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| People, Places and Patterns John All has been visiting from the University of Arizona to teach the Transforming the Global Environment class, Cultural Geography, and several undergraduate interns. All together he had responsibility for over 500 students for the semester. A new enrollment record!! John's research interests are Human-Environment interactions that cross national boundaries. He primarily focuses upon climatic varibility and its impacts on transnational resources. He is ABD at the University of Arizona, has a J.D. and an Environmental Ethics degree from the University of Georgia, and an A.B. from Duke University.  Michelle Goman was awarded $30,000 to study late Pleistocene-Holocene Climate Changes at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USACERL). A NSF POWRE proposal "Palynolgical Investigations at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, was funded in full ($75,000). Michelle will be Featured geographer/geologist in a new textbook developed by McGraw Hill on New Jersey for 4th graders. She heads out to Oaxaca, Mexico in mid May to begin a study looking at climate and human induced changes to the vegetation over the last 5000 years. Michelle says, "My husband, Eric, and I are enjoying our two sons. John (10 months) is a true geographer exploring and climbing everything he can. David (5yr) is quite a naturalist/scientist and is asking pointed questions, most recently about the Big Bang."Robert M. Hordon has been examining stream gaging records as part of his research in the hydrology of NJ. One disturbing factor has become apparent in the process: the decreasing number of gages in both the state and the nation. About 10 continuous record stations have been discontinued in the past decade so we now have about 90 as compared to previous highs of over 100. On the national level, the number of USGS partial record gages for surface water discharge has decreased from over 4,000 in FY (fiscal year) 1985 to under 2,400 in FY 1997. The same downward national trend is indicated for the number of continuous record USGS stations for surface water quality which decreased from over 800 in FY 1984 to under 650 in FY 1997. Robin Leichenko organized two economic geography sessions at the recent meetings of the Association of American Geographers held in Pittsburgh. The sessions were titled "Local-Global Linkages: An Emerging Research Program in Economic Geography," and "Globalization and Global Environmental Change: Exploring the Linkages." Both sessions were well-attended. Leichenko was also co-author on a paper presented at the meeting titled, "Double Exposure: Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change within the Context of Economic Globalization." Leichenko is currently working on a new study at the Center for Urban Policy Research of Indian Tribal lands in the United States. The study, which is funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation, entails a comprehensive assessment of economic and housing conditions on all Tribal lands located in the lower 48 states. Leichenko is also continuing her work on the impacts of economic globalization on U.S. regional development and on the effects of historic preservation in U.S. cities. Kenneth Mitchell, together with members of his Spring semester graduate seminar, continued work on the Great Raritan Flood project. Among other things this included attending a couple of public hearings in Bound Brook when local residents sketched out the kind of community that they would like to see replace the flood-damaged one. Idealized others which citizens mentioned as models that the town should try to emulate included: Bourbon Street, New Orleans; Vancouver, British Columbia; and New Hope, Pennsylvania. Less exotic local alternatives which were offered by planners - Somerville, New Brunswick and Princeton - were ignored! Together with Ph.D. student Mariana Mossler, Ken also submitted testimony to the Urban Land Institutes study team that is charged with developing a Bound Brook Redevelopment Plan. In late March Ken made an invited presentation to the Natural Hazards Roundtable planning group at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. This committee is charged with crafting a fully transparent open forum for the exchange of ideas and experience about hazards among researchers, professionals, civil society and government agencies. The format is a new departure for the Academy, which customarily organizes rather more staid bodies that make formal evaluations of federal policies and policy issues. During the recent AAG meetings Ken sought out - and suffered - a bevy of environmental hazards. Driving out to Pittsburgh involved dodging thunder-storms on the Pennsylvania Turnpike until a particularly ferocious one forced all traffic to a halt in a prolonged episode of zero visibility. Arriving late he missed the next days Hazards Specialty Group trip which, by all accounts, went ahead in atrocious weather - fog, rain, lightning and snow squalls. When the sky faired later in the week it was clear that Pittsburgh had done a mammoth job removing the remains of its steel industry from floodplains of the three main rivers - the Monongahela, the Allegheny and the Ohio. The return trip to New Jersey was by way of Donora, PA - site of America's most famous air pollution disaster. Although 20 people died and several hundred were hospitalized there when fluorine from steel plants was trapped by a temperature inversion in 1948, today's little town is one of the beneficiaries of the decay of the U.S. steel industry. Now, it looks more like a Rhine valley wine village clinging to a steep slope overlooking the Mon than a former industrial disaster icon. Michael Medler has recently submitted several grant proposals to fund three years of wildland fire hazard mapping research. This project will examine the effectiveness of mapping potential fire hazards in one area based on the spatial patterns of nearby recent fires. This last year he presented and published encouraging results from a pilot project. This small trial of the techniques was able to use the patterns of a New Mexican fire to accurately predict the spatial patterns of a similar fire in Arizona. This month also finds the Medler family entering the grand adventure of purchasing their first home.  Joanna Regulska writes: This has been a hectic period, trying to teach, write, do research, run Local Democracy in Poland programs and most importantly run the department. Somehow I am still alive.... In December 1999 I gave a keynote in Berlin at the conference on "Gender and Transition: Ten Years Later". In January I was at IBG in Brighton (another paper), but most importantly had an opportunity to visit with Ted Killian, where he has a job at the University of Brigthon. As almost all his committee members attended IBG we held a Ph.D. defense on a lovely rainy Friday morning. Then a visit to Seattle in February and a talk at the Jackson School for International Affairs and again to Poland in March for some more talks on gender and politics. In the meantime the pen was working and a couple of pieces have come out or will be coming out soon including "Gendered Integration of Europe: New Boundaries of Exclusions" and on local government and local democracy in Poland (in Ukrainian). In May another conference on EU in Slovenja and then... summer is coming soon.David Robinson continues to enjoy his sabbatical, and is already "bracing" himself for his return as Chair in July. January found him dealing with 100 media interviews, as winter weather made an all too brief appearance in the Garden State. A portion of February was spent at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, working on several projects with former grad student Allan Frei and others. Currently, Dave's in the midst of preparing several manuscripts and venturing off to a number of meetings (and Boy Scout camp outs). There is still much to be accomplished before July! Rick Schroeder and his wife, Dorothy Hodgson, a professor in Rutgers' Anthropology Department, were joint recipients of the AAG sponsored Anne U. White award. This fund was established by Gilbert White in honor of the memory of his late wife, and is explicitly earmarked to support joint field research by geographers and their spouses. Rick and Dorothy will spend ten weeks in Northern Tanzania this summer, where Rick will attend an intensive Swahili language course, and both will continue their investigation of community resource mapping exercises in Maasai territories. Andrew Vayda writes that his recent and planned field research includes: Research on causes of the 1997-98 forest fires, Indonesia, 1998 (to be continued in Indonesia during the summer of 2000). Feasibility studies on forest use and agro-ecological change: Nepal (Arun Valley), 1998; Southwest China (Yunnan Province), 1998. (A project on forest use in Western Yunnan is pending.) Research on "Bugis Settlers in East Kalimantan's Kutai National Park: Their Past and Present and Some Possibilities for Their Future," Indonesia, 1996. Pete Wacker is enjoying his leave and getting some writing done on his next book. He and his wife are finding some time to devote to their favorite activity, playing with their grand daughter Lucy. They have also found the time to do some traveling. Last summer there was a trip on a river boat on the Douro (Port Wine District) and in February extensive travel in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur - Melaka - Sabah in North Borneo). Dr. Wacker received the College Teaching Award at the New Jersey History Issues Convention at Monmouth University in March. |
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