Scott Greene
applied climatology, renewable energy, Oklahoma
My current research includes a variety of applied climatological research focused on the broad theme of climate diagnostics and analysis of climatic
and environmental hazards. Specific examples include examination of the impacts of extreme climatic events (e.g., drought, heat waves)
upon agriculture and human health (projects funded by the State of Oklahoma, NOAA, and the EPA); the development of methods to study variability
in precipitation patterns across Oklahoma and the tropical Pacific (projects funded by the DoD and NOAA); and research and outreach associated
with issues of renewable energy and sustainability in Oklahoma and the Southern Great Plains (projects funded by the State of Oklahoma, US
Department of Energy, and the EPA).
See: www.ocgi.okstate.edu/owpi
Bruce Hoagland
plant biogeography, vegetation classification, floristic analysis
My research addresses questions related to plant distribution and abundance. At present, I have three research foci. The first is
reconstruction of historical vegetation patterns in Oklahoma using General Land Office plats and note. The second is floristic studies,
which consists of numerous inventories and development of the Oklahoma Vascular Plants database (www.biosurvey.ou.edu/atlasdesc.html).
The third is vegetation classification and mapping. I am also a jointly appointed faculty member with the Oklahoma Biological Survey,
where I act as coordinator of the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory ( www.oknaturalheritage.ou.edu).
Jason Julian
Fluvial Geomorphology, Ecohydrology
Rivers are the ultimate integrator of landscape hydrology, geomorphology, ecology, and anthropogenic land use. Alterations to the landscape thus result in changes to the river’s character, and these changes have broad consequences for ecosystem and human sustainability. My research aims to understand how land-use change affects fluvial processes across broad spatial scales, focusing on water availability, water quality, channel geometry, and sediment transport. One of my current projects is the mapping of headwater channels (the uppermost extent of rivers, which are currently not mapped in existing hydrography datasets) by combining remote sensing technologies and empirical geomorphic surveys. Our hypothesis is that land-use and physiography will dictate the location of headwater channels. The final product of this research will be a decision-tree based model that can be used to estimate headwater channel locations across Maryland, with future applications to other states such as Oklahoma.
Richard Nostrand
In retirement, I am writing the textbook I never wrote on the historical geography of the United States. The textbook will be developed by regions,
and for each of the regions I will have three themes: cultural diffusion, cultural ecology, and cultural landscape. I will focus on the four
centuries between 1500 and 1900. As a spinoff of the textbook, I will be writing an article on how geographers show change spatially. And with
Brock Brown, I will be writing a piece on the reconstruction of the El Cerrito Schoolhouse.
Karl Offen
Historical Geography, Political Ecology, History of Cartography, Latin America
My current research projects include an edited book (with Historian Jordana Dym) titled Mapping Latin America: Space and Society, 1492 –
2000 under contract with the University of Chicago Press. This work brings together some 40 scholars and 75 maps to document how
representations of space both shape and reflect Latin America. In a second research project, I’m using English and Spanish archival
sources to examine the foundation of an English Puritan colony on Providence Island in the far western Caribbean in the 1630s, and how settler
activities (from African slavery and crop movements to ‘bioprospecting’ and piracy) influenced the early history of Central
America. It is my hope that this study will provide motivation for me to finish my overdue monograph titled A Kingdom Between Empires:
Power, Identity, and the Geographic Imagination in Caribbean Central America.
Darren Purcell
Political Geography, Economic Geography, Internet, credit unions, borders, Europe, East-Central Europe
My research interests revolve around the subdisciplines of political and economic geography, with a mix of interests in information and communications
technology. Recent publications and manuscripts are situated in political geography and focus on state usage of the communication technologies to present
a strategic image of a country to the wider world. More recently, I have become interested in issues of eGovernance and their connection to
Europeanization. My current research is examining the use of technology to extend and monitor borders such as the U.S.-Mexican border. The other
active project examines issues of community chartered credit unions in the United States, and their growth patterns since 1998 legislation that relaxed
restrictions on community charters. The definitions of community and the discourses around scale used to define the fields of membership are my foci.
Tarek Rashed
GIS and remote sensing, hazards risk and vulnerability analyses, disaster management, modeling population dynamics, systems analysis and
design, fuzzy logic, virtual GIS, internet mapping, urban remote sensing
Rashed’s areas of research cut across a board range of topical interests due to his multidisciplinary educational background in Architectural
Engineering and Urban Planning, Computation and Information Systems Engineering, Disaster Management, and Geography. These areas include hazards
simulation, risk analysis, and spatial decision support systems; urban remote sensing applications and image processing algorithms; virtual reality,
geovisualization and Web-mapping; and urban planning and the relationship between social space and physical environment. A single theme that has been
uniting his research in these diverse topics is a common focus on geospatial information technologies and their applied uses for the investigation of
a variety of urban research and policy questions in cities, both contemporary and historical.
Bob Rundstrom
Internal Migration, Race, Resettlement, Oklahoma
For the last three and a half years, we have been constructing a biographical database of a sample of 14,000+ people who resettled permanently in Indian and Oklahoma territories, mostly between 1890 and Oklahoma statehood (1907). More than a million immigrants swamped an already populated area of almost 70,000 square miles during these seventeen years, a social and environmental upheaval pursued and manifest in a manner unlike any other in U.S. history. Oddly, there is no comprehensive geographical study of it. We know that many of the people who participated in the legendary land runs and lotteries did not stay very long. But who were those who stayed and made a home in the new state? Is Carl Sauer's suggestion that they were "…a loose aggregation of strangers" correct, or was there substantial cluster migration from Midwestern and Southern towns and counties of common origin? In what parts of the U.S. had their way of life and ideas been formed? How did ideas about race, gender, and class shape their new lives? What new regional patterns were established in the early 20th Century, and do they still exist today?
Fred Shelley
Political geography, World economy, Academic process/geographic education, United States/North America
My current and projected future research projects include the following. I am working on text for an Atlas of the Great Plains. This
project links to the development of research and teaching on sustainability in the Southern Plains, including work with Scott Greene on the
Sustainability Research and Education Center. I plan to focus work on the historical and contemporary political and economic geography of Oklahoma
and the Southern Plains in conjunction with these efforts. I also continue my research on the political geography of the United States in the global
economy, including studies of U.S. electoral geography. Finally, my recent work with the AAG’s EDGE Project on advising and mentoring in
geography has spurred my interest in undertaking further research on the academic process and procedure in U.S. higher education.
Laurel Smith
Indigenous geographies, video technologies, transnational ‘networks’ of advocacy
Recently I spent four years undertaking ethnographic inquiry into the production of videos made by, with, and for indigenous individuals and
organizations in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. I examined the intersections among indigenous activism, academic advocacy, and neo-liberal
restructuring. This project provided insight into 1) the transnational geographies of access and collaboration that facilitate indigenous video
production, and 2) the oppositional cultural politics that characterize contemporary indigenous movements in Mexico. Currently I am drawing on this
research to write articles that (among other things) critique the geographic metaphor of network, explore the gendered geographies of indigenous
development initiatives, and highlight the potential of video technologies to amplify historically-marginalized actors’ articulations and
assessments. I am also working on a follow-up project that will take me back to Mexico in order to explore audience reception of the oppositional cultural politics that distinguish most indigenous videos.
Aondover Tarhule
Hydrology, Hydroclimatic variability, Dendrochonology, Africa
A central theme in my diverse range of research interests is hydro-climatic variability. Currently, I have two major projects. During the past
several years I have been working on an NSF-funded project exploring the feasibility of developing a tree-ring chronology for semi-arid West Africa.
The goal is to derive proxy records of hydro-climatic events preceding the beginning of instrumental records in the region. Second, I am using
tree-rings to reconstruct the precipitation and stream discharge time series for the Arbuckle Simpson Aquifer in South Central Oklahoma during the
past 300-500 years. The results will support long-range water resources planning initiatives being carried out by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.
Bret Wallach
Cultural geography
I am working on a book tentatively called The World of Work. It will be a comprehensive and empirical survey of the ways people
support themselves across the globe, from peasant farming and coal mining to aircraft manufacturing, retailing, and communications. I also
continue to develop my greatmirror.com. New additions there are backlogged but should be cleared
sometime early in 2008. Meanwhile, I am interested in the physical transformation or geographical history of Oklahoma City and Dallas and
am compiling material for a paper at least on Dallas, which I can write about without the heel-nipping and worse that is generated by writing about
Oklahoma in any way other than promotional.
May Yuan
My research interest is in temporal GIS, geographic representation, spatiotemporal information modeling, and applications of geographic information
technologies to dynamic systems. My research projects center on representation models, algorithms for spatiotemporal analysis, and understanding of
dynamics in geographic phenomena, such as wildfires, rainstorms, air-pollution plumes, and activities and behaviors in complex social systems. I
explore multiple perspectives of dynamics, analyze the drivers and outcomes of geographic dynamics, extract spatiotemporal patterns and behavioral
structures of dynamic systems, and draw insights into the system's development and evolution to derive an integrated understanding, interpretation,
and prediction of activities, events, and processes in dynamic geographic systems.
