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Located above Pine Grove Mills on Route 26,
the Centre and Huntingdon County lines run
through this overlook on Tussey Mountain.
Research interests of the faculty in physical geography are in the fields of climatology, biogeography, geomorphology, landscape and restoration ecology, and coastal and inland hazards.
The Penn State Department of Geography encourages faculty and grad student collaboration on topics such as: synoptic climatology and climate dynamics (climate variation), satellite climatology, climate modeling and climate downscaling, surface water modeling and relationships with atmospheric circulation, crop modeling and prediction for climate scenarios, and society-climate interactions.
The Department of Geography at Penn State has a strong and growing graduate research program in ecosystem research. Faculty expertise and research intersect across several synthetic disciplines including landscape ecology, restoration ecology, and conservation science. Projects address the ecological, spatial, historical, and policy aspects that are pertinent to natural, managed, and damaged landscapes and watersheds. Field, laboratory, and GIS facilities are readily available for student and faculty research. Faculty expertise in geography is complemented by dozens of other ecologists based at Penn State.
Strong research links between physical geography faculty and nature-society relations, GIS, remote sensing, and geographic visualization research further encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration:
Researchers in the Vegetation Dynamics Lab have shown that episodic fire was a prevalent and dynamic ecological process in northern and east-central California before fire was excluded beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. Fire worked in concert with the regional climate and topography to influence both vertical and horizontal forest structure. Fire frequency and intensity modified species composition as well. Research is focused on dendroecology, dendroclimatology, and dendroarchaeology. Involved Geography department members: Director Dr. Alan Taylor, Nancy Brown, and Andrew Pierce.
Additional information about these opportunities will be posted soon.
1. Fire-Climate Interactions in California
2. Stand Structure and Dynamics of Giant Sequoia Stands at their Northern Range
3. Yosemite Valley Fire History
The mission of the Penn State Cooperative Wetlands Center is to conduct, facilitate, and coordinate interdisciplinary research, monitoring and training regarding wetlands and related resources, with an emphasis on Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states. Involved Department of Geography members include: Director Dr. Rob Brooks, Dr. Denice Wardrop, and other staff and students of the Cooperative Wetlands Center.
Research in climatology includes the following key areas: Climate dynamics (climate variations and associated physical mechanisms), climate impacts (of humans on climate, and of climate on humans), and future climate change scenarios. The faculty who are actively involved in some or all of these areas of climate science, are as follows: Dr. Andrew Carleton, Dr. Rob Crane, Dr. Paul Desanker, Dr. Bill Easterling, and Dr. Brent Yarnal. Specific research projects of the climate scientists, many of which have comprised multi-year grants from federal agencies such as NSF, NASA, and NOAA, include the following: Jet aircraft contrails-their satellite-based climatology and impacts on surface climate (Carleton); The role of Midwest U.S. land surface conditions on warm-season climate variations (Carleton); Climatology of cold-air mesoscale cyclones ("polar lows") over the Southern Oceans (Carleton); Downscaling GCM-generated climate to local scales (Crane); Future climate change scenarios-emphasis on South Africa (Crane); Climate and vegetation interactions in West Africa (Desanker); Agriculture in the Great Plains-role of climate variations and climate change (Easterling); Land use and land cover changes in the Mid-Atlantic region-interactions with climate (Yarnal). These scientists apply a wide range of data sets and research techniques to solving problems in climatology, including: satellite and conventional data; statistical techniques; and numerical simulation models.
The climate scientists in geography maintain close ties with their counter-parts in other Penn State departments (Meteorology, Geosciences, Forestry), as well as working actively with their Physical Geography colleagues in topics of mutual interest (e.g., Alan Taylor and Andrew Carleton's project analyzing fire-climate interactions in the U.S. west coast states). These interactions mean that students-both undergraduate and graduate-gain both breadth and depth in their understanding of climatology.