Wilson

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” 

-E. O. Wilson

This fabulous quote is from a larger 2009 story in Harvard Magazine about the tensions and reconcilliation between Wilson and the recently deceased James Watson. (h/t Kottke) 

Polar warming

 This seems like it could be important to figure out:

Study: Polar warming may be underestimated by climate models, ~50 million year old climate variability suggests

Finding lost cities with LiDAR

There has been a flurry of news recently about the successes of using LiDAR to uncover lost ancient cities without the destructive clearing that was required in the past.

The BBC announces, The discovery of the Americas' long-lost 'Rome'.

The New Scientist details the findings calling it A mysterious civilisation built a network of cities and roads in the Amazon between 3000 and 1500 years ago, and then disappeared.

And for the science community, the prestigious journal showcased a richly illustrated peer-reviewed LiDAR paper on its cover about Two Thousand Years of Garden Urbanism in the Upper Amazon.

Lancet paper on access in Colombian

Excited to share that our research team, led by Dr. Hanna and Dr. Peck, has published Use of the six core surgical indicators from the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery in Colombia: a situational analysis in The Lancet Global Health.

Working in Colombia has given me a great chance to discover an amazing country. And the diversity of its landscapes produce some pretty amazing challenges to access to emergency surgical care. Mapping those with and without 2-hour access, was only the first of the six indicators, but it helped illustrate how much both the physical and cultural landscapes of Colombia shaped that access.

Part of what made this possible was a commitment by Colombia to keep good records across their entire nation. Part what it took was a large team with diverse backgrounds and skills. And part of it was a leadership with a vision sustained over years. There is plenty left to do. Updates and refinements and comparisons with other factors. But this was a huge step and I am proud to have been part of this amazing team.

Research Paper: Mapping COVID-19

Maged Kamel Boulos, a Chinese researcher, and Este Geraghty, Chief Medical Officer at Esri, have a new research paper out examining various online GIS-enabled tracking of COVID-19.

Kamel Boulos, M.N., Geraghty, E.M. Geographical tracking and mapping of coronavirus disease COVID-19/severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic and associated events around the world: how 21st century GIS technologies are supporting the global fight against outbreaks and epidemics. Int J Health Geogr 19, 8 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12942-020-00202-8

The paper makes some interesting points about availability and timeliness of data comparing information access duing Chinese New Year (2020) with the Hajj (2014). Along with the recent Lancet article on the JHU dashboard, this may become a must-cite for health geography for quite a while to come.

SNAP and Food Environment

The latest issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is out. The Geohealth Lab @ CRSSA contributed to one of the cover stories, Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Dietary Behaviors: Role of Community Food Environment. With seven coauthors, it is clear evidence of the value of multidisciplinary Team Science. But the lead author is Dr. Cori Lorts whose work deserves cover page attention. The paper look at how children relying on SNAP are impacted, also, by where they live and the food environment of their neighborhood.

Reserach in NJ

New Jersey has released a searchable online database called Research with New Jersey. While focused on STEM, it represents other areas at Rutgers, Rowan and other NJ schools. It helpfully allows visitors to browse by unit. For instance, you can see all of the work it includes for the Department of Landscape Architecture. As it gets updated a little more, it could become pretty useful for discovering potential advisors, collaborators and authors.

A little something

Scarfo, R. A. 1986. "Stewardship in the 20th century," Landscape Architectural Review, 7: 2, 13-15.

Scarfo, R. A. 1988. "Stewardship and the Profession of Landscape Architecture," Landscape Journal, 7 (1988): 1, 60-68.

Aquifer quality from USGS

The USGS has released a study on water quality that includes specifics on five major aquifers. It sounds like one of those "Good News, Bad News" reports with findings like this:

"The nutrient nitrate was the only constituent from manmade sources that exceeded the human-health benchmark. These findings were in the Valley and Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers and the Piedmont and Blue Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers at a low percentage (2 percent)."

 

Technical announcements for five aquifers studied:
Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers (western U.S.)
Valley and Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers and the Piedmont and Blue Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers (eastern U.S.)
Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain aquifer system (east coast of U.S.)
Southeastern Coastal Plain aquifer system (southeastern U.S.)
Coastal Lowlands aquifer system (south central U.S.)

Classic research approach

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with the problems longer." --Albert Einstein

Crime and trees

 Since at least 2001, when Kuo and Sullivan wrote about trees in urban housing developments in Chicago, it has been clear that trees and crime are related. But later studies have muddied the waters a bit. Recent studies in Baltimore have clarified things a bit more and CityLab has posted a summary that reduces the relationship between crime and trees down to basics, like: "While low dense brush seems to increase it, tall broad canopies seem to decrease it."

RU Alum helps discover new frog species

One of our former students, Brian Curry, helped a team of researchers track down a new species of frog in out area. And now they have a paper out.

Cultural history

Creative use of big data and technology is starting to create new ways to see patterns and trends. Northwestern reports on scholarly outputs there that are letting us watch the changing cultural heritage of the American landscape.

“We’re starting out to do some­thing which is called cul­tural sci­ence where we’re in a very sim­ilar tra­jec­tory as sys­tems biology for example,” said Schich, now an asso­ciate pro­fessor in arts and tech­nology at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas at Dallas. “As data sets about birth and death loca­tions grow, the approach will be able to reveal an even more com­plete pic­ture of his­tory. In the next five to 10 years, we’ll have con­sid­er­ably larger amounts of data and then we can do more and better, address more questions.”

Their paper in Science says that they "have reconstructed aggregate intellectual mobility over two millennia through the birth and death locations of more than 150,000 notable individuals. The tools of network and complexity theory were then used to identify characteristic statistical patterns and determine the cultural and historical relevance of deviations." Mapped out, we can see what it means spatially.

A trio of Cook Scholars in the news

The campus is still abuzz with discussions of yesterday afternoon's GH Cook Scholar presentations  by 3 outstanding landscape architecture students, Rebecca Cook (no relation), Michelle Hartman, and Jessie Woods. So, it should come as no surprise that these three made the newspaper today with their research-backed visions for the campus.

Experimental design

I found a great resource to help with critical reading of research methods and findings.
Google's Driector of Research, Peter Norvig, has posted a useful list of red flags in experimental design reporting. It is pretty readable and covers many common mistakes.

Conducting research

I think that the research community might just want to file this experience under "You can't make an omelet without breaking the world's oldest animal."

On the role of professors today

"SOME of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates," writes Nicholas Kristof in today's NY Times. 

He goes on saying first that "The most stinging dismissal of a point is to say: “That’s academic.” In other words, to be a scholar is, often, to be irrelevant." Ouch.

On research in landscape architecture

As we launch a semester on research in landscape architecture, I would like to encourage readers to look over two very different resources.

The first the standardbearing journal in the field, the Landscape Journal. Take some time to look over the journal's overview and explore how it presents itself. A different lens through which to look at the Journal is Google Scholar's list of most cited papers.

The second resource to explore is the Landscape Architecture Body of Knowledge (LABoK). This document was developed as an initial stab at describing the specialized knowledge that comprises the intellectual content of our field. A close reading of the document will show that the authors understood that this as a flawed first attempt. Unfortunately, it is now 10 years old and still without a 2nd edition, despite a decade of rapid change in landscape architecture.

A critical fork in the road

"The profession of landscape architecture and the schools perpetuating it stand at a critical fork in the road.  One fork leads to a significant field of endeavor contributing to the betterment of human environment, while the other points to a subordinate field of superficial embellishment.  The question the profession and the schools must answer i s which road shall be followed and what adjustments may be made adequately to prepare landscape architects to solve the rising problems.  The need for comprehensive landscape architectural planning is not diminishing; on the contrary it is increasing.  The expansion of population and increase in complexity of environmental organization make the need greater today than ever before in history."

Hideo Sasaki, 1950

"Thoughts on education in landscape architecture"

in Landscape Architecture Magazine

A geodesign bibliography

Matt Artz and Shannon McIlvaney have developed an impressive and extensive bibliography on geodesign that is kept at GIS and Science. Admittedly, it is less academic, but the volume is impressive and captures the growing substance of this nascent field with both breadth and depth. It seems like the next step is for someone to step up and develop a more selective annotated bibliography that serves to define the core of the field.