Humboldt Geographer Vol. 1 No. 1

H Geographer umboldt

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

Humboldt State University Department of Geography

SPRING 2017 NEWSLETTER CONTENTS From the Chair

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Student Highlights

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Alumni Updates

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Faculty News

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Department Happenings

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Humboldt geographers gather at the annual meeting of the California Geographical Society, hosted April 28-30 by Grossmont College in San Diego.

HSU Represents at Annual Meeting of California Geographers in San Diego After a long but fun road trip down to San Diego, Humboldt came home with several top awards from the 71st annual California Geographical Society meeting held April 28-30 at Grossmont College.

The sixteen current students, along with alumni, who attended represented HSU Geography with enthusiasm and professionalism.

HSU Geography had three firstplace student awardees. Nathaniel Douglass won first place for the McKnight Professional Paper Award. Russell Walls won first place for the Geosystems Professional Paper Award. And Torrie Brickley won first place for the Student Cartography

Competition. Douglass also won the David Lantis Scholarship, and several of our students landed Student Travel Awards.

Faculty and staff got in on the action, too. Professor Matthew Derrick was awarded the Friend of Geography prize, and he was elected CGS vice president. Nick Perdue, the department’s newest faculty member (see Professor Profile on page 9), was elected to the organization’s board, as was Merien Townsel, our recent graduate and current administrative support assistant.

For more the CGS meeting, see page 5.

Geography Professor Receives Distinguished Faculty Award Since 1964, Humboldt State University has honored outstanding faculty. Professor Stephen Cunha, Department of Geography, received one of the 2016-17 Outstanding Professor Awards.

FROM THE CHAIR

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HSU Geography Continues to Shine Despite this year shaping up to be the second rainiest year on record, Humboldt State geographers continue to shine, pushing forward new and innovative frontiers. Our department maintains its commitment to student success by providing a research-oriented educational experience. We remain distinguished by our one-on-one instruction, challenging analytical courses, independent senior capstone projects, and quality emphasis on experiential learning in the field, including locally, across the American West, or in remote international areas.

While our program is designed to ensure breadth, our recent curriculum revisions encourage students to specialize in one of three concentration areas: the human world, the physical environment, or geospatial systems. As part of our curriculum revision plan, this past year we added one of our upperdivision physical geography courses (GEOG 302: Global Ecology and Biogeography) to the general education curriculum (upper-division area B science) and developed a new geospatial course (GSP 280: GIS for the Social Sciences) in order to increase exposure of students to Geography and Geospatial Sciences. Many of our students continue to include a minor in their degree program (e.g., Geospatial Sciences), and we also now offer a geospatial certificate through the Extended Education program as of fall 2016. A recent external review of our program asserted that our “curriculum should serve as a model for Geography undergraduate programs that have not undergone recent revision.”

Sherriff awards Herring Geography Scholarship to Geography major Blenna Kiros.

In 2016, we welcomed our newest tenure-track faculty member, Nicholas Perdue, from the University of Oregon. Perdue is already reshaping new frontiers in our cartography and geospatial program. His energies contributed to multiple student presentation and map projects that led to firstplace awards at the 2016 annual meeting of the California Geographical Society.

This year, as in past years, we take great pride in seeing our student and alumni accomplishments. Our students are truly remarkable. I also want to highlight the deep commitment our faculty show in mentorship and support for our students that contributes greatly to

their success. Some details of the latest accomplishments are highlighted throughout the newsletter. I also encourage you to see what we’re up to and share what you’re up to through our university website and new Humboldt Geography Facebook page.

Each year we hold an end-of-theyear barbeque potluck and awards celebration on the Friday the week before spring graduation at HSU. This year we invited all alumni and friends to join us and will continue to do so each year. We hope you’ll be able to join us soon!

Rosemary Sherriff Department Chair

STUDENT HIGHLIGHTS

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Senior Geography Major Wins at NACIS In November 2016, senior Geography major Patrick Wood won the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) Student Map Competition. The competition included nineteen entries (twelve graduate students, seven undergraduates), traveling from nine university programs including the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Penn State University, University of Oregon, University College London, and the University of Toronto. The award, presented to Patrick at the annual NACIS conference in Colorado Springs, included a cash prize of $500. Over 320 private sector, academic, and public sector cartographers gathered this year for five days of presentations, workshops, and networking.

Patrick Wood, alongside Nathaniel Douglass at the 2016 NACIS meeting, shows off his award-winning map of Tibet and the Himalaya.

HSU students Nathaniel Douglass (Geography), Aidan Williams (Geography), and John Dellysse (Environmental Studies) also entered high-quality map projects. The student cartographers were accompanied HSU Geography faculty Nick Malloy, Amy Rock, and Mary Beth Cunha (NACIS treasurer and a session moderator).

An HSU Geospatial cohort of students, alumni, and faculty gather at the annual NACIS conference, held last November in Colorado Springs.

Cartography Students Map Pipeline and Oil Spills In March 2017, Advanced Cartography students displayed pipeline and oil spill maps at the campus event Stand with Standing Rock: Water is Life, sponsored by the Environment and Community Club and the Indian Natural Resources Science and Engineering Club. Their maps drew connections between the peaceful protest at the Oceti Sakowin Camp on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to issues in our local community, specifically in regards to the Klamath and Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas pipelines.

Advanced Cartography student Kassandra Rodriguez displays pipeline maps at the Water is Life event.

STUDENT HIGHLIGHTS

HSU Geographers Explore and Map the Sierra Nevada Advanced Geospatial students presented an eighteen-foot map display at HSU’s IdeaFest from the Mapping the Sierra Nevada class co-taught by Mary Beth and Stephen Cunha. The task in this course was to locate quantitative spatial data. In many cases students built their own databases from primary historical documents. Some topics proved more difficult than others as students mapped a variety of themes to accompany text in a forthcoming book about environmental issues in the Sierra Nevada.

Top: Senior Isabella Knori displays maps of the Sierras at HSU’s 2017 IdeaFest. Left: HSU Geographers hike Yosemite Falls.

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“As soon as I took my very first geography course at HSU, I knew I had found exactly what I had been looking for in a discipline. Everything just clicked and I was eager to declare my major as Geography.

Every class I have taken since has solidified that choice and I feel really lucky to be a part of such an amazing department.

All of my professors have been great teachers and have helped me develop a passion for geography and a great desire to pursue the subject further.”

Isabella Knori Class of 2017

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STUDENT HIGHLIGHTS

HSU Geographers Travel to San Diego for CGS Meeting

Top left: Kevin Maurer evaluates geocaching. Top right: Josie Medrano investigates murals and urban revitalization in Eureka. Below: A trio of seniors—Russell Walls, Nathaniel Douglass, and Torrie Brickley— for their original geographic projects.

Two vanloads of Geography students made the long journey to San Diego to attend the annual conference of the California Geographical Society, hosted by Grossmont College April 28-30. HSU geographers participated in three different categories, listed below.

PAPER PRESENTATIONS Sho Drake, “ Discourse Development: An Exploration of Historical Narratives in the Wetlands of PALCO Marsh” Kelly Bessem, “ The Merced River Plan: Understanding the Interaction Between Science, Politics, and Public Response in Yosemite Valley, CA” Nathaniel Douglass, “ Mapping Arcata Neighborhoods and Perceptions” Russell Walls, “ Benthic Debris of Whiskeytown Lake: The Pollution of Public Access" POSTER PRESENTATIONS Josie Medrano, “ Painting the City: Urban Revitalization in Eureka, California” Kevin Maurer, “ Evaluation Geocaching as a Geographic Education Technique” Solveig Mitchell, “ Pillar Point Marsh: Reconstructing Landscape from a Paleo Perspective” Isabella Knori, “ Exploring California Condor Reintroduction in Northern California” Mark Adams, “ The World’s Foggiest Airport: A Landscape Created by National Needs” STUDENT MAP COMPETITION Torrie Brickley, “ Colombian Refugees 1981 - 2015” Garrett Anderson, “ A Spatial Analysis of DUI Arrests in Arcata, CA”

“I would love to travel the world and conduct meaningful research for an organization like National Geographic. I would love nothing more than to spend the rest of my career creating maps that depict the beauty and complexity of the world. I have loved being apart of the Humboldt State Geography Department and their undying attention towards my success. I couldn't have asked for a more dedicated group of faculty to lead me into my professional career.”

Nathaniel Douglass Class of 2017

STUDENT HIGHLIGHTS

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2016-17 GEOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS DR. JOHN L. HARPER MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP Sheamus Vaughan Joshua Shindelbower HERRING GEOGRAPHY SCHOLARSHIP Blenna Kiros DR. JOSEPH S. LEEPER GEOGRAPHY SCHOLARSHIP Mark Adams Stewart Millar SUZANNE WETZEL SEEMANN GEOGRAPHY SCHOLARSHIP Nathaniel Douglass Kassandra Rodriguez WEBB BAUER AWARD Isabella Knori Patrick Wood NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION AWARD Henry Whipps

GAMMA THETA UPSILON INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL HONOR SOCIETY INDUCTEES Isabella Knori Mark Adams Patrick Wood Katherine Schmiderer Eric Deason Nathaniel Douglass Kassandra Rodriquez Henry Whipps

Professional cartographer Stuart Allen, invited HSU by the Cartography Club, offers students an expert’s insight into building effective maps.

Student Clubs Foster Community, Apply Geographic Education The Humboldt GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY plans volunteer and social activities on and off campus, including hiking, kayaking, and camping trips. The Geographic Society serves as a place of community for many students, especially incoming transfer students new to the area. The club coordinates peer-review practice presentations and feedback sessions before CGS and other academic conferences. Additionally, the Geographic Society puts in the majority of the work for Geography Awareness Week, and helps faculty and staff coordinate department events such as semester and end-of-the year gatherings. In the future, Humboldt Geographical Society will issue its first Map Zine, featuring a series of informational maps of Arcata for incoming freshman and transfer students to utilize upon arrival. Join the club on Facebook!

The HSU CARTOGRAPHY CLUB focuses on improving the art of map making and helps students across campus improve the quality of their map products. The club has hosted various skillshops, Mapathon events in collaboration with the Peace Corps, and brought to campus distinguished professional cartographers, Stuart Allan and Neil Allen, to give a lecture and workshop on map design. In addition, the Cartography Club helps support student travel to the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) annual conference.

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CRISTINA BAUSS (2016) is currently working as a writer and editor for the Arcata office of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, one of three temporary positions filled by recent Geography graduates through a contract codirected by Mary Beth Cunha and Rosemary Sherriff. In April, four of her maps were published in American Guerrillas: From the French and Indian Wars to Iraq and Afghanistan—How Americans Fight Unconventional Wars by Thomas D. Mays, a professor of US History at HSU. She plans to stay in Humboldt County for the foreseeable future, and possibly continue her research in a master’s program.

NICK BURDINE (2016) is working on a Peace Corps project called Camp TOBE in Ukraine, an allboys summer camp for Ukrainian boys between the ages of 13 and 17. The purpose of the camp is to teach boys about a wide range of topics including gender-related issues, mental and physical health, and HIV/AIDS, as well as teach life skills related to leadership, project design, and stress management.

The camp aims to teach boys about important subjects not covered in school and how to become social advocates in their communities after the camp is finished. The project has been awarded a grant funded by Michelle Obama's Let Girls Learn initiative. For more information visit: https:// camptobeukraine.wordpress.com To donate to this project visit: https://donate.peacecorps.gov/donate/ project/camp-tobe2964/ DEBORAH ENGELHARDT (2016) moved back to her home state of Texas to be near family after graduation. She dabbled in land surveying in rural Texas, but found it wasn’t for her. Now she is happy working for Coserv, a co-op power company just north of Dallas-Fort Worth, as an Engineering GIS Tech. In her free time, Deborah enjoys getting outside and exploring Texas’ geography. She has also started making custom maps for friends and family, and hopes to start selling them on her website and Etsy by the end of the year.

ALUMNI UPDATES

Atop two wheels, Kris Anderson explores South Asia.

KRIS ANDERSON (2015) took a three-month break from his GIS Technician position at Alpine Land Information Services to get back out in the world and do some geography. He spent that period of time in India and Nepal seeking out Tibetan settlements and continuing his senior research project.

LUCAS REYES (2015) is a master’s of arts candidate in Geography at California State University, Long Beach. Before applying to graduate school, Reyes spent a year back in the Central Valley, working as a substitute teacher and special education resource specialist for Fire-Las Deltas School district. He was awarded the Hispanic Opportunities for Graduate Access and Retention (HOGAR) recruitment scholarship in the fall to attend CSULB and served as a HOGAR Student Travel Fellow while attending AAG Boston to present a cartographic poster on his Tibetan field work. His master’s thesis, titled The Legal Green Rush: New California Agricultural Geographies in Commercial Cannabis Cultivation, explores the budding legal cannabis industry.

Working on his master’s thesis, Lucas Reyes packs in some dank reading.

ALUMNI UPDATES

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Sara Matthews enjoys the view at Mono Lake, where she conducts research contributing to her master’s thesis.

At an award ceremony in Washington, DC, Jenny Novak is honored by the Federal Emergency Manage Agency.

JENNY NOVAK (2007) received the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Community Preparedness Honor in Washington, DC. Novak presently manages the comprehensive Emergency Preparedness Program for California State University, Northridge (CSUN), specializing in preparedness outreach and situational awareness. FEMA announced Novak as one of eleven winners of the 2016 Individual and Community Preparedness Awards, recognizing the outstanding efforts of individuals, programs, and organizations throughout the country working to prepare their communities for emergencies.

Stay Connected with HSU Geography Visit www.humboldt.edu/geography to view an interactive map showing where HSU Geography alumni report they are. Are you an alumni?

Email kosmos@humboldt.edu to get added to the map.

Like our Facebook page Humboldt Geography @HSUGEOG. Join our LinkedIn Group Department of Geography at Humboldt State University.

Class of 2013 Geographers Pursue Graduate Degrees at Humboldt SARA MATTHEWS (2013) is a graduate student in HSU’s Forestry, Watersheds, and Wildlands Sciences program. Her thesis investigates the possibility of using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (drones) for natural resource management in the Mono Basin. Sara is excited to start her research this summer. She'll be splitting time between conducting interviews with stakeholders in the Mono Basin and working as a Wildlife Scientist for the Tahoe Resource Conservation District. Sara will be taking the fall semester off from teaching and classes in order to carry out the Unmanned Aircraft Surveys during the Eared Grebe fall migration. Anyone who is interested in her research can reach Sara by email or attend her thesis defense next spring.

RODOLFO CURIEL (2013) worked in Humboldt County elementary schools before returning to HSU to pursue a master’s degree in Forestry. He is currently examining the role of landownership and political boundaries in increasing community capacity for collective action in natural resource management.

Specifically, his research is focused on private landowners and wildfire management in the midKlamath Basin. The goal of his research is to enhance collaboration and cooperation in resource management between private landowners, tribes, and federal and state agencies. This summer he will conduct interviews with private and public landowners as well as analyze survey data. His research interests include community-based natural resource management, socio-political boundaries, and LennonMcCartney.

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FACULTY NEWS

Professor Profile

Nicholas Perdue Joins Humboldt Geography NICHOLAS PERDUE joined the faculty as an assistant professor in fall 2016. Since then he has received a Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Grant from the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Science, which allows him to employ two student research assistants (Nathaniel Douglass and Kassandra Rodriguez) in a pilot study evaluating assessments of risk and vulnerability in sea level rise maps. He was awarded an incentive program grant from the Sponsored Program Foundation to expand the project during summer 2017.

Over the 2016-17 academic year, Nick and other faculty have coordinated with the Peace Corp to have three mapathon events using Open Street Maps to build basemaps in Botswana and Mongolia, teaching students how to use free web-based tools while broadening geographic awareness. In April, Nick and students from his Advanced Cartography class went to San Francisco to work with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project to understand processes of gentrification in the Mission District, tour neighborhood murals, and apply advanced web-mapping techniques. Nicholas is working with a local non-profit organization and the Humboldt Area Foundation to make maps for a community food guide. He is also developing connections between the Institute of Cartographic Design and community members to create service-based learning opportunities for cartography students.

Arrayed in fashionable flannel, sporting sockless sandals, and sided by his bandanna-bedecked pooch, Perdue is on the path to Mr. Humboldt status. And only the first year! Welcome to the department, Nick.

This coming fall semester Nicholas will teach a new regional geography course, Geography of the American West. The course will investigate the complex landscape of the Western United States, with topics Students in Perdue’s Advanced Cartography work with San Francisco’s Anti-Mapping Project. ranging from the role of the federal government in large infrastructure projects to the rights of nonhuman species and constructions of nature. The course will include a number of creative projects and a depth experience field trip to Eastern Oregon in collaboration with Dr. Sherriff’s Climate, Ecosystems, and People course.

FACULTY NEWS MARY BETH CUNHA was recently elected as treasurer and board member of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS). She was also selected to serve on the Local Arrangements Committee to facilitate the International Cartographic Exhibition at the 2017 International Cartographic Conference in Washington, DC. This July event is the first time in 40 years that the US will host the biennial conference. This past October, five HSU student cartographers accompanied Mary Beth to the NACIS annual meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado; they were joined by six alumni. At HSU, Mary Beth continues to serve as an active member on the cross-college interdepartmental Geospatial Steering Committee and related subcommittees. As Cartography Club advisor, she worked with Professor Nick Perdue and the club’s presidents, Patrick Wood and Nathaniel Douglass, to host two master cartographers, Stuart Allan and Neil Allen. Three hours of presentations and student map critique sessions preceded a dinner (and more maps!) at the Cunha home with seventeen student cartographers.

STEPHEN CUNHA, in tandem with Mary Beth Cunha, cotaught a special Mapping the Sierra Nevada class this spring that included a six-day trip along the Sierra foothills to Yosemite. Last fall

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The Cunhas, on a field trip they organized as part of the Mapping the Sierra course they cotaught this past spring semester, take a moment together to bask in the beauty of Yosemite.

he led an Around the World by Private Jet trip for National Geographic, and with Mary Beth will crew two trips this summer up the western coast of Greenland to Baffin and Ellesmere Islands.

Other initiatives include consulting for the Asian Development Bank in Myanmar, and contributing to a World Conservation Union evaluation of the Pamir Mountains World Heritage Site, along with recent publications in the AAG Annals, APCG Yearbook, Pacifica, and contributing to a young reader volume on Yosemite National Park.

MATTHEW DERRICK was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor in May 2016.

For the second year in a row, he spent much of last summer as a research fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, one of the best-known think tanks in Washington, DC. While there he collaborated in coediting Questioning Post-Soviet, a

policy-oriented book that investigates the continuing relevance of Soviet legacies in the fifteen independent states that once comprised the USSR; the volume also includes two chapters co-written

by Derrick. The book’s release was accompanied by a public roundtable, which Derrick helped organize and co-chaired, at the Wilson Center in December 2016 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s demise. This past year, with his colleague Rosemary Sherriff, Derrick also assumed co-editor duties of the California Geographer.

At the most recent annual meeting of the California Geographical Society, Derrick was elected as the organization’s vice president.

Additionally, he received organization’s Friend of Geography award. With the support of a Fulbright fellowship, Derrick will spend his upcoming sabbatical year in post-Soviet Central Eurasia; while affiliated with the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, he will conduct extensive new field research and lead a graduate seminar focusing on religious and national dynamics in his region of specialization.

11 NICOLAS MALLOY, who leads our geospatial course development, obtained multiple grants totaling $73,000, received recognition by the CSU QOLT Awards and Recognition Program, and published more than 70 instructional videos and tutorials, as well as a digital textbook. His service includes participation on the HSU Senate, the Geospatial Steering Committee, the Geospatial Content Committee, the GSP IT Working Group, and the Canvas Faculty Contributor Group. Nicolas founded the Geospatial Institute, a 501(c)(3) non-profit scientific public charity.

This summer, Nicolas will obtain his FAA drone pilot certification and conduct research on the use of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) for geospatial science applications.

SARAH RAY co-edited two books that were published this spring: Critical Norths: Space, Nature, Theory, was with Kevin Maier, and Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Reader, with Jay Sibara. In other achievements, Ray was chosen to be the CSU representative on a UC-CSU statewide collaborative initiative to coordinate a Transformative Sustainability and Climate Education Knowledge Action Network, for which she attended four workshops with cross-disciplinary faculty in the CSUs and UCs over the spring semester across California. This June, Ray is taking Environmental Studies students,

FACULTY NEWS along with one Environment and Community graduate student, to the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference in Detroit to present their original work. For the conference, she coordinated a roundtable on "Climate Justice Pedagogies: Affect, Action, and the Anthropocene," focusing on the challenges and opportunities of teaching climate justice in the undergraduate classroom. Ray was invited to give a talk at University of Oregon on the environmental humanities and farmworker history.

AMY ROCK joined the faculty as a lecturer in fall 2014.

She also was the first Humboldt State Faculty in Resident for the academic years 2014-15 and 2015 -16. Last spring, she was reelected for a second term as the secretary/ treasurer of the Cartography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers. She will also serve as HSU’s representative to the CSU GIS Specialty Center Board at its annual meeting this summer at the ESRI User Conference in San Diego. Locally, she serves as a faculty ambassador for the Quality Learning and Teaching initiative, and is the director of Online Geospatial Certificate Program at HSU. On the scholarly front, her article “Citizen Participation and Public Funding in Ohio” was accepted as a chapter in Urban Renewal, Community and Participation: Theory, Policy and Practice. She was selected to participate in the International Cartographic Conference this July in Washington, DC. where she will

present research on the politics of space in company towns.

TONY ROSSI continues to teach his popular regional courses on Tibet and China. He hopes to revive his Tibet and China field study course in the summer of 2018. This past year, he worked with senior Geography majors Patrick Wood and Nathaniel Douglass in the process of producing award-winning maps.

ROSEMARY SHERRIFF has been department chair since 2014. She was promoted from associate to full professor in 2016. She is also faculty in the Environmental Studies Program, and n the Forest, Watershed, and Wildland Science Graduate Program at Humboldt State University. She oversees HSU’s Dendroecology Lab, which supports undergraduate and graduate research in biogeography, landscape ecology, forest and disturbance ecology, climatevegetation interaction, and dendrochronology. Recent graduate advisee awards include a first-place presentation at the CSU Student Research Competition (Madelinn Schriver) and a first-place poster presentation at the Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference, International Association of Wildland Fire (Michael Vernon). Current students in the lab, projects and publications can be viewed on the HSU Dendroecology Lab website. Her primary research focuses on forest disturbance ecology, climate-vegetation

FACULTY NEWS interactions, and forest stand dynamics in the western US and in southwest Alaska.

CHELSEA TEALE attended the biennial meeting of the American Quaternary Society in the summer of 2016, the Pacific Climate Workshop in spring 2017, and this summer is scheduled to attend the American Meteorological Society Diversity Workshop, National Conference for Geographic Education conference, Aldo Leopold Foundation conference, and the National Lacustrine Core Facility Drilling and Coring Institute.

This past year she was a reviewer for the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, Pennsylvania Geographer, and a new physical geography textbook published by Oxford Press. One of her papers, titled “Wetlands of New Netherland,” appeared last fall in the Hudson River Valley Review; two others are currently in revision, one in New York History (“Use and Management of Wetlands in the Dutch-Settled Northeast, 16201820”) and the other in Agricultural History Review (“The Loss of Wetland Agricultural Value in Northeastern North America, 18001840”). This spring Chelsea worked with Geography major Solveig Mitchell and Geology faculty member Dr. Eileen Hemphill-Haley to analyze a sediment core for evidence of vegetation change and anthropogenic fire along the central California coast; she hopes to present the analysis at conferences in the upcoming academic year.

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HSU Geography Faculty Publications, Academic Year 2016-2017 FEBRUARY 2016 Rosemary Sherriff co-authored a new paper, published in Ecosphere, titled “Toward a More Ecologically Informed View of Forest Fires.” The work appears as an Innovative Viewpoint paper, which encourages the development of a more ecologically informed view of severe wildland fire in the western United States that stemmed from an organized special session for the 2014 Large Wildland Fire Conference.

OCTOBER 2016 Rosemary Sherriff co-authored a new paper in Ecological Applications, titled “Tree-Ring Isotopes Reveal Drought Sensitivity in Trees Killed by Spruce Beetle Outbreaks in Alaska.” The publication is part of an ongoing collaborative project that evaluates climate change and disturbance effects in white spruce forests in southwest and southcentral Alaska.

OCTOBER 2016 Rosemary Sherriff co-authored a new paper, appearing in the Journal of Applied Ecology, titled “Managing Bark Beetle Impacts on Ecosystems and Society: Priority Questions to Motivate Future Research.” The article stemmed from a three-day bark beetle working group meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, coinciding with the 2014 Western Forest Work Conference.

NOVEMBER 2016 Chelsea Teale published “ Wetlands of New Netherland” in the Hudson River Valley Review, relating colonial Dutch terms for wetlands to their modern-day US Fish and Wildlife classifications.

DECEMBER 2016 Matthew Derrick co-edited Questioning Post-Soviet, a book that examine the continues effects of Soviet-era legacies among the fifteen independent nation-states that once comprised the USSR. He also co-authored two of the chapters appearing in the volume, which was published by Wilson Center Press in Washington, DC. JANUARY 2017 Stephen Cunha co-authored Geosystems Core, a college-level introductory text for physical geography. Stephen authored half of the fifteen chapters.

MARCH 2017 Stephen Cunha’s “ Perestroika to Parkland: The Evolution of Land Protection in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan” appeared in a 2017 issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

APRIL 2017 Rosemary Sherriff co-authored a new paper with three alumni (Kelly Muth, Madelinn Schriver, and Rebecca Batzel), and Amy Miller from the National Park Service, titled "Spruce Growth Responses to Warming Vary by Ecoregion and Ecosystem Type Near the ForestTundra Boundary in Southwest Alaska" in the Journal of Biogeography.

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Students, Faculty, and Alumni Gather for Year-End Potluck

DEPARTMENT HAPPENINGS HSU Geography Professors Assume California Geographer Editorial Duties

Graduating Geography students Kassandra Rodriguez (center) and Russell Walls (right) share a story.

Humboldt Gothic: Rosemary Sherriff and Matthew Derrick, are the new co-editors of the California Geographer.

HSU Geography alumni Mauricio Quiroz (left) and Cristina Bauss reunite and reminisce.

The upcoming 2017 issue of the California Geographer features new co-editors, HSU Geography professors Matthew Derrick and Rosemary Sherriff. The duo’s separate sub-disciplinary specializations—Derrick a human geographer, Sherriff a physical geographer— provide a complementariness that reflects their goal of publishing scholarship that reflects the breadth and dynamism of the field. The editorial team envisions a format that, evolving year to year, will include not only geographic scholarship, geographic education, and book reviews, but also non-scholarly essays, photo essays, and geo-visualizations. They also welcome geographic chronicles that may include reflective essays, general geographical interest stories, notes from the field, and notices relevant to California geographers.

Humboldt Geographer STAFF EDITOR

Merien Townsel mmt327@humboldt.edu

FACULTY EDITOR

Matthew Derrick mad632@humboldt.edu

Geography majors receive certification of their induction to Gamma Theta Upsilon International Geographical Honor Society.

Humboldt State University Department of Geography 1 Harpst Street Arcata, CA 95521

Founders Hall 109