News and Events

The Department of Geography at the University of Iowa invites applications for a full-time tenure track appointment at the Assistant Professor level. We seek an individual with research interests in human-environment interactions who will broadly complement one or more of the department’s existing strengths in geographic information science, land use science, environmental policy, biogeography, or health geography. The applicant’s primary teaching and research interests may lie in the study of biophysical, social/economic, or coupled biophysical/social processes. The Department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are strongly committed to gender and ethnic diversity; the strategic plans of the University, College and Department reflect this commitment.

Click Here for More Information on the New Position

David Bennett and Kathleen Stewart have recently been awarded a two-year research grant from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on ‘Simulating Spatiotemporal Interactions of Mobile Entities’

This research project will investigate how entities that are mobile, adaptive, and intelligent learn to navigate and adapt to landscapes that include risk or opportunity including, for example, territory that is rapidly changing with respect to a hazardous condition. One goal of this work is to understand how complex spatiotemporal dynamics can be modeled, represented, and understood. Monte Carlo simulations using agent-based technologies are applied to generate a typology of spatiotemporal interactions for mobile entities and a metasystem will be developed to explore the causal relationships that drive these interactions.

Interaction, self organization, equifinality, multifinality, bifurcation, and convergence are often present in complex geographic systems, and can significantly complicate issues of representation, interpretation, and validation.

Shane Hubbard, a PhD student in the Department of Geography played an important role during the massive flooding of June 2008 by working with Johnson County Emergency Management and Homeland Security officials to assess flooding impacts using HAZUS-MH software and modeling tools. Shane worked with Johnson County officials to provide critical flood impact assessments and flood boundary maps during the height of the flood event.

See this link for more information on Shane's efforts and the use of HAZUS-MH for emergency response applications. Shane is a PhD student working with Dr. Kathleen Stewart on modeling spatiotemporal dynamics.

Faculty and graduate students contributed to four articles in a recent issue examining the role of models in land use science.  Vineet Yadav was the lead author examining issues related to incorporating ecosystem function into agent-based models.  George Malanson and Marc Linderman were co-authors of articles that examined complexity, cross-site comparisons, and agent-based modeling of household dynamics.

"Land use science is now at a crucial juncture in its maturation process. Much has been learned, but the array of factors influencing land use change, the diversity of sites chosen for case studies, and the variety of modeling approaches used by the various case study teams have all combined to make two of the hallmarks of science, generalization and validation, difficult within land use science. This introduction and the four papers in this themed issue grew out of two workshops which were part of a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) ‘Roadmap’ project. The general idea behind the NIH Roadmap initiative was to stimulate scientific advances by bringing together diverse disciplines to tackle a common, multi-disciplinary scientific problem."

Journal of Land Use Science, volume 3, issue 1, 2008.

UI Cultural Geography Professor Dr. Rex Honey has been named the first-ever "Faculty Mentor of the Year" by International Programs. 

"Dr. Honey was chosen for this award because of his unwavering support for, and outstanding service to, International Studies and all of our students," said Deowning A. Thomas, the Associate Dean of International Programs. 

Dr. Marc Armstrong, the Chair of the UI Department of Geography and interim Chair of the UI Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, presented the first Waldo Tobler Distinguished Lecture in Geographic Information Science at the 2008 AAG Meeting in Boston in April 15-19. The title of his lecture was "Connecting Cyberinfrastructure and Geographic Information Science."

Dr. Kathleen Stewart Hornsby, an Assistant Professor of Geoinformatics in the UI Department of Geography, recently published two new books.

Dr. Stewart Hornsby is co-editor of Understanding Dynamics of Geographic Domains, published in April 2008 by CRC Press. This book contains eleven chapters by a multi-disciplinary group of authors on topics relating to modeling geographic dynamics and GIScience. This book is a partner to an earlier publication co-authored by Kathleen Stewart and May Yuan on Computation and Visualization for Understanding Dynamics in Geographic Domains: A Research Agenda, which may be purchased line from Amazon by clicking here or from CRC Press by clicking here.

Social entrepreneurs are described as “new heroes,” people who often work against the odds to find solutions where others only see problems (e.g. poverty and unemployment, environmental problems, lack of infrastructure). Often (but not always) working in developing countries, social entrepreneurs observe that part of society is stuck, and find ways to get it unstuck.

Over winter break Professors R. Rajagopal and Ed Brands led a team of 23 Iowans for a 3-week period to Tamil Nadu, India to visit, participate with, and learn directly from social entrepreneurs in eight organizations that employ a diverse variety of techniques to address social problems such as child labor, unemployment, poverty, healthcare for the poor, illiteracy, community waste management, and schools for the handicapped. The group of students included geography, engineering, nursing, business, social work, international studies/relations, public health, MBA, and art majors.

Last year, Professors Rajagopal and Brands' class earned rave reviews in BizEd Magazine, where their program was compared to similar ones at Harvard and LeHigh Universities. The BizEd article, Making a Major Impact with Microfinance, BizEd Magazine. May/June 2007, is available online here.

Look for information on an exciting return lecture and public event discussing their trip in this section soon. In the meantime, academia and media personnel, as well as other interested parties, may contact Dr. Rajagopal or Dr. Brands at r-rajagopal@uiowa.edu or edwin-brands@uiowa.edu.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to enter into negotiations with The University of Iowa for work relating to spatial sampling of PM coarse particles for megacities. The EPA is interested in the method of optimal spatial sampling design developed by Dr. Naresh Kumar, and the passive sampler with new shelter designed by Dr. Thomas Peters and Darrin Ott, Dr. Kumar’s collaborators in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, College of Public Health. The EPA’s intent to enter into negotiation with The University of Iowa is available online here:

Professor Naresh Kumar is also serving on the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) PAR-07-345 review panel. It is a new mechanism for time-sensitive research opportunities. Details are available here: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-07-345.html

 

Dr. Kumar also recently received a seed grant from the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination (CHEEC) to develop indirect methods of estimating indoor and outdoor air quality in Iowa City area. The grant amount is $30,000. The UI press release may be read here.

Ronald R. Rindfuss; Barbara Entwisle; Stephen J. Walsh; Li An; Nathan Badenoch; Daniel G. Brown; Peter Deadman; Tom P. Evans; Jefferson Fox; Jacqueline Geoghegan; Myron Gutmann; Maggi Kelly; Marc Linderman; Jianguo Liu; George P. Malanson; Carlos F. Mena; Joseph P. Messina; Emilio F. Moran; Dawn C. Parker; William Parton; Pramote Prasartkul; Derek T. Robinson; Yothin Sawangdee; Leah K. Vanwey; Peter H. Verburg. 2008. Land use change: complexity and comparisons. Journal of Land Use Science, 3(1): 1 - 10.

V. Yadav; S.J. Del Grosso; W. J. Parton; G. P. Malanson. 2008. Adding ecosystem function to agent-based land use model. Journal of Land Use Science, 3(1): 27 - 40.

Dawn C. Parker; Barbara Entwisle; Ronald R. Rindfuss; Leah K. Vanwey; Steven M. Manson; Emilio Moran; Li An; Peter Deadman; Tom P. Evans; Marc Linderman; S. Mohammad Mussavi Rizi; George Malanson. 2008.Case studies, cross-site comparisons, and the challenge of generalization: comparing agent-based models of land-use change in frontier regions. Journal of Land Use Science, 3(1): 41 - 72.

Barbara Entwisle; George Malanson; Ronald R. Rindfuss; Stephen J. Walsh. 2008. An agent-based model of household dynamics and land use change
Journal of Land Use Science, 3(1): 73 – 93.

Mazumdar, S.; Rushton, G.; Smith, B.J.; Zimmerman, D.L.; Donham. K.J. 2008.  Geocoding accuracy and the recovery of relationships between environmental exposures and health.  International Journal of Health Geographics, 7:13 (3 April 2008).

Yuan, M. and K. Stewart Hornsby (2007) Computation and Visualization for Understanding Dynamics in Geographic Domains: A Research Agenda, CRC Press, New York, NY.

Ott, D., Kumar, N. and Thomas, P., 2008. Passive sampling to capture spatial variability in PM10–25, Atmospheric Environment, 42 (2008) 746–756. doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2007.09.058.

Zimmerman, D., Pavlik, C. 2008. Quantifying the Effects of Mask Metadata Disclosure and Multiple Releases on the Confidentiality of Geographically Masked Health Data.  Geographical Analysis, 40(1): 52-76.

 Yadav, V. and  Malanson, G.P. 2008. Spatially explicit land use land cover and soil organic carbon transformations in southern Illinois. Agriculture,  Ecosystems & Environment, 123: 280-292.

Wang, Q. and Malanson, G.P. 2007. Patterns of correlation among landscape metrics. Physical Geography, 28: 170-182.

Kumar, N. and A. D. Foster. 2007. Have CNG regulations in Delhi done their job?  Economic and Political Weekly, 42(51): 48-58.

Read here: http://www.epw.org.in/uploads/articles/11357.pdf

Kumar, N., 2007. Spatial Sampling for a Demographic and Health Survey. Population Research and Policy Review, 26(5-6): 581-99. DOI: DOI 10.1007/s11113-007-9044-7.

Read here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h88202454078193k/fulltext.pdf

Sciences Research Center is seeking innovative, environmental health-related research proposals from University of Iowa researchers in three categories:  senior ($50,000), open ($30,000), and international ($10,000).  Areas of interest for funding include, but are not limited to:  studies of susceptibility to environmentally induced disease; environmental risk factors for disease; fundamental biology with environmental relevance; environmental and mammalian toxicology; occupational and environmental medicine; assessment of exposures to environmental agents; and environmental remediation and control.  The application deadline is February 1, 2008.  For more information, go here.  

TBA