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BIO-SKETCH
Professor of Geography, member of the
Ecology Curriculum, and Research Fellow of the Carolina
Population Center at the University of North Carolina ¨C Chapel
Hill. Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (2006), Former Amos H. Hawley Professor of
Geography (1993-96), Director of the Spatial Analysis Unit at
the Carolina Population Center (1992-97), and current faculty
advisor to the Spatial Analysis Unit. President
(2003-present), Vice-President and Program Chair (2000-2002),
and Secretary (1992-1994) of the Southeastern Division of the
Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG); Chair of the
Geographic Information Systems (1998-2000) and the Remote
Sensing (1994-1996) Specialty Groups of the Association of
American Geographers (AAG). Recipient of the Outstanding
Contributions Award and Medal from the Remote Sensing
Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers
(1997), awarded Research Honors from the Southeastern Division
of the AAG (1999), and awarded National Research Honors for
Distinguished Scholarship from the Association of American
Geographers (2001). Member of the editorial boards of Annals
of the Association of American Geographers, Plant Ecology, and
Geocarto International and formerly on the editorial boards of
the Journal of Geography, The Professional Geographer, and the
Southeastern Geographer; served on the Dissertation
Improvement Panel for the Geography and Regional Science
Division of the National Science Foundation (1997-1999);
member of Review Panels of the National Institutes of Health
(2001, 2005), and on the Committee of Visitors of the National
Science Foundation (2003). Co-edited special remote sensing
and GIS issues in the Journal of Vegetation Science,
Geomorphology, and Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote
Sensing, co-editor of a special issue of GeoForum on coupled
human-natural systems and biocomplexity, as well as a special
issue of Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing on the
mapping and modeling of land use/land cover in frontier
settings. Since 2001, co-edited a series of books for Kluwer
Academic Publishers -- GIS and Remote Sensing Applications in
Biogeography and Ecology (2001, Millington, Walsh, Osborne); Linking People, Place, and Policy: A
GIScience Approach (2002, Walsh and Crews-Meyer); and People and the Environment: Approaches
for Linking Household and Community Surveys to Remote Sensing and GIS (2003, Fox,
Rindfuss, Walsh, Mishra); and in 2003 for Elsevier, Mountain Geomorphology ¨C Integrated Earth Systems (Butler, Walsh, Malanson). Current research is conducted in Thailand, Amazon and the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, and the Mountains of the American West that is funded by grants from NASA, NIH, NSF, and USGS.
Research Emphasis
(1)General Areas of Research: Geographic
information systems, remote sensing, spatial analysis,
physical geography, and population-environment interactions.
(2)Spatial Pattern at the Alpine Treeline
Ecotone: Interrelationships between scale, pattern, and
process are explored in the examination of the alpine
environment including questions associated with alpine
treeline, disturbance regimes, climate change implications,
and biogeographic and geomorphic processes affecting landscape
composition and spatial pattern.
(3)Population-Environment Interactions:
Relationships between environment and population in Thailand
and Ecuador are examined with particular emphasis on the
linkages between deforestation, agro-forestry systems,
urbanization, population demographics and socio-economic
patterns, land use/land cover change, land suitability, and
pattern-process relationships.
(4)Coupled Human-Natural Systems: The
integration of people, place, and environment are considered
through the lens of Complexity Theory in which nonlinear
relationships, feedback mechanism, emergent behavior, and
complex adaptive systems are examined using cellular automata
and multi-agent based models and spatial and statistical
analyses. The general goal is to understand pattern-process
relations within the context of a dynamic environment,
evolving characteristics of multiple agents, interaction
mechanisms and rules of behavior, and scenarios of land
use/land cover dynamics.
(5)Scale Dependence and Information
Scaling: Multi-level relationships within and between social,
biophysical, and spatial domains are examined across the
space-time continuum.
(6)Geographic Methods: Remote Sensing,
GIS, spatial analysis, and data visualization approaches are
examined within the context of landscape characterization and
representation of social and biophysical systems with
particular emphasis on the use of spatial models for landscape
characterization and LULC change simulation.
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
My research examines coupled
human-natural systems and land use/cover dynamics in the
frontier environment of the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, the
Galapagos Islands, and in rural Nang Rong District,
Northeastern Thailand. This research recognizes that at local,
regional, and global scales land use changes is significantly
altering land cover, perhaps at an accelerating pace. This
transformation of the Earth¡¯s surface, particularly through
deforestation, agricultural extensification, secondary forest
succession, and urbanization, is linked to a variety of
scientific and policy issues articulated by international
organizations, such as, the International Human Dimensions
Program and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. In
addition, program initiatives of the National Science
Foundation (e.g., Biocomplexity and Human and Social Dynamics
Programs), National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(e.g., Land Cover/Land Use Change Program), and the National
Institutes of Health (e.g., National Institutes for Child
Health and Development Program and the Roadmap Initiatives)
revolve around the human dimensions of land use/cover change
and the proximate and distal causes and consequences of such
changes.
My research also emphasizes
pattern-process relationships at the alpine and sub-alpine
environments of Glacier National Park, Montana, the Northern
Rocky Mountains, and, more recently, the mountains of the US
American West. With particular emphasis on the alpine treeline
ecotone, the biotic and abiotic factors and disturbance
regimes are examined, particularly, those that are mediated by
local to global forcing functions, affect the loss of
biodiversity, and represent ecological indicators of climate
change. More broadly, my research seeks to understand
ecological, biogeographic, and geomorphic factors affecting
landscape patterns at a host of space and time scales.
Finally, my research focuses on
landscape characterization through statistical and spatial
modeling and spatial analysis approaches. Geospatial data and
spatial digital technologies (e.g., geographic information
systems, satellite remote sensing, and global positioning
systems) and approaches are developed and applied to study
ecological systems and linked ecological and social systems.
Of particular interest are new developments in complexity
theory that conceives the world as consisting of
self-organized systems, either reproducing their state through
negative feedbacks with their environment or moving along
trajectories from one state to another as a result of positive
feedbacks. The goal of complexity theory is to understand how
simple, fundamental processes can be combined to produce
complex holistic systems. My research in system dynamics is
motivated by questions that seek understanding in broad areas
of concern: How does a complex approach help explore the
internal mechanisms of system dynamics and provide plausible
explanations? How do results derived from applying complexity
theory help in understanding decision-making across levels of
social organization ranging from individual households to
national governments? How do fundamental characteristics of
complex dynamics of coupled human-natural systems and
ecological systems limit their predictability, sustainability,
and resilience? Agent based models and cellular automata
models are used to explore the environment as well as
scenarios of land use/cover dynamics by integrating the
characteristics of agents (e.g., individuals and households),
a changing environment, neighborhood associations, and
interaction rules. The goal is to explore ¡°what if scenarios¡±
of land use/cover change through spatial simulations, links
between theory and model outcomes, and trajectories of land
change set by the pathways of human-environment
interactions.
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