Matthew Derrick received a Title VIII Fellowship to study the Kazakh/Kyrgyz language at the Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (CESSI) this summer at the University of Wisconsin.
Activity
Geographer Stephen Cunha’s Perestroika to Parkland: The Evolution of Land Protection in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan, appears in Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107:2. In a span of twenty-four years a perestroika-inspired citizen and government coalition created one of the largest protected areas in the Palearctic Realm. The national park and World Heritage Site represents a significant milestone in the global movement that began in Yosemite to protect landscapes for the use and enjoyment of all people. See: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/wWsw383Cn56BPvEXq8Mb/full
Geography Professor Stephen Cunha’s review of “Jumbo Wild” appears in magazines and festival catalogs in North America, Europe, and Oceania. This documentary film portrays a 25-year battle in Canada’s iconic Jumbo Valley that pits developers of a large ski resort against conservationists, backcountry skiers, and First Nations, who revere it as home of the grizzly bear spirit.
Geography Professor Stephen Cunha is coauthor of “Geosystems Core,” a college-level introductory text for physical geography. Stephen authored 7.5 of the 15 chapters on geomorphology, global climate, plate tectonics, and water resources. Included are 60 of his images from six continents.
On December 6, Matthew Derrick co-chaired a panel discussion titled “25 Years of Independence: Questioning Post-Soviet” at the Woodrow Wilson International Center Scholars in Washington, DC. The panel discussion, attended by scholars, policymakers, and media, coincided with the public release of the book Derrick co-edited, “Questioning Post-Soviet” (Wilson Center Press), which investigates the continuing significance of the fall of the USSR. The Wilson Center is the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum for tackling global issues through independent research and open dialogue to inform actionable ideas for Congress, the Administration and the broader policy community.
Dr. Chelsea Teale, Geography, published “Wetlands of New Netherland” in the Hudson River Valley Review, relating colonial Dutch terms for wetlands to their modern-day US Fish and Wildlife classifications. Another paper also accepted for publication by New York History examines the uses and modifications of wetlands in pre-1800 agriculture. Geography major Dan Cooper (‘16) also worked as a research assistant under an Undergraduate Research & Creative Activities grant and continuing an Island Invasives and Eradication Programs database project by Dr. Teale that began at the University of Georgia Institute of Ecology.
Rosemary Sherriff co-authored a new paper in Ecological Applications titled “Tree-ring isotopes reveal drought sensitivity in trees killed by spruce beetle outbreaks in south-central Alaska” that is part of an on-going collaborative project evaluating climate change and disturbance effects in white spruce forests in southwest and south-central Alaska.
Dr. Ray has been invited to give two public talks in December. At Evergreen State College on December 6, she will present “What Do the Arts and Humanities Have to Do with Our Environmental Crisis?” for Evergreen’s Art Lecture Series. On December 7, she will present on her new research, “Coming of Age in the Anthropocene: Climate Justice Pedagogies for Resilience” for the Anthropocene Interdisciplinary Cluster at the University of Washington.
Alum Zav Grabinski (MS, 2015) and Professors Rosemary Sherriff and Jeff Kane published “Controls of reburn severity vary with fire interval in the Klamath Mountains, California, USA” in the journal Ecosphere. A unique component of the study was evaluation of different scales of analysis within the ecoregion. In the context of recent increases in fire activity, results underscore a self-reinforcing pattern of fire severity related to the Klamath Mountains biophysical setting, but also highlight the importance of spatial and temporal scale of evaluation and interactions of vegetation, time since fire, and weather on reburn severity.
PermLink: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.2012/abstract
Rosemary Sherriff published “Warming drives a front of white spruce recruitment near western treeline, Alaska” with National Park Service collaborators in Global Change Biology. Warming has increased productivity near the boreal forest margin in Alaska. However, the effects on seedling recruitment has received little attention, in spite of forecasted forest expansion. The study of 95 sites across a longitudinal gradient in southwest Alaska shows a differential relationship between longitude and life-stage (seedling, sapling, tree) abundance that suggests a moving front of white spruce establishment through time, driven by changes in environmental conditions near the species’ range limit.
PermLink: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13814/full
