GGIS

GGIS professor Shaowen Wang named Robert W. Schaefer Professor

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has named several accomplished faculty members to endowed chair and professorship positions. The positions are some of the highest honors that can be granted by the college. The recipients will be awarded discretionary funding to carry out research...

New website from GGIS professor bridges science and community to help Chicagoans understand air quality

Researchers, city leaders, and community organizations have worked together to build one of the nation's largest urban air quality monitoring networks across Chicago. Now, a new public-facing...

GGIS researchers use NASA satellite mission to reveal hidden transitions between rivers and lakes

Scientists have long understood that rivers and lakes influence one another, but actually observing where one system gradually transitions into the other has remained a challenge — until now.A new study led by...

GGIS study examines how location privacy concerns shape crowdsourced socio-environmental data

A resident installs an air-quality sensor outside their home, hoping to contribute to a growing network of citizen-collected environmental data. But before making the information public, they drag the sensor’s location pin on the digital map slightly down the street.That small act of digital self-...

The double life: GGIS undergraduate studies geography and history

What happens at the end of science? Philosophy?It is the kind of question that can pause a conversation. Not because science fails, and not because philosophy is waiting at the edge of the laboratory to correct it, but because every discipline, if you follow it far enough, begins to run into its...

Team tracks vegetation recovery from sudden permafrost collapse

Some Arctic regions regain their “greenness” within a decade of a sudden permafrost collapse, while others can take a century or more to recover, researchers report in a new study. The difference is directly related to each site’s gross primary productivity, a measure of its photosynthetic capacity...

Meet Jordan McAlister: A Q&A with GGIS’ newest professor and advisor

 Jordan McAlister is a human geographer with interests in the built environment, historical geography, and historic preservation. A native of Texas, he has long taken an interest in the cultural and regional geographies of...

Study documents conflict between commerce and conservation at mining operation in Bangladesh

A new study using multidecade satellite imagery and face-to-face human interviews tracked the environmental and societal impacts of gravel mining in the Lubha River, Northeast Bangladesh. The researchers found that the river had recovered its natural shape within just four years after gravel mining...

GGIS professor's book explores ‘Dracula Urbanism,’ the dark side of smart city development

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — City development is increasingly associated with creating “smart cities” that use technology for managing city services, home construction and attracting resources. But those strategies come with negative consequences to a city’s poor residents, said...

From Paralympian to scholar: GD Kim’s marathon journey

Gyudae “GD” Kim never planned on becoming a geographer. Nearly 20 years ago, he was serving his mandatory military service in South Korea when a sudden injury left him paralyzed. At the time, he wasn’t considering graduate school,...
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