Geography Compass (2016)

Dune biogemorphic resilience in a geographic context

I've been working on an analytical framework to measure and compare resilience properties in barrier dune systems. Here's a figure from a collaborative manuscript that's under way. Preparing figures for manuscripts is vastly underappreciated - the time to prepare them adds considerably more work.

GEO 406 Forest structure and invasive plants

My GEO 406 Field Studies in Geography class (Spring 2016) undertook a project to examine the relationship between forest structure (tree density and dominance) and the abundance of the invasive plant wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei).  We conducted our work at the UK Arboretum. Shown below is the sampling design from one of the student projects. The circles are the quadrats where they measured tree diameters, wintercreeper ground cover, and the number of wintercreeper vines on a tree. Wintercreeper can form a dense groundcover leading to a depauperate herbaceous ground cover and a decrease in the recruitment of new trees and shrubs. Its vines can climb into the overstory and weaken and bring down small trees. The students had to design and conduct the field sampling, perform calculations for tree density and dominance, and construct histograms for tree size classes. They used online calculators to perform resampling and correlation to statistically assess some the relationships among tree size, stem density, and wintercreeper abundance.  As the density and dominance small trees increased, the height of the wintergreen groundcover increased.

GEO 406 Urban temperature mapping

In my Spring 2016 GEO 406 class (Field Studies in Geography), I assigned a temperature mapping project. The students were asked to use an iButton temperature sensor and the phone app Live Trekker or Motion X-GPS to record temperature and their position as they walked around campus. They had to design the sampling of the project and interpret their results in relation to how land covers impact temperature. Here is a map of temperatures on the UK campus.The undergraduate Geography majors who made this particular map are Philip Arness and Ben Mills. Temperature was recorded every minute. The students had to do a fair bit of database work to integrate the spatial and temporal data and then figure out the different ways to represent it in a map

Recent undergraduate research

One of our Geography undergraduate students, Nicolas Alfaro worked with me on an independent research project last spring and this fall. Our work culminated in a poster that he presented at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers. Nicolas graduated at the end of the fall 2015 semester and has now started working at Northrop Grumman in St. Louis, MO. 

What I read (for fun) in 2015

Yes, I know, I am supposed to read narrowly in my field so as to become that robotic expert who offers their sing song advice to all within earshot.  I know, I'd be better off if I fell asleep at night reading the latest research  (actually, that is what my TOC alerts keep me busy doing a lot of every day). But what kind of a human would you be without a diet of literature, of fiction and writing that humanizes you? I'm not nominating myself as a model representative for any kind of idealized path of cultivation. But pick your side: just what are academics trying to cultivate in themselves and those around them these days?

And yes, these were mostly hardbacks, all locally bought. Where would my kids and I hang out if the bookstores we have here in Lexington folded?  I expect that Amazon shipping centers would discourage the use of their facilities as public space.

The Taoist Tai Chi Society

I've been a member of the Taoist Tai Chi Society since 2000.  I began practicing tai chi in Tallahassee, Florida where TTCS has their national center.  Upon moving to Lexington in 2011 we began offering classes here.  Our main branch in Kentucky is in Louisville. Here is the schedule for the Spring 2015 beginning classes.