Geography & Environmental Studies

MSC 01 1110
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131

Physical Location:
Bandelier West & East

Phone: (505)277-5041
Fax: (505)277-3614

Latest News

Intro to Environmental Studies heads outside in Spring 2018

If busting out of the classroom to learn about landscapes and management practices around Albuquerque sounds like the best way to spend eight weeks this spring, hustle up and register for Geography 195.

Introduction to Environmental Studies is a required class for Geography majors, but it will have a radically different format this year, says Department Chair Maria Lane. That’s thanks to a grant Melinda Harm Benson secured for the class prior to leaving UNM earlier this year to become dean of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming. That grant allows the class to be focused on field study, rather than just classroom lectures.

In Spring 2018, Benjamin Warner will be teaching the course. Warner came to UNM this fall after completing a postdoctoral scholar appointment at the University of Massachusetts in the Department of Geosciences.

Master's student Laurel Ladwig

While visiting sites like the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park, the Sandia Mountains, and the Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, Warner says that students will have the chance to explore why environmental issues are often so political—and how to solve that problem, starting on a local scale.

“We’ll be exploring questions like, ‘Why is our relationship with nature often contentious?’” Warner says. At each of the sites, students will try to understand the unique worldviews and values that different stakeholders bring, and how people view problems and issues from a particular place. At each site, students will also explore, says Warner, “how these sites can solve multiple problems with multiple solutions—all in this one place.”

Although the class will appeal to students of all levels and disciplines, Warner says that first and foremost, it’s a class for undergraduates who are new to geography and environmental studies.

    
Associate Professor Ben Warner

Oftentimes introductory classes provide broad overviews—let’s just admit this—so    it’s hard for students to feel inspired or passionate about the topic. Starting this spring, Geography 195 will change that for geography majors.

“We wanted to create a class to get people excited about geography and environmental studies as freshmen—instead of having them discover it as a senior like I did,” says Laurel Ladwig. Now a graduate student in the department, Ladwig helped Benson design the course as part of an independent study project last year.

“We live in a biotic community and we have so many different habitats in Albuquerque,” says Ladwig. “Let’s get people out and explore the land around us, and learn about the different ways of interacting with lands, and managing lands.”

The class is a second-half spring course that will be held on Thursdays from 1-6 p.m. Students do not have to pay additional fees for the course, and transportation from UNM to the sites will be provided.

 

GES featured in Lobo Gardens story!

http://www.dailylobo.com/article/2017/11/guest-column-lobo-gardens

Editor’s Note: This piece submitted by a student in the UNM Geography & Environmental Studies Department is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community.

A new partnership at the University of New Mexico’s Lobo Gardens is enhancing opportunities for the UNM and Albuquerque communities to learn how the health of our urban communities and natural worlds are connected.

The new collaboration among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, AmeriCorps VISTA, UNM’s STEAMLabs, the Community Engaged Learning and Research Office and the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies increases the resources and enhances the focus of Lobo Gardens, which was first established in 2010.

“From the start, Lobo Gardens has been dedicated to creating spaces for learning, reflection and collaborative action around sustainability, food equity, community and environmental diversity and human and planetary health,” said Tema Milstein, one of the founders of Lobo Gardens and associate professor in the Geography & Environmental Studies Department. “This new multi-party partnership builds on Lobo Gardens’ past successes and creates infrastructure and new regenerative relationships with the land, our communities and other species to foster social and environmental transformation.”

In August, the partnership provided funding support to hire Lobo Gardens’ first paid coordinator, Christina Hoberg, as well as an assistant coordinator, Noel Mollinedo. As the garden coordinator, Hoberg oversees and grows the three Lobo Gardens sites; coordinates any UNM courses and campus and community groups that want to use the gardens; and does community educational outreach. She is also working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and garden volunteers to enhance pollinator and wildlife habitats on campus.

With guidance from U.S. Fish and Wildlife scientists, Hoberg is making plans to create monarch butterfly migration way stations in the gardens and is enhancing efforts already begun by Lobo Gardens students to build and plant a wild pollinator habitat. In an urban environment like Albuquerque where wildlife seek refuge and food among the rhythms of city life, this type of project is important, because it provides wildlife with access to necessary food and shelter. In the coming weeks, Hoberg will share her knowledge with a local Girl Scout troop visiting Lobo Gardens to learn about wild pollinators and how to create habitats in their own home gardens.

“Our long-term goals are to scale up this effort and to see Lobo Gardens and UNM become an herbicide-free zone, wildlife habitat certified and part of a wildlife habitat corridor across the city,” Hoberg said. “For now, we are excited to share our knowledge about the small steps all can take to improve wildlife’s chances for survival in the city center.”

Lobo Gardens’ new partnerships also are providing new avenues for UNM students and faculty to take their learning out of the classroom and into the wider world. Monica Kowal, director of UNM’s CELR, and Andrea Polli, director of UNM’s STEAMLabs, are two of the partners who are bringing new resources to the project and to students.

“For years, Tema Milstein and PhD student Maggie Seibert have been providing UNM students with experiential learning courses at Lobo Gardens,” Kowal said. “Building on their ongoing efforts, we are establishing relationships with new community partners, which will enable students and faculty to collaborate with local organizations on community-based research efforts.”

Polli, for example, oversees 15 AmeriCorps VISTA fellows across New Mexico. Some are now working with Lobo Gardens.

Noel Mollinedo, for example, is using his artistic expertise to document projects at Lobo Gardens. This month, Mollinedo will open a Lobo Gardens Gallery Walk at UNM’s Center for Advanced Research and Computing. The walk will feature Lobo Gardens photographs, plaster molds of plant materials created in the gardens by students and community members and other artistic representations of Lobo Gardens’ projects. The gallery walk will illustrate intersections among science, technology, engineering, art and math, one of the primary objectives of UNM’s STEAMLabs.

In another community partnership, Lobo Gardens is working with Satellite Coffee and UNM’s Food Justice Initiative student group to create compost from Satellite’s coffee grounds. The UNM Biology Department also has joined as a partner and analyzes the compost for micronutrients. The compost will be used in Lobo Gardens to provide essential nutrients to plants.

Confronting a world of social, economic, political and environmental volatility, the new Lobo Gardens’ partnership is committed to building collaborative relationships to generate and foster sustainable, resilient communities in the heart of Albuquerque.

“While these new partnerships are just beginning, we are building on more than seven years of experience at Lobo Gardens,” Kowal said. “Our partners are illustrating that Lobo Gardens and UNM can become a living learning laboratory on campus — a hub of innovation — where UNM and Albuquerque community members can share their knowledge about the connections between environmental and community health and strive to create a brighter future for all Albuquerque and UNM communities.”

To get involved at Lobo Gardens, contact Christina Hoberg at choberg@unm.edu. Faculty or graduate teaching assistants interested in integrating Lobo Gardens into classes they teach also can contact Hoberg. Those wanting to take Lobo Gardens classes can find courses offered through Geography & Environmental Studies starting Fall 2018 and, presently, courses offered through CELR.

Hanes Motsinger is a graduate student in the UNM Geography & Environmental Studies Department. She can be contacted at hanesmotsinger@unm.edu or on Twitter 
@SWBioBuzz.

GEOGRAPHY AWARENESS WEEK!

Murphy Lecture 2017!

GIS DAY!

10/4/2017

Routledge is featuring a Q&A with Geography & Environmental Studies faculty member Tema Milstein and her co-editors, Mairi Pileggi and Eric Morgan. The three colleagues co-edited a book released this year on environmental education titled Environmental Communication Pedagogy and Practice. The book, which features chapters from more than 40 international authors, focuses on “ways to help learners effectively navigate and consciously contribute to the communication shaping our environmental present and future” and explores ways our teaching “can stimulate ecological wakefulness, support diverse and praxis-based ways of learning, and nurture environmental change agents."

 

The Q&A and a sneak peak at a chapter of the book can be found here: 

https://www.routledge.com/posts/12570?utm_source=Routledge&utm_medium=cms&utm_campaign=171009932

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HOMECOMING EVENT!!!!

G&ES is a co-sponsor of this lecture series:

9/5/2017

It is my pleasure to announce that our own Jesse Sprague has been awarded scholarship from the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation. USGIF is a national organization with an extremely competitive scholarship program. Please join me in congratulating Jesse on this well deserved recognition of his work. 

Congrats Jesse!

8/14/2017

New Geospatial Lab computers!!

The Geography and Environmental Studies lab has been updated with new computers.  You will find Dell Precision Workstations with 7th Generation i5 Intel Processors, 16Gb RAM, and M.2 SSD's.  This combonation of hardware will improve on our existsing machines making your work get done faster!  Stop by the lab to check them out! 

4/18/2017

Maria Lane featured on local news chanel KRQE,  talking about the upcoming Geography 180 class:  The world of Beer.

http://krqe.com/2017/04/15/unm-class-to-teach-geography-through-beer/

1/23/2017 Dr. Ronda Brulotte joins the GES faculty

The Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Ronda Brulotte to GES, effective January 1, 2017. She joins the faculty as an Associate Professor, and will begin teaching courses in Fall 2017.

According to GES Department Chair Maria Lane, "Ronda is an accomplished interdisciplinary scholar who brings a wealth of experience in qualitative and field-based scholarship. Her critical interest in food production, rural landscapes, and heritage marketing will complement and enrich existing faculty strengths in Environmental Studies. Her expertise in Latin America will also be a fantastic asset, since so many GES students are deeply interested in Latin American landscapes and cultures.”

Dr. Brulotte also serves as Associate Director of the Latin American and Iberian Institute, where she directs the academic programs and serves as a vital resource for students. Her current and future projects focus on agricultural commodities and the remaking of rural landscapes as these products enter new market niches. She is currently working on a project  to investigate agave cultivation and mezcal production in Mexico, funded by a Fulbright Faculty Research Fellowship. 

  Dr. Brulotte’s work is intrinsically interdisciplinary, and she remarks that GES provides an ideal environment to support scholarship that considers politics, landscape, culture, and commodities simultaneously: “I am extremely excited to incorporate geography perspectives and methodologies into my research, and I look forward to learning from both my geography colleagues and students."

 Dr. Brulotte holds a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Studies from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a M.A. in Latin American Studies and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Oaxaca, Mexico since 1998, and is trained in the cultural geography and anthropology of Latin America more broadly.

 Dr. Brulotte is the author of Between Art and Artifact: Archaeological Replicas and Cultural Production in Oaxaca, Mexico (University of Texas Press 2012) and is the co-editor of Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage (Ashgate 2014) with Michael A. DiGiovine. She has a long list of awards that commend her many talents as a scholar, teacher, and mentor, both at UNM and in the international community.  Originally from the Yakima Valley in Washington state, where her family engages in hops production, Dr. Brulotte will also participate in the brand-new GES course “World of Beer” (GEOG180), which is scheduled to launch in Fall 2017.

3/7/2017

UNM's Geography and Environmental studies steps into the international spotlight with Dr. Maria Lane being interviewed by BBC radio special about Mars and its historical fascination for humans.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08gwx12 

Follow the link to hear more!

2/8/2017

Our own Su Zhang has been awarded the ASPRS Leica Scholarship, a prestigious and competative national award from the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Please join us in congratulating Su on this well deserved recognition of his research. 

Congratulations Su!

2/6/2017

Maria Lane honored by New Mexico legislatureOn Monday, January 30, 2017, Dr. Maria Lane was one of two UNM faculty members recognized on the floor of the New Mexico Legislature. During the annual “UNM Day” event, Dr. Lane was honored with proclamations in both the NM House and NM Senate for her “achievement in the sciences that reflects a keen understanding of the human role in the environment.” Dr. Lane said, “It was a real honor for me to represent UNM in the Roundhouse.” She also enjoyed meeting Rep. Christina Trujillo and Senator Peter Wirth, who sponsored the recognitions of UNM faculty in the House and Senate, respectively.

2/3/2017

Dr. Ronda Brulotte joins the GES faculty

 

The Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Ronda Brulotte to GES, effective January 1, 2017. She joins the faculty as an Associate Professor, and will begin teaching courses in Fall 2017.

 According to GES Department Chair Maria Lane, "Ronda is an accomplished interdisciplinary scholar who brings a wealth of experience in qualitative and field-based scholarship. Her critical interest in food production, rural landscapes, and heritage marketing will complement and enrich existing faculty strengths in Environmental Studies. Her expertise in Latin America will also be a fantastic asset, since so many GES students are deeply interested in Latin American landscapes and cultures.”

 Dr. Brulotte also serves as Associate Director of the Latin American and Iberian Institute, where she directs the academic programs and serves as a vital resource for students. Her current and future projects focus on agricultural commodities and the remaking of rural landscapes as these products enter new market niches. She is currently working on a project  to investigate agave cultivation and mezcal production in Mexico, funded by a Fulbright Faculty Research Fellowship. 

 Dr. Brulotte’s work is intrinsically interdisciplinary, and she remarks that GES provides an ideal environment to support scholarship that considers politics, landscape, culture, and commodities simultaneously: “I am extremely excited to incorporate geography perspectives and methodologies into my research, and I look forward to learning from both my geography colleagues and students."

 

Dr. Brulotte holds a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Studies from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a M.A. in Latin American Studies and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Oaxaca, Mexico since 1998, and is trained in the cultural geography and anthropology of Latin America more broadly.

 Dr. Brulotte is the author of Between Art and Artifact: Archaeological Replicas and Cultural Production in Oaxaca, Mexico (University of Texas Press 2012) and is the co-editor of Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage (Ashgate 2014) with Michael A. DiGiovine. She has a long list of awards that commend her many talents as a scholar, teacher, and mentor, both at UNM and in the international community.

 Originally from the Yakima Valley in Washington state, where her family engages in hops production, Dr. Brulotte will also participate in the brand-new GES course “World of Beer” (GEOG180), which is scheduled to launch in Fall 2017.

 

1/31/2017

Dr. Maria Lane recognized by both House of Represenatives and the Senate of the New mexico for her acheivements!  Congratulations are in order!!

1/30/2017

Cartography recognized by US News

Cartography ranked the #3 most desirable engineering job and #17 best STEM Job in the US. In case you didn't know that GIScience is STEM, and the best of it.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/cartographer?adumkts=branding&aduc=social&adum=external&aduSF=Linkedin&utm_source=social&aduco=USNews_Article&adut=01_17_17&aducp=branding&adbsc=social_branding_20170119_1258331&adbid=UPDATE-c5311-6227862821313609728&adbpl=li&adbpr=5311

1/11/2017

It is our pleasure to announce that Geography and Environmental Studies M.S. student Jesse Sprague has been awarded a Marshall Plan Fellowship for the summer of 2017. This summer Jesse will head to the Corinthian University of Applied Sciences (CUAS) in Villach Austria to conduct work assessing the stability and reliability of 3-dimensional surfaces extracted from high resolution airborne imagery collected from unmanned airborne systems (UAS). 

 http://www.marshallplan.at/overview-1

 Please join us in congratulating Jesse on this well deserved recognition of his cutting edge research!!  What can this guy not do?!

12/5/2016

UNM Geographers’ Spearhead Creation of National Legal Geography Specialty Group

   The American Association of Geographers (AAG) just announced the approval of a specialty group in Legal Geography.  Organized by UNM Department of Geography and Environmental Studies professors John Carr and Melinda Harm Benson, the specialty group will raise the profile of the sub-discipline of legal geography, while providin an organizational focal point for students and researchers who are investigating, exploring, or want to better understand, the mutually constitutive nature of legal and spatial phenomena, so as to enable interdisciplinary exchange and scholarly growth in this emerging subfield within human geography.

 While legal geography as a sub-discipline has been developing for over twenty years, Carr and Benson have been actively involved in bringing together international scholars from across the disciplines to share their work.   Since organizing five related sessions on legal geography at the 2011 AAG meeting in Seattle,  including a triple session on “Law, State, Space”  Carr and Benson have regularly put together successive legal geography sessions within the larger AAG conference.  For example, at the 2015 Chicago AAG Carr and Benson organized a three-day long, 11 session “mini-conference” on legal geography. 

The AAG’s recognition of Legal Geography as a specialty group will enable these efforts to become formalized and institutionalized as part of the regular organization of the annual meetings.  

11/17/2016

It is our pleasure to announce that our own Jesse Sprague has been awarded the Master’s student scholarship by the Rocky Mountain region of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA). The award was announced yesterday to coincide with GIS day. Please join us in congratulating Jesse on yet another recognition of his outstanding work!

 http://rm-urisa.com/events/annual-urisa-scholarship-a-community-outreach.html

11/10/2016  
On October 28th Dr. Chris Lippitt from the department of Geography and Envirnmental studies hosted the Department of transportation as well as others in GES's own geospatial computing lab and Kirtland AFB to demo a project focused on a time sensitive remote sensing system.  Follow the link for the full story!

http://news.unm.edu/news/remote-sensing-tech-sees-positive-response-from-federal-agencies

11/8/2016--Jesse Sprague wins New Mexico Research Grant

It is our pleasure to announce that Geography and Environmental Studies atudent and GEM lab research assistant Jesse Sprague has been awarded the New Mexico Research Grant through UNM GPSA. Through the grant, Jesse will be exploring the construction of a multi-camera sensor for detailed 3D reconstruction of land surfaces. Using cell phone cameras and GPU processing cards, Jesse is working toward performing the computationally intensive process of structure-from-motion at the sensor, solving the single biggest challenge preventing its use for rapid landscape characterization - too much data! 

Please join us in congratulating Jesse on this well deserved honor and exiting research!

11/1/2016--SWAAG 2016 DENTON TX

On October 19, 2016, the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies brought a group of twelve faculty, graduate and undergraduate students to the South West American Association of Geographers (SWAAG) Conference in Denton, Texas. 

 We enjoyed a large turnout with two faculty members, Maria Lane and John Carr presenting research papers.  Masters students Aaron Russell, Sagert Sheets, Zach Taraschi and Jacob Robert Wolff all presented research papers at either the historic Courthouse on the Square or Mulberry Street Cantina. Additionally, Hayley Hajic and Gladys Valentin presented research posters at UNT (University of North Texas) on the Square. Presenting faculty and students were joined on the trip by Jackie Kramer, Courtney Brock, Ursula Freire, and Joseph Greenwood. 

 One highlight of the trip was the World Geography Bowl trivia competition, which pits seven teams from around the region against each other.  The UNM “Geo Lobitos” team took 2nd place overall (behind Texas State) in a very strong showing, thanks to Gladys, Hayley, Jackie, Courtney, Ursula, Zach, Sagert, Aaron and Joseph.   Sagert Sheets placed 2nd place in individual points and Aaron Russell took 6th place, earning both of them places on the Southwest Division team at the Geobowl at AAG in Boston next year.

 The SWAAG conference continues to be a vibrant and essential forum for giving our students experience presenting their research, broadening regional awareness of our Department, and creating closer ties with colleagues throughout the southwest.  Given the successes of this year’s SWAAG, we look forward to next year’s conference in Huntsville Texas.

10/24/2016

Geography professor and department chair Maria Lane will be in Northern Ireland all week as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Belfast. Dr. Lane will give a public lecture, lead a reading group, and meet with students and faculty in the Human Geography group. You can follow her on Twitter at @GeographyLane

10/14/2016

SWAAG 2016

The UNM Department of Geography & Environmental Studies will have a strong presence at the 2016 annual meeting of the Southwest Division of the Association of American Geographers (SWAAG). Several students and professors will be presenting papers and posters, and a student team will represent the department in the World Geography Bowl (GeoBowl) academic competition.

 Students and professors will be leaving for the conference in the morning of Oct. 19th. Good luck to all the UNM GES geographers! We will be live-tweeting the event (and the road trip from Albuquerque to Denton), and you can follow along with the hashtag #GESinTX.

8/17/2016

Once again take a look at the great work Dr. Chris Lippitt is doing with remote sensing to help predict landslides, potentially saving lives and property! See the KRQE & KOB interviews by following the links: 

http://krqe.com/2016/08/16/unm-professor-creates-technology-to-help-predict-landslides/

http://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/unm-professor-developing-way-to-map-burn-scars/4237524/

8/15/2016

Check out the UNM Newsroom’s top story right now featuring GES Professor Chris Lippitt's research into the use of remote sensing to improve fire disaster response times and effectiveness: 

http://news.unm.edu/news/unm-professor-developing-imaging-to-save-lives-after-fires

Kudos to Dr. Lippitt and the many students and collaborators who are working together on this project!!

5/6/2016

Please join us in congratulating Gladys Valentin, who was awarded the American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing Rio Grande Chapter Spring 2016 Scholarship this past weekend! The award recognizes outstanding academic success, research potential, and commitment to geospatial science and technology.  Congratulations to Gladys on all of her achievements this semester!!  

5/4/2016

Please join us to Recognize the achievements of our graduating Seniors and Master's candidates from Spring/Summer/Fall 2015!  

5/2/2016

Recent GES Alum Lands Fulbright Award for Cameroon Study

Maureen Meyer (M.S. Geography 2014) has been awarded a Fulbright award to study cultural geography and ethnobotany in Cameroon.  Maureen and her daughter Kaya will be traveling to Oku, Cameroon in West Africa for at least 9 months beginning in August 2016. While there, Maureen will spearhead a project working with Moringa oleifera, a sub-tropical/ tropical tree species that is fast-growing, nutrient dense, and has numerous medicinal properties. The project will be developed collaboratively by working with farmers, women's co-ops, and school children. According to Maureen, "I will be working with farmers to assess the successes and failures of growing Moringa, with school children to create a brochure in the local dialect that can be distributed throughout the community, and with women to create a Moringa product that is both manageable and profitable.” This project is related to Maureen’s thesis project, which was  an ethnotanical analysis of medicinal plants on the Caribbean island of Dominica.  Upon learning of her Fulbright award, Maureen said, "I am interested in understanding the relationship that people and cultures have with their environment through methods of healing and medicinal plants. I am extremely excited and passionate about this research and look forward to our journey ahead!” Congratulations, Maureen Meyer, on this tremendous accomplishment!

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Full UNM News article here

(Photo: Maureen Meyer and daughter Kaya)

4/27/2016

Our own CodeyWiley receives Best Practices Certification!

GES instructor Cody Wiley has been awarded the UNM Online Course Advisory Council's Best Practices Certification for his online course GEOG102 “People and Place.” The review process evaluates online courses in 5 Categories: Course Overview and Introduction, Instructional Elements, Interaction and Collaboration, Assessment and Feedback, and Course Evaluation. This is an outstanding accomplishment, and Cody will be honored at an award ceremony, sponsored by the UNM Center for Teaching & Learning, on April 28, 2016, from 2:00-4:00 pm in the SUB Ballroom. Wiley has previously been awarded UNM's Outstanding Online Teacher of the Year.  Fantastic job Cody!  

4-22-2016
It is our pleasure to pass along the news that Jesse Sprague was awarded the New Mexico Geographic Information Council (NMGIC) Jessie Rossbach Scholarship (http://nmgic.com/?page_id=31) to support his work doing volumetric change analysis from high-resolution aerial photography. Jesse will enter the M.S. in GIScience program in the fall and join the GiScience for Environmental Management (GEM) Lab as a Research Assistant. Concurrent to his M.S. program Jessie plans to pursue a Certificate in Computational Science Engineering (http://www.hpcerc.unm.edu/education-outreach/cse-certificate-program/index.html).

Please join us in welcoming Jesse to the program and congratulating him on this award!   Congratulations Jessie! 

Colloquium Series Spring 2016: Friday April 29th, 2016 with Dr. Michael Hauck
Join us as we close our Spring 2016 Colloquium Series Friday April 29th, 2016 with Dr. Michael Hauck, Executive Director, American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. He will be speaking about his work; “Geography, Information, and Systems: Past, Present, and Future”.  You will not want to miss it!

Colloquium Series Friday April 29th, 2016 with Dr. Michael Hauck

 
When: Friday April 29th  2016 3:00PM

Where: Dane Smith Hall 126

4/4/2016 UNM GES department @ AAG 2016 in SanFrancisco!

Our department turned out in force for the  American Association of Geographers 2016 Annual Meeting in San Francisco last week. Eleven students presented either papers or posters: Michael Ayala, Will Brewer, Natali Caceres, Tina Faris, Marshall Grebe, Alissa Healy, Andy Loerch, Tammira Taylor, Gladys Valentin, Jake Wolff, and Su Zhang.  Will Brewer represented UNM on the Southwest team in the Geobowl competition (a position he won at last fall's SW-AAG conference) and placed 10th (out of approximately 60 students) in individual performance. Nice going, Will.  Finally, Gladys Valentin presented her paper, "GIS-Based Sub-aerial Beach Inventory of Puerto Rico," in competition for the Coastal and Marine Specialty Group Norbert Psuty Student Paper Merit Award, and won best Master's Student Paper!!!

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Su Zhang has been selected as the outstanding graduate student in the Department of Civil Engineer

Our own Su Zhang has been selected as the outstanding graduate student in the Department of Civil Engineering, an honor awarded to a single student each year. Please join us in congratulating Su on this well deserved award! Keep up the outstanding work Su!!


Su Zhang Wins 1st prize in ASPRS Rocky Mountain Region! 
It is our pleasure to announcement that Su Zhang, M.S. student in Geography and Environmental Studies and Doctoral Candidate in Civil Engineering, was awarded 1st prize in the doctoral student category of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Rocky Mountain Region Annual Scholarship. The scholarship includes a cash award of $1,500.00.
Please join us in congratulating Su!

March 11th 2016; 10:00AM-12:00PM  LiDAR Workshop in the GES LAB!  

Lidar example

 ASPRS UNM Chapter President Su Zhang is very pleased to announce that a LiDAR workshop will be hosted on March 11th from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm in the computer lab (Bandelier Hall East Room 106). LiDAR is a very useful data and it has been used for numerous applications. The instructors of this workshop are Mr. Joe Zebrowski from New Mexico Highland University (NMHU) and Ms. Patti Dappen from New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI). Both of them have been using LiDAR for many projects. This workshop will focus on introducing the principles of LiDAR survey and providing hands-on experience of processing real LiDAR data. After the workshop, Mr. Joe Zebrowski and Ms. Patti Dappen will give us a presentation regarding the current GIS activities at NMHU and NMFWRI. There is no charge for attendees! Please come and join us! Limited seating (25), first come basis! RSVP today! ASPRS Student Chapter members have the priority for the seats. Please contact Su Zhang at suzhang@unm.edu to reserve your space!

February 2016

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2/11 The UNM chapter for the American Society for Photogrammetry Remote Sensing (APRS) hosted a unmanned aerial system (UAS) demonstration on Saturday, February 13th.  The group was shown how to use a helium balloon mapping system to collect high resolution imagery.  A workshop demonstrating how to process imagery collected by this system will be held in March.  This series is a great opportunity for students to get hands-on experience with some of the remote sensing technologies at UNM.   

January 2016

1/11 GES master’s student Andy Loerch has received a Marshall Plan Scholarship to spend three months in Austria conducting research. He will be working with  Dr. Gernot Paulus at Carinthia University on a project titled “Change Detection from Structure From Motion – The Impact of Repeat Station Imaging.” This project involves the use of remote sensing technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles and aerial triangulation, and high-tech GIS tools, such as real-time-kinematic (RTK) global navigation satellite systems. Congratulations to Andy for this honor! For more details about Andy's research, please click here.

December 2015

12/04 In spring 2016, a NEW course will be offered by our affiliated faculty member Jeff Erbig in the Department of History: GEOG499-002 Mapping Latin America. See the attached flyer for a course description, and please circulate to anyone interested in maps, Latin America, and history! Note: this course can be taken for either graduate or undergraduate credit.

12/01:The eminent cultural geographer Dan Arreola will teach our spring offering of GEOG*445: Geography of New Mexico and the Southwest. This class focuses on the cultural, environmental, and historical geographies of our region, topics with which Dr. Arreola has long engaged through his scholarly research. Please also note that this course is available for graduate credit. It is appropriate for grad students from many disciplines.

12/01: One of the many things students accomplished in GEOG 471 Geography Capstone was to create a course website. You can take a look at the site here: scottfreundschuh.comStudents pretty much designed the layout (with some guidance from me, and templates available in wordpress) and the content - much of the content based on class discussions and student writings throughout the semester. Congrats to our undergraduate students!

November 2015

11/18: GES announces Snead Scholarships for 2015-16 

GES will offer a new student scholarship this year to support student travel to academic conferences. The Rodman Snead Scholarship, which is funded through a bequest from one of our long-serving faculty members, will provide three $500 scholarships to GES grad students to travel to the AAG 2016 conference in San Francisco. Visit the scholarship page for scholarship guidelines and application materials. Note that this year’s deadline is Monday, November 30, 2015. The GES Budget Committee will review applications and announce the scholarship winners shortly after the deadline.

 John Carr has been awarded a University of Tasmania Visiting Scholar position with the School of Land and Food’s Geography and Spatial Sciences program for the summer of 2016. This competitive program supports short-term visits to the University by scholars and other eminent individuals, normally from outside of Tasmania.

The program is designed to benefit areas or activities of strategic priority for the University. For example, scholars like Dr. Carr can help strengthen academic networks, provide research leadership and collaboration to publish scholarly work in key areas, enhance educational programs through collaborative teaching projects, and raise the scholarly and public profile of the university. 

Dr. Carr will use his time at the University of Tasmania to promote cross-institutional learning, scholarship, and policy formation – particularly in the areas of resilient economic development, place making, urban planning and governance, and associated legal geographies. In addition to scholarly collaboration with UTAS faculty, Dr. Carr will give two lectures in the program of Geography and Spatial Sciences on political geography and cultural geography, deliver an in-house presentation to UTAS academics and professional staff on the topic of maximizing personal and locational pedagogical assets, and work with graduate students across the School of Social Sciences.

GES Graduate Students and Professors to attend SWAAG Conference in San Antonio

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The UNM Geography Department will have a strong presence at the 2015 Southwest Association of American Geographers Conference (SWAAG). Several students and professors will be presenting papers and posters. UNM hosted last year’s SWAAG Conference, and the department is looking forward to building on that momentum to further strengthen ties among geographers in the Southwest.

We will be live-tweeting the event (and the long van ride from Albuquerque to San Antonio), and you can follow along with Professor Lane @GeographyLane, #GESgoesToTX

October 2015

New Paper: Rewarding Interdisciplinary Research

Co-authored by GES Professors Melinda Harm-Benson and Chris Lippitt, et al.

Geographers are a diverse bunch. You’ll find some geographers fully embroiled in questions of landscape change, while others focus their energy on social and political aspects of environmental studies, and still others are historians or legal scholars. This rich diversity of research interests makes us ripe for interdisciplinary research, both within and beyond the discipline of geography itself. Academic institutions recognize the value of interdisciplinary research on paper, but not always in practice.

 A new paper co-authored by GES Professors Melinda Harm-Benson and Chris Lippitt, and others, aims to shift the dominant academic system, however slightly, in order to effectively support interdisciplinary work. Their five specific proposals are systemic changes, things like creating metrics that extrinsically reward interdisciplinary research and teaching, creating a “safe fail” for interdisciplinary research proposals that are not immediately funded, and creating appropriate academic homes for interdisciplinary programs instead of letting them float unordered around a university. Their proposals are specifically aimed at pre-tenure faculty, whose interdisciplinary work is especially challenging and rarely rewarded. 

The paper is entitled, “Five ways to support interdisciplinary work before tenure,” published in 2015 in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.

 

GES Professor John Carr awarded University of Canterbury fellowship

(link to UNM news article: http://news.unm.edu/news/unm-professor-awarded-university-of-canterbury-fellowship

October 12-16, 2015, Professor Scott Freundschuh hosts COSIT Conference in Santa Fe

On October 12-16, GES Professor Scott Freundschuh co-chaired the interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT), along with Scott Bell from University of Saskatchewan. The conference attracted professionals from psychology, geography, planning, architecture, cognitive anthropology, mathematics, computer science, business organizations, and a variety of other fields, all interested in discussing the most innovative and significant research around spatial information.

COSIT is a single-track conference, meaning there is only one presentation at a time, attended by all participants. This gives everyone at the conference a chance to fully engage with the same problems and creative solutions, so that each dinner table experiences rich discussions about similar ideas. This year’s conference was co-hosted by the UNM Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, the UNM Department of Psychology, and the University of Saskatchewan’s Social Sciences Research Laboratory.

COSIT co-chair Scott Freundschuh has been a professor at UNM since 2010. Before that he worked at the National Science Foundation, the University of Minnesota-Duluth, the University of Maine-Orono, and Memorial University in St. Johns, Newfoundland.

August 2015

8/14, 2015: Orientation for new M.S. Geography students will be held at 11:00am, with lunch, afternoon tour of Albuquerque, and welcome party to follow.

July 2015

GES hires new lab manager, Sean O’Neill

We are pleased to announce that Sean O’Neill has been hired as the lab manager in the Geography and Environmental Studies department. Sean has a degree from UNM in electronic arts and computer science, and has been working in IT and electronic media for over thirteen years. His creative computer skills are on full display solving technical problems and keeping our technology systems functioning at a high level.

Over the next year Sean will help to improve the department website, build a more robust computer network, and continue to provide technical assistance. His role is also informally educational: he is helping everyone in the department better understand a great number of machines, and how to get the most out of them.

If you find yourself with Sean waiting for a new program to install, you’ll have plenty to talk about: he loves music and art, is an avid outdoorsman, and drives a pretty cool truck. We are pleased to have Sean on board, and we are confident that he will continue to be a valuable member of our team. 

7/2 2015 Education Contest Award Winners Su Zhang and Dr Chris Lippitt: http://blog.hexagongeospatial.com/video-2015-education-contest-award-winners-su-zhang-and-dr-chris-lippett/

June 2015

6/9 Dr. Chris Duvall’s book Cannabis has been published by Reaktion Books: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo19143826.html

6/8 Dr. Chris Lippitt’s Edited volume “Time-Sensitive Remote Sensing” was released by Springer Press: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9781493926015

May 2015

5/22 M.S. candidate Su Zhang has won the Hexagon Geospatial Education Contest: http://www.hexagongeospatial.com/solutions/education/education-contest Hexagon will host Su and his Advisor Dr. Chris Lippitt in Las Vegas for the Hexagon Geospatial Live conference in June, where Su will present his winning paper. Congratulations Su!

March 2015

3/18 The GIScience for Environmental Management (GEM) Lab has officially launched its website, gem.unm.edu. The website describes a variety of student and faculty research projects currently under way through GEM and how those projects are appearing in popular media: http://gem.unm.edu/index.php/gem-in-the-news. Check back for updates!

February  2015

2/23 Graduate student Su Zhang won second place in the student poster competition at the Data 2 Knowledge (D2K) Conference hosted by UNM’s Office of the Vice President of Research and Office of the Chief Information Officer. Congratulations Su!

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January 2015

1/30: Geography & Environmental Studies Graduate students sweep American Society of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Rocky Mountain Region 2014-2015 Scholarships! GES graduate students William Brewer, Andrew Loerch, and Su Zhang were all awarded the ASPRS-RMR Graduate Student Schloarship for 2014-2015. The ASPRS-RMR scholarships are awarded to students in the Rocky Mountain Region (Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico) who demonstrate excellence while pursuing careers in the fields of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or related disciplines. William Brewer was awarded Second Prize in the Master's category. Will has been awarded a one year student copy of ENVI Image Processing Software. Andrew Loerch has been awarded the First Prize in the Master's category. Andy has been awarded $750.00. Su Zhang was awarded First Prize in the Doctorate category. Su has been awarded $1000.00. All three scholarship winners have been invited to the ASPRS Rocky Mountain Region Annual Dinner on February 21, 2015 in Centennial, Colorado.

01/05: The UNM student chapter of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) was featured in this month’s issue of the flagship journal of ASPRS, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (PE&RS). The January issue of PE&RS interviews Chapter President Su Zhang and faculty advisor Chris Lippitt for the Professional Insight column. Check it out here. 

November 2014

11/18: Assistant Professor Christopher D. Lippitt was featured in the United State Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s (USGIF) Trajectory magazine:  http://trajectorymagazine.com/got-geoint/item/1844-spotlight-usgif-scholarship-winner.html

11/3: M.S. student Su Zhang has been accepted to the graduate student paper competition of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Remote Sensing Specialty Group (RSSG). He will present his work, which assesses the capacity of routinely collected aerial photography to enable characterization of road degradation for optimization routine maintenance of pavement surfaces, at the annual meeting of the AAG this spring in Chicago. 

October 2014

10/20: Dr. Chris Lippitt, in cooperation with Dr. Chip Wills of UNM Anthropology, has been awarded $60,000.00 from the UNM Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) Equipment Fund to purchase the latest in real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS systems. The RTK GPS will support ongoing research into the use of structure-from motion techniques for 3-D surface height characterization through collaborations with UNM Anthropology, Civil Engineering, and Biology, in addition to providing a state-of-the-art research and teaching tool to students in Geography and Environmental Studies.

10/9: The recently established ASPRS UNM Chapter is organizing an approximately day-long (9 am to 4 pm, one hour lunch break) R workshop on October 9th 2014 at the Center for Environmental Research, Informatics, and Arts [CERIA] Room 335. The workshop will be provided by Dr. Steven Sesnie and Sarah Lehnen from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. You will get a taste of R and touch some more complex data manipulation and analysis, especially in geospatial analysis and modeling. Limited seats (maximum 20) are available so that we will use a first-come-first-served rule. Friday (10/3) we will open up seats to the broader UNM and Albuquerque geospatial community, so reserve your space now if you would like to attend. There is no charge for attendance.
 
To reserve a space, please email Su Zhang (suzhang@unm.edu). 


September 2014

9/29: Students and faculty members from the Middle Rio Grande ASPRS chapter participated in their annual camping trip this weekend.

9/25: GEOG195 will be offered as a fall intersession course January 5-9, 2015 (Monday-Friday) from 8:30am-12:30pm. This will be a hybrid course taught by Dr. Hadjilambrinos.

9/25: Dr. Christopher D. Lippitt, together with Co-PI Susan Bogus-Halter of UNM Civil Engineering, has been awarded $1.2 million over the next two years to develop a prototype rapid infrastructure assessment system for the US Department of Transportation. In collaboration with San Diego State University’s Center for Earth Systems Analysis and Research and BAE Systems Inc., the project will develop the capability rapidly asses damage to critical transportation infrastructure from aircraft. Employing Bernalillo County, New Mexico, as the national test bed, the project will develop deployment ready technology for rapid damage assessment across the United States.

August 2014

8/15: Our own Su Zhang, who also pursuing his PhD in Civil Engineering, has just been awarded a Dean’s Dissertation Scholarship for the coming year. Please join me in congratulating Su on this well deserved recognition of his innovative research and hard work. Congratulations Su!

8/15: Welcome back! Dr. Constantine Hadjilambrinos is back in Albuquerque after his six-month sabbatical in Greece, where he conducted research on energy policy and management.

8/10: Congratulations to Dr. Chris Lippitt, who received a $172K grant from the National Science Foundation for research on: "Optimization of Remote Sensing Networks for Time-Sensitive Detection of Fine Scale Damage to Critical Insfrastructure." This is part of a collaboration with geographers at San Diego State University, totaling $535K over two years.

8/1: The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies welcomes Dr. Maria Lane as the new department chair. Feel free to stop by her office in Bandelier West 103.


July 2014

Thank you to Dr. Scott Freundschuh, who just completed four years as department chair. Scott will spend Fall 2014 on a semester-long leave to focus on his spatial cognition research.


May 2014

Congratulations to Dr. Caitlin Lippitt, who received a $50,000 equipment grant from UNM's Office of the Vice President for Research for the purchase of a full-range field spectrometer and associated software. The spectrometer will be a valuable research and teaching tool for faculty and students in our department as well as for research collaborations with other departments on campus.