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Member, George Perkins Marsh Institute Robert Gilmore Pontius, Jr. teaches as Associate Professor in Clark University's Graduate School of Geography and Department of International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE). His areas of expertise are: Geographic Information Science (GIS), Quantitative Environmental Modeling, Land Change Science, and Statistics. He teaches his areas of expertise, advises in the Human Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) research program, conducts funded research, supervises research assistants, and advises Doctoral, Masters and Bachelors students. Previously, he worked as an Associate Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute analyzing environmental sustainability. He also served as Assistant Professor at Boston University, where he researched and taught in the Department of Geography and Center for Energy & Environmental Studies. He held various positions for the State University of New York, Ohio State University, the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Peace Corps in Tanzania.
Professor Pontius received the Michael Brehney Prize for best paper in Environment and Planning B in 2005 and was the invited Keynote Speaker at the Spatial Accuracy conference in Lisbon Portugal in 2006. He was awarded the Oliver and Dorothy Hayden Junior Faculty Fellowship and Hodgkins Prize for exellence in scholarship, teaching and service. He has published over 65 scholarly articles, nearly all in collaboration with his students. He has also been a panelist and reviewer for several international and national professional scientific advisory committees. Pontius serves on the editorial boards for both Landscape Ecology and the International Journal of Geographical Information Science. He continues his longstanding tradition of co-authoring research with his students as is the case with Christopher D. Lippitt and others in “Comparing the input, output, and validation maps for several models of land change” in the Annals of Regional Science (2008), with Olufunmilayo Thontteh and Hao Chen in “Components of information for multiple resolution comparison between maps that share a real variable” in Environmental and Ecological Statistics (2008) with Clement Alo in “Identifying systematic land cover transitions using remote sensing and GIS: The fate of forests inside and outside protected areas of Southwestern Ghana” in Environment and Planning B (2008) and with Robert Yao-Kumah and others in “Accuracy assessment for a simulation model of Amazonian deforestation” in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (2007). Pontius continues his research as co-investigator a major grant received in 2007 from the National Science Foundation’s Coupled Natural Human Systems Program entitled “Suburbanization, Water-Use, Nitrogen Cycling & Eutrophication in the 21st Century: Interactions, Feedbacks & Uncertainties in a Massachusetts Costal Zone”. Pontius and Clark Professor Colin Polsky won four years of research funding ($1,442,930) for 2007–2011. He was the invited Keynote Speaker at the Southern Forestry and Natural Resources GIS conference in Orlando, FL in March 2008. In addition to speaking engagements in the past year, he presented “Lessons and challenges for land change modelers as revealed by a comparison of thirteen cases” at the conference on the science and education of land use: a transatlantic multidisciplinary approach in Washington, D.C. Internationally, he presented lectures and conducted workshops on “Map comparison to assess the prediction of vegetation response to El Nino in Southern Africa” at the World Congress of the International Association for Landscape Ecology in Wageningen, The Netherlands, “Lessons from the first decade of running a Master of Arts program in Geographic Information Science in the United States” at the Electronic Culture and New Humanitarian Technologies of the XXI century in Astrakhan, Russia and conducted a workshop in Land Change Modeling for Carbon Offset Projects for Conservation International in Quito, Ecuador with GISDE student Oh Kim. Names in italics are Clark University students. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Wideke Boersma, Jean-Christophe Castella, Keith Clarke, Ton de Nijs, Charles Dietzel, Duan Zengqiang, Eric Fotsing, Noah Goldstein, Kasper Kok, Eric Koomen, Christopher D. Lippitt, William McConnell, Bryan Pijanowski, Snehal Pithadia, Alias Mohd Sood, Sean Sweeney, Tran Ngoc Trung, A. Tom Veldkamp, and Peter H. Verburg. 2008. Comparing the input, output, and validation maps for several models of land change. Annals of Regional Science. 42(1):11-47. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Olufunmilayo Thontteh and Hao Chen. 2008. Components of information for multiple resolution comparison between maps that share a real variable. Environmental and Ecological Statistics.15(2):111-142. Alo, Clement and Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr. 2008. Identifying systematic land cover transitions using remote sensing and GIS: The fate of forests inside and outside protected areas of Southwestern Ghana. Environment and Planning B. 35(2):280-295. Kuzera, Kristopher and Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr. 2008.Importance of matrix construction for multiple-resolution categorical map comparison. GIS and Remote Sensing 45(3): 249-274 Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Robert Walker, Robert Yao-Kumah, Eugeino Arima, Stephen Aldrich, Marcellus Caldas and Dante Vergara. 2007. Accuracy assessment for a simulation model of Amazonian deforestation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 97(4): 677-695. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Anna J Versluis and Nicholas R Malizia. 2006. Visualizing certainty of extrapolations from models of land change. Landscape Ecology 21(7) p.1151-1166. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Christopher D Lippitt. 2006. Can error explain map differences over time? Cartography and Geographic Information Science 33(2) p.159-171. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Joseph Spencer. 2005. Uncertainty in extrapolations of predictive land change models. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 32 p.211-230. Fedorko, Evan, Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr, Stephen Aldrich, Luc Claessens, Charles Hopkinson Jr and Wilfred Wolheim. 2005. Spatial distribution of land type in regression models of pollutant loading. Journal of Spatial Hydrology 5(2) p.60-80. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Diana Huffaker and Kevin Denman. 2004. Useful techniques of validation for spatially explicit land-change models. Ecological Modelling 179(4) p.445-461. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Nicholas R Malizia. 2004. Effect of category aggregation on map comparison. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3234 p.251-268. in M J Egenhofer, C Freksa, and H J Miller (eds): GIScience2004. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Pablo Pacheco. 2004. Calibration and validation of a model of forest disturbance in the Western Ghats, India 1920 - 1990. GeoJournal 61(4) p.325-334. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Emily Shusas and Menzie McEachern. 2004. Detecting important categorical land changes while accounting for persistence. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 101(2-3) p.251-268. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Beth Suedmeyer. 2004. Components of agreement in categorical maps at multiple resolutions. p.233-251. Chapter 17 in Ross S Lunetta and John G Lyon (eds). Remote Sensing and GIS Accuracy Assessment. CRC Press: Boca Raton FL. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Aditya Agrawal and Diana Huffaker. 2003. Estimating the uncertainty of land-cover extrapolations while constructing a raster map from tabular data. Journal of Geographical Systems 5(3) p.253-273. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Kiran Batchu. 2003. Using the relative operating characteristic to quantify certainty in prediction of location of land cover change in India. Transactions in GIS 7(4) p.467-484. Holden, Matthew, Christopher Lippitt, Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr and Carissa Williams. 2003. Building a database of historic land cover to detect landscape change. Biological Bulletin 205 p.257-258. Huffaker, Diana and Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr. 2002. Reconstruction of Historical Land Cover in the Ipswich Watershed. Biological Bulletin 203 p.253-254. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore, Joseph Cornell and Charles A S Hall. 2001. Modeling the spatial pattern of land-use change with GEOMOD2: application and validation for Costa Rica. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 85(1-3) p.191-203. Schneider, Laura and Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr. 2001. Modeling land-use change in the Ipswich watershed, Massachusetts, USA. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 85(1-3) p.83-94. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore. 2000. Quantification error versus location error in comparison of categorical maps. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing 66(8) p.1011-1016. Professor Pontius is responsible for several modules that are in the GIS software Idrisi. The modules relate to the following publications: Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Mang Lung Cheuk. 2006. A generalized cross-tabulation matrix to compare soft-classified maps at multiple resolutions. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 20(1) p.1-30. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Jeffrey Malanson. 2005. Comparison of the structure and accuracy of two land change models. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 19(2) p.243-265. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore. 2002. Statistical methods to partition effects of quantity and location during comparison of categorical maps at multiple resolutions. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing 68(10) p.1041-1049. Pontius Jr, Robert Gilmore and Laura Schneider. 2001. Land-use change model validation by a ROC method for the Ipswich watershed, Massachusetts, USA. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 85(1-3) p.239-248.
Professor Gil Pontius on student-faculty research at Clark: "Student-faculty research is the hallmark of Clark University. I engage in student-faculty research because it is fun and interesting. It is wonderful to work with students simultaneously as a mentor and as a peer. Students learn how to function as a professional by doing professional level work. Frequently, they teach me by showing me the surprising things they have uncovered. I guide them in numerous aspects of research, from establishing a research agenda to coaching them in how to make effective oral presentations, which students make at competitive conferences. Nearly all of my publications are co-authored with Clark students who are my advisees. Students who work with me engage in the entire scientific process from data gathering to formal publication in professional peer-reviewed scientific journals. My student-faculty research is a win-win situation, since we all get the satisfaction of doing meaningful, high-level work that has relevance beyond the Clark campus. Much of the work I have done with students has served as the intellectual basis of international scientific efforts, and has resulted in modules in the GIS software Idrisi, which gives us an audience of more than 40000 GIS users worldwide. Now that is truly rewarding!" Read more: /departments/geography/facultybio.cfm?id=104&progid=15&#ixzz0GjtUPALr&B | 
