Spring 2013 Colloquium Series
4:00-5:00 pm, 317 Lindley
1/25 Prof. Jerry Dobson, University of Kansas
2/1 No Colloquium
2/8 Alec Murphy, University of Oregon
2/15 No Colloquium
2/22 Dr. Patricia Solis, Association of American Geographers
3/1 Dr. Joseph Kerski, ESRI
3/8 Prof. Sara Gregg, University of Kansas
3/15 Daniel Giménez, Rutgers University
3/22 Spring Break — no colloqium
3/29 Shannon O’Lear et al., University of Kansas
4/5 Prof. Germaine Halegoua, University of Kansas
4/12 AAG — no colloquium
4/19 Publication award presentations (Feddema presiding)
4/26 Prof. Eduardo Santos, Kansas State University
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Friday, 4/26/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Prof. Eduardo Santos
Department of Agronomy
Kansas State University
Investigating the CO2 exchange between ecosystems and atmosphere using stable isotopes and micrometeorological techniques
Stable isotopes of CO2 and H2O are powerful tools to study biophysical processes across several time and spatial scales. Stable isotopes of CO2, 13C-CO2 and 18O-CO2, have been used in large scale studies to infer regional CO2 sink/source strength and to study the effect of land use changes on the atmosphere composition. At the ecosystem scale, 13C-CO2 and 18O-CO2 can be used to partition the net CO2 ecosystem exchange into plant and soil components. The separation of these two gross flux components (photosynthesis and soil respiration) could bring new insights into the mechanisms controlling the CO2 exchange between the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. The underlying theory of the isotopic flux partitioning approach is relatively simple and requires prior knowledge of the isotopic composition of CO2 flux components. Until recent years, the major limitation to the use of CO2 isotopes as tracers was the inexistence of instruments capable of measuring 13C-CO2 and 18O-CO2 under field conditions and at frequencies suitable for field studies. Fortunately, recent advances in optical instruments have allowed the development of field-deployable gas analyzers capable of providing continuous and robust CO2 isotope concentration measurements. These measurements can be combined with existing micrometeorological techniques to determine the isotope signature of flux components, required for partitioning the net CO2 ecosystem exchange. Currently isotope measurements have been restricted to short-term intensive field campaigns. However, with the development of affordable and field-deployable gas analyzers, continuous isotope measurements could be incorporated to current flux network measurements, providing new tools to investigate the complex mechanisms governing the CO2 budget at ecosystem, regional and global scales.
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Friday, 4/5/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Prof. Germaine Halegoua
Department of Film and Media Studies, KU
Jumping for Fun? Negotiating Mobility and the Geopolitics of Foursquare.
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Friday, 3/29/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Prof. Shannon O'Lear
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies Program, KU
The (Not So) Phantom Menace: Reviewing Kaplan’s Revenge of Geography
Shannon O’Lear, John Biersack, David J. Trimbach, and Nathaniel Ray Pickett
Robert D. Kaplan keeps writing books about geopolitics, and many people find his arguments convincing. However, we take a critical geopolitics view of his latest book,The Revenge Of Geography: What The Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts And The Battle Against Fate, and discuss why his views are biased, out of date, and downright dangerous. After a short presentation, we invite discussion on issues we raise, questions about our approach, and other concerns about geography and policy.
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Friday, 3/15/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Prof. Daniel Ginénez
Dept. of Environmental Sciences
Rutgers University
Multifractal Analysis of Soil Pore Systems Along a Toposequence under a Natural Forest in Brazil.
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Friday, 3/8/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Prof. Sara Gregg
History Dept., KU
The Homestead Act: A New History of Landscape and Policy in the Trans-Missouri West
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Friday, 3/1/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Dr. Joseph Kerski
ESRI
Sleepwalking into the Future: A World Without Spatial Thinking.
Imagine a world where people use spatial thinking everyday on the job to make decisions about land use
policy, city planning, natural resource conservation, transportation logistics, and in a host of other fields,
from local to global scale. Now imagine a world where this almost never happened. Issues of our 21st
Century, such as natural hazards, energy, water, human health, agriculture, biodiversity, and others
are of global importance that increasingly impact our everyday lives. Unless the geography community
steps up, these pressing issues will not be resolved by those with the spatial perspective, akin to
“sleepwalking into the future.” Join Geographer (and KU grad!) Joseph Kerski as we discuss why and how the
geography community can and must ensure that spatial thinking spreads beyond our own discipline into
other disciplines and to the society at large.
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Friday, 2/22/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Dr. Patricia Solis
Association of American Geographers
Evolution of a new geographic approach to broadening participation in higher education
Dr. Solís will present a trajectory of ideas and action toward enhancing diversity, promoting inclusion, and broadening participation of underrepresented groups within higher education geography that have unfolded at the AAG over the past decade. Among other initiatives, this includes the AAG's ALIGNED project, funded by the NSF, which seeks to align the needs of university departments and underrepresented students by drawing upon the intellectual wealth of the discipline to inform and transform ways in which departments envision and realize their own goals to enhance diversity. It also includes the NSF-funded project, Catalyzing Research on Geographies of Broadening Participation, designed to organize and inspire the geography and spatial science community to develop new research that generates novel insights derived from geographic perspectives on how higher education may better discover and nurture underrepresented talent.
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Friday, 2/8/13
4-5 PM, 317 Lindley
Professor Alexander B. Murphy
Department of Geography
University of Oregon
"Territory's Continuing Allure"
Abstract - The role of the territorial state has fundamentally changed in recent decades in the wake of the communications revolution; the explosion of transnational social, political, and economic formations; accelerated mobility across international boundaries; and the inability of states to address pressing socio-economic and environmental issues. In the rush to document and assess the networks, flows, and relational spaces that are part of this shift, it is important not to overlook the continuing hold of modernist territorial ideas on the geographical imagination. Geographical writings on territoriality, spatial socialization, state-driven knowledge production, and regimes of territorial legitimation provide tools for understanding the power and inertia of modernist territorial ideas, which continue to influence patterns of identity and state practice in wide-ranging and significant ways. Contemporary interpretations of the doctrine of self-determination and its application in the Western Sahara case demonstrate that modernist ideas about territory continue to have far-reaching political and social consequences. It follows that any balanced assessment of the contemporary political-geographic order should not ignore the ways in which the continuing allure of territory plays into questions of boundedness versus flow, fixity versus relationality, and deterritorialiation versus reterritorialization.
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Professor Jerry Dobson
Friday, 1/25/13, 4-5 pm, 317 Lindley
Explore Aquaterra: Lost Land Beneath the Sea.
Abstract: Imagine for a moment that an ancient land, lost for thousands of years, is rediscovered right here on earth. Imagine it was, without question, the ancestral home of much of the earth's present population. Imagine it lies beneath the sea just beyond our present coasts but without labels and boundaries. Surely, all able nations would rush to explore the newfound land, and a new Age of Exploration would begin. Cartographers would rush to map and measure its every dimension. Geographers would study the newfound land as they did so many others during the earlier Age of Exploration. Scientists of all sorts would reassess theories in light of the new information.
In fact, such a lost land does exist, but it has been practically ignored in science and society. It is the land inundated and exposed repeatedly, like a vast millennial tide, during the Ice Ages. Four times in the past 120,000 years, continental ice sheets accumulated huge portions of the earth's water, and the world ocean fell as low as 125 meters (400 feet) below current sea level. That's a staggering figure when viewed as the rise and fall of an entire ocean yet impressively flat when viewed as the vertical relief of a global landform. What's truly astounding is the horizontal extent, almost 23,000,000 sq. km. or approximately the size of North America but all flat, mostly coastal, and mostly tropical.
In 1999, Dobson proposed naming the feature Aquaterra. Recently he and his brother Jeff Dobson published two novels encouraging the public to think more expansively about its profound implications for human pre-history. His colloquium lecture will discuss the science and lore underlying The Waters of Chaos: The Ancient Saga & The Modern Quest.
