In February, students Glenn O’Neil (Geography) and Miaoying Shi (Forestry) traveled separately to the week-long Association of American Geographers conference in New York City. Below, Glenn and Miaoying reflect on the conference.

By Glenn O’Neil

New York City skyline. Photo courtesy of Miaoying Shi.

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) conference is one of the largest gatherings of geographers every year, and is a large conference by any measure, due to Geography’s interdisciplinary nature. As evidence of the conference’s “big tent,” consider just some of AAG’s specialty groups: Biogeography, Business Geography, Cultural Geography, Health and Medical Geography, Cyberinfrastructure, and even Wine Geography.

Written by Sheldon Turner (Geological Sciences and ESPP), who attended and presented a poster at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference in Vancouver in February.

Outside the convention center in Vancouver

Earlier in February, I had the great opportunity to attend the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was at the conference for less than three days, but they were very eventful and exciting days. My primary purpose for attending was to present a poster in the Student Poster Competition. The title of my poster was “The Effectiveness of Visualizations in Communicating Natural Resource Issues” and the poster encompassed a large portion of my dissertation work. Although I believe the judges liked my poster (I will find out sometime in March), I was even more appreciative of the feedback and contacts made with others attending the meeting. Being a pan-scientific conference, there were researchers, educators, and science enthusiasts from across North America and the world.

Map of Uganda. Areas visited were northwest of Kampala; southeast of Gulu; and south east of Soroti. Source: Oxford Cartographers.

Barbara Mugwanya Zawedde (Horticulture and ESPP) is in Uganda conducting an environmental risk assessment for potential introduction of transgenic sweetpotato in Uganda. As part of her study, she conducted on-farm visits in eastern, central, and northern parts of the country to understand how farmers utilize and conserve the local sweetpotato diversity. Read about her experience below.

Currently climate change is a controversial topic, with a lot of debate on whether it is happening. While farmers in Uganda cannot provide sufficient evidence to decide the matter, they agree that the weather patterns have changed tremendously. This has resulted in substantial reduction in productivity of Uganda’s agriculture, which is 97% rain-fed. Other evidence for the change in weather patterns is the loss of crop biodiversity. Some sweetpotato varieties that have been grown for decades in various regions are now lost due to extreme weather. Many farmers in Uganda have mixed feelings about the year 2011.

On January 18, ESPP welcomed Paul Stern of the National Research Council as part of the 2011-2012 Distinguished Lecture Series. During his public lecture, Stern discussed the role of human behavior in the context of environmental changes. That is, how does human behavior affect environmental-related decisions; what are the outcomes of those decisions; and how can we achieve behavioral changes that have a positive impact on the environment?

Following his lecture, Stern sat down with ESPP to discuss his thoughts in an interview (see below). In the video, he details what it takes to realize behavioral changes in humans that could help the environment, specifically the “full-court press” approach; common mistakes in approaches to changing behavior, using the example of recycling; and why changing behavior is not merely brainwashing.

The Distinguished Lecture Series began in October and has featured researchers from around the world. Topics have included “China and Climate Change,” “The National Climate Assessment” and “Ecosystem Services.” Interviews with these presenters can be found here.

In an effort to engage world class researchers and practitioners with the MSU community, ESPP introduced a Distinguished Lecture Series this fall. We had three great speakers lecture on cutting-edge environmental topics, including China and climate change, the National Climate Assessment and ecosystem services. If you missed a lecture or want to revisit a speaker’s presentation, the ESPP website has uploaded the powerpoints as well as special video interviews. Below are the three videos and the schedule of exciting speakers coming this spring. For more information on the speakers or the lecture series, visit the ESPP website. Hope to see you this spring!

• January 18
  Paul Stern, Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Climate Change
  Topic: Climate change: role of behavior
• February 22
  Ortwin Renn, Environmental Sociology and Technology Assessment, University of Stuttgart
  Topic: Role of governance

Until last summer, Leila Desotelle (ESPP and Zoology) had been studying how reservoirs impact river food webs downstream of their dams. Then, the Kalamazoo oil spill happened. In a recent ESPP student seminar, Desotelle talked about her research and how the spill changed the track of her dissertation. Read about her experience below.

You never know what can happen during data collection for your dissertation. I’ve heard about hurricanes, floods, droughts, and massive wildfires all occurring while someone was collecting data. I never expected an oil spill to affect mine.

I had been collecting data along the Kalamazoo River, from Battle Creek to Allegan, Mich., to understand how dams affect stream food webs. I was measuring food source changes and the invertebrates that live there. But on July 26, 2010, a pipeline leak pumped 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo, changing my dissertation significantly.

Recently, ESPP hosted two media training workshops to help MSU faculty and students navigate the media waters. Kent Cassella, director of Media Communications at University Relations, led the workshops. Both sessions were well-attended and provided guidance to students and faculty on interacting and communicating with the media.

Below is video of the afternoon session, broken into four segments. Also, here’s a guide from University Relations on why going public with your research is important and how they can help you get the most out of your media experience.

Part I: “Spokesperson preparation”
In this introductory segment, Cassella covers the steps a researcher should take when approached by the media for an interview. This includes studying the media outlet ahead of time and preparing documents to help the journalist best understand the research. Cassella also talks about pitching a story to the media and controlling an interview.

Perdinan (Geography and ESPP) blogs about his experience with climate change research and his experience at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. Perdinan’s trip was supported by the ESPP travel fund. Any MSU graduate student can apply for ESPP travel funding, not just those in the ESPP doctoral specialization. The funding is for any interdisciplinary conference or meeting where a student is displaying a poster or presenting work orally. Funding will continue to be offered quarterly. For more information, see ESPP’s conference funding.

Research on climate change has been happening for decades and often straddles the disciplines of social and natural science work. My own research on climate change here at MSU has adopted that interdisciplinary style, asking the question: What are the impacts of climate change on crop production, particularly in the Midwest?

Linda Novitski (Zoology and ESPP) blogs about her recent experience at the North American Benthological Society conference where she presented a paper from her research on algae and water quality of inland lakes. Novitski’s trip was supported by the ESPP travel fund. Any MSU graduate student can apply for ESPP travel funding, not just those in the ESPP doctoral specialization. The funding is for any interdisciplinary conference or meeting where a student is displaying a poster or presenting work orally. Funding will continue to be offered quarterly. For more information, see ESPP’s conference funding.

This summer, I spent a week at the North American Benthological Society in Providence, Rhode Island. The meeting focused on “Responding to the Global Water Crisis,” and included special sessions on “water scarcity, innovations in policy politics, and science”, “global bioassessment methods,” and “ecosystem service concepts in the management of freshwater habitats.” I was there to present my research using Landsat 7 ETM+ satellite imagery to detect algae and assess water quality in inland lakes of the U.S.

Research is the one of the primary components of scientific advancement in this technological era. Disseminating findings through presentation and discussion with members of related fields enriches the collective knowledge base and improves the quality of individual research. Scientific conferences are a great way to share and discuss ideas.

This August, Subhasis Giri (Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering), Edwin Martinez (Crop and Soil Sciences) and Yaseen Hamaamin (Civil and Environmental Engineering), who all work with the Environmental Modeling Laboratory in Biosystems Engineering, attended the annual American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) conference in Louisville, Ky. At the conference they met professors, students, and policy makers in their research areas of implementation of best management practices (BMPs), application of fuzzy logic in hydrology, and modeling of wetlands to improve water quality. Their trip was supported by the ESPP travel fund. Any MSU graduate student can apply for ESPP travel funding, not just those in the ESPP doctoral specialization. The funding is for any interdisciplinary conference or meeting where a student is displaying a poster or presenting work orally. Funding will continue to be offered quarterly. For more information, see ESPP’s conference funding.