On the Map

The Geography of Bison: Returned from the Brink

Close up image of a couple of bison from a herd at Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Taylor Wright
Close up image of a couple of bison from a herd at Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Taylor Wright

Geography In The News logoGeography in the News is an educational series offered by the American Association of Geographers for teachers and students in all subjects. We include vocabulary, discussion, and assignment ideas at the end of each article. 

By Neal Lineback
Edited by Jane Nicholson, with mapping by Rachael H. Carpenter

The American bison, commonly known as the buffalo, is an icon of the U.S. “Wild Wild West.” The wild American bison was a major food source for native Americans for thousands of years. Yet, by the 1900s, it had been hunted to near extinction by settlers, trappers, and hunters,

The bison is the largest animal native to North America. Males weigh up to a ton (2,000 lb or 1,000 kg). At the turn of the century, there were only reportedly 23 wild bison left inside the territory of Yellowstone National Park and perhaps only a few hundred or so more scattered elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada.

In attempts to salvage the species, governments, organizations, and individuals made efforts to save a few bison. Those few in Yellowstone were successfully protected and became a core of the revival of a herd whose numbers rebounded rapidly. Other captured bison were protected by enterprising farmers and agencies, some on small farms and others as the beginnings of small herds. All of these actions saved the bison’s genetic profile from extinction.

The bison is a hardy creature, able to withstand extreme temperatures, heavy snow, drought and onslaughts of most predators. The bison’s size, herding instincts and aggression help ward off wolf packs and bears, the animal’s main threats. Accord to the National Bison Association, there were 1,986 bison ranches and farms in the U.S. in 2022.

Map showing where bison are raised in the U.S. Credit: Rachael Huerta
Where bison are raised in the U.S: both on ranches and public lands. Credit: Rachael H. Carpenter

 

Several issues still plague the bison from reviving to historic numbers. First of all, the territories available for wide-ranging herds of wild bison are very limited. Fences must be very strong and/or electrified to usually contain them, but even the strongest fencing cannot always contain bison, particularly large males. Private herds must be constantly managed. Although a large bison bull can literally run through fences when frightened, more “escapes” are caused by mating instincts where several males will push through their containing fences en masse to reach a female in estrus (ready to breed).

When they escape their containment as on bison farms surrounded by fences, bison are very hard to retrieve. They often require tranquilizer shots to neutralize their natural aggressiveness. Unlike cattle that can be rounded up with help of dogs, bison are almost immune to that process, sometimes only responding to food (grain) to lead them back into confinement.

Whereas bison escapes are mostly associated with bison farms and smaller ranches, the unfenced 4,900 bison in Yellowstone’s free-ranging herd are unconfined, which brings a new and different problem. When these bison leave the Park, they range onto surroundings under private ownership and National Forest Services land. Thus, they may cause jurisdictional problems, whereby they enter private grazing land and cropland, tear down farmers’ fences, damage farm equipment, destroy delicate ecosystems, and harass farm animals. Once on private land, they are unprotected and exposed to hunters and highway vehicles.

There are an estimated 400,000 bison in the United States, including 31,000 in conservation-focused facilities (parks and Tribal Lands), and the rest on bison farms and ranches. The Native Lands Advocacy Project (NALP) estimates that bison numbers overall increased at a rate of 13.36% between 2012 and 2017, while Tribal bison increased by 1031%. Clearly, Native Americans’ reverence for bison has enhanced the reproductive and survival rates among the herds under their care.

So what is the geographic distribution of bison in the United States today? Every state except the smallest East Coast states contains some small bison farms and larger

ranches. Most of the bison are raised as food, with the market prices for ground bison being three to five times more costly than beef. Consequently, commercial bison meat is mainly marketed to high-end restaurants and advertised as a healthy specialty item.

The word is out: Bison are BACK!!

And that is Geography in the News, updated October 1, 2025.

AAG’s Geography in the News is inspired by the series of the same name founded by Neal Lineback, professor and the chair of Appalachian State University’s Department of Geography and Planning. For nearly 30 years from 1986 to 2013, GITN delivered timely explainer articles to educators and students, relevant to topics in the news. Many of these were published on Maps.com’s educational platforms and in National Geographic’s blogs. AAG is pleased to carry on the series.

Sources Consulted for this Article
Vocabulary and Terms
  • Bison — Shaggy, humpbacked ox native to North America and Europe.
  • Buffalo — A term used interchangeably with “bison” in North America, but actually a different of four-footed grazing mammal native to Africa.
  • En Masse — French for “as a group.”
  • Estrus — The state of a female ready to mate.
Questions for Discussion and Further Study
  1. What happened to buffalo populations in the 1800s?
  2. Are buffalo dangerous to humans? Why or why not?
  3. What are some of the challenges ranches and public land managers face in raising and caring for buffalo?
  4. Buffalo populations are increasing swiftly, but are they anywhere close to the population that once lived in North America before European settlement? See if you can use the sources above and your own search to find that information.
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Featured Article

Helping Students Bridge the Gap from Student to GIS Professional: How Esri YPN Supports Educators

Photo of Golden Bridge in Vietnam with sculpture of two hands supporting the bridge. Credit: Khải Đồng
Golden Bridge, Hòa Ninh, Hòa Vang, Da Nang, Vietnam. Credit: Khải Đồng

By Rosemary Boone, Senior Industry Marketing Manager – Education, Esri

Graduating from a higher education program is an exciting milestone, but it can also feel overwhelming. Students often ask, “What comes next?”

Esri Young Professionals Network (YPN) helps answer that question by bridging the critical gap between being a student and becoming a working GIS professional. The network also plays a vital role in supporting educators, who are deeply invested in their students’ success, both academically and professionally.

What is Esri YPN?

The Esri Young Professionals Network (YPN) is a global community and network of over 20,000 members worldwide that anyone can join at no cost. Esri YPN is designed to support its members to thrive at any stage of their GIS journey. Members consist of college students, recent graduates, emerging and seasoned GIS professionals, truly making it “a network for all” no matter your age or experience.

Built on three core pillars: Learn, Connect, and Lead, our mission is to provide members of Esri YPN with opportunities and resources to strengthen their skills, expand their networks, and step confidently into leadership roles within the geospatial industry.

Through networking events, professional development opportunities, and its Ambassador Program, Esri YPN empowers students to grow beyond the classroom and begin building the foundation of their careers while still in school.

Why It Matters to Students

By joining YPN, students gain:

  • A support system beyond graduation – Access to peers and mentors through the YPN Chapters, conference activities, LinkedIn group, and YPN Networking Space.
  • A platform to build their professional brand – Opportunities to showcase their work, present ideas, and raise their visibility through the YPN Ambassador Program.
  • Professional development resources – Engage in professional development through attending our webinars, conference sessions, chapter meetups; and by subscribing to the YPN blog on Esri Community.

For students, Esri YPN is more than a network, it’s a launchpad for their future in GIS.

Why Educators Should Take an Interest

By getting students involved in Esri YPN, educators can:

  • Strengthen their program’s value by demonstrating clear pathways to professional growth.
  • Help students gain confidence in their ability to enter a competitive job market.
  • Ensure graduates remain connected to a community that will continue supporting their careers long after they leave campus.

While curriculum and experiential learning opportunities build technical knowledge, students also need guidance on how to bridge the gap from student to professional. By encouraging participation, educators can equip their students with tools and connections that extend well beyond the classroom.

How to Get Started and Involved

Getting students connected with Esri YPN is simple—and the benefits begin immediately.

  1. Encourage students to join online – Direct them to esri.com/ypn, where they can join at no cost and gain instant access to resources, events, and community spaces.
  2. Reinforce their ability to participate tand network. Upon joining, members receive a confirmation email linking to their member badge and digital swag they can share with their networks.
  3. Suggest they join a local YPN chapter. Esri YPN has ten chapters across the United States each hosting local in-person networking meetups. Join a local chapter and search for upcoming chapter events.
  4. Encourage them to become a YPN Ambassador. Students can take steps to become a YPN Ambassador to make them stand out to their peers and recruiters. Upon completion, YPN Ambassadors receive a badge and certificate.
  5. Remind them to browse and subscribe to the YPN blog. The YPN Blog on Esri Community is rich in GIS career content brushing on topics like building a GIS portfolio, overcoming imposter syndrome, and GIS career pathway highlights.
  6. Keep encouraging them to start networking online. Join the YPN LinkedIn group and YPN Networking space on Esri Community to begin meeting peers and mentors in the geospatial field from across the globe.

Students who start engaging with YPN early will be equipped with a better sense of a professional identity, supportive network, and the confidence to step boldly into the next stage of their GIS journey.

Rosemary Boone is a Senior Industry Marketing Manager for Esri, concentrating on executing marketing strategies for K-12 schools and higher education institutions. She holds a master’s degree in education technology with an emphasis on multimedia. Prior to her career in marketing, she taught elementary school and taught overseas. In her free time, she likes to listen to music, exercise, and spend time with her two Dachshunds.

Featured Articles is a special section of the AAG Newsletter where AAG sponsors highlight recent programs and activities of significance to geographers and members of the AAG. To sponsor the AAG and submit an article, please contact [email protected]. 

 

 

 

 

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Resources

Geography Awareness Week 2025

Blue sky and clouds encircle the top half of North America and the Arctic

Hope keeps our sights on the horizon of possibility—or perhaps, more aptly, on the horizons of possibility, multiple and fluid, for there is no terminus to a politics of hope, and no geographic fixity to its imagined spaces.”

—Cindi Katz, “Topographies of Hope”

 

NOVEMBER 17-21

Making Spaces of Possibility

Possibility is … a footstep, a hand outstretched, a horizon glimpsed, a purpose spoken. Possibility is grasping the past and present of a place, and acting to move it into a positive future.

Geographers recognize and realize possibilities every day in their work, using their training to spot spatial patterns, convey information in vivid terms, and open up what we can know about places—and what we can believe and plan for them. Whether by exploring conservation, community, or the grand geopolitical stage, geographers are there to ask questions, harness ideas, and map the possible.

Take part in National Geography Awareness Week: Making Spaces of Possibility, and help AAG tell the world about how geographers are broadening and deepening our sense of the possible. Use our map to find out about GeoWeek events and happenings where you are, and all over the world.

 

Get Involved!

Here are a few ways to get involved in GeoWeek right now:

  • Become a GeoAdvocate. Get GeoWeek information and see your name listed below on this page. Sign up today
  • Be a Promotional Partner. Are you an organization interested in helping spread the word about GeoWeek? We provide you with information and public acknowledgment of your partnership. Sign up now
  • Help Us Publicize Your Events. Share your work with us and we’ll add your events to our map. From mapathons to mentoring events, from webinars to community meet-ups, we want to know how geography is showing up where you are. Sign up now 
  • Get classroom resources from AAG. We’ll send you a kit containing posters, stickers, bookmarks, and more. Get your kit today

 

Connect with our Core Partners

AAG is grateful for the support of GeoWeek by our sponsors:

 

 

Esri is AAG 2022's platinum sponsor

Contact us at [email protected] for information on how to sponsor GeoWeek.

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New Books for Geographers

New Books for Geographers: Fall 2025

A view of orange and yellow fall leaves as seen from looking up at the branches on the trunk of the tree.

The AAG compiles a quarterly list of newly published geography books and books of interest to geographers. The list includes a diversity of books that represents the breadth of the discipline (including key sub-disciplines), but also recognizes the work which takes place at the margins of geography and overlap with other disciplines. While academic texts make up most of the books, we also include popular books, novels, books of poetry, and books published in languages other than English, for example.

Some of these books are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books. Publishers are welcome to contact the AAG Review of Books Editor-in-Chief Joshua L. Conver, as well as anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles.

Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South, by Jarvis C. McInnis. (Columbia University Press 2025)

Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora, by Alaina M. Morgan (University of North Carolina Press 2025)

Computing Geographically: Bridging Giscience and Geography, by David O’Sullivan (Guilford Press 2024)

Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid, by Sheilagh Ogilvie (Princeton University Press 2025)

Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and the Future of the Euro, by John Cochrane, Luis Garicano, and Klaus Masuch (Princeton Universty Press 2025)

Earth Shapers: How We Mapped and Mastered the World, from the Panama Canal to the Baltic Way, by Maxim Samson (Profile Books 2025)

Exile: Chronicle of the Border, by Didier Fassin and Anne-Claire Defossez (Polity Books 2025)

Explosivity: Following What Remains, by Javier Arbona-Homar (University of Minnesota Press 2025)

I Can Imagine It For Us: A Palestinian Daughter’s Memoir, by Mai Serhan (American University in Cairo Press 2025)

Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and Structures of Dispossession, by Jodi A. Byrd (Duke University Press 2025)

Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink, by Lars Krutak (Princeton University Press 2025)

Inlands: Empires, Contested Interiors, and the Connection of the World, Eds. Robert S.G. Fletcher and Alec Zuercher Reichardt (Columbia University Press 2025)

It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World, by Mikaela Loach (Haymarket Books 2025)

Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe, by Wen Stephenson (Haymarket Books 2025)

Let Geography Die: Chasing Derwent’s Ghost at Harvard, by Alison Mountz and Kira Williams (MIT Press 2025)

More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, by Adam Becker (Basic Books 2025)

Native Nations: A Millenium in North America, by Kathleen DuVal (Random House 2025)

Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech, by Allison Carruth (University of Chicago Press 2025)

Peril and Promise: College Leadership in Turbulent Times, by Beverly Daniel Tatum (Basic Books 2025)

Picnic: Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Tradition, by Dave Dalton Thomas (Texas A&M Press 2025)

Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore, by Ashley D. Farmer (Pantheon Press 2025)

Science and Inequality: A Political Sociology, by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore (Polity 2025)

Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II, by Paul Thomas Chamberlin (Basic Books 2025)

Seattle in the Great Depression: A History of Business, Labor, and Politics Drawn from Local Chronicles, by Bruce A. Ramsey (WSU Press 2025)

Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara, by Judith Scheele (Profile Books 2025)

Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History, by David McNally (University of California Press 2025)

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Trump: What the Trade War Means for the World, by Phillip Coggan (Profile 2025)

The Field Guide to Mixing Social and Biophysical Methods in Environmental Research, Eds. Rebecca Lave and Stuart Lane (Open Book 2025)

The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West, by Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton University Press 2025)

The Land is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millenium, by Roberta L. Millstein (University of Chicago Press 2024)

The University Unfettered: Public Higher Education in an Age of Disruption, by Ian F. McNeely (Columbia Press 2025)

Turner and Constable: Art, Life, and Landscape, by Nicola Moorby (Yale University Press 2025)

What Is Critical Environmental Justice?, by David Naguib Pellow (Polity 2025)

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News

AAG Welcomes Fall 2025 Interns

The AAG welcomes two new interns joining the AAG staff this fall.

Mirembe DdumbaMirembe Ddumba is a junior studying Economics at Penn State University. She first became interested in geography during a Spring 2025 economic geography course, where she saw how maps and data could explain not just where things happen, but why communities grow and change the way they do. Using ArcGIS, she looked at how AI and shifts in different industries affect where people live and work, and realized that a map can sometimes tell a story better than pages of numbers. That interest led her to a Paragon Policy Fellowship, where she co-authored Charleston’s 2025–2027 flood-resilience plan and presented ideas to city leaders. She also co-created EcoGrow, a solar-powered smart farm with AI forecasting that won first place in a campus innovation challenge.

On campus, Mirembe served as Secretary of the African Student Association, planning events that highlighted culture, food, and music while building community among students. She also gained experience through an Amazon externship in workforce analytics and by attending Google’s Genesis2Genesis Student Conference, where she explored how finance and technology shape everyday decisions. Mirembe looks forward to contributing as a Media and Science Communication Intern at AAG and sharing geography in ways that are approachable and spark curiosity. In the future, she hopes to work internationally in London at the intersection of global affairs, policy, and economics, using geography as a way to better understand and address challenges around the world.

Samra McCullinSamra McCullin is a fourth-year student at George Mason University majoring in Geography with a minor in GIS. Samra’s first introduction to the discipline was a human geography class that she took in high school, where she found passion in the intersection of social, environmental, and physical sciences. In her undergraduate coursework she is constantly surprised at how she is able to exercise both her creative and analytical strengths. The freedom of a multidisciplinary major has allowed her to explore many subgenres within geography, her favorites being tourism, transportation, and sustainable development. Following graduation in the spring, Samra intends to pursue her masters in Geographic and Cartographic Sciences, working towards a professional career in digital cartography. Samra feels lucky to have found geography as a career path so early into her academic journey and hopes that through her work as a Communities Support Intern for the AAG, she can help more people find purpose and belonging within the discipline.

If you or someone you know is interested in applying for an internship at the AAG, the AAG seeks interns on a year-round basis. More information on internships at the AAG is also available on the About Us section of the AAG website.

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Perspectives

Navigating Human Dynamics—Reflections on Chairing the AAG Symposium on Environmental Exposure, Mobility, and Health

By Michaelmary Chukwu

Michaelmary ChukwuAt the 2025 AAG Annual Meeting in Detroit, I had the incredible opportunity of serving as both a session chair and presenter for the 11th Symposium on Human Dynamics Research. This year’s symposium, themed “Human Dynamics and GeoAI,” marked a major evolution of geographic thought—building on a decade of intellectual contributions that have redefined how we understand human-environment interactions in increasingly multifaceted physical and virtual worlds. Thanks to Dr Xinyue Ye, Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University and Dr Xiao Huang, Department of Environmental Sciences, Emory University, for allowing me to take up such a monumental adventure—one that has shaped my experience of AAG for the better.

The symposium’s foundation was engrained in a timely recognition: that contemporary human experiences of space and place are no longer limited to traditional geographies with which we already are familiar. Rather, spatial experiences now unravel across hybrid realms shaped by technologies such as the metaverse and fediverse, generative AI, and quantum computing—although these are relatively novel to me. As spatial researchers, we are often challenged—and empowered—to adapt our conceptual and analytical designs to this convergence. The sessions I chaired brought together a diverse group of scholars exploring how dynamic environmental exposures, shifting mobility patterns, and evolving health outcomes intersect in this digitally augmented landscape. Collectively, these sessions illuminated the role of GeoAI as both a lens and a tool for addressing these multifaceted challenges. My aim in this article is to reflect on my experience facilitating and participating in these sessions, highlighting key themes, emerging insights, and the broader significance of human-centered, technologically informed geography in an era of rapid transformation.

A Broad Shift in the Discipline

The field of human dynamics has always been centered on the spatial understanding of how people interact with their environments—how they move, where they are exposed to risks, and how these patterns shape health, opportunity, and resilience. Nevertheless, in today’s ever-changing world, these interactions have become more fluid, complex, and pushed by emerging technologies. I like how Dr Ye articulated this perspective:

The foundation of human dynamics research lies in understanding human needs, wants, and constraints… GeoAI, with its ability to analyze spatial data through artificial intelligence, will play a critical role in bridging human dynamics with geographic insights, offering new ways to understand and respond to complex urban challenges.

The 2025 Human Dynamics Symposium embraced this evolution, emphasizing a human-centered and convergence-driven approach to research. As we step even deeper into a hybrid era where physical places and virtual spaces blend, our analytical frameworks must be equally adaptable and dynamic.

The sessions I chaired revealed just how far human dynamics researchers have moved beyond merely mapping mobility flows or modeling progressive exposure. They are also now interrogating how AI-generated environments, real-time data streams, and machine learning (ML) algorithms shape human behavior and social vulnerability. A clear example is that the integration of data with environmental risk models can enable a sharper understanding of who is exposed to what hazards—and why. Similarly, GeoAI (the intersection of GIScience and AI) allows us to uncover disparities in exposure, which traditional lone geospatial techniques could not dictate. As Dr Huang has written, “As AI technology keeps evolving, we want to keep pace using it for socially beneficial purposes.”

This burgeoning intersection between technological innovation and geographic inquiry reflects a broader shift in the discipline. No longer are we just observers of mobility—we are now very much inclined to predicting, intervening, and (re)co-constructing human-environment futures. As many of the scholars presented their studies on everything from post-pandemic mobility changes to ethical concerns in AI-based exposure assessments, a clear theme emerged: human dynamics research must not only respond to technological disruption but also lead the way in shaping its implications for equity, access, and sustainability.

Michaelmary Chukwu poses next to a session board outside of a session room.
The author presenting at the AAG symposium he also chaired. Credit: Daniel Kissi-Somuah

The first session focused on urban mobility and exposure disparities, setting a strong foundation for critical thinking and reflection on spatial inequities. Papers examined e-scooter adoption in Charlotte, flow detection techniques for board-scale mobility data, and state policy implications for climate and worker health in Canada. Particularly notable was a paper proposing the use of Points of Interest (POIs) as sentinel nodes for infectious disease surveillance, offering a compelling intersection of geospatial methods and public health. All presenters made important submissions that sparked deep philosophical thoughts in geography.

The second session featured methodological innovations among geographically diverse studies, such as shared-bike mobility dynamics in Seoul, modeled carbon efficiency using urban scaling laws, and the linkages of urban sprawl with subjective well-being in the U.S. One presentation stood out for its novel use of geolocation data to examine tobacco exposure risks using a neuroscience framework. Another presented COVID-19 risk mapping in Kwara State, Nigeria, broadening the discussion to global health geographies and data-sparse regions. This session embodied the kind of interdisciplinary and cross-regional inquiry that the symposium aims to foster.

The final session turned attention to post-pandemic urban restructuring and digital-physical convergence. Presenters addressed the “donut effect” in U.S. cities due to remote work, correction methods for pedestrian mobility biases in Strava data, and the use of graph neural networks to estimate population flows from multimodal transport data. Two of the last presentations caught my attention: an analysis of mobility equity in four Atlanta neighborhoods in the context of the 15-minute city framework, and a forward-looking piece on GIS-based hybrid space-place approaches, emphasizing the need to rethink individual behavior across physical-virtual boundaries.

Throughout the day, the diversity of topics—ranging from graph theory and machine learning to behavioral geography and environmental justice—underscored the multidimensional nature of human dynamics research today. As an early-career geographer, I was honored to chair such a wide range of talks, with the opportunity not just to moderate, but to facilitate bridges between these ideas: connecting themes, fostering open discussion, and encouraging reflection on both technological promise and ethical responsibility.

AAG is not just a venue for presenting research, it is a dynamic community of thinkers, mentors, and co-creators of knowledge.

 

Presentation Insights: Sharing My Research

Among the highlights of the symposium was the opportunity to present my own research. I presented my study of how park visitation behavior varies across space, creating patterns that uncover inequities rooted in race, income, and location geography. Making use of longitudinal human mobility data from SafeGraph, the research revealed widening disparities in both access and usage of urban parks. More specifically, we showed that the borough of Manhattan enjoyed more access and use of parks—a predominately white area, compared with The Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, which are predominantly areas with people of color.

Michaelmary Chukwu's bar chart illustrates Aggregate Visits to Urban Park by Census Blocks in New York City in 2022
The author found that Manhattan enjoys far more access and use of its parks than other boroughs. Credit: Michaelmary Chukwu

 

My presentation illustrated persistent gaps in visitation trends, spatially and statistically, at the census block group level.  Low-income and racially marginalized neighborhoods in New York City consistently lagged in park usage, despite proximity. Some parks in those block groups were not well-maintained and lacked or had uneven distribution of park amenities. This points to a deeper narrative: access is not solely about distance but shaped by systemic barriers—ranging from safety concerns to cultural disconnection.

As a first-time participant at the AAG Annual Meeting—and at the time, a master’s student at the University of Arkansas—chairing not one, but three sessions within the Human Dynamics Symposium was an experience that exceeded my every expectation. Entering such an intellectually charged and collaborative space, I initially wondered how I would measure up. But from the very first session, it became clear that AAG is not just a venue for presenting research, it is a dynamic community of thinkers, mentors, and co-creators of knowledge.

The privilege to engage with and learn directly from leading scholars in the field of human dynamics profoundly shaped my understanding of the many aspects of geographical thoughts and the future. I paid close attention to how leading researchers grounded their advanced methodologies in real-world challenges such as health disparities, urban inequity, and the need for technological foresight. I appreciated how questions were asked not simply to critique, but to expand, refine, and deepen shared understanding of science of geography. This experience will remain a defining moment in my academic journey, affirming that even as an emerging scholar, there is space to lead, learn, and belong in the evolving story of human dynamics.

Michaelmary Chukwu is a Ph.D. student in Geographical Sciences and Cartography at the University of Maryland. He completed a master’s degree in Geography from the University of Arkansas in 2025 and a bachelor’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria in 2021. He is a student member of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), American Planning Association (APA), and Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS) while also being a distinguished full member of Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Societies. Michaelmary’s research interests are in GIScience, urban mobility, spatial statistics, GeoAI, computational social science, urban studies, active transportation, and remote sensing. He has received recognition for his outstanding works including a national scholar award from the University of Arkansas and Third Place student poster at the Southwest Regional Division of AAG.  

Perspectives is a column intended to give AAG members an opportunity to share ideas relevant to the practice of geography. If you have an idea for a Perspective, see our guidelines for more information.

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New Books for Geographers

New Books for Geographers: Summer 2025

Summer scene with butterfly, flowers and grass with sun in background

The AAG compiles a quarterly list of newly published geography books and books of interest to geographers. The list includes a diversity of books that represents the breadth of the discipline (including key sub-disciplines), but also recognizes the work which takes place at the margins of geography and overlap with other disciplines. While academic texts make up most of the books, we also include popular books, novels, books of poetry, and books published in languages other than English, for example.

Some of these books are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books. Publishers are welcome to contact the AAG Review of Books Editor-in-Chief Joshua L. Conver, as well as anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles.

The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy , by Eunji Kim (Princeton University Press 2025)

Another Magic Mountain: Kibong’oto Hospital and African Tuberculosis, 1920–2000, by Christoph Gradmann (Ohio University Press 2025)

Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All, by Nicola Kelly (Elliott & Thompson 2025)

The Beef Taboo in China: Agriculture, Ethics, Sacrifice, by Vincent Goossaert (University of Hawaii Press 2025)

Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality, by Irene I. Vega (Princeton University Press 2025)

Building Culture: Sixteen Architects on How Museums Are Shaping the Future of Art, Architecture, and Public Space, by Julian Rose (Princeton Architectural Press 2024)

Climate Changed: Models and the Built World, by Mara Freilich, Irmak Turan, Jessica Varner, and Lizzie Yarina (Columbia University Press 2025)

The Colony and the Company: Haiti after the Mississippi Bubble, by Malick W. Ghachem (Princeton University Press 2025)

Creating Culture, Performing Community: An Angahuan Wedding Story, by Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera (Indiana University Press 2025)

Debating Disaster Risk: Ethical Dilemmas in the Era of Climate Change, by Gonzalo Lizarralde, Lisa Bornstein, and Tapan Dhar  (Columbia University Press 2025)

Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W. E. B. Du Bois, by Robert Gooding-Williams (Columbia University Press 2025)

Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time, by Rasheedah Phillips (AK Press 2025)

Eco-Theory and Annihilation, by Evan Gottlieb (Bloomsbury Academic USA 2025)

Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine, by Lisa Bhungalia (Stanford University Press 2023)

Elsdon Best, by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman and Frederico Delgado Rosa (Berghahn Books 2025)

Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas: Hispanic Moroccan Jews and Their Globalizing Community, by Aviad Moreno (Indiana University Press 2024)

Eyes of the Ocean, by Syaman Rapongan (Columbia University Press 2025)

Florida Water, by aja monet (Haymarket Books 2025)

GeoAI: Artificial Intelligence in GIS, by Ismael Chivite, Nicholas Giner, and Matt Artz (Esri Press 2025)

Halo-Halo Ecologies: The Emergent Environments behind Filipino Food, by Alyssa Paredes and Marvin Joseph F. Montefrio (University of Hawaii Press 2025)

Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City, by Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi (Ohio University Press 2024)

Making Each Other Laugh: Contemporary Arapaho Storytelling, by Andrew Cowell (The University of Oklahoma Press 2025)

Malaria on the Move: Rural Communities and Public Health in Zimbabwe, 1890–2015, by Kundai Manamere (Ohio University Press 2025)

Mapping the Deep: Innovation, Exploration, and the Dive of a Lifetime, by Dawn J. Wright (Esri Press 2024)

Migrations in Jordan: Reception Policies and Settlement Strategies, by Jalal Al Husseini , Valentina Napolitano , and Norig Neveu (Bloomsbury Academic USA 2024)

Mutants, Androids, and Aliens: On Being Human in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: On Being Human in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, by James Tyner (University Press of Mississippi 2025)

Petroforms: Oil and the Shaping of Nigerian Aesthetics, by Helen Kapstein (West Virginia University Press 2025)

Projections of Dakar: (Re)Imagining Urban Senegal through Cinema, by Devin Bryson and Molly Krueger Enz (Ohio University Press 2024)

Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages, by Lorna Gibb (Princeton University Press 2025)

Reefs of Time: What Fossils Reveal about Coral Survival, by Lisa S. Gardiner (Princeton University Press 2025)

Remembering Lahaina: What I Learned about Tourism, the ‘Āina, and Myself during Twelve Years on Maui , by Anthony Pignataro (University of Hawaii Press 2025)

Rethinking Island Methodologies, by Elaine Stratford, Godfrey Baldacchino, and Elizabeth McMahon (Bloomsbury Academic USA 2025)

A Reverence for Rivers: Imagining an Ethic for Running Waters, by Kurt D. Fausch (Oregon State University Press 2025)

River Delta Futures: Endangered Communities in Audiovisual Media, by Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián and Angelos Theocharis (Bloomsbury Academic USA 2025)

Rojava in Focus: Critical Dialogues, by Cihad Hammy, Thomas Jeffrey Miley, and John Holloway (AK Press 2025)

Tactile Mapping: Cartography for People with Visual Impairments, by Vincent van Altena and Jakub Wabiński (Esri Press 2025)

Telling Stories with Maps: Lessons from a Lifetime of Creating Place-Based Narratives, by Allen Caroll (Esri Press 2025)

Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition, by brian bean (Haymarket Books 2025)

Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India, by Siddhartha Deb (Haymarket Books 2024)

Violent Atmospheres: Livelihoods and Landscapes in Crisis in Southeast Asia, by Wolfram Dressler and Mary Mostafanezhad (University of Hawaii Press 2025)

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2025-2026 AAG Handbook for Specialty and Affinity Group Group Chairs

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Awardees

2025 AAG Specialty and Affinity Group Awards

Photo of bright sparkly lights on dark background

The AAG’s interest-based specialty groups and eight affinity groups recognize their members accomplishments over the course of the year. Following are the awardees within each group:

Africa

2025 Kwadwo Konadu-Agyemang Distinguished Scholar Award, Bilal Butt, Univerity of Michigan

2025 Emerging Distinguished African Scholar Award, Moses Kansanga, George Washington University

ASG Graduate Research Grant, Reforce Okwei, Western University Ontario Canada

Animal Geography

Graduate Student Presentation Award, Adriana DiSilvestro

Applied Geography

AGSG 2025 Annual Meeting Award

  • Jiashuo Sun, Geographic Barriers to Vaccine Access: Associations of Travel Time with COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake, Intent, and Perceived Availability in Kenya
  • Qingqing Chen, Multi-sensory Experiences: The Connection between the Smell and Vision in Understanding Urban Environments
  • Yifan Yang, Hyperlocal Disaster Damage Assessment Using Bi-Temporal Street-View Imagery and Pre-Trained Image Processing Models
  • Christopher Ihinegbu, Unequal Considerations of Disaster Justice in Disaster Planning: Implications for Future Hazard Mitigation and Response
  • Emine Senkardesler, Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Crop Frequency and Insurance Losses to Predict Crop Losses Under Certain Climate Conditions
  • Francis Quayson, Spatiotemporal Analysis of LULC Dynamics in Ramsar Wetlands using GEE: A Multi-temporal Assessment of the Keta Lagoon Complex and Muni-Pomadze Ramsar Site

Bible Geography

Amy Mather Student Scholar Award, Esmaeel Adrah, Kent State University, How does conflict increase drought-induced crop failure I’m the eastern Mediterranean?

Biogeography

BSG Student Research Grant, Sewan Ohr, University of Texas, Reshaped by Reservoirs: Spatiotemporal Analysis of Vegetation Succession in Tropical Dam Systems

BSG Student Rep Travel Fund, Raju Bista, Michigan State University

Black Geographies

Clyde Woods Graduate Student Paper Award

  • Winner – Clara Perez Medina, UC Berkeley, In ‘Framing Displacement: Visual Geographies, Black Geographies, and the Crisis of Homelessness in Oakland’
  • Honorable Mention – Katrina Stack, UT-Knoxville, In ‘Researching and Preserving Resistant Homescapes: The Past and Present of Freedom Houses in the Mississippi Delta’

Graduate Student Travel Award, Aurore Iradukunda, On making homeplaces: African students in Portugal, White ignorance and the case of the Centro de Estudos Africanos

BGSG plenary

  • Rickie Sanders, Temple University (Emerita)
  • Gwendolyn Warren
  • Richard Wilson, In honor of his work on the BGSG Detroit Mural Map field trip

Caribbean Geography

Courtney Russell Award, Sewon Ohr, Department of Geography and the Environment University of Texas at Austin, Research that engages with geospatial technologies in the Caribbean

Travel Award, Brian Boyce, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, This award will allow Brian to support his doctoral dissertation, “You Want My Rhythm but NOT My Blues: Cultural Disturbance and its Echoes in East Port of Spain”

Cartography

Student Session Organizer Award

  • Zachary Cudney, University of Washington
  • Lucinda Roberts, University of Oregon
  • Fangsheng (Jasper) Zhou, University of Oregon
  • Gareth Baldrica-Franklin, University of Wisconsin
  • Lily Houtman, Penn State University
  • Bethany Craig, University of Kentucky

Masters Thesis Research Grant

  • Brynn Patrello, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Under Pressure: Psychological Stress in Cartographic Interaction
  • Susannah Cox, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Navigating the Scattered Mind: Using xR to Understand ADHD Navigational Challenges

China Geography

Best Student Paper Award, Ang Liu, Rutgers University, Financialization of Housing Production: Unveiling the ‘Fake Equity’ in Urban China

Student Travel Award, Xunhuan Li, University at Buffalo-SUNY, Speaking back to Western ideas of justice: Confucian sense of justice in the China’s energy transition

Climate

Paper of the Year, Zhiying Li, Indiana University, Li, Z., Smerdon, J.E., Seager, R., Siegert, N. and Mankin, J.S., 2024. Emergent trends complicate the interpretation of the United States Drought Monitor (USDM). AGU Advances, 5(2), p.e2023AV001070. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2023AV001070

Student Paper Competition

  • 1st Place – Tian Yang, Indiana University, Presentation Title at the 2025 AAG Annual Meeting: “Characteristics and Drivers of Abrupt Transition between Dry and Wet Extremes in the Contiguous United States”
  • 2nd Place – Ahmad Mojtoba Riyadh, University of Utah, Presentation Title at the 2025 AAG Annual Meeting: Spatial Analysis of Disaster Resilience Research: A Bibliometric Study
  • 3rd Place – Kwadwo Frimpong, Western Michigan University, Presentation Title at the 2025 AAG Annual Meeting: “Spatio-temporal analysis of thermal comfort in urban coast of Ghana from 1980-2023”

Coastal and Marine

Norb Psuty Student Paper

  • Ph.D. student – Madison Heffentrager, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Masters/undergraduate student – Noelle King, Southern Connecticut State University
  • Merit Award – Haojie Cao, University of Florida, Global trends in the changing capacity of coastal habitats to provide cultural ecosystem services

Community College

Community College Student Travel Stipend, Christian Umholtz, University of New Mexico, This student is the recipient of the Darrel Hess Community College Geography Scholarship for his work at Central New Mexico Community College. He has recently transferred to the University of New Mexico. CCAG provides travel stipends to students receiving AAG awards to help them attend the annual meeting to receive their recognition.

Higher Education Geography Educator Award, Cadey Korson, St. Clair County Community College, As part of the AAG Education Symposium, the Community College Affinity Group is recognizing a local leader in geography education.

Community Geographies Collaborative

Spirit of Community Geography Award

  • Erica Ascani, University of Missouri, Mapping Mobility: Using Community Geography and Storytelling to Advocate for Transportation Equity in Columbia, Missouri
  • Dulmini Jayawardana, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, See What We See: Stories of Environmental Stewardship in Lindsay Heights, Milwaukee-A Photovoice Project

Cultural and Political Ecology

CAPE Outstanding Article, Lazar Conforti, Land struggles, livelihoods, and trajectories of agrarian change in the Polochic valley, Guatemala

Student Paper Award, Rachel Arney, Georgia State, Legible Natures and the (Re)making of Environmental Impact Assessments in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Student Field Study Award

  • Andrea Cass, Investigating whether voluntary buyouts constitute transformative adaptation: a comparative case study of managed retreat in rural West Virginia
  • Ledeebari Banuna, Penn State

Margaret Fitzsimmons Award

  • Josh Cousins
  • Tianna Bruno, UC-Berkeley

Outstanding Book Award, Shannon Cram

Cultural Geography

Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov Paper Award, Katrina Stack

Denis Cosgrove Research Grant, Cassidy Schoenfelder

CyberInfrastructure

Robert Raskin Student Paper Competition

  • Wei Hu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Spatiotemporal Patterns, Content Variability, and Influencing Factors in Global Earthquake News Coverage
  • Xiao Chen, Arizona State University, Pan-Arctic analysis of permafrost landscape leveraging cyberinfrastructure, geospatial big data, and AI
  • Mohammad Parvez, University of Connecticut, A Framework for Social-Environmental System Boundary Delineation: Enhancing Quantitative Geography through Spatial Optimization

Development Geographies

Gary Gaile Travel Award, Soo Yeon Lim

Best Paper Award, Siddharth Menon

Disability

Todd Reynolds DSG Student Paper Competition, Bella Choo

Economic Geography

Travel Award, Lee Crandall

Graduate Fieldwork Award, Monique Assuncao, Queen’s University

Travel Award

  • Hyunjin Cho, University of Florida
  • Stephanie Eccles

Energy and Environment

Energy Luminary Award, Jennifer Baka, Pennsylvania State University, In recognition of the paper “Cracking Appalachia: A Political-Industrial Ecology Perspective”

Powershift Award, Michelle Martinez, University of Michigan, In recognition of Detroit-based environmental justice work and engagement in public scholarship

Advancing Diversity and Inclusion Award, Mahya Ashtiani

Dissertation Data and Fieldwork Award, Bruce Baigrie, Syracuse University

Best Student Paper Award, Anna Cain, Australian National University

Environmental Perception and Behavioral Geography

Saarinen Paper Award, Yichun Zhou, New York University Shanghai, Nonlinear relationship between perceived residential environment and neighborhood park visitation: An analysis of mobile data and street view imagery in Tokyo

Travel Award

  • Qingqing Chen, University at Buffalo, Multi-sensory experiences: The connection between the smell and vision in understanding urban environments”
  • Fabiha Rahman, Virginia Tech, Redefining “15-Minute City” Accessibility for Pedestrians: a New Approach Considering Age, Gender, and Elevation

Eurasian

Eurasian Geography Photo Contest, Andrew Grant, University of Tampa, Title of the photo: “Samruk Looks Out”

Feminist Geographies

Rickie Sanders Junior Faculty Award Competition, Sarah Klosterkamp, in recognition of Intersectional-Anti-Racist Feminist Geographies

Honorable Mention for Rickie Sanders Junior Faculty Award Competition, Sofia Zaragocin

Glenda Laws Student Paper Award

  • Wiley Sharp, Innovative anti-racist, trans and feminist geographic scholarship
  • Kylie Yuet Ning Poon, Innovative anti-racist, trans and feminist geographic scholarship

Jan Monk Service Award

  • Latoya Eaves
  • Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Susan Hanson Dissertation Proposal Award, Bryttani Wooten, This award highlights a Ph.D. dissertation proposal that promises to make substantial contributions to the geographic analysis and interpretation of topics related to gender, sexuality, and feminism

Honorable Mention for Susan Hanson Dissertation Proposal Award, Annie Elledge, This award highlights a Ph.D. dissertation proposal that promises to make substantial contributions to the geographic analysis and interpretation of topics related to gender, sexuality, and feminism.

Geographic Information Science and Systems

Waldo Tobler Distinguished Lecture Award

  • Song Gao, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Artificial GIS Analyst: From Spatial Questions to Geospatial Intelligence
  • Kathleen Stewart, University of Maryland, College Park, Analyzing Human Mobility Using Mobile Device Trajectory Data: A Multi-Year Study Across the US

Student Paper Competition

  • 1st Place – Yibo Zhao, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Paper title: “Enhanced Origin-Destination Flow Prediction via Community Detection and Graph Attention Networks for Diverse Mobility Patterns”
  • 2nd Place
    • Zhongfu Ma, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Paper title: “Gravity-Informed Deep Flow Inference for Spatial Evolution in Panel Data”
    • Zhangyu Wang, University of California Santa Barbara, Paper title: “LocDiffusion: Identifying Locations on Earth by Diffusing in the Hilbert Space”
  • Finalists
    • Dan Qiang, McGill University, Paper title: “Mobility Vitality: Measuring urban vibrancy through active and micro-mobility modes”
    • Pawan Thapa, University of Alabama, Paper title: “Medial Axis Transform Method for River Centerlines Extraction and Width Estimation”
    • Shiyan Zhang, Pennsylvania State University, Paper title: “Enhanced urban PM2.5 prediction: Applying quadtree division and time-series transformer with WRF-chem”
    • Haoyu Wang, University of Texas at Austin, Paper title: “Search space reduction using species distribution modeling with simulated and sampled pollen signatures”
  • Honorable Mentions
    • Zongrong Li, University of Southern California, Paper title: “StreetviewLLM: Extracting Geographic Information Using a Chain-of-Thought Multimodal Large Language Model”
    • Yifan Yang, Texas A&M University, Paper title: “Hyperlocal Disaster Damage Assessment Using Bi-Temporal Street-View Imagery and Pre-Trained Image Processing Models”

Geographies of Food and Agriculture

Graduate Research Award

  • Suraiya Parvin, Pennsylvania State University, Place-making through Food: A Case Study on Bangladeshi Immigrants in New York City
  • Amber Orozco, University of Georgia, Situating the Corner Store: Cartographies of Black Placemaking, Healthy Retail Intervention Programs, and Alternative Food Movements in Los Angeles

Schalar-Activist Award, Christa Nunez, for work with Khuba International

Geography Education

Gail Hobbs Student Paper Award

  • Samantha Serrano, Texas State University, The Impact of Advanced Placement on Academic Growth: A Study of Early High School Trajectories and the Cumulative Impacts of Gained Social and Cultural Capital for Students Enrolled in AP Human Geography
  • Seth Kannar, University of Tennessee
  • Yanbing Chen, University of Wisconsin

Poster Competition

  • Hunter Hansen, Southern Illinois University, “Geographic Thinking and Research Preparedness Among Watershed Scholars: Insights from Interdisciplinary Comparisons
  • Fabian Terbeck, South Alabama University, Promoting Equity: Using GIS in School Planning to Reduce Racial Segregation in Alabama Schools

Geography Education Researcher Award, Phil Gersmehl, Retired, Presented during Geography Education Symposium 2025

K-12 Geography Educator, Cynthia Bloom, Presented during the Geography Education Symposium 2025

Geomorphology

G.K. Gilbert Award for Excellence in Geomorphological Research, Lisa Davis, University of Alabama, Department of Geography & the Environment, Holocene Thermal Maximum paleofloods improve flood frequency analyses in the lower Tennessee River Basin (USA)

Mel Marcus Distinguished Career Award, Francis Magilligan, Department of Geography, Dartmouth College

Graduate Student Paper Award, Madison Heffentrager, University of California Santa Barbara, Geomorphology of a Parabolic Dune Under Active Restoration Involving the Removal of an Invasive Species

Reds Wolman Graduate Student Research Awards

  • Cody Wilber, Portland State University, Downstream Impact and Channel Response to Post-Fire Hillslope Processes
  • Adit Ghosh, University of Southern California, Investigation of soil erosion rates in the Channel Islands, from the arrival of early humans to later ranching, to quantify a baseline to underpin soil sustainability studies in Southern California

Graduate Student

Travel Award

  • Xiaoling Chen, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Kang Li, University of Utah
  • Ha Pham, Portland State University
  • Amrita Kumar-Ratta, University of Toronto
  • RHONY OCHIENG, Miami University
  • Martin Appiah, Miami University
  • Adeetuk Lina, Western University

Hazards, Risks, and Disasters

Gilbert F. White Award

  • Adam Clark, The role of cartography and visualization in hazard risk communication: An examination of the Houston Chronicle, 1945 to 2020
  • Emmanuel Afriyie, Exploring Spatiotemporal Patterns in Hazardous Hydrologic Events: Assessment, Communication, and Mitigation Through Geospatial Technologies

Jeanne X. Kasperson Student Paper Award

  • Christopher Ihinegbu
  • Palash Chandra Das
  • Asikunnaby Nayan
  • Md. Shaharier Alam
  • Harman Singh
  • Sophiya Gyanwali
  • Nyla Howell
  • Ria Mukerji
  • Shelley Hoover

Health and Medical Geography

Health & Place Emerging Scholar Award

  • Henry Luan, UT Southwestern Medical Center
  • Sandy Wong, Ohio State University

Melinda Meade/Health & Place Student Travel Award

  • Mollie Holmberg, Wilfrid Laurier University
  • Veronica Gomes, Temple University

Jacques May Thesis Prize

  • Aisha Syed, University of Toronto, Immigrant Impact: Deconstructing the Production of the South Asian Built Food Environment
  • Changda Yu, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Do Activity Context and its Temporality Matter in the Stress Relieving Effect of Greenspace? Evidence from Hong Kong based on individual mobile sensing

Health Data Visualization Award

  • Qian Huang, East Tennessee State University, North Carolina, Maternal and Child Health Dashboard
  • SV Subramanian, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, India Policy Insights: A Spatio-Temporal Visualization Platform for Health and SDOH Data

Peter Gould Student Paper Award

  • Peter Ge, University of Toronto, Assessing Environmental Beauty and Safety Perception Impacts on Type-2 Diabetes Across Toronto
  • Jiashuo Sun, University of Hong Kong, Geographic Barriers to Vaccine Access: Associations of Travel Time with COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake, Intent, and Perceived Availability in Kenya

Human Dimensions of Global Change

HDGC EJ Webinar: Teaching in the Space of Environmental Justice, Jessica Creane, iKantKoan, Prof. Creane was one of three remarkable speakers for this year’s HDGC Environmental Justice/Climate Justice Teaching Webinar.

HDGC Teaching Climate Justice Webinar, Jennifer Atkinson, University of Washington, Prof. Atkinson was one of three remarkable speakers for this year’s HDGC Environmental Justice/Climate Justice Teaching Webinar.

HDGC EJ/CJ, Anthony Levenda, Evergreen College, Prof. Levenda was a terrific member of HDGC’s EJ/CJ Teaching panel for 2025.

2025 Student Paper Award, Abdual-Salam Jahanfo Abdulai, Pennsylvania State University, This award is granted for the excellent work described in the paper “Towards a livelihood-interdependence approach to framing adaptation in research and practice: evidence from farmers- and herders-relations in Northern Ghana.”

HDGC JEDI Award, David Lopez-Carr, UCSB Dept. of Geography, Awarded for excellence and commitment in justice and equity-related service and research in the space of the Human Dimensions of Global Change

Landscape

Landscape Photography Competition

  • Winner – Zehra Mahdi, Photo Title: “Going to School”
  • Runner-Up – Kwang il Yoo, Title of Photo: “A Patchwork of Winter Agriculture Field in Great Plains”
  • People’s Choice Award – Abinash Silwal, Photo Title: “The Pristine Waters of Himalayas”

Latin America

Latin America Specialty Group Best Paper Award, Mariam Asaba, University of Wyoming, The endurance of environmental defenders in Mexico and the constrained potential of the Escazu Agreement

Latin America Specialty Group Field Study Award

  • Laura Botero Arellano, UT-Austin, (En)gendering the Mine: Gendered Violence, Territorial Dispossession, and Mineral Extraction in the Amazon Borderlands
  • Stephen Abbot, University of Toronoto, Livelihoods and Extraction: Oil in the Peruvian Amazon

Solidarity Award, Mehrnush Golriz, UCLA

Latinx Geographies

Mutual aid fund

  • Elybeth Alcantar
  • Cassidy Tawse-Garcia, University of New Mexico
  • Nohely Alvarez
  • Leonardo Vilchis-Zarate, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Iskar Waluyo, University of Southern California

Legal Geogaphy Speciality Group

Legal Geography Graduate Student Presentation Award

  • Hannah Friedrich, University of Arizona, Bringing Legal Geography to Post-Disaster Recovery
  • Andrea Lara-Garcia­, University of Berkeley, Who Owns the Border?: Contested Territorialities in the Arizona and Texas Borderlands

Paleoenvironmental Change

2025 Student Research Award (Masters)

  • Madison Moore, University of Tennessee, Untangling the Mystery of the Barrens: Long Term Fire History from Tullahoma, Tennessee
  • Jordan Sharp, University of Louisville, Hydroclimate Response of a combined live-tree and historic timber tree-ring network for KY, U.S.A.

2025 Student Presentation Award Poster Category, Andrea Baker, University of Nevada, Reno, Testing for Radial Translocation of Atmospheric Mercury in Jeffrey Pine Tree Rings Using a Fire Event

Ellen Mosley-Thompson Best Publication Award, Matthew Kerr, University of Tennessee, Kerr, M.T., Horn, S.P. and Lane, C.S. (2024), Holocene hydroclimate in highland Costa Rica: new evidence from hydrogen and carbon isotopes in n-alkanes of terrestrial leaf waxes in a 10 000-year sediment profile. J. Quaternary Sci., 39: 665-681. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3616

Polar Geography

Polar Geography Student Paper Award, Samantha Brown, University of Oregon, A Fermentation Revival for All or Some? Eating Iginneq & Navigating the Legacies of Danish Colonialism in South Greenland

Political Geography

Student Travel Award

  • Jill Thornton, University of South Carolina
  • Luísa Amato Caye, Texas State University
  • Tay Kathleen Villaseñor, Texas State University
  • Anne Della Guardia, London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE)
  • Ang Liu, Rutgers University-Newark
  • Devika Ranjan, Northwestern University
  • Jewon Ryu, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
  • Lauren Herwehe, University of Colorado, Boulder

Minghi Distinguished Book Award, Shaina Potts, University of California, Los Angeles, Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire

Mamadouh Outstanding Research Award, Pallavi Gupta, University of Hawaii, Geographies of Waiting: Politics, Methods, and Praxis—a Case Study of Indian Railway Stations

Brunn Early Career Scholar Award, Emily Mitchell-Eaton, Colgate University

Alexander B. Murphy Dissertation Enhancement Award, Suad Jabr, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Doing Queer Resettlement: LGBTQ+ Forced Migration in the US South

Graduate Student Paper Award

  • Amrita Kumar-Ratta, University of Toronto
  • Fedor Popov, University of Colorado, Boulder

Protected Areas

Graduate Student Paper Award, Seth Kannarr, Our National Parks as Classrooms of Geography.

Student Poster Award, Sharmin Sultana Toa, Emerging Hotspot Analysis for Forest Vegetation: A Case Study of Sundarbans Mangrove Forest, Bangladesh

Student Paper Award, Kaitlyn Anderson, Ecological Fragmentation: Road Networks in U.S. National Parks and Forests.

Qualitative Research

Keynote Honorarium, Emily Kutil, Keynote Speaker, Black Bottom Archives

Keynote Presenter at AAG, Rosie Chapman, Black Bottom Archives

Award for Outstanding Research

  • Sarah Gelbard, University of Ottawa, Qualitative Research Specialty Group- Outstanding Research Award: “Co-designing spaces for transformative housing justice in Canada”
  • tharushi bowatte, University of Melbourne, “Testing a decolonial process for the interrogation of the University of Melbourne’s geology museum”
  • Lee Eisold, KU Leuven, “(How) Does Intersectionality Work in Activism?”
  •  Jahia Ifill Knobloch, Hertie School of Governance, “Held by the Earth: How Black & Native Food/Land Activists Can Find Common Ground”

Recreation, Tourism and Sport

John Rooney Award, Marina Novelli, Nottingham University Business School, For outstanding contributions to the field and discipline of Applied Recreation, Tourism and Sport Geography

Tourism Geographies and RTS Book Award

  • Julie Wilson, Open University of Catalonia, Wilson, Julie, and Dieter K. Müller, eds. The Routledge handbook of tourism geographies. London: Routledge, 2012.
  • Dieter Müller, Umea University, Wilson, Julie, and Dieter K. Müller, eds. The Routledge handbook of tourism geographies. London: Routledge, 2012.
  • Arie Stoffelen, KU Leuven, Stoffelen, Arie, and Dimitri Ioannides, eds. Handbook of tourism impacts: Social and environmental perspectives. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022.
  • Dimitri Ioannides, Mid Sweden University, Stoffelen, Arie, and Dimitri Ioannides, eds. Handbook of tourism impacts: Social and environmental perspectives. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022.
  • Nitasha Sharma, University of Alabama, Sharma, Nitasha, Annaclaudia Martini, and Dallen J. Timothy, eds. Critical Theories in Dark Tourism: Issues, Complexities and Future Directions. Vol. 12. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2024.
  • Annaclaudia Martini, University of Bologna, Sharma, Nitasha, Annaclaudia Martini, and Dallen J. Timothy, eds. Critical Theories in Dark Tourism: Issues, Complexities and Future Directions. Vol. 12. Walter de Gruyter, 2024.
  • Dallen Timothy, Arizona State University, Sharma, Nitasha, Annaclaudia Martini, and Dallen J. Timothy, eds. Critical Theories in Dark Tourism: Issues, Complexities and Future Directions. Vol. 12. Walter de Gruyter, 2024.

Early Career Researcher Paper Award

  • Donna James, Western Sydney University, James, Donna. “Precarious labour geographies of working holiday makers: querying sustainability.” Tourism Geographies 26.7 (2024): 1053-1071
  • Liling Xu, Royal Holloway, University of London, Xu, Liling. “The ‘Awkward’ geopolitics of tourism in China’s ‘Arctic’ village.” Tourism Geographies 26.5 (2024): 796-813

Roy Wolfe Award, Chris Gibson, University of Sydney, For outstanding contributions to the field and discipline of Recreation, Tourism and Sport Geography.

Student Paper Award, Nora Müller, Geography Department, University of the Balearic Islands, Müller, Nora. “Decommodifying nature through commoning: an alternative for tourism and private protected areas.” Tourism Geographies (2024): 1-23

Regional Development and Planning

Emerging Scholar Award, Grete Gansauer, University of Wyoming

Distinguished Scholar Award, Chandana Mitra, Auburn University

Distinguished Service Award, Han Li, University of Miami

Ashok K. Dutt Award for Best Graduate Student Paper

  • 1st Place – Wenjing Gong, Texas A&M University, Paper titled “Integrating Spatiotemporal Vision Transformer into Digital Twins for High-Resolution Heat Stress Forecasting in Campus Environments”
  • 2nd Place – Al Artat Bin Ali, Auburn university, Paper titled “Mapping and Predicting Urban Heat Island Intensity Hotspots with Remote Sensing and Machine Learning in Bangladesh”

Remote Sensing

Student Illustrated Paper Competition

  • 1st Place – Tianze Li, University at Buffalo, Assessment of the applicability of two spatiotemporal fusion models for refined mapping of a highly invaded mangrove forest
  • 2nd Place – Austin Cox, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Comparison of vegetation indices to identify phenological events in deciduous forests
  • 3rd Place – Shelby Paluch, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Phenological changes in Wisconsin deciduous forests

Student Honors Paper Competition Award

  • 1st Place – Wenxiu Teng, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Towards High Spatial-Resolution Mapping of Suspended Particulate Matter in Global Coastal Waters Using Satellite Observations
  • 2nd Place – Yin Liu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, A novel harvest phenology Index (HPI) for corn and soybean harvesting date mapping using Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery on Google Earth Engine
  • 3rd Place – Hyunho Lee, Arizona State University, Spatially Masked Adaptive Gated Network for Enhanced SAR-based Flood Mapping with Incomplete Multispectral Data

Rural Geography

Student Research Award, Andrea Cass, SUNY-ESF, Managed Retreat in rural southeast West Virginia: Are voluntary buyouts fulfilling the promise of transformative adaptation?

Student Paper Presentation Award, Ana Lucia Araujo Raurau, Clark University

Socialist and Critical Geography

James Blaut Award, Nik Heynen, University of Georgia, Echoes of Bombingham: The Longue Dure of Racial Terror, the White Mob, and Abolition Geography

Student Paper Awards

  • Ph.D. – Hannah Kass, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Abstract
  • Master’s – Fernando Lopez Oggier, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Itinerant Deathworlds: Spanish Border Externalization & The Necroborder

Travel Award, Amira Saad

Student Travel Award, Alexandre Pires

Spatial Analysis and Modeling

Student Paper Competition

  • 1st place
    • Jiwon Baik, University of California, Santa Barbara, Identifying Maximum Unobstructed Shortest Path between Multipart-Continuous geometries: A novel type of Access Evaluation
    • Mengyu Liao, University of Maryland, College Park, A Data‐Driven Approach to Spatial Interaction Models of Migration: Integrating and Refining the Theories of Competing Destinations and Intervening Opportunities
  • 2nd Place – Chengbo Zhang, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen, Uncovering the Community Structure and Evolutionary Dynamics of Instant Delivery Networks
  • 3rd Place – Ehsan Foroutan, Oklahoma State University, Revealing Key Factors of Heat-related Illnesses using Geospatial Explainable AI (GeoXAI) Model

Student Travel Award

  • Jiayin Zhang, UC Santa Barbara, Collective Walking Behavior Patterns in Urban Public Space: Evidence from Surveillance Videos
  • Zhenqi Zhou, University at Buffalo, Explainable GeoAI and statistical analysis reveal complementary insights about disparities of 311 help requests during the 2022 Buffalo blizzard

Stand Alone Geographers

SAGE Innovation Award, Sarah Jackson, Western Carolina University

Transportation Geography

Edward L. Ullman Award, Joe Weber

Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award, Rongxiang Su, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sensing Human Activity and Interaction Patterns through Movement Observations

Outstanding Masters Thesis Award, Reyhane Javanmard, The University of Western Ontario, Towards a More Realistic Evaluation of New Public Transit Services’ Impacts on Healthcare Accessibility and Inequality

Student Travel Award

  • Fabiha Rahman, Virginia Tech University, Redefining “15-Minute City” Accessibility for Pedestrians: a New Approach Considering Age, Gender, and Elevation
  • Bahareh Farrokhi, University of Nevada, Reno, Evaluating the Influence of Urban Heat Islands on Active Transportation and Public Transit in Reno-Sparks, Nevada

Urban Geography

Student Access Award

  • Carolyn swope
  • Hyunjin Cho, University of Florida
  • Sandra Johnson, Aquinas College
  • Connery Ritter, Macalester College
  • Kayla Edgett, University of Georgia
  • Jimena Perez, UC Berkeley
  • Thi Mai Thoa Tran, Universite du Quebec á  Montreal
  • Aman Banerji

Graduate Student Fellowships: Ph.D.

  • Kayla Edgett, Prison Futures: The Production of Carceral Space and Abolition Geography in Atlanta – This project explores co-production of carceral space and infrastructure and abolitionist geographies. We were impressed by its sophisticated design and significant potential to contribute to critical urban geographic scholarship.
  • Reforce Okwei, Impacts of Climate Change on Informal Urban Communities in Accra, Ghana.This project presents a compelling approach to studying the impacts of climate change on informal urban communities in Ghana. We were impressed by its potential to generate valuable insights that could inform policy and practice.

Ph.D. Dissertation Award, Rachel Bok, University of British Columbia, A global ethnography of the urban solutions industry: Tracing “solutionism” across interurban terrain // This impressive project draws on twenty-three months of multi-sited ethnographic data across the global North and South to reveal the presence and operations of urban institutions that strategically orthogonal to municipal governance, yet increasingly consequential for 21st-century global urban governance.

Graduate Student Paper Award, Soo Yeon Lee, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, Housing Production from Ground-Up: Binilhaus in Greenbelt Land and Contested Urban Expansion in Gwacheon, South Korea

Alternative Modes of Scholarship, Hakki Ozan Karayigit, Title: Sema of Ankara, This project focuses on the sonic geographies of Ankara in Turkey. The authors have collected soundbites and complied them into an animation. We think this is truly innovative and adds a new dimension to current urban geographic scholarship.

Co-sponsorship of film screening, Arun Saldanha

Water Resources

Olen Paul Matthews and Kathleen A. Dwyer Fund

  • Kristin Dobbin, University of California Berkeley, Leveraging Water System Consolidations to Advance Equity and Resilience (note, please draw from the Matthew-Dwyer Fund)
  • Harman Singh, Pennsylvania State University, Water Governance and Climate Adaptation in Bengaluru: Examining Policy Barriers and Institutional Responses (note, funds should be drawn from the Matthew-Dwyer Fund)

Student Proposal Award

  • Mehrnaz Haghdadi, University of Delaware, Indigenous Water Sovereignty in Arid Lands: Infrastructure and Development Practices in the Colorado River Basin (note, draw from operating fund)
  • Sayanangshu Modak, University of Arizona, From Silos to Synergy: Mapping Collaborative Research Networks on Salinity in the Ganges River Delta (note, draw from operating funds)

Student Presentation Award

  • Angelique Brianna Willis, Michigan State University, Investigating the Association Between Geological Features and Chemical Contamination in Georgia’s Private Wells (note, please draw from operating fund)
  • Asmi Shrestha, Mount Holyoke College, Heritage that Hydrates: Analyzing the Hitis of Nepal through the Lens of Urban Political Ecology (note, draw from the operating fund)

Wine, Beer, and Spirits

Graduate Student Paper Award, Kevin Roy, University of Toronto, Institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship in the Ontario craft beer industry

Graduate Student Paper Honorable Mention

  • Kolosa Ntombini, University of Cape Town, Department of Environmental & Geographical Sciences, The Truth Lies in the Wine: Grappling with (In)Justice in South Africa’s Land Redistribution Policy
  • Brock Burford, Texas State University, Turning Water into Wine: Evaluating the Texas Wine Industry’s Water Efficiency
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News

AAG Welcomes Summer 2025 Interns

Two new interns have joined the AAG staff this summer. The AAG would like to welcome Cadence Bowen and Wyatt Gaines to the organization.

Cadence Brown poses in a fieldCadence Bowen is a senior at Kent State University majoring in Geography with a minor in Geographic Information Science (GIS). Originally from rural Arkansas, her move to the densely populated Northeast Ohio region led to her fascination with the distinction between rural and urban geographies. Her interests include tourism in rural fishing communities, Native American and Alaskan Native geography, regional disparities in early geographic education, environmental gentrification, and urban mapping techniques using open-source GIS. Her goal as a geographer is to advocate for the importance of geographic literacy through forms of digital media sharing. Outside of her academic goals, Cadence enjoys spending her summers traveling and taking on seasonal positions. Last summer, she spent her time working in the service industry in Seward, Alaska, learning more about how tourism affects economies that rely heavily on commercial and sport fishing and local indigenous communities, specifically the Qutekcak Native Tribe. She is super excited to take on the role of being AAG’s Media and Science Communications intern this summer and expand her knowledge of geographic research and media.

Wyatt GainesWyatt Gaines graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia University in May 2025 with a major in International Studies and minors in Geographic Information Science and Conservation Ecology. His interdisciplinary academic background informs his interest in applying geographic research to real-world challenges—a passion he brings to his work with the AAG and its diverse initiatives. Outside of academics, Wyatt enjoys weightlifting, studying languages, and watching movies. Since graduating, he has moved to Japan to work part-time as an American Youth Ambassador at the American Pavilion at the 2025 Osaka World Expo. He is honored to serve as one of AAG’s Community Support interns for the summer term. After his time with AAG, Wyatt plans to continue working in the NGO and nonprofit sectors and pursue graduate study.

If you or someone you know is interested in applying for an internship at the AAG, the AAG seeks interns on a year-round basis. More information on internships at the AAG is also available on the About Us section of the AAG website.

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AAG Staff
AAG Staff