New results on peri-urbanization in Vietnam

Our research, Monitoring peri-urbanization in the greater Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area, was recently published in Applied Geography.  This research combines commune-level Vietnamese census information, dense time stacks of Landsat satellite data (1990–2012), and several spatial measures to quantify urbanization and peri-urbanization in the greater Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area from 1990 to 2012. The results indicate that 660.2 km2 of cropland was converted to urban uses (a near quintupling of urban land), while 3.5 million persons moved into the region, bringing the total population to nearly 12 million by 2012. The analysis also highlights the rapid, unplanned nature of peri-urban development: approximately one-third of new urban expansion occurs in areas >40 km from the core, with nearly 50% of population expansion occurring in communes classified as peri-urban.  Check out the full article at this site: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0143622814001477.

Carly Mertes graduates with MS in Geography

Congratulations to Carly Mertes who successfully defended her Master's Thesis, "Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data".  This work has recently been accepted for publication in Remote Sensing of Environment, and will be available for download this fall.  For more information on this project, go to: http://landcoverchange.com/gallery_post/global_mapping/

Carly (pictured above) first presented her work at Multitemp 2013 in Banff, Calgary, Canada.

Professor Annemarie Schneider presents the keynote at the Geospatial Summit

Annemarie Schneider gave the invited keynote address at this spring's University of Wisconsin-Madison's Geospatial Summit, on April 24th.  Her talk Mapping a decade of change: urban expansion in East Asia, 2000-2010 focused on recent work to understand urbanization processes in East and Southeast Asia.  The talk is now posted online at the UW Geospatial Alliance website.

Congratulations to Professor Mutlu Ozdogan

Congratulations to collaborator and colleague Mutlu Ozdogan on his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure!  To learn more about Professor Ozdogan's cutting edge research, click here.

New NASA funding to understand land cover change teleconnections

Annemarie Schneider and collaborators received a NASA grant for their project Forest, agricultural, and uban transitions in Mainland Southeast Asia: synthesizing knowledge and developing theory. The project is designed to enhance the conceptual underpinnings of land change science by integrating aspects of land teleconnections, land use transitions, and political ecology to explicitly link land changes in SE Asia to local, national, and international drivers. The work will study transitions in forests, boom crops, and periurban areas using remote sensing imagery, socioeconomic data, focus group discussions and surveys designed to harness local knowledge.

New article published on rapid urbanization in Chinese Cities

Annemarie Schneider and Carly Mertes' article Expansion and growth in Chinese cities, 1978-2010, was published in Environmental Research Letters.  The article can be downloaded at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/2/024008/

Caitlin Kontgis receives Vilas Travel Award

Caitlin Kontgis was selected to receive a Vilas Research Travel Award.  Caitlin will use the funds to travel to Vietnam to collect field survey data for her dissertation research in February, 2014.