Geography Education

Melani Smith is Director of Planning and Urban Design at downtown Los Angeles based Meléndrez, a landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design firm. Melani’s…

Projections of urban growth indicate areas where biodiversity is at high risk.

The AAG Smart Brief is a fantastic source of geographic news.  This is what they said about this article:  "Areas such as tropical Africa and eastern China are expected to be hot spots of urbanization during the next several years, according to researchers, who used satellite imagery and other data to project future urban expansion through 2030. 'We're not forecasting population, we're forecasting the expansion of urban space,' said Yale University geographer Karen Seto. Their efforts could be used to assist conservation initiatives, Seto noted."

Tags: AAG, urban, sprawl, land use, urban ecology, biogeography, unit 7 cities, environment.

"The CGGE has built a collection of online modules for undergraduate courses in geography...Six modules are currently available: National Identity, Population and Natural Resources, Global Economy, Global Climate Change, Water Resources, and Migration."

 

Each module includes:

1. A Conceptual Framework that introduces students to some of the key concepts, theories, and analytical approaches in geography.

2. Case studies illustrating how geographic concepts, methods, and technologies can be used to investigate and solve problems in different places and countries.

3. Collaborative projects that use e-learning technologies to connect geography classes in different countries for online collaboration and discussion."

 

If you haven't yet discovered the AAG's CGGE site, it is a treasure trove of activities, ideas, lesson plans, and case studies. 

 

The disaster underscores the need to diversify our crops.

 

AAG: The drought that has hammered much of the country has clearly illustrated the dangers that come with limited agricultural diversity, writes Macalester College geography professor William G. Moseley in this opinion piece. Federal subsidies have encouraged the growth of corn, but this crop is quite vulnerable to drought, Moseley writes. "A more diverse cropping landscape would mean viable farms, healthier diets and a steadier food system," he writes.

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) is now Beta-testing a new website to address some of the issues from the NRC report, “Understanding the Changing Planet, Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences.” This site, builds on the idea that geographers can communicate truth in ways that other disciplines don’t offer, or “the geographic advantage.”

 

The four aspects the geographic advantage (as conceptualized by the AAG team) are:

1.  Relationships between people and the environment

2.  Importance of spatial variability

3.  Processes operating an multiple and interlocking geographic scales

4.  The integration of spatial and temporal analysis

 

To ensure that this advantage is harnessed, the AAG prepared 11 modules within these 4 categories of key issue facing the world:

--Environmental Change

--Sustainability

--Rapid Spatial Reorganization

--Technological Change