Geography Professor and Chair Dan Montello reflects upon the discipline and the importance of Geography today:
Something everyone should know about Geography is what a fascinating and relevant academic discipline it is. But I think the average person is often unaware of this. So many people seem to labor under outdated impressions that Geography is just a descriptive discipline, that it focuses exclusively on mapping and naming earth features, or that it concerns knowledge that is unambiguous, having been solidly established long ago (hey, haven’t explorers discovered every place on Earth?). None of the statements accurately describes modern geography, of the kind we practice at UCSB and elsewhere. Modern Geography is not only descriptive but predictive and explanatory. Yes, it involves maps (and almost any geographer does enjoy a good map), but it involves many other modes of expression and communication, including language, mathematics, physical and computational modeling, computer simulation, and then some (art and cinema!). It is fantastically multi- and interdisciplinary, integrating natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, and engineering. And it involves so many subtle and profound ambiguities about the world. For instance, no one knows how many lakes there are in Minnesota (or Finland, for that matter) and no one ever will. It cannot be known, because there is no principled way to determine exactly and in all cases whether some feature is a lake or not, or whether it is one lake or two. As for the idea that we know everything about every place, nothing could be less true. Places are dynamic, constantly changing. And we have yet to learn quite a bit of even relatively static knowledge about inaccessible but important places, like the world’s oceans from top to bottom.
Don’t get me wrong—I love Geographic trivia and I love maps. Did you know that there are at least four reasonable answers to the question “What is the highest point on the earth’s surface?” The summit of Mt. Everest is the furthest above sea level, the summit of Mt. Chimborazo is the furthest from the center of the earth, the summit of Mt. Denali is at the top of the tallest mountain from terrestrial base to summit, and the summit of Mauna Kea is at the top of the tallest mountain from oceanic base to summit. Did you know that Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau are discontiguous municipalities of Belgium and the Netherlands (respectively), pieces of each of which are scattered among pieces of the other, so that the international boundary runs through cafes and private residences in the town(s)? Did you know that the name of a lake in Massachusetts is 45 letters long? Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Did you know that the Principality of Sealand was a self-declared, unrecognized country-like entity that claimed as its territory an abandoned WWII artillery platform in the North Sea about 6 miles off the east coast of England? If Sealand were accepted as a country, it would be the world’s smallest (yes, much smaller than Vatican City State) at ~.0002 miles².
There, wasn’t that fun? Knowing such entertaining “factoids” may amuse you and help you compete on Jeopardy, but they can give the general public a big misimpression of what Geography is like as an academic discipline. In my Chair’s Letter last fall, I maintained that the research we conduct in the UCSB Department of Geography is intellectually intriguing but also relevant to individuals and society at large. Let me give some examples from our department.
The Climate Hazards Group (CHG) is an organized research unit administered by the Department of Geography. Co-founded by Geography Professor Emeritus Joel Michaelsen, its current personnel include researchers Chris Funk and Greg Husak, both of whom earned doctorates from UCSB Geography, and several other UCSB post-docs and graduate students from Geography and other fields. The CHG truly expresses the breadth and interconnectedness of different aspects of Geography. At its core, the researchers and staff of the CHG monitor environmental conditions to anticipate food insecurity in developing countries, particularly in Africa. Their work produces new datasets, software tools, and analyses to inform government action and allow for timely and appropriate relief efforts in some of the most vulnerable parts of the world. In addition, the CHG actively trains representatives in-country to leverage their available resources—including their local knowledge and information—so they can better assess growing conditions and build their capacity to anticipate and respond to crises. While this is the central mission of the CHG, other byproducts of its work are the identification and analysis of climate trends, changes in land cover, the causes and effects of market activities, health outcomes of food insecurity, and a number of other topics. All of this diverse scholarship has led to a more nuanced understanding of the food system and the rippling effects of food shortages in regions at risk in the world.
Or consider another example. The Spatial Discovery Project is administered by the Center for Spatial Studies, another organized research unit housed in the Department of Geography, in collaboration with the UCSB Library. It is led by Professor Werner Kuhn of Geography (and the Center for Spatial Studies) and Denise Stephens of the UCSB Library. Other post-docs and graduate students from Geography and elsewhere participate as researchers. Funded by a private grant, the Project aims to study the challenges and strategies that libraries and researchers face in trying to discover and link spatial data via metadata on diverse platforms and in a variety of environments. In plain English, information of all kinds very often has a place component—it is located somewhere or is about some place. But given the variety of problem areas, information systems, programs, disciplines, and more that are involved in the storage and use of this information, it is a major problem to maximize how well one source of information about a place connects up with other sources of information also relevant to that place. The Project aims to (1) develop and test a technical protocol enabling researchers to easily identify spatial data located across disparate web-accessible databases, repositories, and catalogs; and (2) promote the evolution of the “spatial university” through expanding awareness and adoption of spatial data and analysis in research and teaching. In addition, the Project is connecting with the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory to promote increased integration of spatially-framed instructional and research activities across disciplines through targeted collaborative programming and outreach.
These are but two of several examples I could discuss that demonstrate how interesting and relevant the work of modern Geography at a place like UCSB is. As always, I know we can count on your support for these efforts, financially and otherwise. They cannot continue without it.
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