Who are We?

Founded in 1975, the Geography Department at Virginia Tech is part of the College of Natural Resources. Department offices, labs, and facilities are located in Major Williams Hall in the Upper Quad area of the Virginia Tech Campus (building #7 grid 3M).

The Department offers both B.A. and M.S. degrees. We participate in the College of Natural Resources doctoral program in Geospatial and Environmental Analysis.

Find out about our exciting new degree program in Meteorology!

Answer to the Newsletter Puzzle: http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0610/nospin.html

What do we do?

We work in a wide variety of careers in teaching, research, planning organizations, business, Information Technology,and government. To explore further, look at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) website on careers.

Important Events and Achievements

• Check out the colloquium schedule for 2011-2012!

• Korine Kolivras was recently named a 2010 winner of the Distinguished Teaching Achievement award by the National Council for Geographic Education.  The award is made in recognition of her exemplary innovative efforts in the classroom, her dedication to active learning, and her popularity with students.

• Congratulations to Jim Campbell who recently received the Ford Bartlett Award from the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing for service to the organization.

• Lynn Resler has just received word that she has been awarded tenure and promotion by Virginia Tech at the University level.  Pending Board of Visitor’s approval she will become our latest Associate Professor!! Congratulations to Lynn for all her hard work!

• Congratulations to Arvind Bhuta for the following achievements:
  
  Elected as the Student Representative for the Biogeography Specialty Group
  Inducted as a Full Member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society
  Awarded a 2010 AAG Dissertation Research Grant

• Congratulations to Candice Luebbering who the the winner of the national 2010 CaGIS Scholarship Doctoral level award from the Cartography and Geographic Information Society.

• The department wishes to congratulate our graduate and undergraduate student award winners for the 2009-2010 academic year:

  Outstanding Sophomore in the College of Natural Resources: Katherine Barnes
  Outstanding Senior in the Department of Geography: Stewart Scales
  Outstanding MS student in the Department of Geography: Tammy Parece
  Outstanding PhD. student in the Department of Geography: Arvind Bhuta

• Congratulations to Heather Lee, who has been accepted into the Geography doctoral program at Texas A&M and will be receiving a Graduate Research Assistantship for the project “Household water security in rural and peri-urban communities in south Texas.”

• Candice Luebbering's poster entitled “The Lay of the Language: Surveying the cartographic characteristics of language maps” won first place in the GSA Research Symposium's CNR division.

• David Kramar has been honored by the Russell Lectureship award from the Bristol Bird Club in Bristol, Virginia.  This award provides a travel honorarium to outstanding PhD. students studying ornithology to present their work to the club.  He will present on his work with Bald and Golden Eagles on April 20, 2010. 

• Matej Muza; a graduate student in Geography was one of 40 student athletes in the Atlantic Coast Conference to receive the Weaver-James-Corrigan award for graduate study.  Further, he was one of only three in the entire conference to receive the Thacker Award for graduate study.  Matej is studying Decision Support Systems in GIS in the department.

• Congratulations to Lisa Kennedy who, with collaborator Kam Biu-Liu of Louisiana State University, has received an award from the National Science Foundation to study Caribbean Maritime Forest Ecosystem's response to fire and hurricanes.

• Congratulations to Lynn Resler and Korine Kolivras who have a new publication that recently appeared in the Journal of Geography:

  Resler, L.M. and K.N. Kolivras. 2009.  A field-based technique for teaching about habitat fragmentation and edge effects.  Journal of Geography 108: 210-218.

• John Boyer (Plaid Avenger) on WDBJ-7 news.

• Lindsey Haller, a geography senior, has been invited to jon Phi Beta Kappa based on her outstanding academic performance.

• Kirsten de Beurs class in Remote Sensing and Phenology is currently highlighted in Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features.

Congratulations to our graduate students who have recently received scholarships and fellowships:

• Korine Kolivras has a new publicaion:
  
  Kolivras, K.N.  2010.  Changes in dengue risk potential in Hawaii, USA due to climate variability and change.  Climate Research  42(1): 1-11.

• Tammy Parece: Virginia Lakes and Watershed Association and the Love of Learning Grant.

• John Powers: Shikar Safari Club International.
  

• Korine Kolivras has a new publication:

  Kolivras, K.N. and Scarpaci, J.L. 2009.  Between Corporatism and Socialism: Navigating the Waters of International Education in the Dominican Republic and Cuba.  Journal of Geography 108(3):121-131.
  

• Larry and Mina are happy and proud to announce the arrival of their grandson Raymond Gaskill, born on Monday August 24, 2009.

• Lynn Resler (PI) and co-investigators Diana Tomback (University of Colorado at Denver) and George Malanson (University of Iowa) were awarded a grant ($439,006) from the National Science Foundation, Geography and Spatial Sciences division for a 4-year project, entitled "Implications of an Invasive Forest Pathogen for Alpine Treeline Dynamics".This study is the first systematic investigation of the implications of exotic disease upon alpine treeline dynamics and will shed light on how an exotic and invasive disease, coupled with the impacts of climate warming, can alter the structure and function of a critical global ecosystem through mortality of a keystone and foundation species.                         

• Congratulations to Arvind Bhuta and his advisor Lisa Kennedy, who received an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant for his proposal "A Multi-Scale Analysis of Disturbance, Dynamics, and Climate-Growth Relationships in Mountain Longleaf Pine Forests, USA.".

• Kirsten deBeurs (PI) along with Geoffrey Henebry of South Dakota State University and Grigory Ioffe of Radford University recevied word of a major grant from NASA to study "Land Abandonment in Russia: Understanding Recent Trends and Assessing Future Vulnerability and Adaptation to Changing Climate and Population Dynamics".

• More - click here

Our Mission Statement

The mission of the department of Geography at Virginia Tech is to foster an appreciation and understanding of the diversity of Earth’s physical and cultural environments, the importance and value of a spatial perspective, and an understanding of the complex interrelationships between peoples and their environments at a variety of scales.  Our goal is to provide students with the intellectual and technical skills to synthesize information, become critical thinkers, develop into better and more informed citizens, and find success in employment or further academic training.

Our department emphasizes teaching and scholarship involving four themes: 1) human-environment relationships – how culture, gender, economy, and politics affect people’s use of and interaction with the environment; 2) international development – the relations between developed and developing countries and the impacts of globalization at local, national, and regional levels; 3) environmental systems – the interrelations among patterns of climate, landforms, vegetation, soils and water, including the factors and processes that produce those patterns; and 4) geospatial analysis – the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), computer mapping, and remote sensing in geographic analyses.