Human-environment interaction
Human-environment interaction provides the foundation for much of what we study in Geography at The University of Iowa. We conduct fundamental research into the biophysical processes that drive, for example, the movement of organisms and abiotic material (e.g., soil and pollutants) across geographic space and examine the processes that produce the temporal and spatial patterns that we experience in our daily lives. Advanced geospatial technologies, such as GIS, remote sensing, and computer simulation, play an integral part in the study of these interactions. Examples of these studies include modeling the spatial pattern of ecosystem processes, land use and land cover change, statistical and remote sensing techniques for the detection of change, and GIScience techniques for the representation and simulation of dynamic geographic phenomena.
Students who study human-environmental interaction in the Department of Geography at The University of Iowa have the opportunity to learn from leading experts in landscape ecology, environmental sampling, land use/land cover change, and computer simulation. Some of the examples of current environmental geography research at Iowa include:
• Affects of global climate change on mountain ecosystems
• Agent-based modeling of mobile, geographically-aware, and intelligent
entities (e.g., humans, wildlife)
• Land-use modeling of household impacts on the Ecuadorian Amazon frontier
• Remote sensing analyses of land-use impacts on ecosystem dynamics
As a student of Environmental Studies you can, for example, build expertise in:
Environmental policy and decision support
Environmental justice
GIS and remote sensing
Landscape ecology
Spatial sampling and statistical analysis
Faculty doing related research:
