Research

I am a broadly trained human geographer primarily interested in how people interact with their places to form a sense of place.  I also look for ways to integrate geographic information system (GIS) technologies in a variety of human geographical concerns.

Such interests have led to a diversity of research efforts that stretch from ethnographic and historical geographies of Las Vegas, to local-scale landscape analysis of disaster recovery in tsunami-hit Kesennuma, Japan, and technical GIS collaboration with students and colleagues on projects involving sea-level-rise mapping, GIS-based archeological modeling, online and mobile map deployment, and wifi security mapping.

More specifically, my work falls into the two broad categories outlined below.

See a full list of my publications, or view my CV here.

Place Geographies

I am interested in promoting the idea of “place geographies.”  These are studies by geographers and scholars in allied disciplines that seek to uncover the experiential feelings of identity, familiarity, and attachment among people within a locale that contribute to a recognizable place character and personality.  

Las Vegas Sense of Place

Along with my book about local life in Las Vegas, I have published additional journal articles exploring the different ways that city’s sense of place has impacted and is impacted by the everyday experiences for residents.  This includes two studies (in Geographical Review and The Changing World Religion Map) examining the interaction between religion and place in Southern Nevada, a historical geography documenting the development of a tourist sense of identity (Nevada Historical Society Quarterly) during the era of construction on Boulder Dam, an analysis of how sense of place affects the formation and functioning of community (GeoJournal), and an exploration of how Las Vegas is an emblematic and illustrative example of a geographic pattern known as a voluntary region (Journal of Cultural Geography).  Most recently, I looked to the historical development and contemporary realities of casino landscapes in Las Vegas in order to introduce the idea of “antecedent landscapes” (Material Culture) and how understanding precursors to existing landscapes can help geographers understand a sense of place.

Sense of Place in Disaster and Recovery

I also have pursued additional in recent years that moves beyond Las Vegas to engage with other places around the world and to topics where sense of place is relevant but still underexplored in geographic research.  Specifically, I have sought to understand how disasters and the resulting recovery mold and inform a sense of place.  Much of my work on this topic, thus far, has been in Kesennuma, a fishing community on Japan’s Tohoku coast that was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. 

I have written about how understanding Landscapes of Recovery can help to illuminate Kesennuma’s shifting sense of place after the 3/11 tsunami (in Explorations in Place Attachment). I have also analyzed what role one particular museum has played in that community’s response to the disaster (Asian Geographer). I am currently working on another project to compare how disaster museums in four Japanese communities variously portray place in the aftermath of disaster. 

Creative Works Related to Sense of Place

I have also looked beyond traditional scholarship to additional ways of exploring sense of place.  I have an essay, “Under Threat of Fire,” forthcoming in the journal GeoHumanities.  This is a personal, autogeographical piece that explores my own connection to a particular place that has been meaningful to me since childhood but that was recently threatened by a massive wildfire.  I reflect on how that threat, and my time away from the place, has affected my own sense of place, place attachment, and personal identity as I revisited the location after the fire.  The essay, more broadly, speaks to the impact (following my other recent research) disasters have on a sense of place.

I also published a photo essay, “Kiribati at the Center of the World” (FOCUS on Geography), where I identify connections between the cultural landscape and key place characteristics in a country that is relatively unknown—including the impacts of religion, isolated island geography, lasting effects of World War Two battle, and the specter of climate change.

Collaborative Geospatial Research

I have published a number of articles and book chapters that have resulted from synergistic collaborations in research applying geospatial technologies to help answer a variety of human and environmental geography questions.

A project to map the spatial and human impacts of global sea level rise is a good example of this work.  With undergraduate students at Haskell Indian Nations University and colleagues at the University of Kansas and Illinois State University I have coauthored several publications on the topic, including two articles in prestigious and widely-read publications (EOS Transactions and PE&RS) and another manuscript that uses sea level rise as a case for establishing a framework for mapping hazard and risk (Cartographica).  Our work has prompted many inquiries and citations by scientists and journalists around the world and has been featured in National Geographic and in educational visualizations sponsored by NASA and NOAA.

I collaborated with a large global network of earth scientists to publish the first worldwide synthesis of lake temperature patterns. The paper “Rapid and highly variable warming of lake surface waters around the globe” (Geophysical Research Letters) has made a huge impact in freshwater lake studies and has made a strong contribution in climate change research. It has been cited numerous times and has been referenced in dozens of newspapers around the world. I was one of the primary scholars on the project as the lead geographic data analyst and cartographer.

I have also worked with colleagues and undergraduates, at ISU and elsewhere, to develop interactive mapping applications—for desktop computers, the web, and mobile devices. With collaborators at the Wisconsin State Geological Survey, we expanded on one of these projects to create a mobile app of Devil’s Lake State Park geology for Apple iOS. I also worked as programmer and developer alongside faculty and students at ISU’s GEOMAP Lab to create a web-enabled system for mapping emergency response in Illinois.