April 21, 2008
Bowling
Green, Ky. - More than 20 students, faculty and alumni from Western Kentucky University’s Department of Geography and Geology attended last week’s meeting of the Association of American Geographers, the world’s largest gathering of academic geographers.
During the meeting in Boston, more than 7,000 geographers from dozens of countries addressed issues from climate change to food shortages, and from geopolitical conflicts to transportation challenges, in a variety of formats including research papers and posters, panel discussions, workshops and plenary sessions.
Attending this year’s conference were the following:
Geoscience graduate student Crystal Bergman, with co-author Dr. Stuart Foster, presented “An Analysis of Impacts Resulting from the Kentucky Drought of 2007.”
Geoscience graduate student Cari Bourette presented “Tasting Chile: Using Archetypal Metaphor to Map Cultural Landscape through Sampling Restaurants in 5 Chilean Cities.”
Geoscience graduate student Ronnie Leeper, with co-author Dr. Arturo Quintanar, WKU post-doctoral researcher in climatology, presented “Simulating Near-Surface and Atmospheric Responses to Changes in Land-Cover and Vegetation Fraction.”
Undergraduate geography major Nicholas Rodgers presented a poster titled “Flash Flood Climatology of the Appalachian Region (1978-2005).”
State Climatologist Emeritus Glen Conner presented “A History of Climate Observation Times: The Search for the Daily Mean.”
Co-Director of the Kentucky Geographical Alliance Scott Dobler presented “The Online Atlas of Kentucky.”
Dr. Josh Durkee, a WKU undergraduate alumnus who will join the meteorology faculty this August, presented “Climatological Variations in Subtropical South American Precipitation Attributed from Mesoscale Convective Complexes.”
Dr. Gregory Goodrich, with geoscience graduate student co-authors John Walker, Ronnie Leeper and Petrina Smith, and geography undergraduate co-authors Brian Biache, Nicholas Rodgers and Kylie Batson, along with co-author Mary Johns from Mississippi State University, presented “Development of the Kentucky Snowfall Index Scale.”
Dr. David Keeling, Geography and Geology department head, contributed to a panel discussion organized by the American Geographical Society titled “Writing for Success: Getting Geography Op-Eds into the Newspaper.” For the second year in a row, he was also recognized by the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers as author of the most frequently downloaded article during 2007 from the “Journal of Latin American Geography.”
Dr. Rezaul Mahmood, associate director of the Kentucky Climate Center and the Kentucky Mesonet, presented “Sensitivity of Planetary Boundary Layer Variables to Anomalous Soil Moisture Conditions: The MM5-based Assessment.”
Dr. Kolson Schlosser presented “Class, Race, and Sexual Politics in 20th Century Malthusian Revivalism.”
Dr. Jun Yan, with co-author Zhixiao Xie from Florida Atlantic University, presented “Kernel Intensity Estimation of Traffic Accidents in a Network Space.”
Geography instructor Daniel Reader, with co-author Dr. John All, presented “Sustainability with Globalization: A Chilean Case Study.”
Geography instructors Amy Seymour and Debbie Kreitzer presented their co-authored paper “Overcoming Geographic Illiteracy in a World Regional Geography Course.”
Geography instructor Will Blackburn attended several presentations on teaching world regional geography courses, while Dr. Michael Trapasso met with co-authors of his successful textbook titled “Physical Geography,” now in its ninth edition.
Several departmental alumni also attended the conference, including geoscience graduates Victoria Alapo, an instructor at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Neb., and Mark Graham, who is completing his Ph.D. in geography at the University of Kentucky.
More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
For information, contact David Keeling at (270) 745-4555.
-WKU-
"A leading American university with international reach"
Office of Media Relations
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Blvd., Bowling Green, Ky. 42101-3576
Phone: (270)745-4295 - Fax: (270)7455387 - E-Mail: western@wku.edu