Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences in the Next Decade

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From the oceans to continental heartlands, human activities have altered the physical characteristics of Earth's surface. With Earth's population projected to peak at 8 to 12 billion people by 2050 and the additional stress of climate change, it is more important than ever to understand how and where these changes are happening. Innovation in the geographical sciences has the potential to advance knowledge of place-based environmental change, sustainability, and the impacts of a rapidly changing economy and society.

Understanding the Changing Planet outlines eleven strategic directions to focus research and leverage new technologies to harness the potential that the geographical sciences offer.

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172 pages · 8.5 x 11 · paperback
ISBN Paperback: 0-309-15075-2
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-15076-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/12860

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National Research Council. 2010. Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Alexander B. Murphy

ALEXANDER B. MURPHY (chair)is a professor of geography at the University of Oregon, where he also holds the James F. and Shirley K. Rippey Chair in Liberal Arts and Sciences. He specializes in cultural and political geography, with a regional emphasis on Europe. Dr. Murphy is a past president of the Association of American Geographers (2003-2004) and current vice-president of the American Geographical Society. He has edited both Progress in Human Geography and Eurasian Geography and Economics. In the late 1990s he chaired the national committee that oversaw the addition of geography to the College Boards Advanced Placement program. Dr. Murphy is the author of more than 70 articles and several books, including The Regional Dynamics of Language Differentiation in Belgium (University of Chicago, 1988), Cultural Encounters with the Environment (edited with Douglas Johnson; Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), and Human Geography: Culture, Society, and Space, 8th edition (with Harm de Blij and Erin Fouberg; Wiley, 2006). Dr. Murphy is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Fulbright-Hays Research Grant in 1985, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1991, a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in the mid-1990s, and a National Council for Geographic Education Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001. Professor Murphy holds a B.A. in archaeology from Yale University, a law degree from the Columbia University School of Law, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Chicago.

Nancy Colleton

NANCY COLLETON is president of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, a nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to improving the understanding of our changing planet and the critical role of space technologies in identifying environmental changes, including climate change. Ms. Colleton has worked vigorously with senior-level government and industry executives to call attention to the need for improved observations, monitoring, technology applications for the delivery of Earth-related information products. Through high-visibility meetings, networking, and congressional testimony, Ms. Colleton has highlighted the need to leverage U.S. investment in Earth observations to focus on the requirements of a growing, diverse, and more-demanding user community. Ms. Colleton also serves as the executive director of the Alliance for Earth Observations, an informal confederation of industry, academic, and nongovernmental organizations that promotes the private sector’s involvement in the development, use, and integration of Earth observations. She serves on the Board of Directors of the American Astronautical Society, is a member of the Global Environmental Outlook Outreach Working Group of the United Nations Environment Programme, is a member of the Editorial Board of Imaging Notes Magazine, and is a member of Commission on Education and Communication of the The World Conservation Union (IUCN). Ms. Colleton holds a B.A. degree from Hood College.

Roger M. Downs

ROGER M. DOWNS is professor of geography and former head of the Department of Geography at The Pennsylvania State University. In the past he has held a permanent position at the Johns Hopkins University and sabbatical positions at Colgate University, the University of Washington, and the National Geographical Society. He holds B.A. (first class) and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Bristol, and has received honors from the National Geographic Society, the Association of American Geographers, and the National Council for Geographic Education. He has served as writing coordinator for the Geography Education Standards Project, and chaired the NRC study on Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum. He has published three books and nearly 100 articles, reports, and reviews.

Michael F. Goodchild

MICHAEL F. GOODCHILD (NAS) is a professor of geography and director of the Center for Spatial Studies and the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is also chair of the Executive Committee of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and associate director of the Alexandria Digital Library. He taught at the University of Western Ontario for 19 years before moving to his present position in 1988. His research interests focus on the generic issues of geographic information, including accuracy and the modeling of uncertainty, the design of spatial decision support systems, the development of methods of spatial analysis, and data structures for global geographic information systems. He has received several awards and published numerous books and journal articles. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, served on the Geographical Sciences Committee, and was a member and a chair of the NRC’s Mapping Science Committee. He received a B.A. in physics from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in geography from McMaster University.

Susan Hanson

SUSAN HANSON (NAS) is research professor of geography at Clark University. She is an urban geographer with interests in gender and economy, transportation, local labor markets, and sustainability. Dr. Hanson has been an editor of four geography journals—Economic Geography, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, The Professional Geographer, and Urban Geography—and currently serves on the editorial boards of several other journals including The Annals of the Association of American Geographers; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; and Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Dr. Hanson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, past member of the Geographical Sciences Committee, past president of the Association of American Geographers, and has served as Director of Clark's School of Geography (1988-1995; 2002-2004). She was the recipient of AAG’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Dr. Hanson received her B.A. in geography from Middlebury College and her Ph.D. in geography from Northwestern University.

Victoria A. Lawson

VICTORIA A. LAWSON is Professor of Geography at the University of Washington and was Chair of Geography Department from 1997 to 2000. She has held several leadership positions at the Association of American Geographers, serving as President and National Councilor. Dr. Lawson holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in geography from The Ohio State University and a B.A. in social sciences from the University of Leicester. Her theoretical and empirical work is broadly concerned with the social and economic effects of global economic restructuring across North and South America. In addition, she is interested in three scholarly literatures: first, feminist care ethics; second, development studies work on neo-liberal modernization and globalization, the transformation of work, and poverty/inequality processes; and third, migration theory. She received several awards including the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award (1996). She is the North American Editor for Progress in Human Geography, Editorial Board, Annals of the AAG(1998-06), Editorial Board, Professional Geographer (1992-96), Editor of newsletter of the Latin American Specialty Group of the AAG (1990), Scholar-Advisory Committee to the National Geography Education Standards Project of the NCGE (1993).

Glen M. MacDonald

GLEN M. MACDONALD is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California at Los Angeles, with a joint appointment in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Previously he was a professor at McMaster University and a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University. The focus of Dr. MacDonald’s research is long-term climatic and environmental change and the impact of such changes on plants, animals, and humans. He uses a variety of archives to reconstruct past climate and environments, including fossil pollen, plant macrofossils, tree rings, fossil insects, elemental geochemistry, stable isotopes, population genetics and historical documents, artwork, and maps. Dr. MacDonald has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and numerous book chapters, reports, and other pieces, as well as an award-winning text on biogeography (Biogeography: Time, Space and Life, Wiley). He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition to research awards he has won the McMaster University Award for Teaching Excellence and the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. Dr. MacDonald has served as the co-chair of the NSF Paleoenvironmental Arctic Sciences (PARCS) Program, chair of the AAG Biogeography Specialty Group, and international coordinator (global change) for the International Boreal Forest Research Association, as well as associate editor or editorial board member for the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Geography Compass, Journal of Biogeography, and Physical Geography amongst other journals. He received an A.B. degree in geography with highest honors and distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Sc. in geography from the University of Calgary, and a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Toronto.

Francis J. Magilligan

FRANCIS J. MAGILLIGAN is a professor in the Geography Department and adjunct professor in the Department of Earth Sciences of Dartmouth College. His research interests focus primarily on fluvial geomorphology and surface water hydrology. In particular, his research addresses stream channel and watershed response to environmental change. He is a member of the Association of American Geographers, the Geological Society of America, and the American Geophysical Union. Dr. Magilligan has published over 30 papers, and has served as chair of the AAG Geomorphology Specialty Group and on the AAG Editorial Board. He received a B.A. in geography from Boston University, an M.S. in water resources management, an M.S. in geography, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

William G. Moseley

WILLIAM G. MOSELEY is associate professor of geography at Macalester College . He is a development and human-environment geographer with particular expertise in political ecology, tropical agriculture, environment and development policy, livelihood security, and West and southern Africa. Before becoming an academic, he worked for ten years in the field of international development. His publications include: six books; 17 book chapters; 18 peer reviewed journal articles that have appeared in such outlets as the Geographical Journal, the Geographical Review, Geoforum, and Journal of Geography, Applied Geography, the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography and Ecological Economics; and op-eds in the International Herald Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Chicago Sun Times. He has been nominated to serve as a national councilor to the AAG (with the election currently in process), and was a finalist in the 2003 AAG J. Warren Nystrom Dissertation Competition. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, and an American Geographical Society McColl Family Fellowship.

Colin Polsky

COLIN POLSKY is an assistant professor at the Clark University Graduate School of Geography. He is also director of the Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) program, which provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to analyze the causes and consequences of global environmental changes at local scales in faculty-led research projects, and research assistant professor at the George Perkins Marsh Institute. Dr. Polsky is a geographer specializing in the human dimensions of global environmental change, emphasizing the statistical analysis of vulnerability to climate change. He has explored ways to blend quantitative and qualitative methods for the study of social and ecological vulnerability to environmental changes in the Arctic (with a focus on traditional reindeer herding), the U.S. Great Plains (with a focus on contemporary agriculture), and central and eastern Massachusetts (with a focus on suburban water management). Dr. Polsky received his Ph.D. and M.S. (geography) degrees from The Pennsylvania State University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and B.S. (mathematics) and B.A. (humanities, French) degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He has also completed a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University, with the Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Karen C. Seto

KAREN C. SETO is an associate professor in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Dr. Seto’s research is on the dynamics of land-use change, especially urban growth and coastal land conversion. She is an expert in satellite remote sensing, urbanization dynamics, and spatial analysis, and has projects in China, Vietnam, Qatar and India, comparing urban development patterns and their environmental impacts. Dr. Seto is Co-Chair of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and the Global Thematic Leader for Ecosystem Management Tools for the Commission on Ecosystem Management of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). She is a recipient of the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and the NASA New Investigator Program in Earth Science Award. Dr. Seto received her B.A. in political science from the University of California at Santa Barbara, her M.A. in international relations, resource and environmental management from Boston University, and her Ph.D. in geography from Boston University.

Dawn J. Wright

DAWN J. WRIGHT is a professor of geography in the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University and holds an adjunct professorship in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. Dr. Wright's research interests include geographic information science, benthic terrain and habitat characterization, tectonics of mid-ocean ridges, and the processing and interpretation of high-resolution bathymetry and underwater videography/photography. She is a National Councillor of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) and chair of research for the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS). Dr. Wright is also on the steering committee of NSF’s Marine Metadata Interoperability Initiative, the NRC Committee on Geophysical and Environmental Data, and recently served on the NRC Committee on National Needs for Coastal Mapping and Charting. She was recently appointed to the National Academies Ocean Studies Board. Dr. Wright's awards include an NSF CAREER award, a Fulbright to Ireland, the Raymond C. Smith Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Oregon State University Honors College Professor of the Year award. In 2007 she was named U.S. Professor of the Year for the state of Oregon by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. Dr. Wright received an individual interdisciplinary Ph.D. in physical geography and marine geology from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

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Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences in the Next Decade

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Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences in the Next Decade

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Featured publication

Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences

Description

Contributors

Committee

Sponsors

Staff

Major units and sub-units

Contact

Contact us

Provide feedback

Request materials

More like this

Review of the draft United by Nature assessment

Modernizing Mathematics Education for Grades 9-14

Health Care Financing to Improve Availability of Affordable Contraception: Identifying Promising Practices

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