Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Professors Bruce Rhoads (left) and Jim Best (right) and graduate student Jessica Zinger (center) documented development of two cutoff channels in a bend in the Wabash River, pictured in the background. The cutoffs released huge amounts of sediment into the river.

For University of Illinois river researchers, new insight into river cutoffs was a case of being in the right place at the right time.

Geography professor Bruce Rhoads and geology professor Jim Best were conducting research where the Wabash River meets the Ohio River in the summer of 2008 when they heard about a new channel that had just formed, cutting off a bend in the winding Wabash just upstream from the confluence. That serendipity gave the researchers a rare view of a dynamic, little-understood river process that changed the local landscape and deposited so much sediment into the river system that it closed the Ohio River.

“It was fortunate to be there right when it was beginning to happen, because these are hard-to-predict, unusual events, particularly on large rivers,” Rhoads said.

While cutoffs are common in meandering rivers, or rivers that wander across their floodplains, the conditions surrounding cutoff events are poorly understood. Most cutoffs are discovered long after they first develop. The Illinois team’s quick response to the 2008 Wabash cutoff, and witnessing of a second cutoff in the same bend a year later, allowed them to monitor the huge amounts of sediment the cutoffs released into the river. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“Cutoffs occur in just about every meandering river on the face of the earth,” said Jessica Zinger, a graduate student and lead author of the paper. “Although it’s unusual to capture one like this, they are ubiquitous events, so it’s important to understand what happens when these cutoffs occur, why they occur when they do, and how they evolve after they occur.”

The two cutoffs, both 1 kilometer long, delivered about 6 million tons of sediment from the floodplain into the river – equivalent to 6.4 percent of the total annual sediment load of the entire Mississippi River basin (which the Wabash contributes to) – in a matter of days. It would take nearly 250 years of bank erosion to displace the same amount of sediment along the bend, had the cutoff not occurred. Such sediment pulses, as they are known, are more often associated with mountain rivers, rather than the relatively level landscape of rural Illinois.

“The first kilometer-long channel was cut in eight days, which is a phenomenal rate of erosion,” Best said. “There were banks collapsing, sediment moving; it’s probably one of the most dynamic river environments you’ll ever see, and you don’t expect that in lowland, flat-grade rivers.”

The researchers found that, after each cutoff, the majority of the sediment was deposited locally. In particular, a large percentage of the sediment accumulated where the Wabash joins the Ohio River. The new layer of sediment, up to 7 meters thick, raised the bed of the Ohio River and required dredging so that barges could continue to use the river.

The Wabash River study demonstrated that cutoffs can have large, immediate effects on sediment transport and deposition in a river – processes not accounted for in current models of meandering rivers.

“If we look at river systems and their role in the landscape, one of their most fundamental roles from a geoscience perspective is that they transport sediment from the land surfaces to ocean basins,” Rhoads said. “What has not been recognized is that these cutoff events can actually deliver large amounts of sediment to the river very rapidly. Then, the question is, since cutoffs are ubiquitous along a lot of meandering rivers, could this be something that we have not recognized fully as a major sediment delivery mechanism for all meandering rivers?”

The researchers plan to continue monitoring the cutoff and the areas just upstream and downstream to document how the cutoffs contribute to the river’s evolution. They anticipate that the river will abandon the bend and the first cutoff as more water is directed through the second cutoff, a more direct route for the river to flow. The abandoned bend will become a new wetland area, shaping the local ecology. The researchers will continue to measure and model changes in flow velocity, sediment transport and morphology in the river as the cutoff channel widens, providing valuable insight into cutoff effects and perhaps contributing to a model that could predict where such sediment pulses could occur.

“Our study brings attention to a whole range of elements – the basic science, the local effects, the ecological effects, the commercial effects – all from this one mechanism of channel change,” Zinger said. “A lot of the meandering models that are out there treat cutoffs very schematically and they don’t deal with the processes that are occurring once a cutoff develops. I think that our work could really make people rethink that aspect of modeling the long-term evolution of meander bends.”

The National Science Foundation supported this work.

The paper, “Extreme Sediment Pulses Generated by Bend Cutoffs Along a Large Meandering River,”
is available online.

Professor Colin Flint Co-Author of Newly Published Book "Reconstructing Conflict"

Congratulations to Dr. Flint and Dr. Scott Kirsch for the recent publication of "Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies."

From Ashgate Publishing "In this volume, reconstruction is identified as a process of conflict and of militarized power, not something that clearly demarcates a post-war period of peace. Kirsch and Flint bring together an internationally diverse range of studies by leading scholars to examine how periods of war and other forms of political violence have been justified as processes of necessary and valid reconstruction as well as the role of war in catalyzing the construction of new political institutions and destroying old regimes. Challenging the false dichotomy between war and peace, this book explores instead the ways that war and peace are mutually constituted in the creation of historically specific geographies and geographical knowledge."

More information on this book can be found at the Ashgate Publishing website

Professor Tom Bassett wins 2011 James M. Blaut Innovative Publication Award

Congratulations to Drs. Tom Bassett and Alex Winter-Nelson for winning the James M. Blaut award from the Cultural and Political Ecology specialty group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) for the publication of their book The Atlas of World Hunger.

For more information and how to order a copy of The Atlas of World Hunger,please visit The University of Chicago Press Books website.

For more information on the James M. Blaut Innovative Publication Award, please visit the AAG Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group website.

Members of the GIS Group from left: Greg Ward, Caroline Cvetkovic, Nate Banion, Brian Wilson, Eric Shook, Max Schulz, Jizhe Yang, Varun Goel, Tori Frobish

1867 Society Fund Award Goes to the GIS Group

Congratulations to the GIS Group who won an $1,100 dollar award from the 1867 Society Fund to continue work on the Imap project - an online direction routing website for students and visitors on campus.  The GIS Group met members of the 1867 Society Fund last Friday to receive the award (pictured above).  Many members mentioned that this was a great way to end the year as many are heading back home.  However, several members have volunteered themselves to working remotely while away from campus so that Imap continues to make progress over the summer.  The group is already busy in the planning stages to make a new and improved version of Imap for the beginning of Fall semester.  This award will help to provide new resources and improve Imap in the future.

For more about this award or the GIS Group please visit our Recent News in Geography page

Congratulations to our Graduates!

Congratulations to Fulbright Winners, Hal Fischer and Richelle Bernazzoli

Harry Fischer, a Ph.D. student in human geography, has received a Fulbright grant from the Institute of International Education (IIE) to perform his doctoral research in rural India on local democracy and water management.

Richelle Bernazzoli, a Ph.D. candidate in political geography, has been selected for a Fulbright award to Croatia.  She will spend the 2011-2012 academic year in the capital city of Zagreb conducting fieldwork for her dissertation, which is tentatively titled "Keeping the State Viable?  Security Governance and the Everyday Geopolitics of Croatia's Euro-Atlantic Integration.

Professor Ashwini Chhatre publishes second article in Science

Congratulations to Dr. Chhatre for his article "Social and Ecological Synergy: Local Rulemaking, Forest Livelihoods, and Biodiversity Conservation" that recently appeared in the March 25th edition of the popular research periodical Science. Abstract and full text of the article can be viewed at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6024/1606.abstract

Congratulations to the Graduate Student Affinity Group 2011 Competition Winners

Every year, the Graduate Student Affinity Group (GSAG) oversees its GSAG Student Paper and Research Award Competitions. The competitions seeks to promote the dissemination of graduate student research through written and oral presentations. Graduate students working on any aspect of geographical research (social or physical sciences, qualitative or quantitative methods) are encouraged to apply.

The department of Geography is pleased to announce that three of our graduate students have received the GSAG awards this year.

An honorable mention for research went to Frank Engel for his "Investigaition of Interactions Among Near-bank Turbulence, Flow Structure, and Bank Retreat in a Compound Meander Loop."

And in the student paper competition, 1st place went to Matthew Anderson and Carolina Sternberg for their paper titled "The Racial Contours of neoliberal Intra-Urban Contingency: A Comparative Analysis of Chicago's Bronzeville and Pilsen." Matt and Carolina also presented their research at the 2011 SESE Research Review as shown above.

Researchers to Develop CyberInfrastructure for Geography Software

The National Science Foundation has awarded $4.4 million to an initiative led by the University of Illinois that will combine cyberinfrastructure, spatial analysis and modeling, and geographic information science to form a collaborative software framework encompassing many research fields.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software has been widely used for spatial problem solving and decision making applications since the 1960s. It has become an invaluable tool for geography-related fields, its uses spanning archaeology, disaster preparedness, public health, resource management, urban planning and much more.  However, conventional GIS software isn’t capable of handling the huge volumes of data and complex analysis required for many modern applications.

Cyberinfrastructure is a system that integrates data management, visualization, high-performance computing and human elements to tackle complex problems. This type of supercomputing power could address many GIS scenarios where current software falls short.

Led by Shaowen Wang, a professor of geography and also a senior research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois, an interdisciplinary team of researchers will work to develop CyberGIS, a comprehensive software framework that will harness the power of cyberinfrastructure for GIS and associated applications. Computer science professor Marc Snir chairs the project steering committee.

“The overarching goal of this project is to establish CyberGIS as a fundamentally new software framework encompassing a seamless integration of cyberinfrastructure, GIS, and spatial analysis and modeling capabilities,” Wang said. “It could lead to widespread scientific breakthroughs that have broad societal impacts.”

The project is part of NSF’s Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation program, which aims to promote scalable, sustainable, open-source software elements. In addition to the advanced problem-solving capabilities, the researchers hope that CyberGIS will enhance sharing among researchers and facilitate cross-disciplinary interaction through multiple-user, online collaboration.

“CyberGIS will empower high-performance, collaborative geospatial problem solving,” Wang said. “For example, it could dramatically advance the understanding of disaster preparedness and response and impacts of global climate change.”

The project involves partnerships among academia, government, and industry with an international scope. Partners institutions include Arizona State University, the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Georgia Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University College London Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (England), University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, University of California-San Diego, University of California-Santa Barbara, University of Washington, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (Australia). The five-year project began in October 2010.  

This article was a publication of News Bureau 10/28/2010 and was written by Liz Ahlberg, Physical Sciences Editor

GIS Club Proposal Selected as Finalist in 1867 Society Fund

The 1867 Society is a student-led effort to gather philanthropic support at Illinois, for Illinois. Our Executive Council is hoping to raise awareness among students about the importance of supporting the campus through donations. Any current undergraduate, graduate or professional student who makes a gift during the fiscal year will automatically become a member of the 1867 Society.

The 1867 Society Fund is a gift fund that will be used to support a different campus-based project every year. When students give to the 1867 Society Fund, their donation will be combined with others to make a powerful impact on campus. Each spring, they will receive an e-mail with several potential campus projects that could be funded by the 1867 Society Fund. They will be asked to vote for their top choice. Votes will be tallied and the dollars will be given to that project before the end of the school year.

The top 3 proposals for funding through the 1867 Society Fund have been chosen for 2010-2011. They include the Undergraduate Library's computer workstations, the Student Affairs Advancement Committee's Emergency Dean Fund, and the GIS Group of Informatics' IMap project. Donors will vote in April and the top project will receive the funding.

ABOUT THE PROPOSAL: GIS Group of Informatics Club - IMap

GIS is a quickly growing field that uses geotechnologies and an understanding of geospatial processes to transform geospatial data into useful knowledge. IMap is a project developed by the GIS Group of the Informatics Club that uses their knowledge of student life and the geography of campus to create a custom map to route students, staff, faculty and visitors between buildings on campus. Every Fall semester thousands of incoming freshmen wander the campus looking for classrooms and dormitories. This project aims to create a simple online resource to help these students navigate campus buildings and corridors. IMap employs geotechnologies that are likely familiar to many students, such as Google Maps which is commonly used to provide driving directions to unfamiliar destinations. IMap couples Google Maps with GIS algorithms and collected GPS data of building entrances, sidewalks, staircases, and potentially other interesting geospatial data related to student life on campus (e.g. bike racks, parking ramps, etc.) to create an intuitive website that provides walking directions, and potentially biking directions, between buildings (see the Try our IMap demo at http://gistest.wikispaces.com for routing directions between buildings on the Quad).

Currently, the GIS Group has collected and tagged over 360 GPS points covering the sidewalks and building entrances of the Quad on campus using borrowed GPS devices. They implemented a shortest path algorithm to efficiently route students between buildings and developed a preliminary user interface using Google Maps in a custom designed website (see link above for demo). They presented their work at the GIS Fair on campus in the Fall of 2010 with glowing responses from students and faculty which included invitations for potential collaborations from other campus entities such as the Wellness Center.

Two new capabilities will provide IMap with immeasurable value to students on campus. First, IMap is looking to expand the map coverage to include all of campus and surrounding areas. Entire coverage of campus is essential to providing new students with routing directions to any building. To accomplish this goal requires collecting and tagging geospatial data such as building entrances and the location of staircases or bike ramps using a GPS device. The group currently borrows GPS devices from family or friends of group members which limits their ability to collect data. The GIS group would greatly benefit from a new GPS device; it would help to simplify and speedup data collection and free the GIS group members from relying on the generosity of family and friends.

Second, IMap would like to provide equal assistance to all students including those with disabilities. Tackling this challenge requires a combination of features to address different disabilities. Providing routes for handicapped students is one feature IMap plans to include; these enhanced routes would eliminate paths that are not handicap accessible such as sidewalk paths with staircases or non-accessible building entrances. The GIS group has already collected this information for building entrances and sidewalk paths on the Quad and plans to add this new feature soon. To further enhance the usability of IMap we would like to make IMap accessible to students with vision impairments. Specifically, we seek to request funds to hire ATLAS consultants to help re-design IMap as an accessible website that meets all accessibility requirements including the standards set forth in the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA). ATLAS provides IT services to students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and they offer website design assistance to meet and exceed accessibility requirements. We hope that this consulting time can also serve as a teaching opportunity to group members to help understand the requirements and considerations necessary to design an accessible GIS-enabled website. One challenge related to this re-design is adapting the current IMap website to not only display the route on Google Maps, but also provide auditory feedback or textual directions that are screen reader compliant. This feature in IMap would compliment the current campus ADA website (http://www.fs.uiuc.edu/ada) which provides ADA accessible information to navigate individual campus buildings including, for some buildings, a textual description of directions to classrooms suitable for a screen reading program. However, the campus ADA website does not provide descriptive directions between campus buildings; if the IMap website is designed to be accessible then this information could be made available to all students on campus.

A GPS device would have an immediate impact for the IMap project by providing freedom to the GIS group to collect and tag geospatial data at any time without needing to borrow a GPS device. The data collected using the GPS device can be quickly incorporated into the IMap website and used to increase IMap coverage which would benefit all students on campus. The GPS device could also be used by group members to add new and exciting features to IMap or explore other GIS-related projects that would benefit students on campus.

A bit of background about the group:

The GIS Group of the Informatics Club is an interdisciplinary group of undergraduate students that share an interest in GIS. Their majors range from Geography to Political Science to Communications. They are actively learning geotechnologies (such as Google Maps API) and applying their new skills to exciting projects to improve campus life for their fellow students. IMap is a project currently being developed by the GIS group which uses the group's knowledge of student life and the geography of campus to create a custom map to route students, staff, faculty, and visitors between buildings on campus. The group's website and a link to IMap can be found at http://gistest.wikispaces.com.

For more information about the 1867 Society or to become a donor please visit http://vcia.illinois.edu/AnnualFund/1867.html

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR DECEMBER 2010 GRADUATES!

Professor David Wilson Recipient of the Queens University (Canada) Chancellor Dunning Trust Lectureship, 2011

David Wilson has been appointed as the Chancellor Dunning Trust Lecturer for Queens University in 2011. He will deliver three lectures at the university on the topics of globalization and city political governance, the discourse of black-on-black violence, and ruminations on urban planning as an evolving discipline.

The Chancellor Dunning Trust Lectureship was established in 1946. Its goal has been “to promote understanding and appreciation of the supreme importance of the dignity, freedom and responsibility of the individual person in human society.” The Trustees of Queen’s University have agreed that this goal may best be accomplished by bringing to Queen’s distinguished speakers who would give public lectures and who would also meet with classes, groups and individuals at Queen’s and in the local community.

Previous recipients of the Lectureship have included Naomi Klein, Elie Wiesel, Michael Harrington, Edward Said, Angela Davis, Stephen Jay Gould, Martha Nussbaum, and Lewis Wolpert.

Roepke Scholarship Winners Named

Congratulations to the 2010 Roepke Scholarship Winners!

Boyang Zhang, $2000 academic scholarship
Matthias Landt, $2000 academic scholarship
Rebecca Helberg, a junior who will be working with Professor Bassett to append on the materials of his recently published book The Atlas of World Hunger by collecting data and making maps on various dimensions of world hunger. Ms. Helberg was awarded $3000 for her research opportunity.
Varun Goel, a senior who will be working with Professor Cidell on the effect of public policy on green buildings and their distribution across metropolitan regions. Mr. Goel was awarded $3000 for his research.
Christina Riebandt, a senior who will be working with Professor McLafferty on the misrepresentation of physician residential addresses as healthcare facilities in and around Cook County and how this relates to the availability of late-stage cancer treatments in the area. Ms. Riebandt was awarded $3000 for this research.

2010 ESRI-GIS Development Center Scholarship Winner

Imelda K. Moise, Department of Geography
(recieves $150 and a certificate)
Imelda has been continuously energized by the desire to attain proficiency in GIS as it relates to health, environmental issues, and disease surveillance, as well as its integration with other disciplines. She has worked as a teaching assistant for GIS courses focused on cartography as well as health applications of GIS. In addition, GIS and spatial statistics have been the focus of several of her co-authored peer-reviewed publications and presentations at various conferences and symposia. Specifically, Imelda used GIS to model the spatial distribution of HIV/AIDS in Zambia, model Illinois student 30-day alcohol-use rates, and investigate neighborhood socio-economic characteristics as it relates to availability of healthy foods in Chicago and in Central Illinois.

Imelda's Ph.D. dissertation reflects the culmination of her GIS experience, using GIS to create maps that pinpoint the potential for swimming pools conceptualized as urban opportunity structures for colonization of mosquitoes across New Orleans neighborhoods post-Katrina. GIS will be used to integrate vegetation data with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and environmental data to develop a multi-layered picture, including neighborhood social and economic characteristics and resettlement patterns along with the location and characteristics of 7,184 pools. This study will provide New Orleans City managers insight into which neighborhood features are related to the potential for vector-borne illnesses and the role of swimming pools in these settings.

2010 ESRI-GIS Development Center Scholarship Winner

Jun Wan, Department of Urban and Regional Planning
(recieves $150 and a certificate)
Jun is a second-year Ph.D. student at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, working at the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL). A major portion of his dissertation is to generate an integrative, multi-task processing platform to tackle natural disasters (e.g., earthquake and floods) and to assist associated decision-making in governmental planning processes. His project is composed of three subunits: (1) the input of data information from physical, social, and economic sources; (2) data processing, modeling, and unraveling of complex spatial relationships; and (3) mapping/visualization and WebGIS applications.

Fulfilling the purposes of such work-flow steps entails the intensive and creative use of ArcGIS. More specifically, ArcGIS provides a strong linkage of physical environment settings and social economic activities through various spatial layers we create. For instance, land-use patterns and geological and meteorological information can be retrieved through satellite raster data and be incorporated with social/economic information (e.g., housing locations and values) in ArcGIS.

Based upon in-depth data review and layers manipulation, spatial analysis and statistics tools are adapted to model/estimate the relationships between possible hazard damage and hypothetical hazard severities on a fine regional scale. The modeling results are later being exported to an open-source spatial object-relational database (e.g., PostGIS, MapServer, Geoserver) to be analyzed and stored. Eventually, certain valuable information/results can be recalled and visualized under the Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Map Service (WMS), based upon the requirements of end users (e.g., planners, government officials, and scholars). Hence, the research agenda allows for integration and management of different levels of abstraction of spatial data under the help of ArcGIS, open-source object-relational database and online mapping services.

Professor Murugesu Sivapalan, Professor of Geography and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, has been selected to receive the 2010 Hydrologic Sciences Award from the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

He will be honored at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, December 13-17, 2010.  

The Hydrologic Sciences Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the science of hydrology. Sivapalan was cited for having made outstanding contributions to surface hydrology, especially in conceiving rigorous theoretical frameworks for addressing scale issues in hydrologic response, developing conservation laws for watershed-scale processes, and addressing the role of heterogeneity across a range of space and time scales. He has also been a leader in the PUB (Predictions in Ungaged Basins) initiative of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, which has impacted the state of the art of watershed hydrology and its practice worldwide.  

CEE PhD student Ciaran Harman, a student of Sivapalan, also will be honored at the AGU's fall meeting.  Harman was selected to receive the 2010 Horton Research Grant, which is made from the AGU Hydrology Section's Robert E. Horton Fund for Hydrologic Research "in support of research projects in hydrology and water resources by Ph.D. candidates in institutions of higher education." Harman was selected for his proposed dissertation research, "Biotic alteration of soil hydrologic properties and feedback with vegetation in water limited ecosystems."  He is one of only two awardees selected from more than100 nominees.  

The 35,000-member AGU is dedicated to the furtherance of the geophysical sciences through the individual efforts of its members and in cooperation with other national and international scientific organizations. Established in 1919 by the National Research Council, the AGU operated for more than 50 years as an unincorporated affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences. It is now a nonprofit corporation chartered under the laws of the District of Columbia.

Ashwini Chhatre recognized as a Center for Advanced Study Fellow 2010-2011

Democratic Governance and Adaptation to Climate Change

Professor Chhatre is drawing on ethnographic and historical data from the Himalayan province of Himachal Pradesh, India, to develop a dynamic model of democracy and its role in facilitating
adaptation to climate change.

Himachal Pradesh offers case studies that are particularly well suited to this kind of research. India has a longstanding tradition of national and state-level democracy with uneven application across local jurisdictions. In 1971 Himachal Pradesh scored very low on indicators of human development and democratic performance. Today it is one of the few provinces in India with high scores in both areas. Lessons from this province thus hold great significance for understanding the emergence of democratic governance.

The province has also grappled successfully with land-use and environmental challenges. Mobilization of tenants and landless peasants in 1968-77, for example, led to a partly successful redistribution of land in favor of the poor. A 1982-89 social movement against environmentally destructive forestry practices resulted in widespread reform. And when climate changes and cheaper imports in the 1990s threatened the production of apples — a principal source of local income — the province introduced policies and programs that allowed households to shift to alternative livelihoods.

In analyzing such case studies, Professor Chhatre pays close attention to two aspects: (a) the dynamics of electoral competition between political parties and the role of elections in articulating citizens' interests and (b) the embeddedness of local events in larger processes at various macro levels. He plans to complete a book manuscript, linking the lessons learned to global debates on adapting to climate change.

CAS Scholarly Achievement: Recognition + Incentives
At the intellectual heart of the University lies the Center for Advanced Study, bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, encouraging and rewarding excellence in all areas of academic inquiry. For more information on CAS, please visit their website at cas.illinois.edu

Professor Murugesu Sivapalan was presented with the International Hydrology Prize from the International Association of Hydrological Sciences on July 7 in Paris, France. He was cited, “For outstanding contributions to watershed hydrology and global leadership in advancing predictions in ungauged basins.”

“I have great pleasure in presenting Professor Murugesu Sivapalan of the University of Illinois as this year's recipient of the International Hydrology Prize,” said Gordon Young, president of the IAHS, who presented the award, calling Sivapalan one of the greatest hydrologists of our time. “Professor Sivapalan is eminently worthy of this award for truly outstanding contributions to the science of hydrology, having shaped modern hydrology in a most distinct way. He has been a key player in formulating a new hydrological theory at the watershed scale and having contributed immensely to a wider inter-disciplinary view of hydrology as an Earth Science. His publication output is exceptional … but it is not only this productivity that has elevated his profile. More important are the new concepts he has introduced. It is by these that he has imprinted his vision on the shape of modern scientific hydrology, making a permanent impact."

Sivapalan joined the University of Illinois faculty in 2005. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in watershed hydrology, engineering hydrology, stochastic hydrology and water resources engineering.

“I am truly humbled by the honor and recognition that IAHS has bestowed on me through this prestigious award, and I am delighted to be receiving it in the presence of friends and family,” he said. “This day will remain one of the happiest days of my life.”

Professor Emeritus jerome d. fellmann

On Saturday, May 29, 2010 our department lost Professor Emeritus Jerome D. Fellmann.  Dr. Fellmann contributed over 50 years of his life to the university and the department of geography.  He came to the University of Illinois in 1950 shortly after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he had also completed both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.  His research interests included urban and economic geography, geographic bibliography, the geography of Russia and the Center for International Studies, and geographic education.  Like many of our geographers, Dr. Fellmann’s many publications can be found in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Professional Geographer, Journal of Geography, and the Geographical Review. He also co-authored several editions of Mc-Graw Hill’s Introduction to Geography and Human Geography.  In addition to teaching and research, he acted as both an Associate and Acting Head of the department in the early 1970’s and served on several committees within the department, LAS, the Graduate College, the Russian and East European Center (now the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center) and the University.

Outside of the University of Illinois, Dr. Fellmann was an active member of the Association of American Geographers, American Geographical Society, Illinois Geographical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Regional Science Association, Illinois Academy of Science, and Sigma Xi. He also held visiting professorships at Wayne State University, the University of British Columbia, and California State University/Northridge.

Professor Fellmann’s contributions to the department, in particular to undergraduate education, continue to be honored annually through the Jerome D. Fellmann Prize.  The Fellmann Prize is awarded each year to a graduating senior in geography who has written a senior honors paper rated Superior.

Bachelor's Candidates: Sarah Andersen, Stephanie Baliga, Zachary Baston, Jared Butler, Jonathan Estwing, Andrea Hail, Mitchell Hoekstra, Laura Reirmaier, John Swider, and Tyler Williamson
Master's Candidates: Treva Ellison, Harry "Hal" Fischer IV, Travis Leonard, Patrice Schoolman
Doctoral Candidates: Ranjana Chakrabarti

Thank you to the faculty, staff and students who celebrated with our graduates! View Photos of the Geography Graduation Reception and LAS Convocation held May 15th, 2010.

The Initiative for Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences (ICARUS) held its first international workshop, ICARUS I, hosted by the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy Initiative (SDEP) of the Department of Geography, the School of Earth Society and Environment and the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. ICARUS a network or a nascent association co-organized by Arun Agrawal and Maria-Carmen Lemos at University of Michigan, Ben Orlove of University of California at Davis, and Jesse Ribot at University of Illinois. Our first ICARUS meeting was a great success, bringing together over fifty five social science researchers from ten countries for three days of intense discussion and debate. From the Illinois Geography Department papers were presented by Tom Bassett, Betsy Anne Beymer, Harry Fischer, Ashwini Chhatre, and Jesse Ribot.

For more information, visit: http://www.geog.illinois.edu/ICARUSWorkshopaSuccess.html

"Turning Science Into Action," a recently publshed book co-edited by Ezekiel Kalipeni, was written as a direct result of the First International Research Conference on Biodiversity and the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources held in Kigali, Rwanda in July 2007. The book explores issues concerning biodiversity conservation and the management of natural resources in Africa. Dr. Kalipeni is a Professor of Geography and African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently serving as the Program Director of the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.

For a detailed description of this publication, please visit: www.africaworldpressbooks.com/servlet/Detail?no=486

CIGI awarded 625,000 hours of supercomputing time by the NSF TeraGrid for geographic research and education.

The TeraGrid resource allocation was awarded to a team led by Professor Shaowen Wang supporting the project: “Extending and Sustaining GISolve as a GIScience Gateway Toolkit for Geographic Information Analysis“. The amount of cyberinfrastructure resources awarded can be understood in terms of the total number of CPU hours consumed as equivalent to uninterrupted use of a single-CPU high-end desktop computer for over *70 years*. This award includes access to several of the most powerful supercomputers in the world for open scientific research, such as the Ranger at the Texas Advanced Computer Center and, thus, will enable CIGI (CyberInfrastructure and Geospatial Information Laboratory) researchers and educators to continue, and lead on, cutting-edge computationally intensive geographic discoveries and computational geography education based on large-scale spatial analysis, parallel spatial simulation, and high-fidelity geovisualization.

For more information: http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/News/09/0625NCSAICHASS.html.

"We can increase carbon sequestration simply by transferring ownership of forests from governments to communities," says Professor Ashwini Chhatre in his article recently featured in New Scientist.

See the full article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17937-give-forests-back-to-local-people-to-save-them.html