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') } if (path.lastIndexOf("/graduate") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = ''; captiontext[1] = 'Research assistant, Janneke Lade, cores a tree in Waterton Lakes National Park. Research on high-elevation forests investigates the decline of whitebark pine, a keystone species in danger of extinction / Photographer, C. Wong'; captiontext[2] = 'Doctoral student Sara Koopman, center, talking with Christian Peacemaker Team staff and delegate on an observer mission in Barrancabermeja, Colombia as part of her collaborative research on how international protective accompaniment uses different forms of privilege to make space for peace.'; captiontext[3] = 'MSc Student Adrian Leitch in Atmospheric Science measures carbon dioxide exchange in a mature Westcoast forest on Vancouver Island / Photographe,r A. Christen.'; captiontext[4] = 'UBC Point Grey Campus in Vancouver, where the Department of Geography is located. / Photographer, A. Christen.'; captiontext[5] = 'Paul St.-Arneault, Adria Hussain, Alyson Watt, and Joshua Collins - the field team assisting Ph.D. student Carmen Wong - in flight to a remote whitebark pine forest in the Willmore Wilderness Area of Alberta / Photographer: C. Wong'; document.write('▲ '+captiontext[randomNo]+'
') } if (path.lastIndexOf("/undergraduate") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = ''; captiontext[1] = 'Students in GEOB 309 tracking balloons for atmospheric profiling / Photographer, A. Christen.'; captiontext[2] = 'Students in GEOB 379 visit Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta.'; captiontext[3] = 'Students in GEOB 309 survey a stream channel / Photographer, A. Christen.'; captiontext[4] = 'Students on a field trip discuss landscape evolution in the Rocky Mountains / Photographer, A. Christen.'; document.write('▲ '+captiontext[randomNo]+'
') } } function PlaceRandomCaption(path,randomNo,setNo) { var caption = ''; var selection = randomNo; if (setNo != 0) {selection = setNo}; var captiontext = new Array() if (path.lastIndexOf("globalchange") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'Coping with Climate Change in the Pacific - Rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns threaten the sustainability of communities across the Pacific. UBC Geography Professor Simon Donner studies how villages across natural climate gradients in Fiji and Kiribati perceive and respond to existing climate '+"'"+'events'+"'"+', like this 2005 storm in Tarawa, Kiribati, in order to identify effective strategies for adapting to climate change.Next project: Glacial sedimentary records.
'; captiontext[1] = 'Understanding climate change using the glacial sedimentary record - Given recent interest in the acceleration of many of the outlet glaciers of the polar ice sheets and temperate icefields, and how these glaciers may be reacting to recent climate change, there is a need to look at the glacial sediment record in the fjords in front of these glaciers to place such recent changes in a broader geologic context. One of the key findings that has emerged out of the exploration of the sediment output from tidewater glaciers is the impact of a warming climate on glacier thinning and retreat, with a concomitant increase in the rate of glacial erosion. UBC Geography Professor Michele Koppes is working on a broader understanding of the sedimentary record of climate change at high latitudes, including Alaska, Patagonia and Antarctica, using these links between recent glacial sediment output and local climate variability as a guide, and extending these links back through the Holocene.Next project: Climate change and coral reefs.
'; captiontext[2] = 'Climate change and coral reefs - Warm water temperatures can cause a phenomenon known widely as coral '+"'"+'bleaching'+"'"+'. This paling of tropical corals, seen in this partially bleached branching coral colony in Fiji, is caused by a breakdown of the vital symbiosis between the reef-building animals and the colourful, microscopic algae that live in coral tissue. UBC Geography Professor Simon Donner leads uses field observations, satellite data, and climate modeling to unravel the impact of climate change on the frequency of coral bleaching events and trajectories of coral cover and coral community structure.Next project: Tree mortality and climate change.
'; captiontext[3] = 'Tree mortality and climate change - Yellow-cedar is a pivotal part of the ecosystem and a valuable resource in the coastal forests of British Columbia where over 40,000 ha of dead and declining trees have recently been documented. The wide-ranging stands of concentrated yellow-cedar mortality in Alaska and British Columbia are one of the most severe forest declines in western North America. Changes in regional climate are thought to be driving the progressive mortality of this species due to decreased snowpack which increases the severity of late-winter freeze events. Tom Maertens, Ph.D. student studying with UBC Geography Professor Lori Daniels, is using tree-ring analysis to quantify tree- and forest-level responses to yellow-cedar mortality. Results from this study will inform resource planning and conservation efforts in BC by providing a scientific basis for predictions on how forests in BC and around the world will respond to changing environmental conditions.Next project: Coping with Climate Change in the Pacific.
'; } if (path.lastIndexOf("cities") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'The New Institutional Face of Mortgage Lending in the Inner City - Fundamental changes in the US banking industry in the 1990s have altered lending inequalities - redlining and gentrification - with substantial implications for home ownership among low-income and minority urban residents. Legislation, court decisions, and community activism forced banks to respond to charges of racial discrimination. Lenders devised new ways of measuring the profit and risk of potential borrowers, even in the dynamic landscapes of the inner city where gentrification and poverty can sit side-by-side. UBC Geography Professor Elvin Wyly is conducting a study looking at these changes and the implications for home ownership among low-income households and racial/ethnic minorities living in inner-city neighbourhoods.Next project: Weather Prediction in Cities.
'; captiontext[1] = 'Weather Prediction in Cities - UBC Geography Professors Tim Oke, Andreas Christen and Ian McKendry collaborate with Environment Canada in the Environmental Prediction in Canadian Cities Network to provide urban residents with better weather and air quality forecasts through development of an urban-atmosphere modeling system evaluated specifically for Canadian urban climates. This enhanced forecasting capability contributes to the safety, health and well being of Canadians through better understanding of the dispersion of smog and particulate precursors in urban environments, accidental and terrorist releases, heat stress and wind chill, and dispersion of air pollutants in urban environments. The research also contributes knowledge to the better conservation of urban resources (energy, carbon and water utilities) and identify effective ways for Canadian cities to contribute to meeting our climate commitments.Next project: Immigrant Settlement in Canadian Cities.
' captiontext[2] = 'Immigrant Settlement in Canadian Cities - UBC Geography Professor Dan Hiebert looks at a wide variety of issues related to immigrant settlement, including labour market participation, immigrant entrepreneurship, neighbourhood change, and the development of multicultural social spaces. His research is conducted using a combination of statistical and qualitative methods. This project is connected with the Vancouver Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis (RIIM) and is an attempt to influence policy. For example, there are frequent criticisms that immigrants are settling in concentrated residential spaces and developing separate social worlds. Professor Hiebert'+"'"+'s research challenges this point by showing that immigrants actually inhabit multicultural places.Next project: Mortgage Lending in the Inner City.
'; } if (path.lastIndexOf("forests") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'Old-growth forest dynamics - In coastal British Columbia, late-successional forests are structurally complex with deep multi-layered canopies, abundant coarse woody debris, and large trees that are up to 1000 years old. These forests are "old-growth" in which fine-scale gaps are the dominant disturbance regime, accounting for their structural diversity. UBC Geography Professor Lori Daniels and her graduate students have used tree-ring analyses to investigate several aspects of the dynamics in these coastal old-growth forests, including tree and seedling responses to gaps, impacts of recurring insect outbreaks, snag and log dynamics, and impacts of climate change on tree mortality and recruitment. Results from this research provide an ecological precedent for use of alternative management, including single-tree and small-patch harvesting, when managing coastal forests for both timber and biodiversity.Next project: Whitebark pine decline.
'; captiontext[1] = 'Whitebark pine decline - Whitebark pine is facing significant decline across its range and may be listed as an endangered species in Canada. Because of the keystone role whitebark pine plays in subalpine and treeline forests, decline of these trees could mean significant changes to the ecosystems and the birds, squirrels and bears that depend on its fatty seeds as their primary food source. What happens when a foundation species like whitebark pine is removed from an ecosystem? Carmen Wong, Ph.D. candidate studying with UBC Geography Professor Lori Daniels, is using tree rings sampled from forests across our National Parks in the Canadian Rockies to answer this important question.Next project: Turbulence in forest canopies.
'; captiontext[2] = 'Turbulence in forest canopies - UBC Geography Professor Andreas Christen studies the exchange processes of energy and mass between forest canopies and the atmopshere. Detailed measurements from towers support the development of a theoretical framework relevant for describing the pathway of greenhouse gases such as as carbon-dioxide - when released or taken-up at different heights within forest stands. Here, using a vertical array of ultrasonic anemometer-thermometers during a field experiment at UBC'+"'"+'s Kennedy Siding Research Tower in Central British Columbia.Next project: Old-growth forest dynamics.
'; } if (path.lastIndexOf("analysis") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = ' Biodiversity Atlases of British Columbia - E-Flora BC and E-Fauna BC - These biodiversity initiatives led by UBC Geography Professor Brian Klinkenberg are unique projects in North America that aim to develop and compile comprehensive scientific information on the flora and fauna of our region. In addition to providing information on species ecology, biology and conservation status, they utilize interactive mapping to visualize species distributions and biogeographic overlay mapping for exploring correlation between species and the landscape. This will allow investigations into the factors that drive species distributions, both in the present and in the face of global climate change, including invasive species expansions. The result of E-Flora BC and E-Fauna BC are comprehensive and unique e-books that function as platforms for biogeographical research and biodiversity education while at the same time allowing insights into the complexities of data integration.Next project: Spatial Analysis of Canadian Suburbanism.
'; captiontext[1] = 'Spatial Analysis of Canadian Suburbanism - As one component of a Major Collaborative Research Initiative supported by SSHRC and led by the City Institute at York University, UBC Geography Professor Elvin Wyly and Markus Moos are analyzing the social and spatial transformation of Canadian suburbs over the last twenty years. The analysis focuses on the balance between continuity and change in the processes creating suburban built environments, and changes in the consequences for land use, infrastructure, and governance.Next project: Biodiversity Atlases of British Columbia.
' } if (path.lastIndexOf("geopolitics") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'Orientalism and occupation: logics, laws and everyday lives - UBC Geography Professor Derek Gregory studies the military occupations of Cairo (by the French from 1798 and the British from 1882) and Baghdad (by the British from 1917 and the US from 2003). The central focus of this work is on the connections between imaginative geographies, performances of space and political violence. It explores the visual ideologies - mappings, inscriptions, images - through which the occupiers both construct the city as alien and opaque and also seek to render it familiar and transparent; the changing systems of international law that regulate military occupation, and the spaces of exception within which those laws are suspended by the occupying powers; and the ways in which all of these actions affect the day-to-day lives of the occupied, and the strategies they in turn deploy to accommodate or resist military occupation.Next project: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts.
'; captiontext[1] = 'Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts - Primary commodities such as coffee, timber, and minerals are critical to the economy and political life of many developing countries. UBC Geography Professor Philippe Le Billon examines relations between the geography and political economy of these commodities and armed conflicts. The project started in the late 1990s through a series of case studies in Angola, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo on the financing of rebel groups through resource exploitation. The project further examines the evolution of French foreign policy and corporate practices towards oil rich West African states over the last two decades. Democratization among these countries, the privatization of a major French oil company, increasing competition from non-French oil corporations, and growing corporate accountability have all presented major challenges to French post-colonial networks and policies in the region. This research will seek to determine their impact on the political stability of local regimes and help define the contours of future western involvement in this region.Next project: Geopolitics, Expertise, and the Baroque.
'; captiontext[2] = 'Geopolitics, Expertise, and the Baroque - This project by UBC Geography Professor Merje Kuus analyzes policymaking processes. It focuses empirically on the ways in which the European Neighbourhood Policy is bound up with geographical definitions of geopolitics and expertise. Theoretically, the study does not attempt a "big picture" or "romantic" account of inter-state relations. It rather develops what one might call a baroque view, an analysis that looks down rather than up: into the microsocial and the incoherent, into specificities, uncertainties, and discrepancies that are brushed over in big picture accounts. In so doing, it offers a more "peopled" account of policy-making processes.Next project: Killing Space.
'; captiontext[3] = 'Killing Space: Targeting, Technoculture and the Art of Bombing - Bombing has always attracted passionate responses - and not only from its victims. But contemporary public debate is largely uninformed about the transformations in air war since its inception in the early twentieth century. A current research program by UBC Geography Professor Derek Gregory seeks to provide just such a critical understanding of bombing by locating it in the transition from modern to late modern war. This supposed re-enchantment of war, with its lexicon of surgical strikes and smart bombs, feeds on and feeds back into the mediatization of war: war made scientific, mundane and acceptable through its visual contraction of the world to a series of targets.A primary objective of the program is to analyze the changing techno-cultural production of targets. The project tracks the mutations of military air power theory and its targeting protocols and procedures from the combined bombing offensive against Germany in World War II through the US bombing of Vietnam to the current air wars over Afghanistan / Pakistan. Its focus is on the changing cartographic and visual technologies that convert places into targets. The second objective is to analyze the convergences between visual technologies in the military and civilian spheres, and the effects these have had on public representations of bombing. Through a critical interrogation of multiple visual archives for all three bombing campaigns, the program examines the extent to which advances in photography, film, television and video have (or have not) allowed the public a more intimate view of bombing. It may be that these visual images produce not empathy but indifference - that the abstractions of the targeting process are repeated in the imaginative geographies of war imaging and reporting - and so a final objective of the program is to analyze the work of visual artists who have deliberately drawn on those abstractions to reveal the violence of representation that is necessary for targeting long before the first bombs fall.
Next project: Faith, Fencing & Fate.
'; captiontext[4] = 'Faith, Fencing & Fate : New Cultural Landscapes of Migration in the United States-Mexico Borderlands - is an online exhibit by UBC Geography Professor Juanita Sundberg, Michael Hyatt, a social documentary photographer, and Geoff Horner, a student and designer. The exhibit records and represents new cultural landscapes of migration resulting from U.S. border security policies. Funded by The University of British Columbia, the exhibit has been featured as a gallery installation at the UBC Liu Institute for Global Issues and Vancouver'+"'"+'s Rhizome Cafe. Ten of the photographs were included in La Frontera - The Cultural Impact of Mexican Migration, an exhibit at Chicago'+"'"+'s Museum of Contemporary PhotographyNext project: Orientalism and Occupation.
'; } if (path.lastIndexOf("globalization") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'The Metropolis Project - UBC Geography Professor David Ley leads a team assessing the impact of immigration and the experience of immigrants in Greater Vancouver and other urban areas in Canada and overseas. Current projects include the economic success of immigrant entrepreneurs; return migration to Hong Kong; immigrant churches and settlement services; irregular migration; immigrant experience of PRC independent immigrants; the role of education in migration from East Asia; integration issues associated with African- and Iranian-origin groups; and political integration of immigrants in Surrey and Richmond. The Metropolis Project is funded by eight federal departments and the Immigration Branch of the province of British Columbia.Show next project: Decentralization or Regionalization in Southern Thailand.
'; captiontext[1] = 'Decentralization or Regionalization in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region - This project, completed in 2008, examined the impact of regional economic growth in Northern Thailand and Yunnan province of China on the prospects for political and economic decentralization. While some views of this economic growth contend that it will lead to greater decentralization, an alternative perspective, substantiated by the research, has it that such growth is actually part of broader patterns of regionalization being driven by national governments and major international investors and thus will expand the power of these central actors. This research has resulted in a book-length analysis of the Greater Mekong Sub-Region, entitled Bounding the Mekong: the Asian Development Bank, China, and Thailand (University of Hawai'+"'"+'i Press, 2010).Next project: The Metropolis Project.
' } if (path.lastIndexOf("sustainability") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'Fish vs. Power: An Environmental History of the Fraser River - This project by UBC Geography Professor Matthew Evenden examines the debate over damming the Fraser River, from its origins around 1900 to about 1960, when the development of the Columbia and Peace Rivers diffused development pressure on the Fraser at least for a decade. The research is based on archival sources from Canada and the United States and treats such problems as the landslides at Hells Gate and their effects on the salmon fisheries, and river politics more generally, the development of transnational fisheries science, the social pressures for electrical energy in the post war period and the fish versus power debate of the 1950s.Next project: War and Waterpower.
'; captiontext[1] = 'War and Waterpower: Mobilizing Canadian Rivers during the Second World War - The project by UBC Geography Professor Matthew Evenden concerns the development of water resources for hydro-electricity during the Second World War in Canada. The research is based on archival sources across the country and focuses on major developments in Ontario and Quebec. Research questions include: how did the federal government exercise extraordinary regulatory control and stimulate electrical energy development under wartime conditions? How did strategic considerations and regional energy demands stimulate and cancel river development plans? What were the environmental impacts of river development projects that were planned and executed rapidly?Next project: Fish vs. Power.
' } if (path.lastIndexOf("social") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'Performance as Theory - Geraldine Pratt has recently collaborated with a Geography Ph.D. student, Caleb Johnston, to create a testimonial play, Nanay, based entirely on verbatim research interviews. Nanay was performed in Vancouver in February 2009 and Berlin in June 2009. Rather than viewing Nanay as a relatively novel format for the dissemination of social scientific research, it is better thought of as a form of knowledge, rooted in the traditions of melancholic realism, which works differently than the speculative realism of social scientific inquiry. Quite simply, testimonial theatre works in a different epistemological register. Whereas social scientific knowledge tends to generalize across the average characteristics of populations or groups, testimony works with the unit of singular case or fact to produce, so the argument goes, a different type of historical observer or witness. Nanay, then, is an attempt to create a different mode of theorizing about and engaging with temporary work migration.'; } if (path.lastIndexOf("water") != (-1)) { captiontext[0] = 'Fishtrap Creek experimental watershed - In August 2003, wildfire burned nearly two thirds of the Fishtrap Creek watershed and killed virtually all of the riparian vegetation. Professors Brett Eaton and Dan Moore have been studying the various changes that have occurred as a result. Since the fire, the pattern of stream flow has changed: peakflows occur one to two weeks earlier than they did prior to the fire. In addition, desynchronization of snowmelt with the catchment now typically generates two or three flood peaks per year, compared to, typically, a single peak prior to the fire. The stream temperature also appears to have been affected, as have the typical sediment transport dynamics for both coarse and fine sediment. Researchers have also documented a signifiant increase in the rates of channel change following the fire, which is attributable primarily to reduced bank strength following the death and decay of the large riparian trees. The ongoing research is part of a larger effort to establish a long-term research program at the site. Together, these research projects are providing new insights into the effects of wildfire on watersheds in the Canadian Cordillera, effects that are fundamentally different than those reported by researchers working below the glacial limit in the continental United StatesNext project: Urban Water Governance in Jakarta.
'; captiontext[1] = 'Urban Water Governance in Jakarta, Indonesia - Lack of access to clean water supply is an increasingly acute problem for residents of rapidly growing, large cities. UBC Geography Professor Karen Bakker analyzes socio-cultural and socio-economic dimensions of changing patterns of water governance in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia. Access to water supply is frequently influenced by factors such as race, class, gender - with implications for equity and service standards. Her research seeks to identify variables in the differentiation of access to modes of urban water provision (networks, wells, water vendors) in the context of decentralization and informalization of the urban economy. The involvement of the private sector and informal private actors (e.g. water vendors) in water supply is analyzed focusing on access (connection rates, pricing) and accountability (transparency, participatory mechanisms). The research combines archival work on the colonial period and several periods of fieldwork in the city.Next project: Stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
'; captiontext[2] = 'The effects of a warming ocean on the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet - When Greenland'+"'"+'s tidewater glaciers reach the ocean, they melt and calve into icebergs. The glacier surface melts from warm air temperatures, but the submerged ice face also melts in contact with warm ocean waters. Little is known about the rate of submarine melting of these glaciers and how it may influence glacier dynamics. UBC Geography Professor Michele Koppes is working on quantifying the amount of submarine melting. Thus far, we are finding that the amount of submarine melting from glaciers in west Greenland is 20 times larger than that of surface melting and removes ice faster than iceberg calving. As ocean waters get warmer, these melt rates may become large enough to control the ungrounding of the glacier from its bed, which is believed to be the main mechanism that has caused many of these glaciers to accelerate dramatically in the last decade.Next project: HYDRONET.
'; captiontext[3] = 'HYDRONET - As part of the NSERC Strategic Network HYDRONET, UBC Geography Prosfessor Brett Eaton will be studying the effects of power generation on stream channel dynamics and the phyiscal aquatic habitat in various dammed rivers in British Columbia and Alberta, in close collaboration with Michel Lapointe from McGill University. HYDRONET facilitates a collaborative investigation of the effects of hydropower generation on fish productivity in rivers across Canada. The project will consider the hydrologic, geomorphic, and chemical controls on fish habitat productivity. Researchers with expertise in biology, hydrology, geomorphology and engineering are involved in the project, and come from various universities across Canada and from Fisheries and Oceans Canada.Next project: Fishtrap Creek experimental watershed.
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