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"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.
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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 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. |
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"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 |
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August 2009 : PROFESSOR JIE TIAN TO JOIN THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
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Jie Tian will join the Department of Geography as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the fall of 2009. Prof. Tian's area of study and research focus on GIS and Remote Sensing applications in environmental management. He will teach Intro to GIS and Intro to Remote Sensing.
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16 May 2009 : AWARDS GIVEN IN THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
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On May 16, 2009, at 10 a.m., the Department of Geography held a convocation ceremony at Huff Hall. Immediately after the ceremony a reception was held in Davenport Hall to honor the graduates. Graduate Alex Beata received the Jerome D. Fellman Award and Frances Levy recieved John Thompson Award.
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Spring 2009 : LAUNCHING SDEP: JESSE RIBOT |
This spring the Department of Geography in collaboration with the School of Earth Society and Environment (SESE) and Beckman Institute launched the “Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy Research Initiative” (SDEP). SDEP is dedicated to the pursuit of socially and politically sound solutions to society’s mounting environmental dilemmas. The initiative will: 1) conduct research on the human dimensions of environmental change and policy; 2) serve as a forum for collaboration among social and natural science faculty within SESE and across the UIUC campus; and in the long run 3) link UIUC researchers with policy makers and policy-making processes in Illinois, across the US, and globally. The initiative aims to shape national and global agendas for environmental policy research, develop its own nationally and globally recognized research initiatives, and become recognized as a source of reliable research-based policy guidance. Its ultimate goal is to apply rigorous social-science research to the making of just and sustainable environmental policy.
The first steps of SDEP this spring include setting up of a talk series, a set of workshops, and engagement in two international policy meetings. The campus-wide Climate and Society talk series, from Fall 2009 through spring 2010, will be integrated with the Geography Colloquium, and will feature ten top theorists and researchers working on the analysis of climate and social vulnerability. In collaboration with the University of Michigan, SDEP will support the activities of the newly formed coalition of social scientists called the Initiative for Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through Social Sciences (ICARUS) through a series of six workshops over the next two years on climate adaptation theory and methods. SDEP is also helping to organize and bring to bare the findings of SDEP activities in two international policy fora. To inform global policy debates on climate and vulnerability SDEP will prepare a special policy report on Environment, Security and Local Government to be presented at the United Nations International Forum on Local Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in February 2010. SDEP is also co-organizing the Second International Conference on Impacts of Climate Variation and Sustainable Development in Semi-arid Regions (ICID II), a Rio + 20 (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development—UNCED 2012) preparatory meeting to be held in Fortaleza, Brazil, in August 2010.
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28 April 2009 : BALIGA HONORED AT FIGHTING ILLINI SCHOLAR-ATHLETE RECEPTION |
Stephanie Baglia from Rockford, Illinois, received the Outstanding Scholar-Athelete Award at the Big Ten Medal or Honor Awards reception held at the Colonnades Club at Memorial Stadium. Stephanie is double majoring and received a 4.0 GPA in geography and economics. She competed in the 5,000m at the Meyo Invitational and ran a personal-best time of 17:37.80.
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15 April 2009 : KEYNOTE SPEACH GIVEN BY PROF. KALIPENI IN LUSAKA, ZAMBIA |
In April, Prof. Kalipeni gave the keynote speech at Justo Mwale College in Zambia entitled: HIV and Religion in Africa: The Politics of Treatment and Prevention in a Changing Religious Landscape
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March 2009 : MCLAFFERTY PRESENTS AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE |
Professor Sara McLafferty was an invited lecturer at Dartmouth University presenting: "Locating Health Inequalities: Place, Immigration and Women's Health in New York City."
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19 February 2009 : HEWINGS QUOTED IN THE ECONOMIST |
The Economist, February 19 print edition, quoted Professor Hewings: “Geoffrey Hewings, an economist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, explains that Illinois is apt to enter business cycles later than the country, but that its downturns are usually deeper and longer. The state lost 100,700 jobs in 2008, 73,600 in November and December alone.”
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12-16 February 2009 : PROFESSOR CHHATRE PARTICIPATES IN AAAS 2009 SYMPOSIUM: OUR PLANET AND IT'S LIFE: ORIGINS AND FUTURES |
The annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) brings together an exceptional array of scholars addressing some of the most crucial and timely questions facing humanity. Ashwini Chhatre, Assistant Professor in Geography, organized a symposium at the 2009 AAAS conference as part of a day-long seminar on assessing and responding to climate change. The symposium, titled ‘Equity, Sustainability, and Governance of Mixed-Use Landscapes,’ brought together leaders in the emerging field of Sustainability Science to report on the frontiers of thinking about governance regimes for complex adaptive social-ecological systems.Moving beyond the role of institutions in dealing with trade-offs among competing land uses along different outcome dimensions – income generation, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services provision, greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon sequestration – the participants in the symposium discussed the challenge of devising complex multi-level governance systems for human-dominated landscapes with multiple users, diverse uses, and an array of benefits to humanity ranging from the local to the global.
The discussion was moderated by Prof. William Clark, Harvard University. Among the presenters, Prof. Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University led the way with an exposition of imaginative institutional design in generating multiple benefits. For example, a shift to more efficient wood stoves in developing countries not only reduces carbon emissions, but also has a large positive impact on the health of women and children. Prof. Thomas Tomich, University of California at Davis, presented research from South-east Asia, demonstrating the important role played by ‘boundary organizations’ that bridge the divide between scientists and policy makers in devising creative mechanisms for dialogue. Prof. Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan, and Ashwini Chhatre, University of Illinois, presented their research on trade-offs and synergies between carbon storage and livelihood benefits using data on forests from ten developing countries. Their analysis showed that where local communities have the freedom to make rules appropriate to the local context, the forests managed by such communities store higher amounts of carbon as well as contribute more to rural livelihoods. The presentations were followed by comments from two discussants, Prof. Dan Brown, University of Michigan, and Prof. Lennart Olsson, University of Lund, Sweden. The presentations can be accessed at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/ifri/aaas_2009_symposium
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19 December 2008 : PROF. BRUCE RHOADS AND PROF. JIM BEST AWARDED SPECIAL GRANT FOR EXPLORATORY RESEARCH FROM NSF |
Bruce Rhoads and Jim Best have received a Special Grant for Exploratory Research from the National Science Foundation in the amount of $64,992 for the project "Fluvial Dynamics of a Large-River Meander Cutoff." This two-year effort will explore the evolution of a meander cutoff that occurred in June 2008 along the lower Wabash River near its confluence with the Ohio River. The cutoff delivered large amounts of sediment to the confluence of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers, shutting down barge traffic on the Ohio River for five days. The cutoff is expected to change considerably in the near future as it captures increasing amounts of flow in the Wabash River. The U.S. Geological Survey Water Science Center, located on campus, is a collaborative agency in the project. More information can be found at: http://as102.http.sasm3.net/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0852865
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December 2008 : COLIN FLINT INVITED TO LECTURE AT SEOUL NATIONAL UNIVERSITY |
Asia in the Geopolitical Imagination of U.S. Presidents: An Analysis of U.S. Presidential State of the Union Speeches 1988-2008
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February 2008 : FLINT NAMED DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRAM IN ARMS CONTROL, DISARMAMENT AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY |
Colin Flint became Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security (ACDIS) in February 2008. The programs mission statement is to inform international security policy decision making and implementation through focused interdisciplinary research, thoughtful, objective analysis and effective communication and teaching. More information can be found at the ACDIS web site http://acdis.illinois.edu/.
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2008 : RHOADS APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVE TO AAAS |
Bruce Rhoads has been appointed by the Association of American Geographers as the AAG's representative to the Geology and Geography Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He attended the recent annual meeting of the AAAS (Feb. 12-16, Chicago, IL), including the business meeting of the Geology and Geography Section.
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1 November 2008 : RIBOT JOINS DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY |
Dr. Ribot joins us from World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. Ribot will lead an initiative on Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy that will be centered in the School of Earth, Society and Environment, but will also be supported by the campus and the Beckman Institute. He has been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellow, a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and a fellow at the Yale Program in Agrarian Studies. From 1990 to 1994 he lectured on environment and development policy and planning in Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Over the past two decades he has conducted numerous studies for the World Bank and United Nations. Ribot conducts research on: decentralization and democratic local government; natural resource tenure and access; distribution along natural resource commodity chains; and household vulnerability in the face of climate and environmental change. He holds a doctorate from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley.
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16 August 2008 : WELCOME NEW GRADUATE STUDENTS
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We would like to welcome the following graduate students to the Department of Geography:
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Matt Anderson - Ph.D. - Urban Geography
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Ben Cheng - Ph.D. - Urban Geography
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Hal Fischer - M. A. - Environmental Geography
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Poonam Jusrut - Ph. D. - Political Ecology
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Travis Leonard - M.S. - Medical Geography
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Jong-Woo Nam - Ph.D. - Political Geography
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Ewan Robinson - Ph.D. - Political Geography
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Shen Ye - M.S. & Ph.D. - Fluvial Geomorphology