The Geometry of Geography

Beyond the naming of capitals and countries, geography has evolved into a prismatic discipline that explores the broader implications of place.

By Lisa Raleigh

Get your pencils out for today’s geography quiz: Name the capitals of Sudan, Iran and Canada.

Actually, that was yesterday’s quiz. Or yesteryear’s.

A 21st-century geography quiz would probably not involve pencils nor be a quiz at all. Imagine instead a thought-provoking essay question that would not be concerned with place names, but rather with place meanings—something more along the lines of:

• What are the geopolitical factors that led to the recent independence of South Sudan?

• In what ways is Iran unique among Middle East nations?

• How has Canada’s topography and settlement pattern shaped its relationship with the U.S.?

To be sure, identifying capitals, countries and continents remains a facet of the study of geography, but as UO geographer Alec Murphy likes to say “place names are to geography as dates are to history.” In other words, they have little or no meaning when isolated from their context. And context is key: geography’s imperative is to examine from many angles the broader implications of place.

In this way, geography has become geometric: it is a prismatic discipline that looks in a multitude of ways at how the surface of the Earth affects our lives as human beings—and vice versa.

How have the human and physical characteristics of specific places influenced wealth distribution, ethnic divisions, political and economic systems and vulnerability to conflict, disease and disaster? How have human beings affected, for better or worse, the waterways, climate, soil and vegetation of the landscapes they have populated? Geographers seek the answers.

To do so, they explore the spatial organization and form of the planet’s physical landscapes (rivers, mountains, forests, deserts, variations in climate) as well as its human characteristics (cities, cultures, political and economic relationships)—relying on both traditional and advanced technologies to characterize these phenomena (maps, GIS, remote sensing).

“This is a truly global science,” said Murphy. “Geography is increasingly important because it not only informs us about where things happen, but why they happen where they do.” And this goal is achieved, he says, by “drawing together such seemingly disparate fields as ecology and political science; sociology and botany; anthropology and geology.”

Thanks to this inclusive approach, geography is now enjoying a renaissance after decades of disfavor. In the mid-20th century, conventional wisdom held that Western models of human behavior would apply to any population, regardless of location. The assumptions in many economic models, for instance, treated all places as if they were the same, says Murphy. But conventional wisdom eventually caught up with the reality that place does matter, and the last 25 years have seen a fundamental reversal of the onesize-fits-all approach to social science. This has paved the way for geography’s multifaceted approach—supported by phenomenal advances in mapping technology and analysis—to regain status and respect as a relevant field of study. Geography’s renaissance is occurring across the nation and also at the UO. The number of UO students majoring in geography has doubled in the last ten years, and these students have the opportunity to study with leaders in the field. 

In fact, Oregon geography faculty members are helping set the research agenda for important areas of the discipline; several have played leadership roles in geography’s key national organizations.

The National Research Council recently ranked the UO geography department third of 49 programs nationwide in terms of publications per faculty member and third in citations per publication. These metrics indicate both a high level of productivity and the significant influence that UO geographers are having on their peers.

Overall, the NRC rated the UO’s graduate program in geography as one of the top in the nation.

For a glimpse into the many angles of approach taken by the Department of Geography, here are profiles of four areas of research underway.

—Lisa Raleigh

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Geodatabase-Driven Map-Making: The InfoGraphics Lab

Maps, which convey information about variations over space, remain a fundamental component of all geographic studies. By visually representing the world, maps serve as an integral part of humanity’s communication toolbox. Their most basic form, “X marks the spot,” is found among the ruins of the oldest civilizations.

Graduate student Dana Maher was part of the team that helped develop the UO's first iPhone app, "UOregon," which features an interactive campus map. It's available for free on iTunes.

Today, maps are used for far more than simple navigation. They enable the analysis of spatial relationships—from the distance of a hike, to the number of foreclosed homes in a neighborhood, to the best location for a new public library.

“There has always been spatial analysis, but with the digitization of so much data, we now have really powerful research tools,” said Jim Meacham, director of the UO InfoGraphics Laboratory. “You can do flood analyses, forest analyses, analyses of demographic patterns—all of it much faster than in the past.”

The predominance of maps in the 21st century stems from the emergence of geographic information system (GIS) tools that digitally capture, analyze and project geospatial data. At its core, GIS is a computer science that combines cartographic visualization with database technology, allowing researchers to explore complex questions from a spatial perspective and often observe patterns not detectable in a spreadsheet or written description.

At the UO, the modernization of mapping is the province of the InfoGraphics Lab, which serves not only the Department of Geography but also the campus and community at large. Meacham, along with assistant director Ken Kato, make it their mission to be at the leading edge of technology trends that continue to redefine the mapping world. Both have been immersed in cartography and geographic data analysis since the 1980s, before the Internet and digitization of spatial data transformed the field.

“It’s evolved rapidly; everything is digital now,” said Kato. “Keeping pace with advances in technology is essential for us as geographers because they enable us to communicate spatial information with more people.”

Meacham and Kato employ the latest in GIS and data collection technologies—interactive web applications, mobile devices, spatially enabled relational databases linked to specialized software applications—to provide mapping and geographic analysis services to students and professors across campus, not just in geography but also in sociology, Graduate student Dana Maher was part of the team that helped develop the UO’s first iPhone app, “UOregon,” which features an interactive campus map. It’s available for free on iTunes.anthropology, city and regional planning, art history and others.

In addition, the same GIS technologies are used to provide mission-critical data to the administrative and operational units that keep the university running. These units rely on the lab’s Campus GIS “geodatabase” system to map and store data about the UO’s 20,000+ rooms, buildings, underground utilities, safety and transportation features and much more.

Using data from the Campus GIS, the lab also produces the UO’s definitive campus maps and is now taking the campus map paradigm to the next level, technology-wise. Last summer the lab, with key programming help from graduate student Dana Maher, produced an iPhone application, “UOregon,” that features a searchable, detailed campus map, including a GPS location device. The application attracted national attention for pushing the limits of what is possible with the newest geographic information technology.

The lab also trains students in GIS techniques and methodologies and applies its expertise to both cartographic and graphic design projects. Among their signature projects are several atlases, including the award-winning Atlas of Oregon, now in its second edition.

The Atlas is a comprehensive volume that depicts the history, geography, demography and economy of the state via vivid maps that illustrate everything from land ownership to precipitation patterns, vegetation distribution and energy sources. Meacham has also collaborated on an archeological atlas of the Altai Mountains in Mongolia and is working on the first-ever atlas of a national park, the Atlas of Yellowstone.

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Human Geography: What We Can Learn From Our Neighbors

In Tijuana, volunteers build pervious pavers for a stormwater harvesting project.

In many ways the border cities of Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California, are much alike. They share similar desert landscapes, rainfall patterns, proximity to the ocean and populations of approximately equal size (between 1 and 1.5 million). Despite these similarities, however, their economies, community infrastructure and access to resources differ dramatically. So does their use of water.

Katharine Meehan, who joined the UO geography faculty this year, estimates the average resident in Tijuana uses just half the water of the average resident in San Diego. Numerous factors create this discrepancy—many of them related to wealth and water availability, but there are also important cultural habits that contribute to the statistic.

It is these cultural habits that Meehan is most interested in. Recently, her focus has been on the individual and cultural water conservation practices of Tijuana residents in communities not served by municipal water supplies. Sometimes referred to as “off-the-grid” communities, these are places where water distribution infrastructure and use regulations have been taken into the hands of the people.

As part of her field research, she recently spent several months in Tijuana studying informal water supply systems and distribution patterns.

Meehan’s interest stems not only from a passion for improving water conservation but also from a larger interest in topics of urban political ecology and social theory. Her work exemplifies the integrative nature of modern geography, as she investigates the intersection between environment, culture, politics and place.

Her research explores questions about how people conserve water when it is scarce, how the flow of water through informal neighborhood infrastructure is organized and what happens when an individual breaks the rules. She also studies how people who live without many basic government services, such as municipal water, think about politics.

“In the U.S., we don’t think we need to recycle water because it comes from the tap; it’s cheap; it’s around. Comparatively, people in Tijuana recycle out of habit,” said Meehan. “Even middle class families do it.”

Water conservation practices commonly employed by Tijuana residents revolve around intensive grey water reuse. “Say you have six loads of washing and rinsing,” said Meehan. “The Tijuana women will do at least four of those loads with recycled water, using the washing machine and then saving the water in a bucket for the next load. Eventually even that water often finds a final use as water for a plant in the yard.”

Not surprisingly, Meehan has found the conservation practices of many Tijuanans are duplicated in other dry and impoverished parts of the world, from Bangladesh to much of Africa.

She would like to see North America adopt similar attitudes toward water use, especially in the western U.S., a dry region plagued by its own “water wars.” Today, tens of thousands of miles of pipelines and irrigation canals redistribute water around many states, including California, Nevada and Arizona where enormous canyons have been filled (Hetch Hetchy Valley, Glen Canyon) and lakes pumped dry (Owens Lake) to satiate the water supply demands of cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Diego.

She recognizes, though, that U.S. adoption of conservation practices popular south of the border may be hindered by institutional obstacles, such as laws prohibiting grey water to be used for crop irrigation. “From a conservation perspective there are problems with our approach to water regulation in the U.S.,” said Meehan. “We think about importing expertise from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere. But we should also be looking at what kinds of knowledge and expertise we can gain from our southern neighbors when we’re thinking of water management strategies.”

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Data Miner: Using Data from Eons Past to Predict Future Climate Patterns

Pat Bartlein is a paleoclimatologist, one of only a handful of scientists who combine studies about the world’s present climate with studies of past climate patterns. His current research delves into the potential connection between wildfires and global temperature change.

Bartlein, a professor of geography, studies prehistoric climate patterns via paleoclimatic data—ancient “natural resource” data that comes from tree rings, lake sediments and polar ice core samples. The data provide evidence about the make-up of the Earth’s atmosphere, as well as temperature and precipitation patterns, from hundreds or thousands of years ago.

These maps show reconstructions of "growing degree days" (a measure of summer warmth) 6,000 years ago, based on pollen records of past vegetation (left) and simulations from climate models (right)


Bartlein and other paleoclimatologists have been using data like this since the 1980s to test increasingly complex models that show how the Earth’s climate has changed through the centuries—and also project how it will change in the future.

Thanks to such research, we are now able to put into context the current warming trend of the Earth within the greater scheme of the Earth’s climate over millennia. The data show the most recent years of the 1990s and early 21st century are the warmest of the past 1,000 years, if not longer, leading to the present concerns about impacts the warming may have on the planet.

“We are able to study how ecosystems have responded to climate changes historically, and thus better predict how current ecosystems may respond to the unusually rapid warming trends of the present,” said Bartlein.

Constructing models that can simulate past or future climate is a complex computer-science enterprise requiring the ability to think on a global scale across thousands of years of time. Testing the climate models requires the synthesis of thousands of paleoclimatic records collected by hundreds of scientists. Each of those records, in turn, contains tens of thousands of data points.

For instance, in the case of paleoclimate data from ancient pollen (see image), each record requires counting thousands of pollen grains to determine what types of plants once grew in a specific region. That record is one of hundreds that can be used to infer past climatic patterns from 5,000, 10,000 or even 50,000 years ago.

As the complexity of the models has increased, so has the demand for different kinds of data for testing them, and this has been answered by new kinds of paleoclimatic records, advances in statistical techniques and increasingly sophisticated computer software.

Today much paleoclimatic research, including Bartlein’s, is focused on questions about what the future climate may be like based on current atmospheric conditions and projected increases in the release of carbon dioxide and other gasses over the next 50 to 100 years. The newest models provide climatologists with a general sense of future global climate trends, but the science isn’t refined enough to give precise predictions at the regional and local scales, where people will feel the actual effects.

One of the tricks to increasing the precision of the models is figuring out potential ripple impacts induced by projected global increases in temperature. Presently Bartlein is studying how relatively small changes, like increases in individual wildfires across the globe, may amplify the change in worldwide climate patterns. Key to this research is determining how fire behavior is linked to global temperature changes.

The conclusions are preliminary, but Bartlein and fellow UO geographer Dan Gavin, an assistant professor, have collaborated with other researchers on several studies showing that climate has historically been the main driving factor in fire occurrence and suggesting that this will likely be the case in the future.

Their research indicates our warming climate could mean increased wildfires in places we’re not used to seeing them, like the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest. It also means the next generation of climate models will need to incorporate an increased release of carbon from forest fuels due to escalating fire activity around the globe.

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You Are Here: How We Navigate

At a large family gathering more than 15 years ago, Amy Lobben started thinking about how people perceive and navigate their way through space. “We were in the car, driving somewhere, and the person navigating for the driver was really, I mean, really, really, bad. So much so that I thought the person was joking, and then I thought: how on Earth can someone be so terrible at this?”

The question was an epiphany of sorts for Lobben, who, having grown up in a family that lived and traveled around the world, had been poring over maps for as long as she could remember. It had never occurred to her that getting around the world might be a challenge for others.

Today, studying human navigational patterns is Lobben’s main area of research. An associate professor of geography, she directs the UO’s Spatial and Map Cognition Research Laboratory, a unique geographic information systems lab that merges the study of geography, human behavior and environmental psychology (the study of how humans respond to the physical environment).

At the lab, Lobben and other researchers explore the little-understood domain of human orientation and navigational abilities. The experiments involve traditional laboratory and in-field behavioral methods as well as fMRI brain scans and eye tracking (tracking the patterns of eye movement as a person views a map). This multipronged testing approach makes Lobben’s experiments among the most rigorous spatial cognition studies in the world.

These experiments generally focus on several different tasks for one individual, most of which involve a map, though some involve geometric shapes. Tasks include mental rotation exercises, in which subjects are given several kinds of maps and geometric shapes and asked to rotate them in their mind; basic navigation exercises that provide subjects with a map and ask them how they would get from point a to z; and computer navigational exercises that combine digital maps and computer games.

The results of the experiments are useful in isolating and describing how people understand and interact with space and help advance educational tools and methods for teaching navigational tasks from reading a map to getting around a website to putting together 3-D puzzles. The research is also important for the development of tools and technologies for the blind and visually impaired. In fact, a significant portion of Lobben’s work revolves around nonvisual spatial orientation.

To explore this realm, Lobben tests subjects who use strategies other than sight to get around. Utilizing tools like tactile maps—maps with raised features that provide information about a landscape—she is able to administer the same kinds of tests to non-sighted individuals as to those with sight.

These experiments allow Lobben to identify what kinds of technologies are most helpful to those who rely on senses other than sight for orientation. While tactile maps are a well-known tool for the visually impaired, new devices are also evolving to serve their needs. These include sound-based navigational tools and those based on haptic technology—devices that communicate with the user through the sense of touch, such as a mouse that vibrates when rolled over features on a web page.

New projects on the near horizon for Lobben include a collaboration with Michael Young, an associate professor of computer and information science at the UO, to develop a GIS soundscape interface that will enable students who are blind or have low vision to work with and analyze geospatial data.

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