internal Penn State advocates; the department community of faculty, staff, and graduate students; undergraduate students; and alumni and friends. Thanks for reading!

A video on “Virtual Reality field tour of the ‘Variable Density Thinning’ study on the Stanislaus-Tuolumne Experimental Forest, California,” research conducted by Alan Taylor, Alexander Klippel, and Jan Wallgrün is featured on the USDA Forest Services Research and Development highlights webpage. This 33-minute tour provides a visual view of novel thinning and prescribed fire treatments for restoring a more diverse forest that is also resilient to stressors such as wildfire and drought.

Erica Smithwick discussed the impact wildfires have on the ecosystem, climate change and human habitat. At “Conversations with Colleagues,” monthly seminar hosted by at Penn State’s The Village. The 57-minute video of her talk can be viewed on YouTube.

Jamie Peeler successfully defended her Ph.D. She also has received postdoc funding and will be a NatureNet Science Fellow with The Nature Conservancy in Missoula, Mont.

Helen Greatrex received a Research Innovations with Scientists and Engineers (RISE) seed grant from the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) for the project “Standardizing satellite weather analysis.”

NEWS

Virtual Undergraduate Exhibition showcases undergraduate ingenuity

Harman Singh presented a poster from her research “Examining the Complex Nature of Flash Flooding through a Mixed Method Approach: A Case from Kerala, India.”

Faculty and staff encouraged to prepare Box accounts for migration to Office 365

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences migration starts on May 4, 2021

As Penn State IT continues to migrate Box files to comparable Office 365 services, University IT leaders are asking faculty and staff members who have not yet done so to clean up their Box files to help facilitate successful, timely migrations.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

The Organ Supply Chain: Geography and the Inequalities of Transplant Logistics

Harrison Cole
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12458
This paper describes how supply chain management practices are applied to the process of organ transplantation in the United States. While these practices are meant to increase the volume of organs available for transplantation, I argue that they may in fact exacerbate existing inequities of access to treatment. This is an especially pressing issue given that the number of people currently on the organ transplant waiting list far exceeds the number of organs available for transplantation, a situation referred to as “the organ shortage crisis.” A contributing factor to this disparity is the spatiotemporal distribution of transplant centers, donors, and recipients, considering that the transplant process is so time‐sensitive and time‐intensive. In response, the healthcare industry is developing systems that smooth and accelerate the procurement and delivery of organs, creating a logistical network that is standardized, data‐driven and able to be deployed at a moment’s notice. However, these new systems draw design inspiration from those originally developed for profit‐based corporate supply chains, and thus risk employing the spatial logics of corporate supply chain management practices. Drawing from interviews with transplant and other medical professionals, I argue that applying these practices to the organ transplant network may end up privileging already‐advantaged patients, when instead, a truly equitable network must attend to the uneven landscape of transplantation in the US. Furthermore, I argue that these technologies should not necessarily be resisted outright, but rather adopted in the interest of universal access as opposed to the maintenance of profitability.

Prescribed fire alters structure and composition of a mid-Atlantic oak forest up to eight years after burning

Dems, C.L., Taylor, A.H., Smithwick, E.A.H. et al
Fire Ecology
https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-021-00093-5
Background: Prescribed fire in Eastern deciduous forests has been understudied relative to other regions in the United States. In Pennsylvania, USA, prescribed fire use has increased more than five-fold since 2009, yet forest response has not been extensively studied. Due to variations in forest composition and the feedback between vegetation and fire, Pennsylvania deciduous forests may burn and respond differently than forests across the eastern US. We measured changes in forest structure and composition up to eight years after prescribed fire in a hardwood forest of the Ridge and Valley region of the Appalachian Mountains in central Pennsylvania.

Results: Within five years post fire, tree seedling density increased more than 72% while sapling density decreased by 90%, midstory density decreased by 46%, and overstory response varied. Following one burn in the mixed-oak unit, overstory tree density decreased by 12%. In the aspen–oak unit, where pre-fire harvesting and two burns occurred, overstory tree density increased by 25%. Not all tree species responded similarly and post-fire shifts in species relative abundance occurred in sapling and seedling size classes. Abundance of red maple and cherry species decreased, whereas abundance of sassafras, quaking aspen, black oak, and hickory species increased.

Conclusions: Forest composition plays a key role in the vegetation–fire relationship and localized studies are necessary to measure forest response to prescribed fire. Compositional shifts in tree species were most pronounced in the aspen–oak unit where pre-fire overstory thinning and two prescribed fires were applied and significant structural changes occurred in all stands after just one burn. Increases in fire-tolerant tree species combined with reductions in fire-intolerant species highlight the role of prescribed fire in meeting management objectives such as altering forest structure and composition to improve game habitat in mid-Atlantic hardwood forests.


20
Apr 21

UROC at Coffee Hour | Crane to retire | Mapping the mafia

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

virtual gallery slide
Tara Mazurczyk has two pieces of artwork featured in the Palmer Museum virtual exhibition, both on gallery slide 19: Walking in Serenity (acrylic painting) and Forging the Past (pen drawing), shown above.

GOOD NEWS

April 21, 11:15 a.m.–12:30 p.m. “Envisioning a Climate Consortium: What is a University’s Role in Combatting Climate Change?” Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment seminar by Erica Smithwick

Beth King has been selected for the 2021 Carolyn Merry Mentoring Award from the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.

Megan Baumann was awarded the Best Paper Award for 2021 from the Latin America Specialty Group at AAG for her paper titled, “No es rentable’: Land rentals as a form of slow exclusion and dispossession in Colombia’s irrigation megaprojects” and she also received the 2021 Mountain Geographies Specialty Group  Mauna Kea Student Presentation Award.

Amy Farley won first place in the Engineering category of the Graduate Exhibition for her research project, “Open-source, serverless web-mapping: A Case Study for the Agriculture Industry.”

Louisa Holmes received an IEE seed grant for “Engaging Underserved Communities in Environmental Assessment for Healthy Living.” Co-investigators: Mallika Bose, professor of landscape architecture and Melissa Bopp, associate professor of kinesiology.

COFFEE HOUR

UROC Showcase

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Connection (UROC) offers research and professional development opportunities in the Department of Geography.

These opportunities allow undergraduate students to gain valuable research experience and technical skills through collaboration on projects within the department and supervised by faculty and/or graduate students, as well as 1-3 credit hours to apply towards graduation. Once a year, UROC reseachers present a short talk about their projects at a department Coffee Hour.

NEWS

Associate Vice Provost for Global Programs Rob Crane to retire July 2021

Penn State Global Programs has announced that Associate Vice Provost Rob Crane will retire in July 2021 from the University after 36 years as a faculty member and an administrator.

Four projects receive research computing support through institute’s seed grants

Helen Greatrex, assistant professor in remote sensing and geo-statistics and ICDS co-hire, for the project “Standardizing satellite weather analysis” is a recipient

The Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) has awarded the first round of RISE seed grants, made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

GIS technology helps map out how America’s mafia networks were ‘connected’

At its height in the mid-20th century, American organized crime groups, often called the mafia, grossed approximately $40 billion each year, typically raising that money through illegal or untaxed activities, such as extortion and gambling.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Grand Challenges in Urban Agriculture: Ecological and Social Approaches to Transformative Sustainability

Zimmerer Karl S., Bell Martha G., Chirisa Innocent, Duvall Chris S., Egerer Monika, Hung Po-Yi, Lerner Amy M., Shackleton Charlie, Ward James David, Yacamán Ochoa Carolina
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.668561
This synopsis of the Grand Challenges of Urban Agriculture (UA) is framed by the urgent need to understand and strengthen the expanding yet highly diverse roles of UA amid rapid global urbanization, failures of predominant food systems, and crises in systems of physical and mental health. More than half of humanity lives in cities today and by 2030 this is projected to grow to 60.4 percent, ~5 billion people (UN Habitat, 2020). More than 90 percent of urban demographic increase is anticipated to take place in the developing world.

Ecological and social dimensions of UA are situated in these expanding spaces of cities, towns, and villages (along with their urban fringe or peri-urban areas), and among their diverse populations. UA is further situated in the powerful, far-reaching influences of urbanization processes that occur within and beyond these spaces. UA is thus integral to the prospect of Urban Sustainability as SDG 11 (“Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”) of the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Predominant agri-food systems are currently failing to provide healthy diets to the world while causing planetary externalities of environmental damage that both create and compound social injustices. As described below, UA has critical roles to play in strengthening food systems and the sustainability and justice of these functions in addition to benefits such as contributing vital new approaches to address crises of physical and mental health. Such contributions occur while recognizing the fuller scope of these societal problems. In response to such concerns, the Grand Challenges of UA serve as a clarion call for the integration of ecological and social research to advance this expansive frontier of sustainable food systems.

Fostering Geological Thinking Through Virtual Strike and Dip Measurements

Natalie Bursztyn, Hannah Riegel, Pejman Sajjadi, Bart Masters, Jiayan Zhao, Jiawei Huang, Mahda M. Bagher, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, and Alexander Klippel
2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)
DOI 10.1109/VRW52623.2021.00061
Fast-tracked by need for field trip alternatives during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Strike and Dip (SaD) tool uses structure from motion 3D models of rocks in a virtual environment to facilitate teaching students how to measure the orientation of rock faces, necessary for the completion of geologic maps. Spatial reasoning is a difficult skill to master for geology students, although a significant component of their studies involves visualising 3D structures from 2D representations, in particular, maps. More time and experience is necessary for students to practice their spatial reasoning skills,

but this is a logistical challenge. The SaD tool provides an interface that resolves these logistics of practice time and field site access. Geology is often first characterised as a field science, but recent and increasing efforts to make a more inclusive environment have shown a demand to establish a comprehensive alternative to fieldwork/trips. The SaD tool is malleable, and while providing an inclusive way to teach core components, it is also capable of an array of field experiences for almost every sub-field within the geosciences. In this pilot study, introductory geoscience students were assigned a geologic mapping lab using the SaD tool. Results overall were positive in regard to the usefulness of the tool and provide us with three main directions for next steps in research and development.

HMD Type and Spatial Ability: Effects on the Experiences and Learning of Students in Immersive Virtual Field Trips

Pejman Sajjadi,  Jiayan Zhao, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Peter C. La Femina,  Alexander Klippel
2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)
DOI 10.1109/VRW52623.2021.00155
We report on the results of a study in the context of place-based immersive VR (iVR) geoscience education that compares the experiences and learning of 45 students after going through an immersive

virtual field trip, using either a lower-sensing but scalable Oculus Quest or a higher-sensing but tethered HTC Vive Pro. Our results suggest that with content design considerations, standalone HMDs can be a viable replacement for high-end ones in large-scale educational studies. Furthermore, our results also suggest that the spatial ability of students can be a determining factor for their experiences and learning.


13
Apr 21

Spring is for wild greens | Celebrating undergrad engagement | Rattlesnake safety poster wins

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

wild garlic mustard

“Nothing says ‘spring’ more than a sink full of wild spring greens (here: garlic mustard, wild onion and wild garlic),” said Bronwen Powell who shared this image. “I use garlic mustard in spanakopita (half and half with spinach or other leafy vegetables), I think it makes the taste and texture better. Traditionally spanakopita would have been made with mixed greens, not just spinach. I also eat garlic mustard with a poached egg in the morning: sauté an onion in olive oil, add garlic mustard, salt, pepper and lots of cumin and maybe a spoonful of water. You can mix it up by adding a (peeled) tomato, or turn it into shakshouka by adding half a jar of tomato sauce and poaching the eggs directly in the pan with the mix. Garlic mustard is an invasive plant, it’s literally everywhere, so there is no need to worry about sustainable harvesting. More info here: https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/indiana/stories-in-indiana/garlic-mustard/

GOOD NEWS

Emily Rosenman received an IEE seed grant for the project, “Energy retrofit policy and programs in low-income housing markets: Implications for energy equity in Cleveland, Ohio.”  Her co-PI is Esther Obonyo, in the College of Engineering.

Alexandra Lister won first place in the Undergraduate Student Affinity Group Poster Competition at AAG. The poster, “Rattlesnake Safety on the Black Forest Trail”  was based on her final project in GEOG 260 last semester.

April 13 at 6:30 p.m. EDT, Centre Region COG will hold a virtual forum on “Understanding and Preparing for Climate Impacts in the Centre Region.” Visit this link for more information and to register for the forum.

April 14, 2021, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Celebration of Undergraduate Engagement (CUE) Student presentations and talks will take place throughout the day. This PDF has the CUE Agenda and Zoom Links. Jamie Peeler is a session host.

  • Michael Hermann (Alumnus and founder of Purple Lizard Maps) is giving a plenary talk entitled “The Power of Maps in Storytelling.” The plenary talk is 12:30—1:30 p.m. EDT.
  • Harman Singh (Geography undergraduate) is presenting a poster, “Examining the Complex Nature of Flash Flooding through a Mixed Method Approach: A Case from Kerala, India.” The poster presentation is 2:30–2:45 p.m. EDT.
  • Hannah Perrelli (Geography undergraduate) is presenting a poster, “Understanding the Power Dynamics and Spatial Patterns of Water Insecurity in the Navajo Nation.” The poster presentation is 2:45–3 p.m. EDT.

April 14, 2021, 6 p. m. EDT, Joshua Inwood will give a talk about “Geographies of white supremacy and settler colonialism” at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee meeting of the BLMxBLM monthly discussion group. Visit this link for more information and to join the Zoom session.

April 22, 2021, The Esri-MUG is holding a one-day virtual meeting. Visit this link to register for this meeting.

COFFEE HOUR

No Coffee Hour this week. Visit our Coffee Hour channel to see previous talks you missed. And plan to attend the UROC Showcase on Friday, April 23, 2021 at 4 p.m. EDT. 

NEWS

Activism and Academia Series: Bridging the gap between theory and praxis

Graduate students in the Department of Geography (GSDoGs) and Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) welcome students, faculty, and community organizers to this virtual series on Tuesdays at noon. It is open to the public and registration is required. This series will feature local and national work at the intersection of activism and scholarship for the purpose of enlightening the audience on how to use their expertise to contribute to a more just and equitable world.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Titling as a Contested Process: Conditional Land Rights and Subaltern Citizenship in South India

Jonnalagadda, I., Stock, R. and Misquitta, K.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13002
Drawing on multi‐sited fieldwork and discourse analysis of government orders, we investigate land‐titling programmes that distribute marginal public land to the poor in both urban and rural South India. We suggest understanding this type of distribution as a process of creating a subaltern category of land ownership to facilitate governance of lands and people entangled in de facto land tenures. Although these titling initiatives have been largely ignored or dismissed as failures in the existing literature, we argue that they have had significant socio‐political effects. First, we argue that, despite the attempt to create a differentiated property regime, titling engenders a complex juridico‐legal terrain where the bounds of ‘subaltern citizenship’ are contested and negotiated. Second, we show that titling is better understood as a process that creates new social relations and new expectations of the normative relationship between state and citizen. Finally, we suggest that the practices and discourses of the land bureaucracy are a window into the production of spatial relations based on pressures from above and below. In sum, we show how a history of iterative titling has resulted in the entanglement of struggles over possession, personhood and citizenship for marginalized groups in the region.

Settler Rural Imaginaries of MichFest: Connecting Settler Legacies and Cis Fear

Jacklyn Weier
ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1948
Thinking through scholarship at the intersections of anarcha-feminism, settler colonialism, and heteropatriarchy, this paper uses the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MichFest) as a case study to examine how settler rural imaginaries are mobilized to reify settler and cis hierarchies. The two imaginaries of interest – “safety in the woods” and “Nature is [cis] female” – rely on settler legacies: the first is derived from the emptiness created by settler state violence and Indigenous displacement, and the second is a reproduction of settler sexuality. To understand how these imaginaries surfaced at MichFest, I analyze online media created around the time of MichFest’s closing. Given the blame of MichFest’s closing was often placed on the issue of trans-exclusion, blog posts and opinion pieces around this time serve as a small sample of the trans-exclusionary rhetoric found at MichFest that reproduced these imaginaries. Most of the texts address concerns about trans-inclusion leading to sexual assault, creating an implicit connection between women’s fears and cis fears. The discourse around this time reproduced the wilderness of MichFest as a cis women’s landscape, constructing the land as a cis woman. In using these two imaginaries, women at MichFest are producing a cis women’s landscape that relies on the exclusion of both Indigenous and trans people, reproducing settler and cis dominance.


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