News Archive

A recent CNN article, “Protecting villagers from deadly mudslides” by Ebonne Ruffins (February 10, 2011) pays tribute to research by the UCSB Department of Geography: “There are plenty of natural reasons why Guatemalans are vulnerable to mudslides: frequent earthquakes, hurricanes and heavy rains oversaturate Guatemala’s mountainous terrain and muddy the soil. But…there’s another mudslide trigger to...

The fabled “green flash” is a rare optical phenomenon that occurs just after the sun sets or just before it rises and is due to the refraction of light under certain conditions. This unpredictable event was first popularized by the 1882 novel The Green Ray by Jules Verne and, more recently, was used as a plot device in the 2007 film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Not many people have seen a green flash,...

According to the University Consortium of Geographical Information Science web site, “since 2010, UCGIS has acknowledged those individuals who have contributed to the advancement of geographic information science and technology. The grade of Fellow is bestowed on the recipient who has had an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the spatial disciplines and communities of practice that use spatial information to...