Water is the lifeblood of communities across Eastern North Carolina, many owing their locations and existence to the abundant natural resources provided by rivers, tributaries, floodplains and coastlines. These natural features, including their propensity to flood, have made lasting physical and cultural impressions that continue to shape and influence both town and region. Recent catastrophic…
3:30pm – Megan Coffer – Eyes in the Sky Lend Support for Seagrass Monitoring in Coastal Environments 3:40pm – Xiaojie Gao – Quantifying Long-term 30-m Land Surface Phenology with Uncertainty by a Bayesian Hierarchical Model 3:50pm – Nikki Inglis – Future Declines in Quaking Aspen Disproportionately Affect Rocky Mountain Viewscapes along Scenic Byways 4:00pm –…
An important problem in terrain analysis is modeling how water flows across a terrain and creates floods by filling up depressions. In this Forum, we will discuss a number of flood-risk related problems: Given a terrain T, represented as a triangulated xy-monotone surface with n vertices, a rain distribution R and a volume of rain…
We have experienced a massive digital transformation and these new trends are powerful - cloud and analytics driven. The shift to cloud technology is changing our workforce needs, and geospatial education is changing as well. What are some of these changes, and what do they mean for skills of today’s graduates? What skills do we…
Landscape-scale intensification of individual crops and pesticide use that is associated with this change is a problem that has had unequal effects on pests with different lifecycles, host ranges, and dispersal abilities. Understanding the fundamental connections between agricultural intensification and pests remains a major obstacle to improving the long-term sustainability of modern agriculture. In this…
Malnutrition linked to poor quality diets affects at least 2 billion people globally. Forests and trees are key sources of dietary diversity in some rural settings. Here, we develop and explore the conceptual links between diet diversity and forested landscapes in the rural tropics. We summarize the state of knowledge regarding diets obtained from forests,…
A rapidly growing body of work suggests mountain streams emit surprisingly large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Studies in these environments are scarce and estimates of CO2 fluxes from aquatic environments are poorly constrained. High-altitude tropical grasslands, known as “páramos,” are characterized by high solar radiation, high precipitation, and low temperature. They also…
As data, including geospatial data, are increasingly mobilized in the service of governments and corporations, their unequal conditions of production, their asymmetrical methods of application, and their unequal effects on both individuals and groups have become increasingly difficult for data scientists--and others who rely on data in their work--to ignore. But it is precisely this…
Biomass feedstock utilization has the potential to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and improve energy security while decarbonizing our energy needs. Energy crops, short rotation woody crops, municipal solid waste, and agricultural and forest residues are considered promising sources of renewable energy. Computer modeling has proven to be a key tool towards minimizing logistics cost.…
A spatial perspective isn’t (just) about making compelling visualizations, but also investigating how complex human-environment interactions impact the theory, design, methods and infrastructure of research. Detangling how place impacts, interacts with and/or drives factors of health outcomes for different people and neighborhoods is essential to reducing health disparities. In this forum talk, Dr. Kolak highlights…