Wrapping up the bITS summer 2013 internship program
I’ve been working with 5 high school youth for the past 6 weeks as part of the “Building Information Technology Skills” program at Temple University. My lab has been focused on exploring the urban environment in Philadelphia. Click here to see what we’ve been up to this summer.
Mapping temperatures on Temple’s campus
I’m working with the Building Information Technology Skills program at Temple University this summer. My lab is involved in a variety of different urban environmental projects. This week we’re focusing on the urban heat island effect. The students measured the temperature of different surfaces across campus and created the following web map in CartoDB. Follow […]
On our way back home
After two and a half weeks in Chiapas, we are wrapping up our first field season! Though I’ve been unable to post for the last week due to inconsistent/intermittent internet access, we’ve been quite busy with our interviews and landscape surveys. Some new surprises in the landscape have included large tree plantations of not only […]
Documenting the changing land
Over the last few days we’ve been conducting some interviews in various ejidos, but we’ve spent most of our time driving around documenting different types of land uses. One goal of this exercise is to better understand the different types of land use practices, but another is to be able to validate the vegetation data […]
Where are we?
We’ve only very generally described our study region – the eastern lowlands of Chiapas, the area near the Guatemala border, etc. – and we’ve received some interesting natural history lessons by asking what people call this region. Perhaps the most common term we hear is the Selva Lacandon (the Lacandon Rainforest). However, most of the […]
Milpa, cattle, and palm oil
Over the last few days, we’ve had a chance to begin speaking with people from a few different communities in the region and are beginning to hear the stories associated with the landscape. Although some of these processes are well documented, particularly land use transitions associated with timber extraction from the Selva Lacanada, the rise […]
Getting the lay of the land
For our first day in the field, we drove the along a portion of the Eastern Lowlands in Chiapas and observed different land uses, primarily pasture for cattle, but also maize fields and a few palm oil plantations. Some fields were recently cleared (see photo), while others were semi-vegetated or contained secondary growth.
Vulnerabilities in Mexico
My collaborators and I are starting our new study in Eastern Chiapas, Mexico this week (more details about the project appear at the following link: https://sites.temple.edu/hpearsall/research/vulnerabilities-in-mexico/) I’ll post reflections and updates as time and internet connectivity permits. Stay tuned….
UAA and AAG in California
I recently returned from two conference in California: – Urban Affairs Association in San Francisco – Association of American Geographers in Los Angeles At the UAA, I participated in a session titled Farming and Gardening in the City: the politics and practices of urban agriculture in the 21st Century This session brought together several urban […]
Feeding Cities Conference, March 13-15
There is an upcoming conference in Philadelphia on food security in the urban(izing) context. The conference will take place at the University of Pennsylvania March 13-15, 2013. See link below for additional details. Feeding Cities: Food security in a rapidly urbanizing world There is a wide range of topics and speakers, and the registration fee […]