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PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Department Newsletter—Spring 2017 College of Liberal Arts and Science | Department of Geography | Post Office Box 751 | Portland, OR 97209

A Message from the Chair 1

Announcements 2

Online Mapping 3

Student Spotlight 4

Congratulations 5

Community News 6

Climate Research 7

Research & Publications 8

Center for Geography Edu-

cation

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Inside this issue:

On a sunny Thursday afternoon, walking across the sky bridge that connects Cramer Hall to Parking Struc-ture 2, I encountered a diverse group of high school students curious about exploring the university. On the 4th floor of the campus Rec Center, guided by a PSU staff member easily speaking a foreign language, a group of international visi-tors was equally inquisitive about our rec facilities, listening carefully and asking questions. Such scenes are common on campus when summer is around the cor-ner.

The following day stunned us all with the news of the horrendous crime on Port-land’s MAX train. One of the brave men stabbed by the attacker is a PSU student, and though we are relieved to hear that he is recovering and are proud of his cour-age, we are deeply saddened by the tragic deaths of two other heroes who tried to defend young women against intolerance and hate.

While our campus environment promotes diversity and inclusion, there is room for us to make further improvements through conscientious and collective efforts to increase and support diversity in hiring faculty and staff, and in recruiting and re-taining students. Our department has made some headway this year. Four women will join our department later this year: Melissa Lucash and Nancee Hunter come in as co-director of the Global Environmental Change Lab and Director of the Cen-ter for Geographic Education in Oregon, respectively. Jola Ajibade and Alida Cantor will join the department cluster in December as tenure-track Geography faculty and members of the college-wide environmental extremes cluster. Originally from Nigeria, Jola will add an international dimension to our work. With these new col-leagues, our faculty’s origins are on five different continents.

Faculty and student research already encompasses a diverse range of scholarship across physical and human geography. The addition of human geographers Cantor and Ajibade will help broaden departmental teaching and research, and we will be offering an even more diverse set of ideas and methods in the study of Geography. As we acknowledge diversity across space and time, our Geography community is devoted to making our society and environment a better place for all. The better we understand and educate about where and why differences exist, the better equipped we are to prepare for the ever-increasing complexity of the world to come. We are committed partners in PSU’s efforts to put awareness of the im-portance of diversity at the center of what we do.

A Message from the Chair

Geography and Diversity

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

NEW FACULTY MEMBERS

Farewell Teresa!

Professor Teresa Bulman, who

served the Department for 27 years

will retire at the end of this Spring.

Her outstanding service records

include serving as Department Chair

for 6 years and as Director of

Education Programs for 27 years.

We will greatly miss her!

Idowu (Jola) Ajibade - Coming from a post-

doc at Balsillie School of International Affairs

in Ontario. PhD in Geography from Western

University in Canada. Her research focuses

on how individuals, communities and cities

respond to global environmental change and

their different capacities for adaptation,

collaboration, and transformation.

Nancee Hunter - Coming from Oregon

State University to be Director of the

Center for Geography Education in

Oregon. PhD in Environmental Science

and Resource Management from PSU.

Much of her career has been dedicated

to geography education and teacher

professional development.

Alida Cantor - Coming from a

postdoc at UC Berkeley School

of Law's Wheeler Water Insti-

tute. PhD in Geography from

Clark University. She studies

water law and policy and hu-

man-environment geography.

Melissa Lucash will join the Glob-

al Environmental Change (GEC)

Lab as a co-director, starting July

1, 2017. She is a landscape ecol-

ogist investiGATing forest dynam-

ics under environmental change

using spatially-explicit landscape

modeling.

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ONLINE MAPPING

Developing an Interactive Online Mapping and Survey Tool:

A collaboration of geography alumni

Over the last year and a half, a group of geography depart-

ment alumni collaborated to build an interactive online

mapping and survey tool for the Deschutes and Ochoco Na-

tional Forests and the Crooked River National Grassland.

The project is a good example of the diverse set of skills one

can obtain after some time spent in the geography depart-

ment.

The purpose of the survey (dubbed the human ecology map-

ping project) is to gather information about how the public

use these national forests, and this information can help

guide the forest plan revisions and decisions. The infor-

mation the Forest Service wanted to collect sounds decep-

tively simple: Where people go on the forest and why, what

places are important to people, why those places are im-

portant, and what they do at those places. However, the

project team needed to learn how to create a custom inter-

active mapping survey from scratch, one that was relatively

simple and user-friendly yet rigorous enough to provide

useful data for analysis. Besides the two national forests and

grassland, the work was done in partnership with the PNW

Research Station, the US Forest Service’s regional office in

Portland, and the non-profit Discover Your Forest, located in

Bend.

Overseeing the program were Rebecca McLain, research

faculty at the Institute for Sustainable Solutions and geogra-

phy department affiliated faculty (a graduate of the GIS Cer-

tificate Program 2011), and David Banis, Associate Director

for the Center for Spatial Analysis and Research, (Master’s in

Geography 2004).

Gabriel Rousseau, currently a master’s student in urban and

regional planning (graduate of the GIS Certificate Program

2015), designed a custom interactive map to use for the

survey; Zuriel Rasmussen, a PhD student in geography

(Master’s in Geography 2014), designed the multiple inter-

twined surveys including a Spanish language version and a

version for the visually impaired; Tim Hitchins, a Master’s

student in geography (graduate of the GIS Certificate Pro-

gram 2015) designed the custom web mapping application

that allows participants to add features and attributes to the

map, including a Spanish language version. Both Tim and

Zuriel were instrumental in our efforts to make the survey

available offline on tablets.

The survey went live in October 2016, 15 months after we

started working on the project. The project has already been

featured in one regional conference (Association of Pacific

Coast Geographers held at PSU in October 2016) and one

national conference (Society for Applied Anthropology held

in Santa Fe in March 2017).

If you are a user of the Deschutes and/or Ochoco National

Forest, or the Crooked River National Grassland, consider

taking the survey:

http://discoveryourforest.org/hemsurvey/

Data will be collected through August 2017, at which time

our data analysis will commence.

From Left to Right: David, Rebecca, Zuriel, Tim, and Gabriel

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Elusive Aurora Borealis: Geographic incidence of geomagnetic atmospheric disturbances in the Northern Hemisphere, terrain analysis, and multi-criteria suitability analysis for Aurora Borealis occurrence in Alaska: John Rogers (incoming MS student)

I first realized that I wanted to become a geographer after surviving alone in the Red Buttes Wilderness for three days, straddling the western crest of the Siskiyou Range and blam-ing my 15-year-old self for neglecting to bring a map. This experience sparked my interest in terrain maps, watershed science, wilderness navigation, remote sensing, and ulti-mately cartography and Geographic Information Systems, which I currently practice and research here at Portland State University. I am a MS student in Geography interested in utilizing GIS to as tool to develop an indicator for polar vortex migration in order to better understand climate vari-ability and likely related feedback loops in Northern Hemi-sphereaweather.

Taking a trip to Alaska and do not want to miss the epic phe-nomenon of Aurora Borealis? The solar flares of the North-ern Lights are a must-see multi-colored display that can be quite elusive as they form from interactions between the electrons from solar winds and the molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, and are typically only visible on a dark, clear night in high latitudes. Relying on climate and spatial data rather than chance will aid the curious in increasing their chances of being in the right place and the right time to ex-perience the ocular majesty. Geographically, where on the Northern Hemisphere is the swath of 80-100% of nights with possible Aurora Borealis? The isocasm map shows clearly the swath of statistical auroral occurrence by per-centage chance, with the 80-100% zone symbolized with a green transparency and the populated towns nearby. Taking into consideration cloud cover, navigable terrain, low densi-ty land cover, forest type, orographic viewshed barriers, and overall proximity to the highest value isocasm lines, where in Alaska is the most suitable region for the best chance at viewing the Aurora Borealis in March? A multi-criteria suita-bility approach with terrain analysis provided key insights to locations in Alaska for prime Aurora Borealis viewing.

John Rogers and faculty member Geoffrey Duh won 1st place at GIS In Action

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Bachelors Degree: Jacob Argueta Christina Barton McCade Bell Michael Brehm Jeanette Butts Connor Cohn Patricia Dubois Tiffany Eurich Krista Fanucchi Debby Friend Willa Ford Emily Goldthwait Karoline Gurdal Matthew Hart Nathan Herzog Nadia Hussain Justin McGillivary Zachary Neumann Michael Pouncil Whitlee Powney Katheryn Reed Shana-Lynn Rogers Timothy Roszel Stephanie Saldari

Charles Schmidt Jennifer Schofield Alex Walker Ella Weil Crystal White

GIS Certificate: Todd Albertson Kara Batdorff Stephen Dodson Matthew Downs Travis Driessen Jaycee Elliot Yunjiao Jiang Mohamed Koroma Ian Lambie Michael Myers Alexander Nagel Philip Paulson Lynnette Perez Tobyn Perterson John Rogers Ryu Sakuma Ali Santora Grace Stainback

Ashley Weslowski Paul Wild

Masters Degree: Matt Ryan Bonnette Taylor Gibson Zachary Herzfeld Dirk Kinsey Gwyneth Manser Alexander Nagel Ali Santora

PhD Degree: Melanie Malone

Congratulations to our students who have graduated in AY 16-17. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

Congratulations!

Barbara Brower is the winner of the John Eliot Allen Teaching Award this year!

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Camila Isabel Holz was born on May 8th.

COMMUNITY NEWS

“I am starting a mediation firm, with a tentative opening date in Spring or early Summer, 2017. The business will be called PDX Metro Mediation (PMM). In the future, there may be internships available. Also, look for PMM interactive web site, coming soon. My novel, Snohala or Bust will hopefully be released in the next year or so. A lot of things going on! Good to be busy!” Andrew Bobzien

Called "empowering, lucid, and inspiring” and “beautifully written,” adjunct faculty member Kevin Van Meter’s new book Guerrillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Rev-olution Possible will be released by AK Press in June 2017.

Nan (Gage Devlin, B.S. Geography, 1986. Master of the Tourism Administration, The George Washington University, 2009. Now heading up two county-wide initiatives: an extensive culinary/agritourism/locally sourced products to attract tourists and build an economic base; and a comprehensive wayfinding program, including interpretive signage.

Undergraduate student Ella Weil won the student poster Award at GIS in Action.

PhD student Janardan Mainali received a travel award from the Water Resources Specialty Group of the AAG.

Graduate stu-dent Elsie Love received the Elsa Jorgenson Award from OGS.

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A Message from the Chair

SUBTITLE

CLIMATE RESEARCH

Presentations

Judah Detzer presented a talk at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Fran-

cisco, California entitled " Assessing the Meteorology Associated with Extreme Dust Storms

over the Arabian Peninsula: A statistical and dynamical approach"

Emily Slinskey presentated a talk at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San

Francisco entitled " Towards an Event Based Indicator for Monitoring Change in Extreme

Precipitation in Support of the US National Climate Assessment"

Paul Loikith presented a talk at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Fran-

cisco entitled " Assessing the effects of non-Gaussian tails on increases in temperature

exceedances under global warming using climate models"

Paul Loikith presented a talk at the Northwest Climate Conference in Stevenson, Washing-

ton entitled " Characterizing Large-Scale Meteorological Patterns and Associated Tempera-

ture Extremes over the Northwestern US"

Paul Loikith gave a PSU CLAS brown bag lunch research seminar entitled "Temperature

and Precipitation Extremes over the Pacific Northwest: Using large scale meteorological

patterns to better understand future changes at local scales"

Paul Loikith presented a poster at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in

Seattle, WA entitled " Towards an Event Based Indicator for Monitoring Change in Extreme

Precipitation in Support of the US National Climate Assessment"

Alex Sweeney presented a poster at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

in Seattle, WA entitled " Characterizing Large-Scale Meteorological Patterns and Associated

Temperature and Precipitation Extremes over the Northwest U.S. using Self Organizing

Maps"

Paul Loikith presented a research seminar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA

entitled "Connecting Large-Scale Meteorological Patterns with Local Scale Temperature

and Precipitation Extremes over the Northwestern United States in Observations and Cli-

mate Models using Self-Organizing Maps"

Paul Loikith presented a research seminar at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Die-

go, CA entitled "Connecting Large-Scale Meteorological Patterns with Local Scale Tempera-

ture and Precipitation Extremes over the Northwestern United States in Observations and

Climate Models using Self-Organizing Maps" The Geography De-

partment and Climate

Science Lab welcomes

Andy Martin as a new

affiliated faculty. Andy

is a Project Scientist at

the Center for West-

ern Weather and

Water Extremes at

the Scripps Institute

of Technology.

Congratulations to Director Paul Loikith! He is the esteemed recipient of this year’s Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award.

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RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS

FACULTY & STUDENT PUBLICATIONS

FACULTY GRANTS

Martin Lafrenz received a grant from the Murdock Foundation to study "The Im-portance of Plant-mycorrhizae Mutualism in Salt Marshes" as part of my ongoing research on the impacts of sea level rise along the North Pacific coast. Paul Loikith was awarded $10,481 to study extreme precipitation events over the Upper Willamette and Lower Columbia River Basins Paul Loikith is the PI on a new grant funded by the National Science Foundation to study the effects of non-Gaussian temperature dis-tribution tails on future changes in tempera-ture extreme exceedances. The grant totals $415,660 and covers three years in collabora-tion with UCLA.

Presentations

David Banis: Using sociocultural PPGIS data for environmental planning: A case study of travel analysis for national forests (OSU Geography seminar)

Heejun Chang: Climate Change and Urban Flood Vulnerability Assessment (Boston AAG)

Heejun Chang: Climate change and the waters of Mt. Hood (People’s Forest Forum for Mt. Hood, Portland)

Zbigniew Grabowski, Mary Ann Rozance, Ashlie Denton, Marissa Matsler, and Sarah Kidd: Dam removal PFESTS: dimensional co-production of politics, finance, environment, society and technology in restoration oriented infrastructure interventions (Boston AAG)

Daniel Larson: Consider the Source: An Assessment of Customer Support for Source Water Protection in the Greater Portland Area (Boston AAG)

Janardan Mainali and Heejun Chang: Spatio-temporal dynamics of water quality parame-ters in Han River Basin South Korea (Boston AAG)

Melanie Malone: A Critical Physical Geographical Analysis of Conservation Management Practices: Implications for Soil Quality, Water Quality, and Food Security (Boston AAG)

Martin Swobodzinski: Affect, Immersion, Geography, and Virtual Reality (Boston AAG)

Martin Swobodzinski: Portland Urban Coyote Project (NSF workshop on Advancing Move-ment and Mobility Science by Bridging Research on Human Mobility and Animal Move-ment Ecology, the University of Texas at Austin)

Martin Swobodzinski: Individual decision making in online public-participation transporta-tion planning (Transportation Research and Education Center at PSU)

Chang, H., Bonnette, M. Stoker, P., Crow-Miller, B., Wentz, E., (2017) Determinants of single family residential water use across scales in four western US cities, Science of the Total Environment 596/597: 451 - 464. Also shown in the media

Heejun Chang (2017) Water and Climate Change, In The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technol-

ogy, Wiley.

Heejun Chang (2017) Water Conservation, In The International Encyclope-

dia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, Wiley.

Cho, S. and Chang, H. Recent Research Approaches to Urban Flood Vul-nerability, 2006-2016, Natural Hazards doi:10.1007/s11069-017-2869-4

Alexis Cooley and Heejun Chang (2017) Precipitation Intensity Trend Detection using Hourly and Daily Observations in Portland, Ore-gon, Climate, 5(1), 10; doi:10.3390/cli5010010

Kimberly Yazzie and Heejun Chang (2017) Watershed response to climate change and fire-burns in the Upper Umatilla River Basin, USA, Climate, 5(1), 7; doi:10.3390/cli5010007

Holz, A., Méndez, C., Borrero, L., Prieto, A., Tor-rejón, F., and Maldonado, A. Fires: the main hu-man impact on past environments in Patagonia. Special Issue on “Climate change and cultural evolution”. PAGES Magazine, vol. 24(2), 72 -73.

Iguchi, T., W.-K. Tao, D. Wu, C. Peters-Lidard, J. A. Santanello, E. Kemp, Y. Tian, J. Case, W. Wang, R. Ferraro, D. Waliser, J. Kim, H. Lee, B. Guan, B. Tian, and P. C. Loikith, 2017: Sensitivity of CONUS sum-mer rainfall to the selection of cumulus parameter-ization schemes in NU-WRF seasonal simula-tions. J. Hydrometeor.

Kevin Van Meter, Geography adjunct faculty, authored an op-ed, "The Meaning of 1984 and Brave New World in These Trumpian Times," pub-lished in Truth-Out.org, Feb. 15.

Loikith, P. C., B. R. Lintner, and A. N. Sweeney, 2017: Characterizing Large-Scale Meteorological Patterns and Associated Temperature and Precipita-tion Extremes over the Northwestern United States using Self Organizing Maps. J. Climate, 30, 2829-2847.

Puchi, P., Muñoz, A., González, M., Abarzua, A., Araya, K., Towner, R., Fitzek, R., Holz, A., and Stahle, D. The potential use of Pilgerodendron uviferum treering dating in the historical interpretation of the churches of Chiloé. Revista Bosque (Chile) 38(1): 109-121. DOI: 10.4067/S0717- 92002017000100012 2016

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CENTER FOR GEOGRAPHY

The Center for Geography Education in Oregon is pleased to announce the hiring of Dr. Nancee Hunter as our new Director of Education Programs and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Portland State University.

We engaged in a national search that included dozens of applicants and chose Dr. Hunter for her strong commitment to geog-raphy education, her extensive contacts in the geography community at the state and national level, and her expertise in pro-gram development and grant-writing.

Many of our members know Dr. Hunter not only from her work in C-GEO’s programs, including summer institutes and GeoFests, but in her work as Director of Education for Oregon Sea Grant at the Hatfield Marine Science Center and as Director of Education and Outreach at the National Geographic Society Education Foundation. She was most recently a Senior Re-searcher at OSU’s Center for Research on Lifelong STEM learning.

Dr. Hunter received her B.S. from Arizona State University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Portland State University.

Dr. Teresa Bulman, who is retiring in June 2017, will work with Dr. Hunter over the summer for a smooth transition to her new assignment at C-GEO. Dr. Hunter will begin working full-time in September.

C-GEO held a successful GeoFest convention in Monmouth in March, attended by over 100 K-12 teachers. There were inspir-ing presentations and excellent model lessons. Dr. Bulman received the Mentor of the Year Award for her work with K-12 teachers.

Also in March, Dr. Bulman received a special commendation from National Geographic for her service to geography education over the last several decades. She was praised for her commitment to standards-based model programs and her ability to attract funding for a wide variety of community, research, and teaching programs. C-GEO will hold several workshops for teachers this coming summer, including a trip to Chile to compare physical and human geographies of Chile and Oregon. Teachers will also have the opportunity to do a Comparative Mountain Geography study in a two-week institute in the middle Appalachian mountains. Those teachers who prefer to stay closer to home can participate in a workshop on Map Literacy at Portland State.

We welcome any donations to help support our efforts to improve geography education in Oregon’s K-12 schools! Just go to https://cconn.foundation.pdx.edu/ccon/new_gift.do?action=newGift&giving_page_id=60&site=giving at the C-GEO website.

Remember that without Geography you are nowhere!

Support the

Geography Department

If you are interested in making a donation

to the Geography Department

(including the Thomas Harvey Memorial

Scholarship), please click here:

Thank you, as always,