Program Activities

Twelve students--three from Pennsylvania, three from Massachusetts, three from Kansas, and three from Arizona--will participate in the HERO REU Site activities, which will run from May 29 to July 22, 2005. The primary activities will include a short course, local-area studies, and remote collaboration.

Short Course

The HERO REU students will start their activities by taking a two-week, intensive short course at Penn State. The short course will introduce the students to the concepts, data, and tools needed to study the local dimensions of global environmental change. It will cover such topics as climate variability and change, land-use change, natural hazards, socioeconomic drivers and impacts, human vulnerability, and more. It will present climatic, hydrologic, land-use, socioeconomic, and other data; it will introduce geographic information systems, aerial photographs, remote sensing images, and interview techniques. The course will mix lectures, lab exercises, and field trips.

Local-Area Studies

After the short course, the REU students will go to their home states where they will assess the adaptability of their study sites to global environmental change. The three-person student teams will work for six weeks with a faculty research mentor and with other faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students. Research activities will include the mapping, field checking, and analysis of: hydroclimate; land cover and land use; natural and technological hazards; essential facilities (such as fire houses, hospitals, and water pumping stations); potentially vulnerable socioeconomic groups (such as poor, elderly, and single-mother households); businesses, factories, resource extraction and processing facilities, and other commercial sites; and critical biological habitats. Interviews with the public, elected officials, and other decision-makers will support laboratory and field work.

Collaboratory

The student teams will work together through the HERO collaboratory (remote collaboration network). Collaboratory activities will include a weekly video conference to compare findings and problems. A co-written report developed through the collaboratory will cap the six-week field season.

Program Information

The HERO REU Site is a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program of the National Science Foundation. It is a component of the HERO project, also funded by NSF and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The HERO project is a collaboration of geographers specializing in global environmental change research and in geographic information

Prerequisites