UW-Madison Geography Wins 1st and 2nd Place at NACIS Annual
Student Map Competition.
Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Interactive Atlas! Wins
First Prize
The ANWR
Atlas! was created by students Sarah Johnson, Jerod
Mccleland, Erica Maczka, and Caitlin Scopel as a final project for Mark
Harrower's 2006 575 course . The atlas was designed as an educational
tool to deliver an understanding of the Arctic National WIldlife Refuge
through the use of an interactive media guide.
The team won $500 for the map.
World Freedom Atlas Wins Second Prize
The World
Freedom Atlas was created by Zachary Johnson. It
is a geovisualization tool for world statistics designed for
social scientists, journalists, NGO/IGO workers, and others who
wish to have a better understanding of issues of freedom, democracy,
human rights, and good governance . The map loads over
300 variables from dozens of data sets covering the years of
1990 through 2006.
Zach won $250 for his map and was unavailable for comment.
The World
Freedom Atlas was launched on September
22nd of 2007 and has become widely popularized among blogging
and mapping sites. As of this writing, the map has
been visited by over 40,000 unique visitors from 147 countries
worldwide, and is linked from over 150 blog sites.
Geography Department
Hosts Visiting Scholar Susanne Freidberg to Discuss
the History of Food Freshness.
Thursday, October 11 from 4 — 5:30pm in 388 Science Hall
Susanne
Freidberg is an Associate Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College.
She is well known for her prior work on the culture of local, regional and
transnational food trades. Her book "French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and
Commerce in an Anxious Age" (Oxford University Press, 2004) examines the
cultural economy of fresh produce trading between Europe and Africa. On
Thursday, she will discuss her most recent book project, a history of food
freshness.
Fresh: a Perishable History (forthcoming, Harvard University
Press).
On the surface, few food qualities seem so simple and unquestionably good
as freshness. Dig
a little deeper, and few qualities reveal a more compromised past. Dig deeper
still, and the history of freshness reveals much about our uneasy appetites
for modern living, especially in the United States. This book traces that history.
Through a tour of an ordinary fridge, it explores the relationship between
the meanings of freshness and the technologies and trades that have revolutionized
its place in both individual diets and the global food economy. Although the
value attached to fresh foods can be traced back to ancient times, the advent
of refrigeration in the late 19th century marked the beginning of the end of
seasonal and purely local supplies. It also provoked suspicion and resistance,
partly because of the power it gave merchants over socially-valued perishability.
Resistance faded only as consumers came to believe that a diet of industrial
freshness was the best antidote to life in an urban industrial society. But
there are more than a few parallels between past and present anxieties about
what counts as "really" fresh.
Graduate Jaquelyn
Gill wins Braun Award at
Ecological
Society of America 2007 Annual Meeting
E. Lucy Braun, an eminent plant ecologist and one of the charter members of the Society, studied and mapped the deciduous forest regions of eastern North America. To honor her, The E. Lucy Braun Award for Excellence in Ecology is given to a student for the outstanding poster presentation at the ESA Annual Meeting. Jacquelyn Gill was awarded the 2007 Braun Award for her poster, "Investigating biotic drivers of Quaternary landscape change: Late glacial no-analog communities and the North American megafaunal extinction."
In North America, the end of the last ice age saw rapid climate change, the arrival of the first humans to the continent, the extinction of 33 genera of large animals, and some vegetation communities that had no analog when compared to modern landscapes. At Appleman Lake, the local extinction of the megafauna (represented by the decline in spores from the dung fungus Sporormiella) took place before climate-induced vegetation change (the transition from spruce to pine), and was followed by a rise in fire (the increase in charcoal) and the onset of no-analog vegetation; this also suggests that climate change was not responsible for the extinction of the megafauna in this region.
Graduate Student
Leila Gonzales wins Deevey Award at Ecological
Society of America 2007 Annual Meeting
The Edward S. Deevey Award is given for the best graduate
student presentation of paleoecological research
at the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting. Leila
was given the Deevey Award for her talk, "Modeling late-glacial
no-analog climates with expanded response surfaces", in which
she discussed how she is reconstructing the late-glacial climate
for a site in NE Illinois by developing a new variant on response
surfaces, called expanded response surfaces.
Because some
late-glacial taxa have pollen abundance distributions that
are truncated at high abundances near the edge of the modern
climate envelope, their full potential climate space is unknown.
Expanded response surfaces attempt to estimate pollen-climate
relationships for these truncated taxa in order to recover
their late-glacial counterpart.
Faculty Opening in Geography: Biogeographic Aspects of Global Change
Assistant Professor of Geography, tenure-track position
in the biogeographic aspects of global change. Preference
will be given to broadly trained applicants whose research
and teaching interests complement existing departmental strengths
in Physical Geography and People-Environment studies. Possible
research areas include, but are not limited to, historical
and current human impacts on ecosystems, ecological responses
and risks related to global environmental change, and processes
governing biological diversity, especially human activities.
Duties include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses,
and developing a strong program of research and publication.
Nine-month, academic year position starting August
25, 2008.
To apply for this position, send a letter describing research
and teaching interests, a CV, and three letters of reference
to the address below.
Apply: Joseph A. Mason, Recruitment Committee Chair, Department of Geography, 160
Science Hall, 550 N. Park St., Madison, WI 53706-1491. Email: mason@geography.wisc.edu.
All application materials must be received by November 1, 2007.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Unless confidentiality is requested in
writing, information regarding the applicants must be released upon request. Finalists
cannot be guaranteed confidentiality.
Geography Teaching
Assistant Orientation set for August 29 at 9am.
All Geography TAs are
welcome. Required for All New TAs. TAA information will be provided.
When: Wednesday, August 29 9am to Noon
Where: Trewartha Room 378 Science Hall
Trainers: Kara Dempsey and Julia Ferguson
Refreshments will be served
To Register Email the Graduate Student Coordinator
New Graduate Student
Orientation and Welcome is set for Friday, September 7th
The Department of Geography, invites all graduate students, faculty, and staff to the New
Graduate Student Orientation and Welcome on Friday, September 7th from 12:00 - 2:00 pm in
the Map Library, room 310. Pizza and
soda will be provided.
The Department Chair, Matt Turner, will welcome the
incoming and returning grads, while Tammy Schlender, the Graduate Coordinator, will be on
hand to answer questions. The new Geography Graduate students will get a chance to
introduce themselves and informally meet faculty members, staff and other senior graduate
students.
All the new grads will have their pictures taken and be offered a tour of Science Hall.
During the tour, we will be making a stop in the Geography
Library to show you where you
will need to go to arrange a detailed tour of the Geography library and find out how to
get a FREE copy card.
Let's not forget the Science Hall tradition of making a trip to the Union Terrace to
study Wisconsin cultural geography or maybe some good old
Beer n' Loafing after the
orientation. Hope to see you there! Download
PDF.
Animated and
Interactive Student Maps from Mark Harrower's Geog 575 Course
Explore another impressive set of animated and interactive
Web maps from the Spring
2007 Final Projects. Under the guidance of Professor
Mark Harrower and TA Robert Roth, UW-Madison cartographers
continue to push the boundaries of innovative Web-based maps.
This
Spring marked the fifth time Harrower has instructed the
"Geography 575 - Animated and Web-based Maps" course. Students
learn applied skills and gain a theoretical understanding
of the issues in distrubuted mapping. Web
mapping is situated within a broader social and technological
context through a discussion of the means of production,
the methods of distribution, and the modes of use. While
the computer has changed the way maps are made and viewed,
the recent explosion in Web mapping is a result of Internet
providing a way for distributing those maps to a wider audience. Harrower
(2004) explains that "the reason why animated mapping
is finally coming of age -- a full twenty years after the
PC revolution began -- is the World Wide Web. Unlike
paper maps, before the Web there was no practical or inexpensive
way to allow millions of users to access animated maps on
demand. Without easy access to an audience, animated
maps are little more than a technological curiosity."
Distributed
mapping via the Internet draws upon an increasing amount
of available data to meet a growing interest in mapped geospatial
information. But Web mapping not only allows for more
efficient map production and distribution. These technologies,
coupled with other spatial and digital technologies (i.e.,
geographical information systems, geospatial databases),
offers a flexible dynamic new medium that expands cartographic
possibilities. Cartographers are able to do new things
with maps.
Peter Jones and Professor
Kris Olds Participate in WUN Alliance
Check out the story in the Capital Times, "Worldwide
alliance benefits UW, others." Peter Jones has
been visiting us from the University of Bristol, UK in collaboration
with Professor Olds. You may have seen Peter in the 5th
floor graduate offices this past Spring, studiously engaged
with his scholarship on education policy and EU governance.
Science Hall team
is awarded AAG's Best Web Site award for 2007
The UW-Madison Lakeshore
Nature Preserve web site has been
awarded the 2007 Best Web Site of the Year by the American
Association of Geographers (AAG)
special project PlacesOnLine.
The web site was designed by Melanie McCalmont, a UW Geography
graduate ('06) and PhD candidate in Life Sciences Communication.
McCalmont has also created web sites for other UW units including Wolves
in Wisconsin, the UW
Cartography Lab, UW Women's Studies, and the Department
of Geography.
Additionally
from Science Hall, the web site team
included Geography students Robert Roth, Joel Przybylowski,
Andrew Woodruff and Prof. Mark Harrower.
Under the direction
of Prof. William Cronon, a team
of over 60 members of the UW community and friends
of the preserve contributed content and photographs to
the web site, including UW historians, geographers, biologists,
soil scientists, environmental scientists, and many others.
All told, over 325 web pages of material were compiled,
along with hundreds photographs, maps and historical documents
that help to tell the many stories of the UW Lakeshore Nature
Preserve.
PlacesOnLine is
a map-based Web portal and a project
of the AAG Centennial Committee chaired by Stanley
D. Brunn of the University of Kentucky and Donald
G. Janelle of the University of California at Santa
Barbara. PlacesOnLine contains links to a special collection
of quality web sites that describe or analyze places. To
be included in the collection, a site is judged to have
original content about a specific place, provide a good
place experience for the user through the effective use
of images and text, and have a format that is user-friendly.
The contest was judged by the PlacesOnLine editorial
board who stated: “The
Lakeshore Nature Preserve Web site is appealing for several
reasons. It
gives the user a comprehensive view of the Preserve using
quality images and textual materials. It covers numerous
topics relevant to the understanding of the place, and provides
resource materials to aid that understanding. Finally,
it is easy to navigate and includes a very nice interactive
map that provides spatial context.”
Other recent PlacesOnLine.org awardees in past years include: Tramways
in Cuba (Cuba); Dickens London (London, UK); and
Journey Through Calumet (Chicago, Illinois, USA).
Doctoral student Max Grinnell elected to
the UW-Madison Teaching Academy as a Future Faculty Partner
Max Grinnell has been elected into the
UW-Madison Teaching Academy as a Future Faculty Partner (FFP).
The Teaching
Academy promotes professional development
of teaching faculty and academic staff.
The FFP is a graduate
student who is affiliated with the Academy to "provide the
Academy with the informed perspective of future teachers
who can help the Academy work toward its stated goal of 'encouraging
innovation, experimentation, and dialogue among teachers
of the future.' " Grinnell will be part
of an ongoing dialogue between faculty members, instructional
staff, and fellow graduate students on the process and experience
of teaching in a research university setting.
Grinnell was nominated
by a variety of people, including several of his former students
from Geography 305, “Introduction
to the City”. As part of his application, he
mentioned that he’s interested in working on creating
a series of podcasts and working on creating a few unique
experiential activities for students interested in the
world of cities. Grinnell expects it “to
be a great opportunity to learn from other people on campus
about different pedagogical ideas in other disciplines.”
Department picnic May 11
Mark your calendars for the Geography Spring Picnic on Friday,
May 11th at the Tenney Park Shelter (1414 East Johnson St.).
The Picnic will follow the Trewartha lecture, which is at 3:30
that afternoon (likely ending around 5:00pm), and will run
until the beer and food run out late in the evening. The Department
will provide brats and burgers (including veggie options) and
beer, but everyone attending should bring a bottle of wine,
side dish, or dessert to share. Bring your footballs, frisbees,
Koob sets, etc., and your family/significant other/pets and hope
for good weather !
Kris Olds' research used
in Vancouver recurring housing loss debates
UW-Madison
geography professor Kris
Olds has found that recurring geographic
studies of an issue can be useful in helping cities to monitor
and alleviate housing problems.
Olds, whose research focuses on
the geographical organization of power in relation
to contemporary socio-economic and spatial transformations,
was
recently quoted in several Canadian newspapers during coverage
of debates on whether enough is being done to help low-income
residents keep their housing in the face of development and
displacement during Olympics build-up.
A Vancouver politician
MLA Jenny Kwan has called for the UN to monitor the Vancouver housing situation.
Read full story...
Olds, who is also a former Vancouver city
planner, has studied the impact of the Olympic Games on cities.
His studies found about 740 people were displaced from two
apartment complexes in Calgary leading up to the 1988 Winter
Games. He also found there were up to 850 people evicted from
their homes during Expo '86 in Vancouver and between 1984 -
when the city was granted Expo - and 1986, 600 low-income housing
units were permanently lost.
In the news report, Olds said monitoring such situations
should be done by several organizations, "not just some UN
agency which is overstretched inevitably. It's probably useful
for the UN to know what's going on, but the more appropriate
organizations are the local governments."
Geography student Susanna Ehlers has been selected to
receive a 2007 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate
(NDSEG) Fellowship. She was selected from over 3,400
applications in 2007. The NDSEG
Fellowship covers tuition and
fees for 3 years plus stipend.
Ehlers will attend Carnegie Mellon University this fall under
the direction of Dr. Peter Adams in the Civil and Environmental
Engineering department. She is interested in atmospheric
chemistry and modeling air pollutants such as aerosols and
to understand how it relates to and impacts climate and air
quality.
In 2006, Ehlers won the Ernest
F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Ehlers used
that scholarship to work at NOAA's Geophysical
Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton, NJ on atmospheric modeling
of carbon monoxide. Prof.
Jack Williams was a nominal advisor
for Ehlers work with Dr.
Tracey Holloway in the Nelson Institute of Environmental
Studies.
NDSEG selections are made by the Air Force Research Laboratory/Air
Force Office of Scientific Research (AFRL/AFOSR), the Office
of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and
the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program Office
(HPCMP). The American Society for Engineering Education
(ASEE) administers the NDSEG Fellowship. The
NDSEG Fellowship is sponsored and funded by the Department
of Defense (DoD).
Geography undergrads Collins and Lininger
win research fellowships
Congratulations to Erin Collins and Katie Lininger, Geography
majors at UW-Madison, who have won Hilldale and Holstrom
undergraduate reseach awards!
Katherine Lininger is majoring in Geography
and Political Science. She won the Holstrom Environmental
Research Scholarship which is funded by an endowment by alumnus
Carleton Holstrom, and provides $4,000 to the student for senior
research projects and $1,000 to their faculty adviser(s) for
research support. Lininger's undergrad advisor is Jack Williams.
Erin Collins is majoring in Geography and Southeast Asian
Studies. She won the Hilldale Undergraduate-Faculty Research
Fellowship, which includes a $4,000 stipend to each student
and $1,000 to their faculty advisers. Collins' advisor is
Ian Coxhead in the Nelson Institute of Envirnonmental Studies.
More information about the awards can be found here.
Prof. Jim Knox has been awarded the Presidential Achievement Award by the Association of American
Geographers.
Wisconsin Veterans Museum to offer GIS Certificate
student's map
GIS
Certificate student Samuel F.B. Johnson's map of Wisconsin's
unique 15th Volunteer Infantry is on sale at the Wisconsin
Veterans Museum recently.
The map "For Gud og Vort Land!: Three Years of Campaigning
in the 15th Volunteer Infantry" was of particular interest
to the Museum for its subject and use of historical sources.
The 15th Wisconsin Infantry was the only Civil War unit in
the north or south that was formed entirely from Scandinavian
immigrants. The unit shipped out in March 1862 from
Camp Randall with mostly Norwegian soldiers who
eventually participated in 26 war campaigns.
The map was originally a project for Johnson's Introduction
to Cartography class last fall, and won a Barbara Bartz Memorial
Graduate Award in Cartographic Design.
The map follows the 15th
Wisconsin's movements through key campaigns in North-South
border states, including key battles at Stones River, Tennessee,
Chickamauga, Georgia, and in William Tecumseh Sherman's
Atlanta campaign. Many were captured and died as prisoners
of war at Andersonville Prison in Georgia.
Johnson said that the map used thematic cartography, in
this case a flow map, in a somewhat unorthodox way—to
illustrate the history of a specific Civil War unit. He believes
that "thematic cartography of certain facets
of military history is an area that deserves more attention
and exploration."
Why was Johnson interested in this subject? He says:
"I had recently discovered in a family genealogy that I had a second, more direct
Civil War ancestor who, as it turned out, served in Company E of the 15th Wisconsin
Infantry. He had enlisted from Bad Ax (now Vernon) County, Wisconsin in November
1861." The map incorporates photos and information on the ancestor, Private
Ole Kjostolsen, and other notable men of the 15th.
Details about the Wisconsin party at the
2007 AAG Meeting in San Francisco
Orgianziers Chris Limburg and Claudia Hanson-Theim write:
Mark your calendars for the Thursday evening party for AAG
2007 in San Francisco. The
University of Wisconsin Geography Department has rented out the Cafe Royale Bar
a few blocks from the Hilton. The details:
Who: Geographers of all stripes
What: Private Party (the bar is ours!) with some Free Beer
When: Thursday night, 4/19, 7pm to ???
Where: The Cafe
Royale Bar at 800
Post St , San Francisco
How: Like a thirsty Geographer
Why: 'Cause there ain't no party like a Sconnie party, 'cause a Sconnie party
don't stop
Keep your eyes peeled for the flyers around the Hilton
and the happy Wisconsin faces heading to the bar. Feel
free to join those Wisconsinites for the quick stroll over
to Cafe Royale.
Dept of Geography Prof. Jack Williams co-author
of new study identifying patterns of change affecting global
biodiversity
A new
climate modeling study has identified regions of the world
where greenhouse gas emissions during the next century are
likely to cause the appearance of novel climates unlike anything
that exists today.
Novel
climates appear throughout the tropics and subtropics, while
the climates now found in tropical mountain ranges and near
the poles may vanish. When mapped (image at right), novel
climates appear in yellow and regions whose
current climates will disappear completely by the year 2100
are shown in blue.
"Key risks associated with projected climate trends for
the 21st -century include the prospects of future climate
states with no current analog and the disappearance of
some extant climate regimes. Because climate is a primary
control on species distributions and ecosystem processes,
novel 21st -century climates may promote the formation
of novel species associations and other ecological surprises,
whereas the disappearance of some extant climate regimes
increases the risk of extinction for species with narrow
geographic or climatic distributions. Here we analyze multimodel
ensembles for the A2 and B1 emission scenarios produced
for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, with the goal of identifying regions
projected to experience 1) high magnitudes of local climate
change, 2) development of novel 21st -century climates,
and/or 3) disappearance of extant climates. Novel climates
are projected to develop primarily in the tropics and subtropics,
whereas disappearing climates are concentrated in tropical
montane regions and the poleward portions of continents.
Under the high-end A2 scenario, 12-39% and 10-48% of
the earth's terrestrial surface may respectively experience
novel and disappearing climates by 2100AD. Corresponding
projections for the low-end B1 scenario are 4-20% and 4-20%.
Dispersal limitations increase the risk that species will
experience the loss of extant climate regimes or the occurrence
of novel climates. There is a close correspondence between
regions with globally disappearing climates and previously
identified biodiversity hotspots; for these regions, standard
conservation solutions (e.g. assisted migration, networked
reserves) may be insufficient to preserve biological diversity."
The work suggests
that climate change is likely to have serious ecological
impacts, including increased risk of extinction. According
to the team's press release, the patterns of change foreshadow
significant impacts on ecosystems and conservation.
"There is a close correspondence between disappearing climates and areas of
biodiversity," says Williams, which could increase risk of extinction in the
affected areas.
Physical restrictions on species may also amplify the effects
of local climate changes. The more relevant question, Williams
says, becomes not just whether a given climate still exists,
but "will a species be able to keep up with its climatic
zone? Most species can't migrate around the world."
For the researchers, one of the most poignant aspects of
the work is in what it doesn't tell them - the uncertainty.
At this point, Williams says, "we don't know which bad things
will happen or which good things will happen - we just don't
know. We are in for some ecological surprises."
Read full UW-Madison news story > Get printable PNAS abstract
>
Image: Jack Williams, Univ of Wisconsin-Madison, March 2007
UW-Madison geography students win top honors
at WLIA map competition
Congratulation to Geography Department students for winning
six awards at this year's Wisconsin Land Information Association
(WLIA) Map Competition.
Winners included GIS Certificate
Program students Daryl Austin and Laura Cotting, Cartography
Master's student Robert Roth, and Geography PhD student
Bill Buckingham.
At WLIA conference, from left:
Daryl Austin,
Laura Cotting, Rob Roth.
Not pictured, Bill Buckingham. Photo: Karen Tuerk
In the Black & White Map category, Geography PhD student
and UW Applied Population Lab cartographer, Bill Buckingham,
took first place for his map, Intermountain West Communities
on the New West Continuum.
Laura Cotting took second place in the Orthophotography
Base Map category for her Frankenstein's Landscape: Controversial
Proposed Transmission Line Routes of the Jefferson County Reliability
Project.
Daryl Austin (pictured with his maps at right) won first
place in two categories - Best
Map Poster and Best Student Map - for his entry, How
Humans Adapt to MPA Regulations: Channel Island National
Marine Sanctuary (1997-2006).
Robert Roth took home two awards as well. Rob, along with
co-author and geography undergraduate student, Jesse Papez,
won second place in the Best Map Poster category for An
Automated Approach to Site Selection in Fragmented Landscapes .
Rob also received a first place blue ribbon for Best Animated
Map for the Lakeshore Preserve Interactive Map. Roth
will share this honor with other students and faculty on
the Lakeshore Map design team: Mark Harrower (faculty), Joel
Przybylowski, Andy Woodruff, and Melanie
McCalmont.
The competition, part of WLIA's annual membership conference,
was held March 7-9, 2007at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel
in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Land Information Association
(WLIA) is an association of GIS and Land Information professionals
dedicated to the development, operation and maintenance of
a network of statewide multi-purpose land information systems.
Glen MacDonald to
lecture April 25 on role of Arctic, mega-droughts
Dr. Glen MacDonald, noted biogeographer from the University
of California Los Angeles, will visit the UW-Madison campus
on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 in the Hilldale Lecture series.
Wednesday, April 25, noon Lecture: Mega-droughts, the Pacific Ocean and People
in Western North America
Science Hall Room 180 (550 North Park St)
Wednesday, April 25, reception at 5:30pm, talk begins 6:30pm
Lecture: Arctic Warming and Global Climate Change: Where Have We Been
and Where Are We Going?
State Historical Society Auditorium (corner of Park and Langdon)
The Arctic has been referred to as the "canary in the coal
mine" in
terms of global warming. Rates or future warming will likely
be
magnified at high northern latitudes and the Arctic environment
is
particularly sensitive to such temperature changes. Some
potential
changes in the physical environment of the Arctic could
produce
positive feedbacks enhancing warming at a global scale.
Is the Arctic
now warming and is this warming beyond the range of natural
variability? Unfortunately, scientific records of Arctic climate
and
environment are generally too short and sparse to answer
this
question. During this talk we will explore the role
of the Arctic in the global climate system. We will then
visit various fieldsites in
the Canadian and Russian Arctic to examine how past climate
changes
are documented using paleoenvironmental and historical
records and
compared to present and anticipated future conditions to
answer the
question - Is the Arctic now warming and changing in
an unprecedented manner?
Glen MacDonald is a Professor of Geography and of Ecology
and
Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. His research concerns
past, present and future climate changes and their impact
on the environment and
people. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Canadian
and
Russian arctic, western North America, Africa and Hawaii.
He has
published over 100 articles and an award winning book. He
is a Fellow
of the AAAS, a Life Member of Clare Hall Cambridge,
winner of the University of Helsinki Medal, the Cowles Award
for Excellence in
Publication Award and several distinguished teaching awards.
He has
appeared on numerous news broadcasts and educational TV programs
concerning climate change.
Grad student Jamon Van Den Hoek wins IGERT
traineeship to China
PhD
grad student Jamon Van Den Hoek has been awarded the UW-Madison
NSF IGERT traineeship for the China Program, an interdisciplinary
research effort in the Yunnan Province in southwestern China
focused on biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.
The IGERT program is an NSF-funded project devoted to investigating
the "ecological
factors governing existing and future patterns of biodiversity,
livelihood strategies and human population dynamics that
drive resource exploitation, and governance structures and
policies that impact biodiversity and economic development." (more
at http://www.swchina.wisc.edu/index.en.html)
Van Den Hoek will be working with Prof. A-xing Zhu as well
as other UW professors from various departments
to conduct dissertation research on the application of remotely
sensed imagery for policy development. He will work in the
Yunnan Province this summer, next summer (2008), and the
following two academic years (2008-2010).
The fellowship includes
tuition remission, an annual stipend, and airfare to China
for the research periods.
Grad student Richard Donohue wins Holtz
fellowship
Geography PhD student Richard Donohue has been awarded the
Holtz Center for Science and Technology
Studies 2007 Graduate Scholars Summer Fellowship.
The award will help support Donohue's preliminary research
on the geography of information technology. He
will explore how the digital transition in cartography affects mapping in the
broader social context through a case study of a specific community-based
mapping project and related mapping artifacts. His research seeks to
understand how cartographic technologies, distributed networks, and Geographical
Information Systems (GISs) both engender and constrain democratic possibilities
for mapping.
UW cartographers dominate
ACSM Interactive Digital map award Professional Division
The Campus
Lakeshore Preserve interactive map for the UW Lakeshore
Nature Preserve has been chosen as the Best
Interactive Digital Map in
the Professional
category in the 2006 ACSM-CaGIS Map Design Competition!
In addition, the Interactive
Campus Map won 2nd place
in the same 2006 Interactive Digital Map Division Professional
Category.
Prof. Mark Harrower, who supervised both of the 2006 winning
maps, said: "Given that the ACSM award is the oldest
and best known cartography award in the U.S., this is really
nice recognition for the hard work everyone put into these
maps. I know a lot of long hours and late nights were spent
on these maps - so thanks to everyone."
The winning Lakeshore Preserve map
was created at the UW-Madison
Cartography Lab by Rob Roth, Andy Woodruff, Joel Przybylowski under the
supervision of Professor Bill Cronon and
Professor Mark Harrower.
Melanie McCalmont assisted with info window text and image production. The map
was produced in May-November 2006.
The interactive Campus Map was rpoduced in the University
of Wisconsin Cartography Lab, and created by Aaron Erkenswick,
Jamon van den Hoek, Eve McGlynn, Andy Woodruff, Nick Weaver,
and Mark Harrower.
UW has finished in the top places at ACSM for the last several
years. In the 2004 competition, UW won multiple student
awards (see
2005 news story). In 2005, the printed Visitor
Map and Guide (see
2006 feature story), the forerunner of this year's
interactive version, was chosen as Best Reference map in
the Professional category.
The purpose of the ACSM awards is "to promote interest
in map design and to recognize significant design advances
in cartography. The competition is open to all map-makers
in the United States and Canada. Noted cartographers and
designers judge the entries based on the following criteria:
color, overall design and impression, craftsmanship, and
typography." Read more at the ACSM
website.
The ACSM Awards Ceremony
will be held on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at the ASCM annual
conference and technology meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mark Harrower receives Chancellor's Distinguished
Teaching Award
Mark Harrower, Assistant Professor of Geography and Associate Director of the UW Cartography Lab, has
received a Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award for 2007,
according to Matt Turner, chair of the Department of Geography.
Harrower
was nominated for his
contributions in research and service as well as
dedication to and excellence in teaching. The special recognition is awarded
to only 6 faculty members per year at the UW-Madison.
Previous winners from the Department of Geography include
Robert Ostergren (1998), Martin Cadwallader (2001), Lisa Naughton (2005).
Details on Prof. Harrower's teaching can be viewed at his
faculty
website.
Geography lands biogeographer MacDonald as
Hilldale lecturer
The Department of Geography has won the
competition for one of the three 2006-2007 Hilldale Lectures.
Nomiated was Glen MacDonald of the University
of California Los Angeles.
Dr. MacDonald is an international leader in the fields of
biogeography and global change research. He has made outstanding
research contributions linking vegetation responses at different
temporal and spatial scales to global and regional climate
change, and for documenting influences of peatlands on global
methane budgets. Dr. MacDonald has exciting new research into
climate change in the Arctic, including an article in the 13
October 2006 Science,
and into historical drought variations in western North America.
Honors and awards received include the University of Helsinki
Medal for his biogeographic research, the 2004 Henry Cowles
Award from the Association of American Geographers for his
book Biogeography – Space, Time and Life, several
teaching awards, and mention in Discover Magazine’s
Top 100 Science Stories for 2005. MacDonald's complete CV
can be viewed
here.
Dates of the lecture are being finalized. Contact Jack
Williams for more information.
The Hilldale
Lectures sponsor a
distinguished scholar whose contributions to contemporary culture
have received international recognition and are of particular interest to the
UW community.
Kris Olds awarded 2007-2008 Vilas Associateship
Department
of Geography Associate Professor Kris Olds has been awarded
a Vilas Associateship for 2007-2008 by the University of
Wisconsin Graduate School.
The newly-awarded Vilas Associateship will enable Prof.
Olds to conduct intensive field research on two global
knowledge spaces during his sabbatical year in 2007-2008,
as well as during the follow-up year.
According to Olds, new knowledge spaces are
those that include innovative class room architectures designed
to engender more creative learning and globally 'competent'
citizen-subjects, new institutions, global university consortia,
and national- and regional-scale initiatives.
Olds' first project is
titled Global Assemblage: Singapore, Western Universities,
and the Socio-Economic Development Process. The Global
Assemblage project was initiated in 2001 just prior
to Olds move from Singapore to Madison. Global Assemblage focuses
on Singapore's attempt to become a 'global education hub'.
In addition to the Global Assemblage project, Olds
will formally initiate of Phase I of a complementary research
project. This project, titled The Global Geopolitics of
the Knowledge-Based Economy: Regionalisms, Regional Linkages,
and Higher Education Restructuring in Asia & Europe,
focuses on globalization, regionalism(s), and higher education
from a regional comparative perspective, albeit one situated
in a multi-scalar globalizing context.
Vilas Associate
support will enable Olds to conduct intense empirical research
at the key sites where the Europe-Asia interregionalism dynamic
is being shaped—sites including
the European Commission, the European University Association,
the Asia-Europe Foundation, the ASEAN University Network,
and representative offices of select member countries and
institutions. During this time the first
of several journal articles will be written, and an international
collaborative research proposal for the 2008/2009 to 2011
period (Phase II of the project) will be developed.
The Vilas competition accepts nominations of tenure-track
and tenured faculty from UW departments. The associate receives
research salary support and a flexible research fund to use
in their research program.
6th Annual Student Symposium calls for paper
abstracts by March 30
Symposium organizer Colin Belby writes:
The 6th Annual Geography Student Symposium will be held
this year on Friday, April 13th in Science Hall. Julia
and I invite and encourage you
to present at this year's Symposium. It is a great opportunity to
show off the fine work you do and for members of the Geography Department
and UW-Madison to learn about the diverse and exciting research going on
in Science Hall.
We are looking for 20 presenters to fill 4 presentation
sessions. Talks
will be 15 minutes followed by 5 minutes of questions. Julia
and I have also added a 1 hour poster session to this year's Symposium
The Symposium is the week prior to the AAGs. Therefore this is a perfect
chance to present your talk or poster in a formal setting in front of your peers
prior to heading to San Francisco. While this is highly encouraged,
we ask that all posters and presentations be well organized and prepared
to maintain the professional conference feel the Symposium has had
over the years.
Please express interest by March 2nd.
Please submit abstracts by March 30th. Abstracts
should follow AAG guidelines.
If there are any questions feel free to contact Julia or
I.
Lifetime achievement
award from CSG for UW-Madison Emeritus Prof. Brinkmann
Department Chair Matt Turner has announced that Professor
Emeritus Waltraud Brinkmann has been awarded the
lifetime achievement award from the AAG Climate Specialty
Group. Congratulations to Wally! Very well-deserved! She
will be presented the
award at the Association of American Geographers meeting in San Francisco in
April 2007.
Putting the Wisconsin
Idea into practice: Geography grad student Matthew Liesch
publishes popular-press book on Michigan, Wisconsin iron
range
What
began as a way for Matt Leisch to convey thesis ideas has
evolved into a publication geared to the general public, Images
of America: Ironwood, Hurley, and the Gogebic Range (2006,
Arcadia Publishing).
Liesch's master's thesis took a geographical perspective
on a large mining scandal in the Midwest. During the 1880s,
an iron mining boom lured settlers, investment, and controversy.
Investors from throughout the Great Lakes states hoped to
become rich, but many were pulled into scams or poorly managed
mines and ended up losing their money. Liesch focuses on
how representations of place and place imagery contributed
to financial disaster for thousands.
The book, rather than being only the story of one localized
mining range, is the story of the relationship between an
extractive resource region and powerful corporations located
in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Cleveland. Liesch put key points
and GIS maps from his thesis into his book and supplemented
them with photographs and text that analyzes landscape change
and working-class lifestyles.
Responding to the Wisconsin Idea
According to Leisch, the book responds to the Wisconsin
Idea,
the commitment to use university expertise and resources to address the problems
of the state. "At
a publicly-supported institution, I believe that we have
a moral obligation to reach outside the university. And given
the misconceptions that many Americans have about geography,"
said Leisch, "it's imperative that some geographers try to
engage with audiences outside of a university setting. I
want anyone reading the book to think about geographical
topics—such as landscape change, sense of place, and how
maps lie—without a lot of jargon."
A book review in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel stated: "Arcadia
Publishing's prolific Images of America Series of
photo-driven local histories has introduced readers to several
thousand places, but it's likely the story of 'Ironwood,
Hurley and the Gogebic Range' could hold its own with any
of them." The Ironwood, Michigan, Daily Globe also featured
Liesch's book on the
cover of its Saturday, December 2nd edition.
Details matter
Ironwood, Hurley, and the Gogebic Range also
exposes the propaganda inherent in maps representing the
Gogebic's mining boom. Chapters are organized around themes
such as built environment, recreation, and transportation.
So, in the process of writing photograph
captions, Liesch points out the power relations at work in
the photograph: "Rather
than using standard captions to describe a photograph,
I also try to explain what we're not seeing in the photograph
and why that is," Liesch remarked.
For example, a photograph of miners might include a caption
discussing gendered spaces of labor, exposing social norms
of the late 19th Century. Other photographs and captions
address geographical topics such as urban morphology, property
values, and mining towns' lack of public space.
Photo
at left: The Plummer Mine Headframe is the lone headframe
on the Gogebic. Mining's effects on the cultural landscape
have been fading away, although its social memory lingers
on. Photo by Matt Liesch
Liesch declined any specifics, but acknowledged that
roughly 1000 books had been sold in the few weeks since
the book was released. "I didn't want my thesis research
to just sit on a library shelf in Madison. This might not
be a vast number of books, but I am flattered that people
are interested in my work," Liesch said.
Matthew
Liesch is continuing in the Department of Geography's
PhD program, and is considering dissertation ideas related
to vernacular landscapes. He can be contacted at: mliesch@wisc.edu
Story posted 12 January 2007. Melanie McCalmont, Department
of Geography.
Dig
a little deeper, and few qualities reveal a more compromised past. Dig deeper
still, and the history of freshness reveals much about our uneasy appetites
for modern living, especially in the United States. This book traces that history.
Through a tour of an ordinary fridge, it explores the relationship between
the meanings of freshness and the technologies and trades that have revolutionized
its place in both individual diets and the global food economy. Although the
value attached to fresh foods can be traced back to ancient times, the advent
of refrigeration in the late 19th century marked the beginning of the end of
seasonal and purely local supplies. It also provoked suspicion and resistance,
partly because of the power it gave merchants over socially-valued perishability.
Resistance faded only as consumers came to believe that a diet of industrial
freshness was the best antidote to life in an urban industrial society. But
there are more than a few parallels between past and present anxieties about
what counts as "really" fresh.
The Edward S. Deevey Award is given for the best graduate
student presentation of paleoecological research
at the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting. Leila
was given the Deevey Award for her talk, "Modeling late-glacial
no-analog climates with expanded response surfaces", in which
she discussed how she is reconstructing the late-glacial climate
for a site in NE Illinois by developing a new variant on response
surfaces, called expanded response surfaces.
All Geography TAs are
welcome. Required for All New TAs.
The Department Chair, Matt Turner, will welcome the
incoming and returning grads, while Tammy Schlender, the Graduate Coordinator, will be on
hand to answer questions. The new Geography Graduate students will get a chance to
introduce themselves and informally meet faculty members, staff and other senior graduate
students.
The FFP is a graduate
student who is affiliated with the Academy to "provide the
Academy with the informed perspective of future teachers
who can help the Academy work toward its stated goal of 'encouraging
innovation, experimentation, and dialogue among teachers
of the future.' " Grinnell will be part
of an ongoing dialogue between faculty members, instructional
staff, and fellow graduate students on the process and experience
of teaching in a research university setting. 
UW-Madison
geography professor 
Mark your calendars for the Thursday evening party for AAG
2007 in San Francisco. The
University of Wisconsin Geography Department has rented out the Cafe Royale Bar
a few blocks from the Hilton. The details:
Laura Cotting took second place in the Orthophotography
Base Map category for her Frankenstein's Landscape: Controversial
Proposed Transmission Line Routes of the Jefferson County Reliability
Project. 
Contact 
PhD
grad student Jamon Van Den Hoek has been awarded the UW-Madison
NSF IGERT traineeship for the China Program, an interdisciplinary
research effort in the Yunnan Province in southwestern China
focused on biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.
The award will help support Donohue's preliminary research
on the geography of information technology. He
will explore how the digital transition in cartography affects mapping in the
broader social context through a case study of a specific community-based
mapping project and related mapping artifacts. His research seeks to
understand how cartographic technologies, distributed networks, and Geographical
Information Systems (GISs) both engender and constrain democratic possibilities
for mapping.
Department
of Geography Associate Professor Kris Olds has been awarded
a Vilas Associateship for 2007-2008 by the University of
Wisconsin 
Symposium organizer Colin Belby writes: 
What
began as a way for Matt Leisch to convey thesis ideas has
evolved into a publication geared to the general public, Images
of America: Ironwood, Hurley, and the Gogebic Range (2006,
Arcadia Publishing).
A book review in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel stated: "Arcadia
Publishing's prolific Images of America Series of
photo-driven local histories has introduced readers to several
thousand places, but it's likely the story of 'Ironwood,
Hurley and the Gogebic Range' could hold its own with any
of them." The Ironwood, Michigan, Daily Globe also featured
Liesch's book on the
cover of its Saturday, December 2nd edition.
Matthew
Liesch is continuing in the Department of Geography's
PhD program, and is considering dissertation ideas related
to vernacular landscapes. He can be contacted at: mliesch@wisc.edu 