Tags: Four Towers Building


[Re]Defining 'Food Deserts'

Very interesting new research from the Jerry Shannon in the department of geography on access to healthy food: The concept of food deserts grew out of a need to describe areas with the combination of a low-income population and reduced availability of stores selling healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables. Online resources made available by the USDA identify food deserts by measuring the distance to the closest supermarket from each census…


Franklin Visiting Scholar: Jennifer Fluri

The Franklin College Office of Inclusion and Diversity Leadership brings to campus visiting feminist political geographer Jennifer Fluri from Dartmouth to give an important talk on gender, security and violence in south and southwest Asia: Fluri, an associate professor of geography and chair of the women's and gender studies program at Dartmouth College, will discuss "The Beautiful ‘Other:' A Critical Examination of ‘Western'…


And now... the weather

One of the 'super hubs' for collaboration and partnership at UGA is our public televisioon station, WUGA TV. The Franklin College has a partnership with the station in the interview show that I host - but the College of Public Health, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and of course the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication all have growing collaborations with the station. One of the latter is Grady…


Friday lectures: Geography, Cinema, Anthropology and Women's Studies

  Friday Lectures Abound: Geography, Cinema, Anthropology and Women’s Studies By Jessica Luton Fall is in full swing here in Athens. And alongside the crisp cool air and colorful changing leaves all over campus is a busy schedule of lectures, from both UGA faculty and visiting scholars.  Here’s a look at what’s on today’s schedule for lectures. Women’s Studies: Female Judges First up, is the Women’s Studies Friday Speaker Series held…


Exploring Earth Sciences

By JESSICA LUTON  jluton@uga.edu If interest in the Earth sciences is at your core, two events happening this week may very well provide some insight into the kinds of careers that are possible in meteorology and geography. First up, tonight from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in room 200B of the Geography and Geology building, is an informational meeting entitled “Your Future in Meteorology.”  The UGA Chapter of the American Meteorological Society is…

three students in front of NASA sign
Summer NASA experience for Franklin students

This is an update on a story we reported back in January. The Franklin College is especially pleased that it is written by the newest member of our communications team, Jessica Luton. Be sure to watch the great videos for each research project.   To Infinity and Beyond From Observation to Application: Franklin students inform policy using NASA data By Jessica Luton When NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is mentioned…


NOAA supercomputers: 200 trillion calculations per second

As we enter the height of hurricane season, forcasters have a new model to improve their work. Newly upgraded supercomputers of NOAA’s National Weather Service are now more than twice as fast in processing sophisticated computer models to provide more accurate forecasts. The scientific data and insights that these newly upgraded supercomputers will provide are essential to help government officials, communities, and businesses better understand…


Departmental newsletters

The Franklin College is home to 30 departments and nearly 30 more centers, institutes and programs. That's a lot of news to keep up with. But our units do a great job of sharing their specific news, notes, headlines and quotes with the wider world. And what were formerly printed materials that units mailed out are now nice elctronic documents and websites that allow us to share more information than ever with a growing roster of friends, alumni…


Weather and climate experts

The devastating tornado that hit the Oklahoma City suburbs on Monday has rightly taken up a lot of media oxygen over the last few days. The attention means faculty members in geography John Knox and especially current president of the American Meteorological Society J. Marshall Shepherd have been on call, non-stop. A sampling for Shepherd alone, just in the past two days: Huffpost Live, XM Sirius B. Smith Show NPR Science Friday on Friday.…


UGA Research magazine

The fall 2012 issue of the ugaresearch magazine is out, and available online. It features some great stories on Franklin College faculty, including geography professor Steven Holloway and whole section devoted to the Civil War, with a focus on books by history facuty members Stephen Berry, John Inscoe and a forthcoming work by Kathleen Clark. Great work all around.


Shepherd and Knox opine on Sandy and forecasting in the AJC

How do we understand the potential of a megastorm like Sandy, currently battering the East coast of the U.S.? Geography professors Marshall Shepherd and John Knox explain in an Op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Advances in numerical weather forecasting during the past several decades have extended our ability to see into the future. In September 1938, before all of these advances, a hurricane devastated Long Island and much of New…

woman with weather map
'Good Morning America' meteorologist Ginger Zee

The student chapter of the UGA American Meteorological Society welcomes weekend 'Good Morning America' meteorologist Ginger Zee to campus on Tuesday, Oct. 17 at 4:30 p.m. in room 102 of the Miller Learning Center: Zee is the Emmy Award-winning weather anchor of the "Good Morning America" weekend edition, which is broadcast from the ABC News studios in Manhattan, N.Y. She also reports on weather-related topics from around the country during the…


New website allows access to changes along the coast

Overlapping constituencies have often been the bane of sustainable development practices. Even having the tools that allow different groups to share information and work together has long been a deficiency; and without them, marshalling agreement among competing interests has been that much more difficult and rare. Now, a new web tool from UGA researchers might begin to change that dynamic: a team of University of Georgia researchers has…

Greenland ice melt
Climatologists note dramatic surface ice melt in Greenland

In widely reported findings, UGA climatologists and NASA independently confirm that during several days this month, nearly the entire ice sheet of Greenland experienced some degree of melting on its surface. On average, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts in the summer. The new data—from three different satellites—show that an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July. "This is…


Amazing student: Lauren Anderson

A senior from Macon, Lauren Anderson is engaged with unique combination of opportunies at UGA to focus her studies at the confluence of U.S. foreign policy and the international politics of human rights. Lauren Anderson: Degree objective: A.B. in international affairs, A.B. in human geography, minor in African studies and anthropology   During fall semester of my sophomore year, I enrolled in Dr. Amy Ross’ geography of human rights…


Focus on Faculty: Marshall Shepherd

Very nice Q & A with the director of UGA's Atmosphereic Sciences program, Marshall Shepherd, on the University of Georgia homepage.  A professor in the department of geography, Shepherd discusses several personal and professional topics,  including his favorite courses and why? I developed two new courses when I came to UGA. One course, Applied Climatology in the Urban Environment, is one of my favorite courses because I get to…

football players at practice
Study: heat-related football deaths triple

Very interesting finding out of the department of geography, a discipline that truly has no bounds: Heat-related deaths among football players across the country tripled to nearly three per year between 1994 and 2009 after averaging about one per year the previous 15 years, according to an analysis of weather conditions and high school and college sports data conducted by University of Georgia researchers. The scientists built a detailed…


The Impact of Drought

Lee Shearer of the Athens Banner Herald reports on research by Franklin faculty on the recent drought:   But measured by its impact on people in the four counties served by the Bear Creek Reservoir, and how much it depleted water in area rivers, it was the worst on record, they say in an article published this month in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association. “The smoking gun is pointing at population increases,” said one of…


Shepherd elected president of AMS

Congratulations to professor of geography Marshall Shepherd, who was recently voted president-elect of the American Meteorological Society: Shepherd, who directs the university’s Atmospheric Sciences Program, will begin a one-year term as president-elect on Jan. 22 at the annual meeting of the society in New Orleans. In 2013, he will assume the presidency of the society, which was founded in 1919 and has a membership of more than 14,000…
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