Latest News

Prof. Kulakowski testified about his and his students’ research before a subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation of the Committee on Natural Resources of the United States House of Representatives in Washington D.C.

Prof. Kulakowski has been awarded $170,000 from the National Science Foundation for a project titled "Spruce Beetle and Wildfire Interactions Under Varying Climate in the Rockies"

Prof. Yuko Aoyama has been invited as one of nine social scientists nationwide to serve on the NSF panel on Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research (IBSS). It is a competition conducted by the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences to promote and support interdisciplinary research by teams of investigators in the social and behavioral sciences.

Prof. Anthony Bebbington has recently released the Spanish version to his book "Social Conflict, Economic Development and the Extractive Industry: Evidence from South America" (Routledge, 2011), titled "Industrias Extractivas, Conflicto Social y Dinamicas Institutionales en la Region Andina" (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos/Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales, 2013). His book release sparked the attention of news stations such as RPP, La Mula, and La Prensa.

Nuria Benach (University of Barcelona) who visited Clark in the autumn of 2010 has published a book on Prof. Richard Peet (the third of the series “Espacios Críticos” aimed to make geographical radical thought more available for a spanish-speaking audience). The book includes an anthology of texts written by Prof. Peet as well as an interview and a couple of essays on his intellectual trajectory and the scientific debates, in which he has been involved along his career.  The book was launched last October with public lectures given by Prof. Peet in a crowded Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and at the Catalan Geographical Society.

Prof. Chris Williams communicated elements of the recent paper on droughts in the American West as an Opinion piece in the NYTimes, during an interview with Tom Ashbrook on NPR’s On-Point, and in the NYTime’s Dot Earth Blog maintained by Andrew Revkin. This work also initiated a local TV news spotlight with New England Cable News.

Prof. Karen Frey has submitted two NSF proposals that are being recommended for funding. One is a five-year, $2,304,973 proposal titled “Collaborative Research: The Distributed Biological Observatory (DBO) – A Change Detection Array in the Pacific Arctic Region” and the second is a three-year, $943,326 proposal titled “Collaborative Research: Investigating the Influence of Sea-Surface Variability on Ice Sheet Mass Balance and Outlet Glacier Behavior using Records from Disko Bugt, West Greenland."

Prof. Chris Williams co-authored a study which was recently featured in the high-profile journal Nature Geoscience. The study looked at the ways in which the major drought that struck in Western North America from 2000-2004 impacted the area's carbon uptake and water resources.

Prof. Dominik Kulakowski was featured in an article titled "Fighting Western wildfires: Does Forest Service have enough air power?" in the Christian Science Monitor, which addressed the issues related to the recent wildfires across the West Coast.

Prof. Deb Martin has agreed to take on the newly established position of Special Features Editor for the publication Urban Geography. Her work in this role will include the evaluation of proposals and manuscripts for Special Features, and she will be pro-active in identifying themes for potential Special Features.

Report co-authored by Prof. Karen Frey stuns scientists with remarkable findings: phytoplankton mega-blooms beneath Arctic sea ice. Read more

Congratulations to the Class of 2012! Please see our web album for photos of faculty, students, friends, and family at the Commencement Ceremony.

NECN visits Clark University for the announcement of $329K National Science Foundation grant for the HERO program. Geography Professors John Rogan and Deb Martin, (co-PI's) as well as Geography student A.J. Shatz (BA '12, MA GIS '13) are interviewed for upcoming work in helping to solve the Asian Longhorn beetle infestation in Worcester. News link

Geography and Music double major Andrew (A.J.) Shatz was awarded a $500 stipend for receiving 1st prize in the RSSG/GISSG/CSG Student Illustrated Paper Competition for his poster titled, "Characterizing the Distribution of the Asian Longhorned Beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) in Worcester County, Massachusetts using Mahalanobis Typicality."

The winter issue of Geography News is now online!

Prof. Karen Frey contributed to the 2011 Arctic Report Card's collection of scientific essays, and participated on a panel of three distinguished researchers. The panel presented a live webinar and a Q&A session with reporters from the Associated Press, Reuters, ClimateWire, and others. Read more

Prof. Colin Polsky has been appointed co-Convening Lead Author for the Land-Use and Land-Cover Change chapter of the National Climate Assessment (NCA). The NCA, commissioned by the Office of Science & Technology Policy in the White House, is the official U.S. statement about impacts and vulnerabilities associated with climate variability and change.

Wallace A Atwood Lecture Series Thursday, October 13 and 14, 2011. featuring, Karen Seto, Assoc. Professor, School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Yale University, "Urbanization Trends in China: challenges and opportunities for environmental sustainability" Read more

Prof. Yuko Aoyama (PI) has been awarded a $269,999 National Science Foundation grant for support of the project entitled "The Global Shift in R&D Alliances: Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and the Quest for the Base-of-the-Pyramid (BOP) Markets." Read more

Read NASA Blogs' Q&A with Karen Frey: At the Seams of Science.

Congratulations to Hannah J. Tirrell-Wysocki, recent graduate of the Global Environmental Studies program with a minor in Geography. Hannah was recently recognized by the University for her outstanding Leadership in Sustainability. Read more

Clark's School of Geography now has a web album! Check out our photos from Commencement, and keep your eyes open for highlights and updates from Geography events.

Tony Bebbington, Director, has recently been awarded a fellowship on "Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America" from Free University of Berlin/Lateinamerika-Institut, for 2011-12.

A recent article in Nature details the "good news for aspiring geoscientists. Job opportunities at all career stages are on the rise." Read more

Anthony Bebbington, Susan Hanson, Roger Kasperson, Robert Kates, and Billie Lee Turner II were honored by The National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. on March 15th, 2011. Read more

See the updated Undergraduate Guide to the Major!

Prof. Gil Pontius co-authored "Comparison of Three Maps at Multiple Resolutions: A Case Study of Land Change Simulation in Cho Don District, Vietnam," an article published in the first 2011 edition of The Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Read more

Tony Bebbington, Director has been appointed by the Minister of Economy of El Salvador to Chair a blue ribbon committee that will monitor a strategic environmental assessment metal mining in the country. The assessment will serve as the basis for determining national mining policy and the conditions under which the country will permit hard-rock mining in the future.

Tom Koch '71 NEW BOOK: In Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground (University of Chicago Press, 2012) Tom, a medical geographer, makes a new and important argument. It is in the mapping of individual cases of illness as group events that we have come to understand disease as a public thing affecting general populations. Read more

Prof. Christopher Williams has been funded by NASA The Science of Terra and Aqua as a Co-I on a 3-year, $866,082 project examining remotely sensed albedo trends related to land cover change and disturbances.

As of September 2010 Prof. Deb Martin has been appointed Book Review Editor of Urban Affairs Review. She was also appointed to the Editorial Boards of the Urban Affairs Review and Journal of Geography in Higher Education last year.

Prof. Karen Frey has been funded by the NASA Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science Program for a proposal entitled "An interdisciplinary study of recent ice sheet melt, sea ice decline & enhanced ocean biological productivity along the Amundsen Coast, West Antarctica." Frey is a co-PI on the 3-year $707,112 grant, collaborating with Dr. Sarah Das at the Woods Hole Oceanograhic Institution and Dr. Matthew Evans at Wheaton College. Read more

Prof. Kulakowski was quoted in the L.A. Times article, "Bark beetles kill trees, but may not raise fire risk".

Prof. Chris Williams is the co-author of a recent report in Nature, "the leading weekly international science journal" 13 October 2010, "Recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply". Read More

Recent PhD research grant awards. Read more