Featured Research
Global Sulfur Cycle Studies (Herman Sievering)
Building on work over the last 20 years, Dr. Sievering's recent NSF funded research has focused on sulfur-related field work in the Southern Ocean. The atmosphere over this Antarctic-encircling ocean is the world's cleanest, from the viewpoint of sulfur. This has allowed him, together with several UC Denver graduate and undergraduate students to conduct field work based out of New Zealand and Australia that describes the physical and chemical processes controlling the evolution of sulfur compounds in the air over all of Earth's oceans. Most recently, Mike Kline (a MS in Environmental Science student) assisted with an intensive experiment in Tasmania and, prior to that, Dawn DeVries (an undergraduate in Geography) obtained air samples while aboard the New Zealand research ship, The Tangaroa.
Teaching the Geography of China (Rudi Hartmann)
This project has significance for geographic education and programs that aim at a better understanding of current trends and issues in the People's Republic of China. It involves participation in education seminars and meetings hosted by the School of Geography, Beijing Normal University during a guest stay in Beijing May/June 2007. Stay tuned for futher updates as this exciting project unfolds!
Building Web-based Spatial Information Systems around Open Specifications and Open Source Software
(Rafael Moreno, Geoff Anderson)
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are rapidly moving to web-based applications that offer specific geo-processing functionality and transparently exchanging data. Interoperability is at the core of this new web services model, which is enabled by compliance with Open Specifications (OS). Open Source Software (OSS) provide a no-cost software alternative to proprietary software operating systems, web servers, and Relational Database Management Systems. We tested the potential of the combined use of OS and OSS to create web-based spatial information solutions to support land use planning in Mexico with web-based geo-processing capabilities currently not present in commercial web-GIS products. We demonstrate how the process is straightforward and can be accessible to a broad audience of geographic information scientists and developers.
Participatory Youth Mapping (Darcy Varney, Laura Makar, Amanda Gierow, and Deborah Thomas)
During summer, 2005, the research team worked with a group of middle school students to map hazards in their community. The goals of the project were to: 1) train youth who live in northwest Denver to research ways in which the multiple environmental risks and harms they face affect their health, mobility, and participation in their community and 2) identify institutional and policy barriers to detecting and solving the environmental health issues with which they are concerned. On November 16, 2005 (GIS Day), these students visited the UC Denver downtown campus to present their work to one of the GIS classes taught in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, when they demonstrated their GIS capabilities.
The Use of GIS for Assessing Biased Policing in Denver
(Deborah Thomas)
The role that race and/or ethnicity plays in police stops has become a point of contention in numerous communities across the U.S. and has led many to question whether biased policing is taking place. Mapping technologies can improve the integrity of biased policing studies in many ways. First, data integration from numerous sources is one of a geographic information system's (GIS) greatest capabilities. As such, a GIS can be used to generate information on comparison groups. In this way, the data collected by the policing agency can be compared to a general population of people who are, in theory, susceptible to being stopped. Another way that GIS can contribute is by including the fact that population characteristics vary geographically. GIS allows the makeup of identified comparison group, such as neighborhood demographics, driving behavior, police presence, among others, to be incorporated geographically into the analysis. Finally, GIS could be used throughout the study process in a participatory fashion for including the community and the agency perspectives into the analysis phase.
Ghost Town Climatology (Fred Chambers)
This study investigates whether declining populations affect local temperature patterns, creating a reverse urban heat island effect. This reversal has been demonstrated to exist in former Colorado mining towns whose populations have dramatically decreased in the last century. The research is currently being expanded into the "Rust Belt" regions of U.S., focusing on how declining factory emissions (due to shutdowns) have altered the urban heat island effect.
Atmosphere, Weather, and Baseball: How much farther does the baseball fly at Denver's Coors Field? (Fred Chambers, Brian Page, and Clyde Zaidins--physics)
It is generally accepted that a baseball should fly approximately ten percent further at a mile-high altitude than sea-level. An analysis of four years of flyball distance data for Coors Field refutes this notion. Instead, it was found that the baseballs only fly an average of 6.5 percent farther than the average at other National League ballparks. Why the discrepancy? It appears as though a persistent summer wind pattern within the Platte River Valley is responsible. Diurnal upslope and downslope winds appear to be channeled by the river valley resulting in a preponderance of days with the wind flowing in towards home plate, thereby diminishing the supposed mile-high advantage. However, when the winds do blow out of the park...awesome flyball distances can (and are) seen!
