Why should geographers care about data science?

By Canserina Kurnia, Esri Senior Solution Engineer for Education, and Joseph Kerski, Ph.D., GISP, Esri Education Manager

Data science is the study of data. Data science involves developing methods of recording, storing, and analyzing data to effectively extract useful information. The discipline of geography has always been focused on data science, because geographers have always been keen to gather, analyze, and make sense of large volumes of data across a wide variety of scales and covering a wide variety of themes, from ecoregions to individual census blocks. Those using GIS are spatial data scientists: They combine their data with theoretical foundations such as Tobler’s First Law to explain and predict. As they visualize and analyze data, they detect patterns and relationships, testing real-world phenomena against hypotheses.

Why is geographic thinking and spatial analysis important to data science?  Incorporating spatial analytics into data science allows analysts to extract deeper insight from data using a comprehensive set of analytical methods and spatial algorithms. These methods and algorithms include machine learning and deep learning techniques.  Machine Learning (ML) refers to a set of data-driven algorithms and techniques that automate the prediction, classification, and clustering of data. Machine learning can play a critical role in spatial problem solving in a wide range of application areas, from image classification to spatial pattern detection to multivariate prediction. Deep learning is a type of machine learning that relies on multiple layers of nonlinear processing for feature identification and pattern recognition described in a model.

Geographers will no doubt find resonance with terms such as algorithms, classification, clustering, and pattern detection. Indeed, data science represents an opportunity for geographers to promote the value of geographic thinking throughout the academy and in the workplace. The rise of data science in academia and the workplace provides geographers with some new opportunities to demonstrate the relevance of their discipline, one that is high-tech and data-driven. In so doing, geographers can work in innovative ways with data science students and faculty, introducing them to the value of the geographic perspective and geographic tools. This work can lead to collaboration on research projects and jointly offered courses. Geographers can also work with employers to develop new internship programs and other opportunities for their students grounded in spatial thinking and data science.

Geographic Understanding + Data Science = Spatial Data Science

At left is a data-driven valuation model for the housing market for King County, Washington, USA.

When we chart the relationship between variables, in this case price and living space (measured in square feet), the dark green and dark purple indicate a large mismatch between predicted sale price of the homes and actual sale price of the homes. Ideally, data points should be close to the line. The closer to the line the data points are, the stronger the relationship is between the two variables.

In the chart, green colors indicate an underestimation of the sale price of the home, where the actual price of the house is higher than the one predicted by the model. The purple color indicates an overestimation, where the predicted price is above the actual price of the house. How can this situation happen?

Looking at the map at the left, the darker green points cluster around bodies of water, and people are willing to pay more to have a house near the water body. The regression model is systematically underestimating the sale price of the houses close to water bodies. It looks as though small changes to the size of the living space may result in bigger changes to the price of a house close to a water body compared to a house that is inland. So, location matters, and in this example, incorporating spatial data is crucial in modeling and understanding the complete situation.  In addition, visualizing the data on the map make it easy to observe the trend and distribution.

The Building Blocks of Spatial Data Science

Spatial data science is the intersection of geography and data science; it incorporates geographic understanding into existing data science methods to improve predictive models and results. This house value scenario provides a simple example of the type of questions spatial data science can address. But how do we learn spatial data science and apply it to our work?

Spatial data science starts with Data Engineering. This refers to making sure the data is ready for our use. Visualization and exploration are next: We seek to understand the data and get a sense what we can solve with the data. We visualize and explore the data throughout the process and share the results. We use Spatial Analysis, Machine Learning and AI to layer the algorithms, methods, and approaches that allow us to break down the problem and create the model. This process turns data into information and often motivates us to take action.

These methods increasingly use larger data sets, such as a collection of imagery or a large vector data set, or real time streaming data from the Internet of Things. We use modeling and scripting, and Big Data Analytics, to Model the phenomena and automate the functionality. We employ Sharing and Collaboration to convey the results.  No matter how good the analysis is, if it is not shared with other, no action will be taken, and no improvements to the situation will be possible. Creating and sharing a story map, a dashboard, or one or more infographics enables others to understand the location, scope, and nature of the problem or situation, and allows for the gathering of stakeholders to arrive at a solution.

Integration

ArcGIS includes machine learning tools for performing classification, clustering, and prediction.   An example case for Classification is to classify impervious surfaces based on the latest high-resolution imagery to help effectively prepare for storm and flood events. Another example is for prediction:  Accurately predict impacts of climate change on local temperature using global climate model data.  An example for clustering is: Grouping the traffic patterns into traffic zones that can be used to elicit feedback from current drivers in the area.

As engaging and powerful as the tools are, integrating the tools is important. How can students and those in the workplace understand how data science works and integrate spatial components in data science? Nowadays, many open source machine learning frameworks exist, such as TensorFlow and scikit-learn.  These provide libraries for machine learning and deep learning. ArcGIS includes ready to use tools, methods and algorithms to support building blocks of spatial data science. ArcGIS Pro is a powerful desktop application that is used widely by the scientific community as a spatial analysis workstation, with ready-to-use tools for spatial data science modeling.

Equally importantly, integration between ArcGIS and open source data science machine learning libraries through Python and R is available. For Python, ArcGIS Notebooks allow the Jupyter notebook environment to access open source python libraries and the ArcGIS API for Python and ArcPy, which supports the backend of ArcGIS geoprocessing capabilities. For R, the ArcGIS R-Bridge connects ArcGIS to R, allowing for statistical analysis results to be easily mapped in 2D and 3D. Conversely, the bridge also allows data from the GIS to be input into R for statistical analysis.

Value-added Skills
Adding data science to teaching spatial analytics builds highly marketable skills that are sought by nonprofit organizations, private companies, government agencies, and academia. This article shows how Fruit of the Loom hired recently graduating students as the company’s data analysts.

Conclusion
Spatial analytics is a fundamental part of data science.  Combining the power of the two brings deeper insights to analysis.  The job market for data scientists who understand location intelligence is growing.  And ready-to-use tools, open data, and integration tools are already available to enrich teaching and research.
Next steps

Explore resources for Spatial Data Science in Higher Education to learn how to bring spatial data science into your research and teaching. You’ll find lessons, web courses, webinars, sample notebooks and other resources to build your own skills and inspire your students and colleagues.

Featured Articles is a special section of the AAG Newsletter where AAG sponsors highlight recent programs and activities of significance to geographers and members of the AAG. To sponsor the AAG and submit an article, please contact Oscar Larson olarson [at] aag [dot] org.

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Working Together for Racial and Social Justice: From Anti-Asian Racism and Violence to Anti-Racist Praxis in Geography

By Guo Chen, Associate Professor of Geography and Global Urban Studies, Michigan State University

This column is the first in a new section of the AAG News called Perspectives, which offers a platform for members to discuss issues of relevance to geography. A slightly longer version of this article was first published in April as a tie-in with related sessions sponsored by the Asian Geography Specialty Group and the China Geography Specialty Group at AAG’s annual meeting. Registered participants at the meeting may view the recordings of these sessions until May 11:

In June 2020, the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) issued an open call directed at putting an immediate end to anti-Black racism and advancing efforts toward global social justice. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd pulled a painful trigger for many Asian Americans. The Association clearly stated that “[the] fight against anti-Asian pandemic racism is rooted in a common struggle against white supremacy” and “[to] end global anti-Black racism, we must fight racism in our local communities and educate ourselves and others about the rich history of Black Americans and support, validate, and value Black lives now and always.”

Most recently, but not for the first time, the urgency of this shared struggle against white supremacy was highlighted by the horrific Atlanta-area shootings of eight people on March 16, 2021, including six women of Asian descent. In April, four members of the Indianapolis Sikh community were killed in a shooting at a FedEx warehouse. Anti-Asian racism in the United States has been more widely reported by the media lately than before (see LA Times coverage and NY Times, for example), and reports of anti-Asian hate crimes are rising around the world (see Time). In early 2020, Asian American communities and scholars were already well aware of this rise in anti-Asian racism. On a virtual panel in June 2020, the president of the AAAS, Dr. Jennifer Ho of the University of Colorado Boulder, explained why COVID-19-related anti-Chinese sentiment is essentially anti-Asian racism:

[w]hile China and Chinese people have been targeted and blamed for the coronavirus in the United States … the truth is all forms of racism against the Chinese in the United States are forms of racism against anyone who is perceived to be Chinese in the United States. It’s an Asian/Asian American issue … what it means to be an Asian American is the recognition that those particularities that happened in a natal homeland get diminished, get flattened when you arrive in the United States. Because someone who doesn’t know what your particular ethnicity is, your nationality, and only sees your Asian-looking face and is going to make certain assumptions of who you are, about your ability to speak English … one of the things we have in common, as Asian Americans, is this understanding that we are not benefiting from white privilege, that we have been on a receiving end of systemic racism, starting with the Chinese, extending into other Asian ethnic groups.”

Since January 2020, the lives of Asian-heritage people in the U.S. and probably also in many other countries have been violently shaken. Asian Americans were among the first to help local communities combat COVID-19, while racist attacks were increasing in cities like Los Angeles. The Stop AAPI Hate website received 3,795 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents nationwide between its launch on March 19, 2020, and February 28, 2021. In these reports, the Chinese were the ethnic group most targeted, but 60% of the respondents were non-Chinese. Incidents occurred in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Asian women reported significantly more incidents than did Asian men. The fatality rate for Asian women has continued to increase due to the combined effect of COVID-19 and a terrifying rise in hate incidents. In fact, the AAPI Data website reports that 13,620 more Asian Americans died than usual in the first seven months of 2020 (a 35% increase over the prior 5-year average). Over this long year, anxiety has also built up as many have been separated from their families or extended families and ancestral lands due to travel bans from both sides of the Pacific—a circumstance that has likely caused more stress to Asian women than to men, given that women are more likely to fulfill caregiver roles. As early as July 2020, studies were already finding a large percentage (40.3%) of Asian Americans with self-reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression (an 8-fold jump from the previous year) compounded by racism-related vigilance. These same studies warned of the serious and long-lasting negative impact of experienced and perceived racial discrimination on physical health and psychological well-being.

Despite discussions on the xenophobic sentiment stoked by the previous U.S. administration, we must also accept the historicity of our current crisis of racism and racial violence. As race scholars have commented, white supremacy is the root of all race-related violence in the U.S., and “race is a thread that connects all shootings.” Anti-Asian racism is racism, just like anti-Black racism and any other form of racism. Whenever an Asian country is perceived as a national threat, Asian Americans suffer. Asian Americans are all too familiar with the history of state-sanctioned discrimination.

Racism is like a river that affects everyone in the country, and it is deeply rooted in white supremacy in the U.S.
. . .

We have come to realize that our geographic scholarship is compartmentalized along national, experiential, and personal identity lines. Racialized identities and the angst and alterity experienced by diasporic scholars in North America often need some translation to the rest of our international colleagues. But the themes of our studies are universal. As one geographer wrote to me, “different forms of oppression are linked … nobody is free until all are free.” And, as a community of geographers, we need to continue our discipline’s strong tradition of studying how oppression and marginalization play out, within places and across space. As a former chair of a Specialty Group of the AAG, I have led open dialogues with Asian and China-heritage geographers, some of whom shared opinions and stories with me in June 2020. Most expressed pain arising from frustration with a cross comparison of the ways different nations had handled COVID-19, together with feelings including fear about the prospect of leaving their “anodyne” research areas to embrace a perceived “politicized” arena, such as addressing the legacy of anti-Asian racism and distant or near memories of being discriminated against or marginalized as a Chinese or Asian scholar within our institutions. I appreciate their sharing with me.

“[T]here is a rising anti-Asian sentiment because of the [previous] U.S. leader’s rhetoric and the hawkish advisors and media he listens to … it is easier to blame the Other, versus looking clearly at the fault of not acting early, to respond to the pandemic, and doing the necessary steps to have masks, etc. We can see the … examples of Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand and even many African nations that have low infection rates, and VERY low fatalities [by June 2020 during the first wave] … I get emotional almost weekly because of the current situation … I will stop writing about this.”

“I’m not a China-study scholar and I was never an active member as I almost never went to those AAG happy hours. But I do care about the study subjects … I used to think politics and politicization should be separate from academic endeavors, however, it becomes increasingly difficult, if not possible at all, to be like that. And even further, being a social scientist, I started asking myself whether it’s responsible not to face the challenges from the political side. I guess it’s a learning process for me.”

“I grew up in post-colonial Africa and have a very low level of tolerance for racism in any form. Even if I am not genetically Asian, I too could say a few words on bigotry and prejudices. But is this enough? Should we try to publish our personal opinions if this helps us discover our own identity and the originality of our own contributions as transnational geographers? We are a tiny minority but maybe it is easier for us to articulate or advocate than it is for a vast majority of people.”

“[One can] in no way ignore the anti-Asian/Chinese racism and discrimination that exist around the world, not just in the US … the diasporic Chinese scholars’ life experience …matter, and … the research on Asian (im)migration and racism … matter.”

“As a Mainlander based in Hong Kong, I can totally relate to [the] feeling … [about] racial prejudices against Asian scholars.”

“[I] would like to reach out to say that I feel [I am] being discriminated [against] in my job.”

In 2021, these messages from nine months ago look so distant, but the concerns are even more relevant today. As we sojourned in the Zoom world of scholarly exchanges in the past year, the fluidity has afforded us connectedness and made us academic refugees striving for existential relevance. The interruption of COVID-19 in our customary lives also provides an opportunity to change. It is time to prioritize anti-racist praxis in Geography, like in other disciplines, and to ensure that our being anti-racist advances a resolution to “challenge structural racism and other intersecting oppressive systems—e.g., ableism, classism, ethnocentrism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia—by shifting power—e.g., funding and other critical resources, policies, processes, leadership, culture” in our discipline and subdisciplines. For area geographers (those whose research has been largely framed regionally rather than systematically or globally), some clear goals are to continue to interrogate the assumptions and privileges embedded in area-bound expertise, to continue to problematize our positionalities and the dominant narratives in our research field, and to continue to privilege the scholarship that has long been considered “marginal,” such as work on transnational migration and migrants, underprivileged people, race, ethnicity, and social justice, to name a few. There is also an urgency to develop anti-racist learning and teaching praxis in our discipline.

Many challenges are ahead, but the most dreadful time is when we are in silence. We should continue to intervene with dialogues to break this silence. The research field is there to be defined and redefined.
. . .

Guo Chen (PhD, Penn State), Associate Professor of Geography and Global Urban Studies at Michigan State University. She is the recipient of a Wilson Center Fellowship in 2017-2018 and an Outstanding Service Award from the China Geography Specialty Group of the AAG in 2020. At MSU, Guo serves as an elected faculty representative on the Asian Studies Advisory Council, a founding member of the Geo Diversity Committee, a newly appointed faculty member on the President’s Advisory Committee on Disability Issues, a SWIG faculty advisor and a core faculty member of the Asian Pacific American Studies Program beginning fall 2021. Guo thanks Christian Lentz, Ken Foote, Shaolu Yu, Jennifer Ho, and Lisa Schamess for their reading of this piece, and the many anonymous colleagues for their emails, warm words, and generously shared resources, which led to this op-ed. The opinions expressed here are solely her own.

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0089

Panel resources:

Ho, J. 2020. Anti-Asian racism, Black Lives Matter, and COVID-19. Japan Forumhttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09555803.2020.1821749 .

Japan Forum Podcast 8 With Prof Jennifer Ho – Anti-Asian Racism, BLM, and COVID-19. https://soundcloud.com/soas-university-of-london/japan-forum-podcast-8-with-prof-jennifer-ho-anti-asian-racism-blm-and-covid-19 .

Teaching resources for Anti-Asian racism and COVID-19. www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2020/04/08/anti-asian-racism-and-covid-19.

To be an Asian woman in AmericaCNN opinion.

For an understanding of white supremacy as the root of all race-related violence in the US, read https://theconversation.com/white-supremacy-is-the-root-of-all-race-related-violence-in-the-us-157566

Read Ben Barron (PhD student in Geography at CU Boulder) article about the Boulder and Atlanta shootings: https://www.boulderweekly.com/opinion/guest-columns/race-is-a-thread-that-connects-all-mass-shootings/

Anti-Racism Resources for Asian Americans. https://tiny.cc/AntiRacistAsAmResources .

Alberts, Heike C. and Helen D. Hazen. 2013. International Students and Scholars in the United States: Coming from Abroad. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.


Please note: Perspectives is a new column intended to give AAG members an opportunity to share ideas relevant to the practice of geography. If you have an idea for a Perspective, see our guidelines for more information. 

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AAG Climate Emergency Statement: April 2021

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AAG Climate Statement April 22 2021

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2021 AAG Specialty and Affinity Group Awards

Photo of bright sparkly lights on dark background

The AAG’s 75 interest-based specialty groups and eight affinity groups recognize their members accomplishments over the course of the year. Following are the awardees within each group for 2021:


Africa Specialty Group

Distinguished Emerging Scholar Award, Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong, University of Denver

Florence Margai Student Paper Award, Matthieu Ahouangbenon, University of Delaware

Graduate Research Award, Dinko Hanaan Dinko, University of Denver


Animal Geographies Specialty Group

Animal Geography Graduate Student Presentation Award, Jacquelyn  Johnston, Florida International University, Death in the dark: Ethical considerations of making animal death visible through public records data mining in multispecies research


Applied Geography Specialty Group

Applied Geography Travel & Research Award

  • Changzhen Wang, Delineation of Cancer Service Areas Anchored by Major Cancer Centers in the USA
  • Claire  Burch, Energy sector buy-in and climate change solutions: A case study of support and trust of climate change initiatives in Oklahoma
  • Xiantong Wang, Quantifying the Temporal Pattern of Land Change of a Time Series: an Analysis on Categorical Variables with MapBiomas
  • Dan Tian, BLP3-SP: A Bayesian Log-Pearson Type III model with Spatial Priors for reducing uncertainty in flood frequency analyses
  • Jiyoung Lee, Spatiotemporal Analysis of Nighttime Crimes in Vienna, Austria
  • Lauren Mabe, Application of a decentralized approach to waste facility siting: the case of food waste in Los Angeles County, California
  • Hanlin Zhou, Using Street View Imagery to Examine the Relationship between Perception of Park Environments and Time Spent in Parks

Asian Geography Specialty Group

Graduate Student Paper Competition, Shamayeta  Bhattacharya

Graduate Student Research Fellowship, David  Bachrach


Biogeography Specialty Group

Parsons Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Biogeography, Kathleen Parker, University of Georgia

Best Master’s Student Paper Presentation, Tali Hamilton, Texas Tech University, The Effects of Grass Invasion and Fire Severity on Acacia koa Regeneration

Best Ph.D. Student Paper Presentation, Jonathan Kleinman, University of Alabama, Department of Geography, Floristic indicators of ecosystem recovery after wind, logging, and fire in a Pinus woodland

Student Research Grant, Clara Mosso, Colorado State University – Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Urban expansion into native forest: Assessing impacts on fire risk and ecosystem services provision in San Martín de los Andes (Neuquén) and Aspen (Colorado)

Cowles Award for Best Biogeography Publication, Evan Larson, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, People, Fire, and Pine: Linking Human Agency and Landscape in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Beyond, published in the Annals of the AAG

Master’s Student Presentation Award, Tali Hamilton, Texas Tech, The Effects of Grass Invasion and Fire Severity on Acacia koa Regeneration in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Ph.D. Student Presentation Award, Jonathan Kleinman, University of Alabama, Floristic Indicators of Ecosystem Recovery after Wind, Logging, and Fire in a Pinus woodland

Ph.D. Student Research Award, Clara Mosso, Colorado State University, Urban expansion into native forest: Assessing impacts on fire risk and ecosystem services provision in San Martín de los Andes (Neuquén) and Aspen (Colorado)

James J. Parsons Award for Lifetime Achievement in Biogeography, Kathleen Parker, University of Georgia

Henry C. Cowles Award for Best Biogeography Publication, Evan Larson, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, People, Fire, and Pine: Linking human agency and landscape in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and beyond


Black Geographies Specialty Group

Graduate Student Travel Award, Maya Kearney

Clyde Woods Black Geographies Specialty Group Graduate Student Paper Award, Zaira Simone, CUNY, Earth and Environmental Systems,  Essay: Tek Down Nelson! The Struggle for Repair in Barbados


Caribbean Geography Specialty Group

Travel Award, Jenna Pulice

Conference support award, Suzanne Nimoh, University of Texas at Austin


Cartography Specialty Group

Travel Grant for Underrepresented Groups

  • Morgan P. Vickers
  • Fikriyah Winata

China Specialty Group

Best Student Paper Award

  • Lisha He, The University of Hong Kong, The uneven geography of Chinese real estate investment in the United States: Local market conditions, migration and ethnic networks
  • Yining Tan, Arizona State University, Cross-border Mobility of Skilled Migrants from the US to China: Migration Motivations and Return Intentions (runner up)

Outstanding Service Award

  • Ronald Knapp, The State University of New York New Paltz
  • Qihao Weng, Indiana State university

Climate Specialty Group

Lifetime Achievement Award, Andrew Comrie

Student Paper Competition

  • Daniel Vecellio (1st place)
  • Flavia Moraes (2nd place)
  • Lori Wachowicz (3rd place)
  • Holli Capps (3rd place)

John Russell Mather Paper of the Year, Ariane Middel, Arizona State University, Solar reflective pavements — A policy panacea to heat mitigation?


Coastal and Marine Specialty Group

Norbert Psuty Student Paper Competition Honorable Mention,

Norb Psuty Student Paper Competition Honorable Mention,

Norbert Psuty Student Paper Competition

  • Pei Zhang, University of Alabama, An algorithm for objective analysis of grainflow morphology (winner)
  • Thomas Bilintoh, Clark University, A Generalized Method to Quantify the Dynamics of a Specific Category to Compare Sites (honorable mention)
  • Duc Nguyen, University of Otago, Incident wind direction and topographic steering through foredune notches (honorable mention)

Critical Geographies of Education

Critical Geographies of Education Dissertation Award, Symon James-Wilson, Geographies and Infrastructures of School Segregation: A Historical Case Study of Rochester, NY


Cultural and Political Ecology

CAPE Scholar-Activist, Sara Maxwell, Seeing the people for the trees: Connecting plant labor to human lives in fighting a biomass wood pellet factory in North Carolina

Graduate Student Paper Award, Cynthia Morinville, The Toil of Waste: capitalist value and biopolitics in the global e-waste economy

Student Field Study Award

  • Zachary Tabor, A Scourge on Texas: Identifying local Scale CWD and Feral Hog Management Strategies
  • Hernán  Bianchi Benguria, Demystifying Electromobility: The lithium hinterland and socioenvironmental transformationin the Atacama Desert

Student Paper Award, Julia Sizek, Regulatory Alchemy


Cultural Geography Specialty Group

Denis Cosgrove Ph.D. Research Award, Ned Wilbur

Honararium – CGSG Paper Competition Judge, Caitie Finlayson

M.A. Research Award, Kiera McMaster

Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov Paper Award, Travis Bost


Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group

Robert Raskin Student Competition

  • Lin Yue, The Ohio State University, Traffic density estimation from camera feeds using deep learning and high accuracy regions (1st place)
  • Arif Masrur, Pennsylvania State University, Multi-scale machine learning for interpreting spatiotemporally heterogeneous drivers of geographic events (1st place)
  • Ahmad Ilderim Tokey, University of Toledo, Mobility During COVID-19 in the USA: Its Spatiotemporal Pattern and Associations with COVID Cases (3rd place)

Digital Geography

Racial Justice Award

  • Emily Barrett
  • Wenfei Xu
  • Isaac Rivera
  • Candice Wilfong
  • Joyce-Ann Percel

Disability Speciality Group

Todd Reynolds Student Paper Competition, Caitlin Joseph, Temple University, My Body, The Planet: On the potential of relational geographies of disability within the climate change discourse


Economic Geography Specialty Group

Best dissertation award

  • Wanjing Chen, The Power of Mirage: State, Capital, and Politics in the Grounding of ‘Belt and Road’ in Laos
  • Erin Torkelson, Taken for Granted: Geographies of Social Welfare in South Africa
  • Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen, Bordering Blackness: The Production of Race in the Morocco-EU Immigration Regime (honorable mention)

Best Student Paper in Economic Geography, Samuel Nowak, The social lives of network effects: Platform urbanism, speculation, and collective risk management amongst gig workers in Greater Jakarta, Indonesia

Graduate Research Award, Albina Gibadullina


Energy and Environment Speciality Group

Advancing Diversity and Inclusion Award

  • Zihan Kan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Edgar Andres Virguez Rodriguez, Ph.D. Candidate at Duke University

Best Student Paper, Carelle Mang-Benza, University of Western Ontario, Many shades of pink in the energy transition: Seeing women in energy extraction, production, distribution, and consumption

Dissertation Data and Field Work Award

  • Elena Louder, University of Arizona, Renewing Injustice? A multi-scalar examination of solar energy development in Chile’s Atacama Desert
  • Saumya Vaishnava, Pennsylvania State University

Ethnic Geography Specialty Group

Early Career Award, Paul McDaniel, Kennesaw State University


Eurasian Specialty Group

Research/Travel/Conference Travel Award

  • Sameera Ibrahim, University of Wisconsin
  • Francis Naylor, University of Colorado at Boulder

European Specialty Group

Student Paper Competition

  • Samantha Brown, Univeristy of Oregon, Pork Politics: What the Danish Meatball War Can Teach Us About Race, Migration, Identity and Belonging
  • Beth Nelson, University of South Carolina, Spaces of Inclusion and Exclusion: Algerians in France

Feminist Geographies Specialty Group

Glenda Laws Student Paper Award, Annie Elledge, UNC-Chapel Hill; Her paper, The Future of Corpulence: Geographies of Fatness, Medical Care, and Tomorrow, pushes feminist geographers to rethink theorizations of fat embodiment, neoliberal control of the body, as well as conceptions of “fat futures.” The awards committee was particularly impressed by the paper’s ambitious scope, which combines literatures on geographies of fatness with work on national and neoliberal embodiment, frameworks in health geographies on the violence of care, and work in Black geographies on futurity.

Jan Monk Service Award, Ann Oberhauser, Iowa State University; This award recognizes her significant service to women in geography and/or feminist geography. As a feminist scholar and mentor, Dr. Oberhauser also has a distinguished record of service to women in geography. She has served on the AAG Committee on the Status of Women in Geography, the Executive Committee of the IGU Commission, and the Executive Board of this specialty group. In this time, she played an important role in facilitating the name change of this group.

Rickie Sanders Junior Faculty Award, Caroline Faria, University of Texas, Austin, Recent Publication: Faria, C. and Whitesell, D., 2021. Global retail capital and urban futures: Feminist postcolonial perspectives. Geography Compass, 15(1): https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12551

Susan Hanson Dissertation Proposal Award, Vivian Deidre Rodriguez Rocha, Pennsylvania State University; Her proposal, “Counter-topographies of care: Caring activism in the movement for women’s lives in Mexico” centers the material practices of women’s protest movements against femicide in urban space in central Mexico. The committee was intrigued by the proposed investigation into how women’s intimate care-practices in and through protests rework urban landscapes and assert women’s right to the city. Further, her mixed-method approach to documenting a counter-cartography of women’s solidarities in urban space and long-term partnership with anti-violence feminist organizers on the ground exemplify a strong commitment to feminist geographical epistemologies and ethics.


Geographic Information Science and Systems

Graduate Honors Student Paper Competition

  • Bing Zhou (1st place)
  • Zhen Liu (2nd place)
  • Scarlett Rakowska (2nd place)

Graduate Honors Student Paper Competition

  • Wataru Morioka
  • Jinwoo Park

Undergraduate Honors Student Paper Competition, Kexin Chen (1st place)


Geographies of Food and Agriculture

Graudate Research Award

  • Lauren Asprooth
  • Atlanta-Marinna Grant

Geography Education Specialty Group

Gail Hobbs Student Paper, Christopher Krause, University of South Carolina,


Geomorphology Specialty Group

Graduate Student Paper Award – Ph.D., Sumaiya Tul Siddique, Louisiana State University, Paper Presentation: Assessing over 100-years of geomorphic and anthropogenic alterations on the Grand River, Michigan

Reds Wolman Research Award

  • M.S. research proposal: Taylor Johaneman, University of Colorado – Boulder, Research Proposal: “Geomorphic and ecological responses to human modification of the Fremont River, Captiol Reef National Park, Utah”
  • Ph.D. research proposal: John Kemper, Colorado State University, Research Proposal: “Sediment-ecological connectivity: establishing the links between tributary morphological processes and downstream riparian vegetation dynamics”

Undergraduate Student Poster Award, Trung Tran, Louisiana State University, Poster Presentation: “A classification of neck cutoffs incorporating cutoff centerline curvature based on a global database of meandering rivers”


Graduate Student Affinity Group

Research & Support Award

  • Rachel  Arney, University of Georgia
  • Vani Singh, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
  • Morgan Vickers, UC Berkeley Department of Geography
  • Grace Chun, University of Hawaii Manoa Geography and Environment Department
  • Mia Dawson, UC Davis
  • Robert Anderson, University of Washington
  • Mindy Price, University of California – Berkeley
  • Carlos Serrano
  • Maritza Geronimo, UCLA
  • Maya Kearney, American University, Department of Anthropology

Travel Award, Sylvia Rocio Cifuentes


Hazards, Risks, and Disasters Specialty Group

The Gilbert F. White Thesis Award, Joseph Toland, University of South California, A model for emergency logistical resource requirements: supporting socially vulnerable populations affected by the (M) 7.8 San Andreas earthquake scenario in Los Angeles County, California

The Gilbert F. White Thesis/Dissertation Award, Marissa Bell, SUNY Buffalo, Energy justice, nuclear landscapes, and consent: An examination of Canadian nuclear waste siting


Health and Medical Geography

Emerging Scholar Award

  • Trang VoPham, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
  • Marta Jankowska, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center

Health Data Visualization Award

  • Dynamic: Dylan Halpern, University of Chicago, The US COVID Atlas: https://theuscovidatlas.org
  • Static: Changzhen  Wang, Louisiana State University, Spatial Network of Cancer Care Utilization and Automated Delineation of Cancer Service Areas in Northeast US

Student Travel Award, Zhiyue Xia

Jacques May Thesis Prize

  • Siewying Shee, National University of Singapore, Moving bodies, feeling health: Examining the embodied politics of health-promoting infrastructure in Singapore (Master’s)
  • Makato  Takahashi, Munich Centre for Technology in Society (MCTS) , The Improvised Expert: Performing expert authority after Fukushima (2011-2018), (Ph.D.)
  • Meredith Alberta Palmer, Cornell University, Land, Family, Body: Measurement and the Racial Politics of US Colonialism in Haudenosaunee Country (Ph.D.)

Melinda S. Meade Distinguished Scholar in Health and Medical Geography, Sarah Curtis, Durham University

Peter J. Gould Student Paper Award, Yanzhe  Yin, University of Georgia, DTEx: A dynamic urban thermal exposure index based on human mobility patterns


Historical Geography

Andrew Hill Clark Paper Award

  • Travis Bost, University of Toronto, After Sugar: Plantation Persistence in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana (1st place)
  • Andrew Hill Clark paper award (2nd place), Ian Spangler, University of Kentucky, Sweat matters: on the spatial politics and epistemology of perspiration (2nd place)

Carville Earle Research Award (Ph.D. student), Ian Spangler, U. of Kentucky, Research project: “The Impact of Platform Real Estate Technologies on Housing and Home”


Human Dimensions of Global Change

2021-2022 Student Initiatives for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award, Siya Aggrey, Stellenbosch University

2021-2022 Student Research Grant, Emily Melvin


Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group

Plenary Honorarium

  • Aude Chesnais
  • Josh Meisel
  • David Bartecchi

Landscape Specialty Group

Conference Registration Award (inaugural), Joshua Merced, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Membership Award (naugural), Desiree Valadares, University of California, Berkeley

Landscape Photography Competition

  • Preston Welker, University of Calgary,  for photo titled “The Unruly ‘Natural Landscape:’ Graffiti Pier” (1st place)
  • Pankaj Bajracharya, University of North Carolina Greensboro, for photo titled “Kathmandu Valley” (2nd place)

Student Presentation Competition

  • Sanober Mirza, University of Montana, Understanding Global Perspectives on Large-Landscape Conservation (1st place)
  • Key MacFarlane, University of California, Santa Cruz, The Temporality of Landscape: Between Sauer and Benjamin University (2nd place)

Latin America Specialty Group

Field Study Award, Ph.D. Level: Mirella Pretell Gomero, Syracuse University, Project title: “Environmental Justice and Indigenous Women’s Struggles in the Northern Peruvian Amazon” (2nd place)

Best Student Paper Award, Megan Dwyer Baumann, Pennsylvania State University, Paper title: “No es rentable”: Land rentals as a form of slow exclusion and dispossession in Colombia’s irrigation megaprojects

Student Field Study Award

  • MA Level: Mehrnush Golriz, UCLA, Managing Difference: Inequalities in Boa Vista’s Migrant Shelters
  • Ph.D. Level: Ruchi Patel, Pennsylvania State University, Nature-based tourism, development, and change on El Salvador’s Bálsamo Coast

Latinx Geographies

Mutual Aid Award

  • Hazim Abdullah-Smith
  • Jin Chen

Mutual Aid Funds

  • Channon Oyeniran
  • Flavia Lake
  • Zaira Simone
  • Mernush Golriz
  • Annita Lucchesi
  • Fikriyah Winata
  • Shamayeta Bhattacharya
  • Suzzanne Nimoh
  • Diego Martinez-Lugo

Mountain Geography Specialty Group

Barry Bishop Career Award, Sarah Halvorson, University of Montana, for significant contributions to Mountain Geography over her career

Chimborazo Student Research Grant Award, Elise Arnett, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Using Oblique Aerial Photography from 1931 to Assess Changes in Tropical Glaciers in the Peruvian Andes


Paleoenvironmental Change

Butzer Award, Sally Horn, University of Tennessee

Mosley Thompson Award, Tim Beach, University of Texas, Austin, Beach, T., Luzzadder-Beach, S., Krause, S., Guderjan, T., Valdez, F., Fernandez-Diaz, J.C., Eshleman, S. and Doyle, C., 2019. Ancient Maya wetland fields revealed under tropical forest canopy from laser scanning and multiproxy evidence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(43), pp.21469-21477

Student Research Award – Ph.D., Jamie Alumbaugh, University of Tennessee, A Multiproxy Record from the Ecuadorian Andes  Incorporating sedaDNA Analysis

Student Poster/Presentation Award, Rebecca Vail, CSU-Sacramento, Reconstructing 4,000 years of fire at Markwood Meadow Sierra National Forest, California

Student Paper/Presentation Award

  • Luke Blentlinger, University of Tennessee, Compound specific stable C and H isotope analyses of vegetation and precipitation change in Belizean pine savanna (M.S.)
  • Julie Edwards, University of Arizona, Multiple climate signals in quantitative wood anatomical measurement of Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine (Ph.D.)

Political Geography

Alexander B. Murphy Dissertation Enhancement Award, Lauren Fritzsche, University of Arizona

Graduate student paper award in MA/MS category, Grace Chun

Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award, Sara Smith, University of North Carolina, Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory, and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold (Rutgers University Press)

Undergraduate Paper Award, Aubrey Cunningham, The Sino-Indian Border Dispute: A Case of Cartographic Ambiguity and Empire Expansion in the Western Himalayas

Richard Morrill Public Outreach Award, Mia Bennett, University of Hong Kong

Stanley D. Brunn Junior Scholar Award, Danielle Purifoy, University of North Carolina

Virginia Mamadouh Outstanding Research Award, Anna Jackman, Racheal Squire, Johanne Bruun, Pip Thorton, Unearthing feminist territories and terrains (Political Geography 2020)


Queer and Trans Geographies Specialty Group

Graduate Student Conference Fund Award

  • Bobbi Ali Zaman
  • Shamayeta  Bhattacharya
  • Hazim Abdullah-Smith
  • Jinwen Chen
  • Chan Arun-Pina

Recreation, Tourism, and Sport

John Rooney Award, Dallen  Timothy

Student Paper Award, Dalilah Laidin, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Roy Wolfe Award, Salvador Clavé


Remote Sensing

Student Honors Paper Competition Award

  • Qi Dong, Beijing Normal University, Correction of area estimates derived from subpixel mapping: a two-term method (TTM) (1st place)
  • Rowan Converse, University of New Mexico, Assessing drought vegetation dynamics at the landscape scale in semiarid grass and shrubland using MESMA (2nd place)
  • Yuean Qiu, Beijing Normal University, A spatiotemporal fusion method to simultaneously generate full-length normalized difference vegetation index time series (3rd place)
  • Yilun Zhao, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Monitoring phenology of deciduous forest community and individuals with multiple satellites (3rd place)

Rural Geography

Student Paper Presentation Award, Clare Beer, University of California, Los Angeles, Big Philanthropy, Big Conservation: Ecology as Resource Spectacle in Chilean Patagonia

Student Research Award, Dinko Hanaan Dinko, Department of Geography & the Environment, University of Denver, Negotiating Water Security for Irrigation and Smallholder Agriculture in Northern Ghana


Socialist and Critical Geography SG

Blaut Award, Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota

Student Paper Award

  • Robert Chlala, USC Sociology
  • Travis Bost, Dept. of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto

Travel Award

  • Ricardo Barbosa Jr., Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
  • So Hyung Lim, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  • Yawei Zhao, University of Calgary
  • Amelia Merhar, University of Waterloo, Geography and Environmental Management

Spatial Analysis and Modeling

Student Travel Award

  • Mingzheng  Yang
  • Binbin Lin
  • Connor Donegan
  • Yaxuan Zhang
  • Ruowei Liu
  • Chenxiao Guo
  • Wataru Morioka

John Odland Student Paper Award

  • Jessica Strzempko, Flow matrix avoids problems of the popular Markov matrix
  • Junghwan Kim, An examination of the effects of the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP) on the assessment of sociodemographic disparities in air pollution exposures: Evidence from Los Angeles
  • Joe Chestnut, Exploring the Utility of Gini Coefficients as a Measure of Temporal Variation in Public Transit Travel Time

Transportation Geography

Masters Thesis Award, Elise Desjardins, McMaster University

Dissertation Award, Mischa Young, University of Ontario

Edward L. Ullman Award, Selima Sultana, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, for contributions to the field of Transportation Geography


Undergraduate Student Affinity Group

Undergraduate Student Poster Competition

  • Alexandra Lister, Rattlesnake Safety on the Black Forest Trail (1st pace)
  • Samantha Proulx-Whitcomb, Hurricane Season During a Pandemic: Changes in Disaster Response and Migrant Farmworkers in Hillsborough County, Florida (2nd place)

Urban Geography Specialty Group

Dissertation Award, Elsa  Noterman

Glenda Laws Undergraduate Paper

  • Mariam Abdelaziz
  • Lauren Weber

Graduate Student Fellowship

  • Sameera Ibrahim (M.A.)
  • Sara Tornabene (Ph.D.)

Graduate Student Paper

  • Allen Xiao
  • Diala Lteif, University of Toronto

Virtual Conference Access Award

  • Allen  Xiao
  • Maira Magnani
  • Ivin Yeo
  • Josh Merced
  • Wenjing  Zhang
  • Hung Vo

Water Resources Specialty Group

Student Research Paper

  • Madeline Wade, Texas State University, Community Education and Perceptions of Water Reuse: A Case Study in Norman, OK
  • William Delgado, University of Texas-Austin, Solar desalination: Cases, synthesis, and challenges

Student Research Presentation, Natallia Diessner, University of New Hampshire

Student Research Proposal, Lukman Fashina, East Tennessee State University, Water Quality Assessment of Karst Springwater as a Private Water Supply Source, Northeast Tennessee

Olen Paul Matthews and Kathleen A. Dwyer Fund for Water Resources Award, Michelaina Johnson, UC-Santa Cruz, Towards Equitable Groundwater Governance: A Case Study of California’s Most Critically Overdrafted Coastal Basin


Wine Beer and Spirits

Percy Dougherty Career Achievement Award (inaugural), Percy Dougherty, Kutztown University, As a founding and active member, Percy Dougherty was honored by having the biennial Wine, Beer and Sprits career achievement award named in his honor and being its first recipient

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What will be Presented at the 2021 AAG Meeting?

Jeong Chang Seong, Sanghoon JI, Ana Stanescu, Yubin Lee, and Chul Sue Hwang

Building off of an analysis completed for the cancelled in-person portion of the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting, Seong et al. have provided an update on presentation topics in anticipation of the 2021 AAG Annual Meeting.

A total of 2,952 papers and posters (2,648 papers; 304 posters) are scheduled to be presented at the AAG virtual annual meeting in April this year (numbers as of March 1, 2021). To help meeting participants and fellow geographers to find out what will be presented at the meeting, we summarized the AAG 2021 presentation submissions using the keyword network analysis method.

Figure 1. Major keywords and their network clusters.

After collecting all keywords from the presentation submissions, raw keywords were cleaned with deletion, concatenation, standardization, normalization, lemmatization, and conversion techniques. A total of 20,550 keywords were split into single-word keywords. Only distinctive words were retrieved in each paper by deleting any duplicate words. A total of 4,145 distinctive keywords were identified from the 20,550 keywords. We used 30 as the keyword frequency threshold during network visualization. As a result, a keyword network diagram was constructed with 124 keywords as shown in Figure 1. In the figure, circle sizes reflect keyword frequencies, edge widths indicate co-occurrences between two keywords, and circle colors indicate cluster memberships.
Urban (311) was identified as the most frequent keyword at the 2021 AAG annual meeting, followed by COVID-19 (199), GIS (167), climate change (163), social (139), spatial (133), infrastructure (130), water (128), food (117), analysis (114), development (112) and health (111). Each number in parentheses indicates the frequency of the keyword. When the Louvain algorithm was applied for grouping keywords, ten (10) topical clusters were identified as shown in Table 1. Even if the Urban keyword appeared most frequently, the COVID-19 cluster had the largest number (779) of keywords as members. When the influence of each cluster was measured, the COVID-19 cluster was also most influential in the keyword network with the largest eigenvector centrality amount of 18.20%.

Cluster Name
Count of Members
Percent (%) Influence
Top Five (5) Keywords
COVID-19 779 18.20 covid19, GIS, spatial, analysis, health
Urban 560 16.39 urban, development, governance, city, planning
Land Cover 615 12.36 remote sensing, forest, change, land, machine learning
Climate Change 459 11.51 climate change, climate, resilience, risk, vulnerability
Political Ecology 403 10.78 infrastructure, water, environmental, justice, political ecology
Sustainability 319 10.64 food, agriculture, community, system, management
Critical Geography 335 7.64 social, education, place, feminist, race
Border 272 5.60 digital, migration, labor, usa, river
Mapping 158 2.59 tourism, map, cultural, national, history
Culture 144 2.24 human, post, more, than, animal
Others 101 2.05 method, population, qualitative, violence, culture

Table 1. Major clusters identified from the AAG 2021 presentation keywords.

About 7.5% of papers (i.e., 222 papers among 2952) included COVID-19 or pandemic in their keywords. A further detailed network analysis with the 222 papers identified seven (7) sub-clusters of COVID-19 research as shown in Table 2. Overall, five topics appear to stand out that are (1) spatial analysis of mobility, (2) health and sanitization accessibility, (3) community resilience and policies, (4) lockdown and activity spaces, and (5) online education.

Sub-cluster Name
Count of Members
Percent (%) Influence
Top Five (5) Keywords
Spatial Analysis 87 20.09 mobility, social, analysis, human, spatial
Community Resilience 66 15.30 food, local, system, resilience, agriculture
Public Health 61 11.24 health, public, neighborhood, adult, older
Activity Space 59 10.28 space, risk, livelihood, management, activity
Lockdown Impacts 61 9.01 GIS, lockdown, infrastructure, transportation, behavior
Sanitization Accessibility 41 8.80 access, vulnerability, water, sanitation, adaptation
Urban Policy 39 8.00 urban, policy, density, housing, rural
Online Education and Others 101 17.29 learning, online, education, teaching, city

Table 2. Sub-clusters of COVID-19 research.

The urban keyword was used in 311 papers (10.5% of total papers). Table 3 shows major sub-clusters of urban research. Like the 2020 case, no topic dominates in the urban research when examining the percent influence values that were measured with the eigenvector centrality. It, rather, shows that multiple sub-clusters are competitive each other.

Sub-cluster Name
Count of Members
Percent (%) Influence
Top Five (5) Keywords
Urban Development 99 11.74 development, agriculture, food, social, rural
Vulnerability 70 11.69 governance, resilience, system, climate change, COVID-19
Housing 89 11.40 housing, land, estate, financialization, political
Sustainability 103 11.21 change, sustainability, landscape, machine learning, management
Urban Planning 86 11.12 planning, GIS, human, community, critical
Green Space 69 10.45 infrastructure, green, space, environmental justice, gentrification
Public Access 77 9.44 city, water, public, right, access
Others 250 22.95 china, heat, spatial, urbanization, political ecology

Table 3. Sub-clusters of urban research.

The keyword network analysis suggests a couple of watching points in the 2021 AAG conference presentations. One is the emergence of COVID-19 research as a very influential topic. It may be of great interest to many geographers to see how fellow researchers tackle the global pandemic phenomenon. The other is the integration of GIS and spatial analysis into the COVID-19 cluster.

The 2021 AAG Conference is held virtually this year. Even if it is heartbreaking that we cannot meet fellow geographers face-to-face, the virtual conference will be an opportunity for us to overcome geographic mobility restrictions. We hope to see you all during the conference.

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0088

Acknowledgment: This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science, ICT), Republic of Korea, under the High-Potential Individuals Global Training Program (IITP-2020-0-01593) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation).

About the Authors

Jeong Chang Seong, Ph. D., is a professor of geography at University of West Georgia (UWG), Carrollton, GA

Sanghoon JI is a graduate student at Kyung Hee University (KHU) who is currently performing a visiting research at UWG

Ana Stanescu, Ph. D., is an assistant professor of computer science at University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA

Yubin Lee is a graduate student at KHU, Seoul, South Korea

Chul Sue Hwang, Ph. D., is a professor of geography at KHU, Seoul, South Korea

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