UT Geography Community,
We are very proud to have our own Dr. Hannah Herrero presenting next week as part of Baker Center Energy and Environment (Virtual) Forum. Please see formal announcement below for more details. It would be fantastic
to pack that virtual room with her departmental colleagues. (Thanks for representing Geography so well, Dr. Herrero.)
DA
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Dear all,
The Baker Center Energy and Environment Forum is an opportunity for academics to share their research findings with a broad set of academics, researchers, and students from outside their own discipline but who
have a common interest in environment and energy issues. This Fall marks the 10th anniversary of the Energy and Environment Forum and we have an exciting list of speakers scheduled. To accommodate social distancing,
all meetings of the Energy and Environment Forum will take place via Zoom this semester.
For each Forum meeting, we will circulate a Zoom link and you can join the discussion simply by clicking on that link as you would for any other Zoom meeting.
Despite this shift to an online format, the Forum will follow the same format as in past semesters including a robust Q&A session following each presentation.
The first Baker Center Energy and Environment (Virtual) Forum, which will take place on
Thursday, September 3 at 1:00 pm. The Zoom meeting link is https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/98789491824.
Dr. Hannah Herrero, from the Department of Geography in the College of Arts & Sciences, UTK, will give a 45 minute presentation and then lead a discussion with participants. Her talk is titled:
Sensors and Scale in Southern Africa: An Analysis of Vegetation Health, Protection, and Parks
Abstract: Southern African savannas are an important dryland ecosystem as they account for up to 54% of the landscape and support a rich variety of biodiversity, play a critical role in the global carbon cycle,
and support large human populations. They are areas of key change, but due to the highly heterogeneous nature of these landscapes, they can be very difficult to quantify. However, understanding trends and drivers of vegetation health in these landscapes is
critical for proper management and sustainability because protected areas are the ecological and socioeconomic engines of the region. This work seeks to create accurate ways to quantify change over time in vegetation and identify drivers utilizing different
remote sensing approaches. At the regional scale, this work considers 79 national parks across southern African savannas, and then zooms into a unique national park in Mozambique for further examination.
Dr. Herrero graduated from the University of Florida with a PhD in Geography in 2019, and is starting her second year at the University of Tennessee, Department of Geography. Dr. Herrero’s research interests are
based on the study of human-environment interactions within the field of Land Change Science through the use of remote sensing technologies. All of her research is undertaken with highly interdisciplinary research teams, which involve both physical and social
scientists. Within such interdisciplinary teams, Dr. Herrero’s particular strengths lie in the remote sensing of vegetation dynamics; land use and land cover change; the implications of scale and scaling in remote sensing and modeling analyses; and people
and parks. Her work on understanding environmental change has a particular concentration on conservation and protected areas, as well as savanna science. While Dr. Herrero’s work is applicable globally, she has a strong regional focus on southern Africa, where
she has worked and adventured for over a decade.
Also, don’t forget to mark your calendars for the remaining list of speakers:
·
September 17: Andrew Hoffman (Ross School of Business & School of Environment and Sustainability; University of Michigan)
·
September 24:
Christoph Nolte (Department of Earth and Environment; Boston University)
·
November 5: Rob Johnston (Department of Economics; Clark University)
·
November 12: Tara Conkling (Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center; USGS)
Please join us for what promises to be a very interesting semester of discussion and presentation.
Paul Armsworth, College of Arts and Sciences
Charles Sims, Haslam College of Business
Becky Jacobs, College of Law
Charlie Kwit, Herbert College of Agriculture