We're in the Canadian Association of Geographer's Newsletter!

The Canadian Association of Geographers has been a terrific supporter of our community green map efforts and a great source for information about current Canadian Geographical Research. I encourage you to have a look at their website:
The Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG)
Ken Josephson

geognews39

News Digest of the Canadian Association of Geographers
No. 39, July 23, 2009
Compiled by Dan Smith (Very cool Geographer, friend and prez of the CAG!)
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Contents
1. SFU’s Nadine Schuurman on Pedestrian Injuries in Vancouver
2. UVic Geographers Help Communities Map Their Common Ground
3. UT’s Danny Harvey on Housing Wind Turbines in Hydro Towers
4. Memorial’s Rudolphie Devillers Co-Edits Two Notable Publications
5. UT’s Pierre Desrochers Provides Commentary on World Population Day
6. UWO’s Richard Sadler Wins Master’s Category Award at IMGS 2009
7. Jason Kovacs Begins SSHRC Post-Doc at University of Toronto
8. Memorial’s Nick Novakowski Involved with Humber Basin Project
9. McGill’s James Ford on Arctic Climate Threshold
10. Vancouver Island University Student Receives NSERC Master’s Award
11. UTM’s Pierre Desrochers Reports Local Food No Green Panacea
12. Queen’s Mark Rosenberg on Disappearance of Small Communities
13. New Physical Geography Module at the University of Western Ontario
14. Geographer of the Week: Dr. Ratana Chuenpagdee. Memorial University
15. Other “Geographical” News
16. Some not so “Geographical” News
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1. SFU’s Nadine Schuurman on Pedestrian Injuries in Vancouver
http://www.straight.com/article-240551/traffic-puts-walkers-risk?

The Georgia Straight looked at a study of pedestrian injuries in Vancouver that identified 32 hot spots in the city. ’We noticed that pedestrian injury is certainly not random,’ principal researcher and SFU geography professor Nadine Schuurman told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. ‘We’re interested in what the environmental correlates were. There’s very little work done on the influence of the built urban environment on rates of injury’.”

2. UVic Geographers Help Communities Map Their Common Ground
http://ring.uvic.ca/09jul10/community-mapping.html

The Highlands Community Green Map is one of many community mapping projects supported by the University of Victoria through the Department of Geography’s Community Mapping Resource Centre. UVic geographer Ken Josephson notes that “It took two years for Highlanders to complete the project, and the result is a map alive with the language, sites and symbols of the Highlands people.” The Highlands project was facilitated by Josephson and Adjunct geography professor Charles Burnett and Maeve Lydon, consultant on community partnerships at the UVic Office of Community-Based Research.

3. UT’s Danny Harvey on Housing Wind Turbines in Hydro Towers
http://www.thestar.com/article/663841

Danny Harvey, a geography professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in energy, said the French team's concept of retrofitting old electrical towers, or setting up turbines on top of buildings, would not be a good fit for Toronto or Ontario. "I would not put them in urban centres. The parts of the world that have good winds tend to be far from where people live," said Harvey, who has found the best winds in the province are offshore in Lake Erie. Harvey also said retrofitting existing towers would be too expensive. The best method is to build large wind farms in areas with high winds, using mass-produced equipment, he said.

4. Memorial’s Rudolphie Devillers Co-Edits Two Notable Publications
http://www.mun.ca/geog/people/faculty/rdevillers.php

Dr. Rodolphe Devillers of the Department of Geography at Memorial University has two recent publications. He co-edited with Randy Gillespie (Marine Institute) a special issue on “Marine Geomatics” in the Canadian journal Geomatica and co-edited with Dr. Helen Goodchild a book titled “Spatial Data Quality: From process to decisions” published by CRC Press/Taylor and Francis. The book includes the papers presented during the 6th International Symposium on Spatial Data Quality that took place in St. John’s from July 5-8th, 2009.

5. UT’s Pierre Desrochers Provides Commentary on World Population Day
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1780142&p=2

July 11th was World Population Day and should have served as a reminder that a little information in the hands of those who think they know best and are able to influence policies imposed on others is a dangerous thing. The impact that the population-control frenzy has had on international aid policy provides a good illustration. Constraints imposed on foreign governments and their people in exchange for aid are similar to those imposed on taxpayers when they are coerced by domestic policy decisions made "in their best interest" by others.

6. UWO’s Richard Sadler Wins Master’s Category Award at IMGS 2009
http://geography.uwo.ca/grad/students.html

At the student presentation awards held at the International Medical Geography Symposium in Hamilton in July 2009, Richard Sadler from the University of Western Ontario won an award presented by the CAG Health Geography Study Group for his presentation "Disadvantaged and Underserved: A case study of food deserts in Flint, Michigan". Richard’s presentation was selected as the best in the master’s category from students participants from Japan, New Zealand, Germany, United States, Canada and France.

7. Jason Kovacs Begins SSHRC Post-Doc at University of Toronto
http://www.geog.utoronto.ca/

Jason Kovacs is commencing his SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the University of Toronto Department of Geography this September. Jason completed his bachelor (biology/geography) and masters (geography) degrees at Queen’s University. He undertook his doctoral studies in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. His dissertation, “The Cultural Turn in Municipal Planning,” examines the development, content and outcomes of municipal cultural plans in Ontario’s mid-size cities. Jason will be undertaking new research on the effectiveness of metropolitan cultural plans with particular focus on Toronto’s creative city planning framework. He will be working with Deborah Leslie.

8. Memorial’s Nick Novakowski Involved with Humber Basin Project
http://www.thewesternstar.com/index.cfm?sid=271285&sc=25

The Humber River Basin Project paper that won the best paper award at the Global Conference on Global Warming in Istanbul, Turkey earlier this month. Wilfred Grenfell College (Memorial University) geography professor Nick Novakowski, along with Pamela Gill, Wade Bowers, Rainer Baehre, Joan Luther and Doug Piercey represented the Humber River project at the conference. The Humber River research team also won an award for “exemplary contribution” to the conference in advancing and promoting interdisciplinary science.

9. McGill’s James Ford on Arctic Climate Threshold
http://www.canada.com/technology/Climate+clock+ticking/1462485/story.html

In the summer of 2007, a large portion of Arctic Sea ice – about 40 per cent – simply vanished. That wasn’t supposed to happen. “It really caught the scientific community by surprise,” Professor James Ford, a McGill University geographer and Arctic expert recalled. “The Arctic system is close to crossing the threshold beyond which we will get dramatic changes in climate.”

10. Vancouver Island University Student Receives NSERC Master’s Award
http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_central/nanaimonewsbulletin/...

Vancouver Island University students are among Canada’s top student researchers. VIU graduate Erin Rechsteiner (Biology and Geography) received an award valued at $17,500 to pursue a master’s degrees.

11. UTM’s Pierre Desrochers Reports Local Food No Green Panacea
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/07/22/consumer-local-food.html

There are lots of reasons somebody might want to buy local food — freshness, distinct flavour, or even a desire to keep their dollars in their own community. "But if you're doing it to save the planet," University of Toronto Mississauga professor Pierre Desrochers says, "you're being misguided." As globalization and environmental issues grow in prominence, a "buy local" food movement has arisen that maintains locally produced food is not only fresher and better tasting, but also better for the environment, Desrochers says.

12. Queen’s Mark Rosenberg on Disappearance of Small Communities
http://www.globalvisas.com/news/canadian_immigration_promotes_moving_to_...

Small communities in Canada are shrinking as young people move into the city for job opportunities and immigrants who have made the move to Canada typically settle in cities. Mark Rosenberg, a professor of geography and community health and epidemiology at Queens University in Ontario says: “The disappearance of some communities, particularly some of the smallest communities in rural and northern places, will slowly see their populations disappear.”

13. New Physical Geography Module at the University of Western Ontario
http://geography.uwo.ca/undergrad/phys_geog_module.htm

The new Major provides a concentration in physical geography, which deals with the physical and biological science components of the discipline, such as climatology, geomorphology and biogeography. Packaging physical geography courses in this way creates a new module that will be attractive to Science students and can be matched with Science modules to give a BSc Honors degree, as sufficient courses in the proposed Major already have Science-equivalent status.

14. Geographer of the Week: Dr. Ratana Chuenpagdee. Memorial University
http://www.mun.ca/geog/people/faculty/rchuenpagdee.php

Dr. Chuenpagdee received a PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies in 1998 from University of British Columbia. With a background in marine science (BSc., Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand), fishery management and resource economics (MSc., Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA), fishery biology (MSc., University of North Wales, Bangor, UK), and environmental studies, Ratana is particularly interested in interdisciplinary research, especially the integration of natural and social sciences to address resource management issues. After spending three years as an assistant professor at the Department of Coastal and Ocean Policy, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Ratana returned to Canada to join the Social Research for Sustainable Fisheries project, based at St. Francis Xavier Univeristy, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and later worked as senior research fellow for International Ocean Institute, Dalhousie University, Halifax. In 1999, she established a research centre in Bangkok called ‘Coastal Development Centre’ (or CDC), which I currently co-direct. Dr. Chuenpagdee holds a Canada Research Chair in Natural Resource Sustainability and Community Development at Memorial University.

15. Other “Geographical” News

Quebec's Blue Gold: Project Aims To Channel Northern Rivers To Generate Power
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716104659.htm

Seasonal storage of floodwaters from three unexploited rivers that flow into James Bay and the channelling of this water to the Ottawa River would provide for the generation of 14 terawatt-hours of hydroelectric energy per year, producing annual revenues of nearly $2 billion, according to a new report. Even more important, this project would enable Canada to export an equivalent amount of water to the United States from the Great Lakes without modifying the flow of the St. Lawrence, for potential yearly revenues of about $7.5 billion.

Global Model for Origin of Species Independent of Geographical Isolation
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/bumc-agm071709.php

The tremendous diversity of life continues to puzzle scientists, long after the 200 years since Charles Darwin's birth. However, in recent years, consistent patterns of biodiversity have been identified over space, time organism type and geographical region. In a new study, a team of researchers from collaborated and found a way to settle the debate which deals with the origin of species independent of geographic isolation. They demonstrated, using a computer model, how diverse species can arise from the arrangement of organisms across an area, without any influence from geographical barriers or even natural selection.

Mountain Biodiversity: Lifeline for the Future
http://www.mtnforum.org/rs/bul.cfm

The July 2009 edition of the Mountain Forum Bulletin, “Mountain Biodiversity: Lifeline for the Future”, is now online. This edition is a joint product of the Mountain Forum, GMBA and the Mountain Research Initiative, with support from ICIMOD, and features contributions on research, policy and initiatives from the three networks and partners. The Bulletin is intended to be useful to all those working on Biodiversity and the Mountain Agenda before and during the International Year of Biodiversity in 2010.

Digital Toys Are Helping Increase Our Geographic Illiteracy
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090722/EDITORI...

A study in the Journal of Geography reports that despite increased support for K-12 geography education over a 15-year period, geography knowledge among Indiana college freshmen has not improved. The results reflect a national trend verified by similar findings by the National Geographic Society. One main reason for the decline cited in the study is technology. GPS devices, for example, quickly take people from one point to another without them having to notice anything in between. Once upon a time, travelers had to know exotic concepts such as “east” and “west” and “turn right where Joe Smith’s barn used to be.” They even had to look at maps, where representations of actual places could be seen in relation to one another.

16. Some not so “Geographical” News

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/07/23/album-review-the-rural-alberta-...

Edenloff sings of Canadian geography, mountainous landscapes, his relationship with them, and the relationships that grow and fall apart amongst it all. He is backed by a band that perfectly soundtracks his passionate, troubled words. The band name and album title say it all. This band is from Canada, and they’re going to tell you about it.

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