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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 synoptic climatology and climate dynamics, snow hydrology, the cryosphere, remote sensing, ecological biogeography and ecosystem dynamics, landscape and restoration ecology, wetlands ecology and management, and coastal and inland hazards.
The Department of Geography at Penn State has a strong and growing graduate research group focusing on ecosystem dynamics. Faculty expertise and research interests intersect across several disciplines that include plant and animal population and community ecology, landscape ecology, ecosystem ecology, ecosystem modeling, climate change, restoration ecology, and conservation science. Research projects address the ecological, spatial, historical, and policy implications pertinent to natural, managed, and damaged landscapes and watersheds. Excellent field, laboratory, and GIS facilities are available for student and faculty research. Faculty expertise in geography is complemented by faculty in other programs at Penn State, including the Intercollege Graduate Program in Ecology at www.ecology.psu.edu.
Strong research ties between physical geography faculty and departmental faculty in human-environment interactions, GIS, remote sensing, and geographic visualization promotes cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Landscape Ecology at Penn State (LEAPS) is focused on understanding important processes at the interface of landscape and ecosystem ecology. Research in LEAPS cuts through traditional disciplinary bounds to ask synthetic questions about ecosystem function through space and time. LEAPS is also committed to cross-scale analysis of challenging issues in earth system science. We work at a variety of scales, from microbial to sub-continental, using laboratory techniques, field studies, and ecosystem simulation models. Our goal is to describe the relevance and consequences of ecosystem patterns for improving understanding of earth system processes.
A common research theme in LEAPS is to understand how disturbances modify ecosystem function across landscapes. For example, fire is an important ecological driver that may create landscape heterogeneity at multiple spatial and temporal scales, influencing biogeochemical cycling and forest succession. Other examples include disturbances of riparian habitat and/or biogeographical shifts in species ranges, which both reflect and create landscape heterogeneity. Understanding the role of these disturbances on landscape heterogeneity elucidates expectations of how forests are likely to respond to climate change. Director: Erica Smithwick
Research in the Vegetation Dynamics Lab is focused on identifying the causes and consequences of vegetation change in ecological communities from both a theoretical and applied perspective. We work mainly in forested ecosystems where fire is a predominant disturbance agent. Particular interests include: 1) the role of natural and human caused disturbance in driving vegetation change and maintaining species diversity; 2) disturbance interactions and how they constrain or promote future change; 3) climate-disturbance interactions; 4) disturbance and forest stand population dynamics; 5) forest structure, fire behavior, and fire effects; and 5) ecological restoration. Faculty and graduate students in the laboratory usually collaborate closely with natural resource agencies in executing their research. The laboratory is fully equipped, and LEAPS and the Cooperative Wetlands Center also share facilities, providing a wide array of additional instrumentation to support research. Director Dr. Alan Taylor
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. Wetlands form part of a larger hydrologic system, a watershed palette, composed of other wetlands, streams, riparian areas, and the surrounding landscape. They contribute to the ecosystem services of an encompassing watershed. Research conducted by the faculty, staff, and students of the CWC is directed at understanding how these integrated systems function and how they are perturbed by human activities. We view humans as part of these ecosystems. The CWC produces and distributes objective and technically rigorous information about wetlands and related ecosystems and the issues surrounding their regulation and management to institutions, agencies, and industries. We conduct science to characterize ecosystem responses at the water-land interface and to inform policy and practice. We apply the principles and practices of the natural and social sciences to foster the conservation of biodiversity and aquatic ecosystems. An extensive set of reference wetlands is available for field study, and laboratory and computer facilities are available to conduct analyses. Involved Department of Geography members include: Dr. Robert Brooks, Dr. Denice Heller 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), boundary layer climate, particularly of snow and ice, 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. Bill Easterling, Dr. Derrick Lampkin, 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 and Tschakert); Fire-climate interactions in Mediterranean climates Taylor and Carleton); 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; development of new instrumentation; statistical techniques; and numerical simulation models.
The climate scientists in geography work collaboratively with other faculty in the geography department and also maintain close ties with their counter-parts in other Penn State departments (Meteorology, Geosciences, Forestry). The collaborative environment ensures that students-both undergraduate and graduate-gain both breadth and depth in their understanding of climatology.
The cryosphere, where water is found in solid form, is among the most sensitive to global climate change. The cryosphere includes seasonal snow cover, glaciers, permafrost, sea ice, and ice sheets. Unlike other substances found on Earth, ice and snow exist relatively close to their melting point and may frequently change phase from solid to liquid and back again. Consequently, consistent and prolonged warming trends should result in observable changes to Earth's cryosphere. Work here at Penn State includes a vibrant research group that spans the departments of Geography, Geoscience, and Meteorology. Exciting research into ice sheet behavior, ice sheet modeling, polar climatology, sub-surface geophysics, and paleoclimate are actively pursued through the Penn State Ice and Climate Group (PICE). PICE includes Dr. Derrick Lampkin (Geography), Dr. Richard Alley and Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan (Geoscience). The group works in addressing changes in both contemporary changes in ice sheet mass balance as well as historical changes. Dr. Lampkin is specifically interested in mass-energy exchanges that drive surface melt production and infiltration processes. These dynamics are explored using ground-based robotics, wireless sensor networks, and satellite remote sensing. Dr. Alley explores ice sheet kinematic physics modeling and measurements, while Dr. Anandakrishnan uses geophysical techniques to determine ice sheet sub-surface conditions as well as ice stream behavior and flow dynamics. Several opportunities exist to participate in laboratory and field research in Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, as well as alpine environments.