Central Massachusetts

January 2009: New research grant awarded to HERO

Professor Colin Polsky was recently awarded a three-year, $360,000 "REU Site" grant from the US National Science Foundation, with Professors John Rogan and R. Gil Pontius, Jr. as co-principal investigators. This award will take the Clark HERO program to the national level. To read the brochure click the link on the right of this page.

Download HERO Summer 2010 application by, clicking the 'Fellowship' tab, and scrolling all the way to the bottom.

Click here to see the how-to guide for producing <1m lawn maps by the HERO Object-oriented Lawn Mapping for Exploring Suburbia (HOLMES) team.

This follows a $1.4 million research grant awarded to HERO in September 2007 that was intended to catalyze research by HERO Professors Polsky and Pontius.

HERO-CM has three main areas of research: large-area forest change monitoring, vulnerability analysis, and prediction of land use and land cover change.

Forest Change Monitoring Vulnerability Analysis Land Change Prediction
Research questions:

  • What are the patterns and processes associated with timber harvest and forest growth in Massachusetts?


  • How can remote sensing help us accurately and consistently monitor these regional-scale changes?
    		•  Research questions:

  • How have public water systems in Massachusetts adapted to the effects of climatic hazards such as droughts and floods?


  • How well suited is this coping capacity for the sprawling population growth pattern currently unfolding in the region?
    		•  Research questions:

  • How can information about historic human behavior help anticipate and guide future human behavior concerning the way humans change the land cover?


  • How can we use geographic information science (GIS) computer technology appropriately to address these questions?
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    For additional information contact Professor Colin Polsky at cpolsky@clarku.edu.

    Sponsors

    This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grants No. BCS-0948984, BCS-0709685 and SES-0849985. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

    The map below shows the locations of the approximately 200 inquiries HERO received during its 2009 application season.


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