As Geography research begins in the field and ends in the field, so does my Presidential Column. I had the good fortune to be able to compose most of my first column (July 2018) during my fieldwork in Belize and Guatemala in Central America. Now I am filing my final column as your AAG President from field camp in northwestern Belize, working with an international team of colleagues, students, and volunteers to study the resilience of ancient Maya society. While “Op-Ed” stands for Opinion/Editorial, it also represents both Opportunity and Education. I thank you, my readers and fellow AAG members, for the Opportunity to freely explore challenging and timely issues and to share thoughts and opinions on current events and research over the last year. I am also grateful for the platform of the AAG Newsletter on which to perform one of my primary duties as a Professional Geographer: to Educate, to enable understanding and discussing important issues from local to global scales, and, to inspire actions to solve the planet’s most critical human and environmental problems. It is a tall order, but we should set expectations for ourselves at the very highest level to ensure a better future for people, the environment, and the planet.

This is my 26^th field year exploring the palimpsests of millennia of urban and agricultural landscapes of parts of modern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. Each year we discover more about how extensive and influential ancient humans have been in the Americas. We have increased our understanding of human influences on the earth, from William Denevan exploding the Pristine Myth in the 1992 Annals Special issue (82(3):369-85), to the 2013 dawning of the journal The Anthropocene, (Anne Chin, Editor-in-Chief), to the May 2019 binding vote of the Anthropocene Working Group approving that the Anthropocene shall be “treated as a formal chrono-stratigraphic unit” and its primary marker will be “one of the stratigraphic signals around the mid-twentieth century of the Common Era” (AWG, 5/21/19). It is still a complicated matter of agreeing when that marker occurs in time globally. While the swirling smog of the 19^th C. Industrial Revolution was a leading, if not charismatic, candidate, not to mention the globally detectable nuclear testing fallout signal of the mid-20^th C., evidence still builds for an Early Anthropocene. Denevan’s idea (1992) that 18^th century human visibility on the landscape was less substantial than that which was visible before 1492 still stands the test of time, further supported by W. F. Ruddiman et al.’s 2016 work (Rev. Geophys. 54: 93-118) on early, increased releases of CO₂ and Methane to the atmosphere associated with increased burning and farming like rice paddy (wetland) agriculture in Asia. Now with advanced geospatial technology such as Lidar guiding our field exploration and validation, we are fast on the trail of finding significant extents of ancient landesque capital, including cultivated landscapes, ranging far across the Western Hemisphere, including Mesoamerica. Much else has changed in field research infrastructure since the early 1990s: Quad maps in Belize were produced for us in 1993 as Ozalid blueprints in the Government Mapping Office in Belmopan. Now there is a Land Information Center providing geospatial data. In 1994, a colleague mounted a brick-shaped GPS unit on an extension pole in the jungle, trying to reach a satellite signal at just the right hour. For communications, there was a payphone and one fax machine in the general store in the village near our field camp, a lifeline for college students with final papers due who were here in the field to collect data before the rainy season hit. Now we despair that the local internet is not working today in camp. Yet, there are some regions here in Belize and beyond still too remote to access cell service, allowing us a moment to also rejoice that there are places untouched by clouds of 4G data smog to walk through and be interrogated by.

My last official duty as AAG President will take place at the end of June, when I travel on behalf of the AAG to Beijing and Harbin, China, where I will be hosted by the Geographical Society of China to present in a session on “Scientific Organization Governance” at the China Association of Science and Technology Meeting, and will present academic talks on my team’s Ancient Water Management research, at Chinese universities. It is a privilege to be able to collaborate internationally, and to thereby conduct science and science diplomacy. Getting back to my yearlong theme of Science, Geography, and Human Rights, we must strive to fulfil the ideals of making science accessible to the benefit of all people; of guaranteeing scientists their rights to practice and to preserve science; and to protect scientists’ rights to collaborate freely and internationally.

Although my title will change to Past President on 1 July, my service to AAG as a member of the leadership team will continue for one more year: on the AAG Executive Committee, the AAG Council, and the Disciplinary Matters Committee. My writing assignment will shift from a monthly column, to composing the content and form of the Past Presidential Address for the Denver meetings and for the Annals, as per tradition. I look forward to my new role, and continuing to serve our association. I congratulate the incoming President, David Kaplan, and thank him for his service this past year as Vice President, and ask that you all lend your support to his efforts and themes. I also thank Derek Alderman for his service as Past President, and congratulate him on completing his term on the AAG Council, concluding on 30 June. I also extend a warm welcome and best wishes to Vice-President elect Amy Lobben. Speaking of service, please do not forget to nominate deserving AAG members for awards! See the AAG website for complete details.

The AAG Council and AAG Committees and Task Forces deserve much of our thanks for keeping our association vibrant and dynamic through their volunteer efforts. I am most grateful for the lasting friendships and professional relationships that have been formed with the Officers, Council, Committees, and the AAG Staff, and thank them all for their support during my presidency and beyond. My final words of praise are for the AAG Staff, the Legal team, and retiring Executive Director Dr. Douglas Richardson, for their day in and day out dedication to this non-profit organization’s mission and members. I will not be able to name all of the AAG staff in this column but please know you are a terrific team! I will note that AAG’s Rebecca Pendergast and Emily Fekete are especially thanked for their good-natured patience with my stretching the concept of “column publication deadline.”

AAG Members, I thank all 12,000 of you for making the AAG a community. I look forward to seeing you at future meetings, especially in Denver for the 2020 AAG Annual Meetings. Make a Difference with Geography. Have a great summer, wherever your Geography takes you!

— Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
President, American Association of Geographers
Professor, Geography and the Environment and C.B. Smith Fellow in US-Mexico Relations, University of Texas at Austin
slbeach (at) austin (dot) utexas (dot) edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0055

The 2019 Annual Meeting of the AAG is shaping up, and I thank those who responded to participate in the three featured themes, Health and GIScience, Human Rights, and Physical Geography in Environmental Science, in addition to the many independent abstracts and sessions submitted. Program committees and AAG staff, to whom I offer my deepest appreciation, are now sorting abstracts and assembling sessions from the more than 5,000 paper abstracts submitted. Thus far, we have 306 paper abstracts and 71 sessions submitted in Health and GIScience; in the Human Rights Theme we have 201 paper abstracts and 82 sessions; and in Physical Geography in Environmental Science there are 233 paper abstracts and 42 proposed sessions. Although the call for paper sessions and abstracts is now closed, participants may still edit their entries until 23 February 2019. Additionally, the Call for Posters is open until 31 January 2019, and poster session organizing is open until 14 February 2019. I look forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C., April 3-7, 2019!

This week marked two landmark accomplishments. The first accomplishment is that fire-fighting crews have brought the Camp Fire in my beloved northern California to 100 percent containment. The city of Paradise, (population around 26,000), is devastated along with the smaller communities of Magalia and Concow in the largest and deadliest wildfire in California history, and the largest fire in the U.S. in 100 years. 88 people are now known to have lost their lives, with nearly 200 still missing. Paradise is on the doorstep of Chico where I went to school, and families are hurting, with hundreds homeless, 18,000 buildings destroyed, and more than 62,000 hectares scorched (an area bigger than the city of Chicago). Schools across northern California, all the way to San Francisco, were closed due to the smoke from the fires, and only recently are re-opening. A part of southern California also burned in tandem to the Camp Fire, with the Woolsey Fire in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties consuming over 39,000 hectares, an area roughly the size of Denver. The fire destroyed 1,500 buildings, and killed three people. It was brought under containment shortly before the Camp Fire. Three firefighters were injured in each fire, respectively. We thank Cal Fire and all of the responders from other jurisdictions who assisted. Cal Fire provides web based GIS fire mapping and incident tracking, an important geographic information science benefit offered to the public. And the first response from the White House was unbridled ignorance about California forests and blame wrongly cast upon California State forest management, before and after a Presidential site visit. Our dear leader in the White House suggested forest floor raking as the answer. This is lunacy. In reality, 45.8 percent of all land in CA is federally owned, and KTVU TV reported that 57 percent of California forests are federally managed, with 2 percent managed by the state, and the remaining 39 percent are under private management, where most of the fire losses have occurred. Most of the land that burned does not look like Trump’s imagined Jellystone (apologies to Hanna-Barbera Productions) to be tended by Finnish raking teams, it is Mediterranean scrubland and chaparral, mixed with suburban neighborhoods. As the Camp Fire hit close to home for my family and community, the Woolsey Fire hit even closer to home for Past AAG President Glen MacDonald, who with his family had to evacuate from their home. Dr. MacDonald made a bold public statement calling out the U.S. President’s misinformation about California forest management, and noted the powerful connection between increasingly frequent and large wildfires, changing seasonality, and climate change. Now, flooding is beginning to take over the Camp Fire site. Although Giving Tuesday is past, and I do not often break the “fourth wall” to make personal appeals, please do consider contributing to the charities of your choice to assist wildfire victims.

The second landmark accomplishment this week was in climate change communication: Federal scientists at 13 Federal agencies partnering with independent, university, and research scientists were able to complete and publish a clear and sobering report on Climate Change, the Fourth National Assessment, reporting mandated by Congress since 1990. The report covers 12 areas of impact and actions. When reporters asked Trump about the report, Trump said he “saw” it, read “parts” of it, and it is “fine.” A follow-up question about the findings of negative economic impacts elicited his response that he does not believe it. This is completely off the rails to deny, without any counter evidence, his own administration’s scientists’ dire findings on global warming that will affect our economy, our environment, our food, our water, and our health. He claims that our water and air are at their “cleanest” by ignoring the very legislation that he has attempted to disassemble, that allowed air and water quality to improve over the last decades. If our commander in chief will not wake up, we cannot wait for that day, we must wake up and act ourselves. Geography Professor Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, Northeast Chapter lead author on the Fourth Climate Assessment, spoke out in an interview on the report. She notes that changes in seasonality and in coastal environments are vulnerabilities in the Northeast, the regional report she led. She also notes a key takeaway that mitigation and adaptation measures being put in place offer hope and are critical. Dr. Dupigny-Giroux also notes that even if greenhouse gas inputs stop today, global warming will not level off anytime soon due to greenhouse gases already accumulated in the atmosphere. Climate change matters. The free press matters. Peer-reviewed science matters. The freedom to practice, communicate, and benefit from science matters.

I end this column with hope. We must work hard to get there, however. In the same month that a CNN White House correspondent had his press credentials stripped by the White House, but later restored by a federal judge, as noted in last month’s column, a Washington Post reporter was brutally murdered in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. The White House has repeatedly called members of the press the enemy of the people and has chosen to believe Saudi government denials of involvement in the murder, over our own national intelligence community findings otherwise. I travelled to Tunisia this month to give a keynote in the 10^th Anniversary of a Springer/Nature Journal, the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, the flagship journal of the Saudi Society for Geosciences. (Full disclosure, I am an AJGS associate editor for Geography, Geoarchaeology, and Geotourism.) What I witnessed at this international meeting of nearly 500 participants was enthusiastic freedom of expression, camaraderie, academic diplomacy, thoughtful discussion and debate, student encouragement and empowerment, and science communication. In my keynote comments, I thanked the founding editor for giving voice to scientists across the region for the past 10 years with the journal, and reminded all of the right for scientists to practice, to share their science, and to gather and collaborate internationally. And at this meeting, all were treated as welcome, and women were featured speakers in addition to men. I am grateful for the new friends I have met, the outstanding papers I heard, the excellent field trips to enhance our teaching, and the new research opportunities and ideas we all shared. (Tunisia hosted the International Geographical Union meeting in 2008). This week, Tunisian citizens freely rose up to speak against the visit of the Saudi Crown Prince, in protest of the murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi. So, our Geoscience conference was not a singular or staged event in free speech. I am encouraged by Tunisians lighting a candle in the darkness, and thank our Tunisian hosts for their warm welcome, sincere hospitality, and many kindnesses during the meetings, and look forward to returning, Inshallah.

Finally, there are two upcoming events related to Science and Human Rights to observe in December: The 30^th Anniversary of World AIDS Day will be observed on 1 December 2018; and Human Rights Day will mark the 70^th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 2018. Cherish and protect our First Amendment and our human rights. Take part, speak up, and make a difference with Geography!

Wishing you a peaceful and rejuvenating holiday season,

— Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
President, American Association of Geographers
Professor of Geography and Fellow of the C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in U.S. Mexico Relations, University of Texas at Austin

Please share your ideas with me at: slbeach(at)austin(dot)utexas(dot)edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0048