Research Overview

University of Georgia's Department of Geography conducts research across physical geography, human geography, and geographic information science. Faculty investigate climate systems, ecological change, migration, social justice, and advanced geospatial technologies such as AI and remote sensing. These areas represent only a portion of the department's diverse and ongoing research activities.

Earth, Environment, and Climate

The Department's physical geography research and teaching activities provide a solid foundation for the next generation of physical geographers to address current and future topics related to the physical earth, environment, and climate.

The Earth and its environment represent a complex and dynamic system that has undergone change for millions of years. For most of this time, changes to Earth's physical environment could be attributed to natural processes, but in the era of human activity, anthropogenic processes have become more important. Current direction for earth and environmental research is (1) to study past, current, and future interactions among the continents, oceans, atmosphere, ice, and life; (2) to understand the relative roles of human-induced and natural processes in these interactions; and (3) to understand and predict changes in Earth's physical environment.

Physical geography is the study of the physical earth and encompasses spatial and temporal analyses of the physical and biological elements and processes that comprise the environment: air, water, energy, weather, climate, land, animals, and plants. The University of Georgia's Department of Geography has a strong emphasis in physical geography, as reflected by its research portfolio, faculty composition, and available resources. The Department's physical geography research and teaching activities provide a solid foundation for the next generation of physical geographers to address current and future topics related to the physical earth, environment, and climate. Broad research interests within the Department include (click on a topic for more information): (1) Paleo-Environments, (2) Geomorphic Systems, (3) Vegetation Dynamics and Ecological Modeling, (4) Cryosphere-Hydrosphere Processes, (5) Weather-Climate Processes and (6) Biogeography. The Department also offers a certificate program in Atmospheric Sciences.

These broader areas embody a larger array of research topics that, at times, enable interdisciplinary collaboration with Departmental colleagues in human geography and geographic information systems. Physical geography researchers within the Department also have strong collaborative ties and intellectual exchanges with other campus departments, including the Institute of Ecology, Department of Geology, Department of Marine Sciences, Department of Plant Biology, Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering, and the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science.

 

Geographic Information Science

Geographic Information Science (GIScience) is a vibrant research field of multidisciplinary research and applications.

Work in GIScience seeks to redefine geographic concepts and their use in the context of geographic information systems (GIS). GIScience draws from and overlaps with more specialized research fields such as computer science, statistics, mathematics, and psychology, while it also contributes to further developments in those fields.

GIScience research in the geography department at UGA includes a wide range of work on remote sensing, cartographic visualization, urban and resource modeling, and qualitative GIS. In addition, the faculty employs or develops state of the art GIS, remote sensing, and geocomputation techniques to explore various geospatial systems in order to advance our understanding of the real-world complexities.

The department has superb computing facilities for GIScience research and instruction. It also hosts the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping which undertakes interdisciplinary research projects. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of GIScience, the department has strong collaborative ties across and beyond campus. The university is a long-standing member of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS).

 

People, Place, and Identity

The human geography program at the University of Georgia is ranked in the top 20 programs in North America, and its faculty has been ranked as themost productive of any department in the nation.

The research interests of the Human Geography faculty focus upon how economic, political, and social practices are shaped by place and location and how, in turn, such practices shape the ways in which economic, political, and social landscapes are produced. Although members of the faculty engage in empirical research upon a wide range of issues using a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, they share a critical engagement with issues of social justice.

Faculty members conduct research in the areas of urbanization and community processes, social and environmental justice, political participation and resistance, migration and transnationalism, globalization and workers, and nature and scociety. The Human Geography faculty have conducted research in North America, the Czech and Slovak Republics, South Africa, Tanzania, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ecuador, India, and China. The Human Geography program at the University of Georgia is ranked in the top 20 programs in North America, and its faculty has been ranked as the most productive of any department in the nation.

The Human Geography faculty has close linkages with several other departments and centers on campus, including the School of Public and International Affairs, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the African Studies Institute, the Women's Studies Institute, the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Sociology. Faculty members are also heavily involved in international education, running study abroad programs in Paris, Tanzania, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Australia, Croatia, and Egypt. Such programs involve both traditional classroom learning and service learning activities.