News Archive

The following “letter from Seattle” is from UCSB Geography Professor Emeritus Michael Goodchild, the first director of the Center for Spatial Studies (originally posted in the seventh issue of the Center’s Newsletter, Vertices, with the title above): In Suzhou, an ancient Chinese city that—like all Chinese cities—is now bursting with construction, there is a garden known as the Humble...

The following is a NASA news article posted August 29 and with the title above: Data from a NASA airborne science mission reveals evidence of a large and previously unknown canyon hidden under a mile of Greenland ice. The canyon has the characteristics of a winding river channel and is at least 460 miles (750 kilometers) long, making it longer than the Grand Canyon. In some places, it is as deep as 2,600 feet (800 meters), on scale...

At present, there are 51 large wildfires burning in the U.S., the National Interagency Fire Center has raised the national wildfire preparedness level to the highest level for the first time in five years, and firefighting costs have reached $1.2 billion so far this year, more than half last year’s total of $1.9 billion and quickly nearing the 10-year average of $1.4 billion. There have been 33,000 fires that have burned more...