Geography student's project gets national attention

from an article by Bill McAuliffe at the Star Tribune:

"Erika Wertz might measure her college career in tree rings. Wertz, a University of Minnesota senior, has been studying what the rings in bur oak trees in the Red River Valley can reveal about floods in the distant past, which someday may also indicate what the future might hold for the flood-prone Red and its broad, populated, level valley. Wertz's research is similar to other studies in "paleoclimatology," in which researchers look for clues about past weather and climate events by studying ice cores as well as layers of pollen, volcanic ash and the like laid down long before the advent of modern record-keeping."

Read the full story here.

Brown Day Lecture April 27

Join us for the Ralph H. Brown Memorial Lecture by Susan Cutter, Carolina Distinguished Professor and Director, Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina.

Where: 3M Classroom 1-106 Hanson Hall on the West Bank of the U of M campus.
When: Coffee/refreshments 3:15; talk starts at 3:30 and ends at 5pm with a Q&A

Moving from Hazard Vulnerability to Disaster Resilience: The Experience from Mississippi's Gulf Coast

For the past decade, hazards and disasters researchers have focused on what makes people and places vulnerable to natural hazards. The development of geo-referenced vulnerability metrics, especially those capturing social vulnerability (such as the Social Vulnerability Index), enabled comparisons between places in terms of attributes that influenced the ability of populations to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Hazard vulnerability assessments (including both social and physical vulnerability) are now the basis for county and state hazard mitigation plans nationwide. Instead of focusing on vulnerability reduction as a pathway towards disaster risk reduction, federal agency interest is centered on enhancing the nation's resilience to natural disasters. Using Mississippi's Gulf Coast and its experience with Hurricane Katrina as an exemplar, this lecture describes the concept of disaster resilience and current efforts underway to measure disaster resilience from community to regional scales.

Urban Revolutions In the Age of Global Urbanism

A new grant was received from the UK-based journal Urban Studies Foundation's International call for proposals for a seminar series. PI's on the grant include professors Vinay Gidwani, Helga Leitner, and Eric Sheppard of the Geography Department.

This grant will support a conference that will take place in Jakarta, March 16-20, 2012.

Urban Revolutions in an Age of Global Urbanism is being organized by Eric Sheppard (University of Minnesota), Helga Leitner (University of Minnesota), Ananya Roy (University of California), Vinay Gidwani (University of Minnesota), Jo Santoso (Tarumanagara University), and Michael Goldman (University of Minnesota)

Minnesota Reception now part of Southwest by Midwest

The Minnesota Reception, our annual get together at the AAG has a new look this year.
We've joined forces with UW-Madison to sponsor "Southwest by Midwest."

Please join us at the Stitch Bar on Saturday night, February 25th in NYC!

Stitch Lounge (downstairs)
247 West 37th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)
8pm to Close

Map

This is a co-production with UW-Madison and includes Exeter and Bristol! Don't Miss Out!

Chris Strunk and Helga Leitner in The Nation

Ph.D. student Chris Strunk and Geography Professor Helga Leitner have a new article in The Nation titled "Redefining Secure Communities." Read it here!

City Redistricting and Jeff Matson's Geography 5564 - Urban GIS

Geography 5564, Urban GIS, was recently highlighted in the MNDaily. The class, taught by Jeff Matson, welcomed Mike Dean, executive director for Common Cause of Minnesota as part of project on redistricting that will create maps for Minneapolis city wards. The maps the class produces will be submitted to the city. Read the story here.

Yu Zhou

Yu Zhou, Professor of Earth Science and Geography at Vassar College and an alum of the U of M's Geography Department, has an article in the Huffington Post on the possibilities of fair trade as a way of addressing the controversy over Apple (and others') subcontractors in China. See the full article here.

Yu Zhou is also author of "The Inside Story of China's high-tech industry: Making Silicon Valley in Beijing." She received her Ph.D. from the Geography Department in 1995.