GEOG Celebrates Excellence in 2024, Looks Ahead

The Department of Geographical Sciences (GEOG) celebrated numerous accomplishments and milestones this year, and is looking ahead to more impactful activities, collaborations and projects in the future.

Demonstrating strength in research and innovation, GEOG faculty brought in more than $12 million in external funding this fiscal year to-date (since July 1) from 26 funding agencies. The top three funding sources were NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation. This is a major achievement for the faculty and the staff that processed these proposals. 

GEOG was also once again recognized as a national and global leader in the area of remote sensing, and was ranked #1 in the United States by the 2024 Shanghai Rankings. 

“Geographical Sciences continues to be a research powerhouse in the College and on campus, with an outstanding reputation nationally and internationally. Externally funded research enables our graduate students to contribute to cutting-edge environmental research, collaborate on impactful publications, and launch their research careers,” said Acting Chair and Distinguished University Professor Chris Justice.

Included here are just a few of GEOG’s remarkable activities, awards, publications and honors this year. Read more on the department’s newly redesigned website, geog.umd.edu.

The Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation, or “GEDI,” led by Professor Ralph Dubayah is once again firing lasers down to Earth from the International Space Station after being successfully reinstalled onto its original location on the ISS this past Earth Day, April 22, 2024.

University of Maryland researchers are part of a team awarded $5 million to explore the potential of a new satellite mission that would launch in 2032. The mission, Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer (EDGE), which is led by Associate Professor John Armston, aims to advance our knowledge of changes in Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems, ice and glaciers to help better understand how our planet is responding to climate change and would follow-on from the GEDI Mission.

As climate change accelerates, forests are undergoing significant structural changes that affect biodiversity, wildlife habitats, and critical ecological services such as carbon storage and water regulation. A study published in September by the GEDI team provides new insights into these changes, using spaceborne lidar technology to produce the first near-global assessment of the 3D structural complexity of Earth’s forests. This detailed analysis reveals how the arrangement of trees and plants varies across different forest types, offering valuable data for understanding and addressing these transformations.

Forest ecosystems are vital for storing carbon and stabilizing the climate. However, deforestation and climate change risk triggering Earth's tipping points that accelerate global warming. This underscores the urgent need for better forest carbon monitoring and strategies to boost carbon absorption Researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Pittsburgh have been awarded $750,000 from the National Science Foundation’s new program on Collaborations on Artificial Intelligence and Geosciences to address this challenge by combining remote sensing data, modeling and artificial intelligence.

Chair Tatiana Loboda, Associate Research Professor Evan Ellicott and Assistant Research Professor Adrián Pascual Arranz were all selected to join NASA’s new FireSense Implementation (FSI) Team. This initiative aims to enhance wildland fire management across the United States using advanced Earth science technologies and continues the department’s leadership role in fire remote sensing.

Vivre Bell, Director of Administrative services, was recognized among several UMD faculty and staff members with the MVP Impact Award.

Professor Matthew Hansen was honored with the William T. Pecora Award, jointly presented by the United States Geological Survey and by NASA. The award recognizes innovators in the field of remote sensing.

Assistant Professor Catherine Nakalembe was awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program. She will be analyzing flood impacts on agricultural lands in Nigeria’s Niger River Basins. She also received the prestigious Al-Sumait Prize for African Development.

In findings published in November in the Journal of Climate, GEOG researchers and collaborators with the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center identified the Bering Sea in the northern Pacific Ocean as a climate change hotspot, showing how environmental changes there threaten the stability of vulnerable coastal communities and ecosystems. 

Renowned for its biodiversity and rainforests, Indonesia has undergone significant changes over the past three decades. Since 1990, the country has lost 25% of its old-growth forests—and substantial areas of that cleared land are sitting idle and unused. This was the key finding of a study on Indonesian deforestation trends from 1991 to 2020 that was published last summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to the study, 7.8 million hectares of land had been converted into palm oil plantations by 2020, while an additional 8.8 million hectares—roughly the size of Maine—remain vacant. Postdoctoral Associate Diana Parker is the lead author of the study.

Published on Mon, Dec 16, 2024 - 11:20AM