Events

Join the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems for the first seminar of the Fall 2026 semester.

Dr. Matt Fagan
Geography and Environmental Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The Limits of Pixels: Overestimation of Forest Edge Effects Using Remote Sensing

Most forests lie within 1 km of a forest edge, where edge effects can influence carbon storage, temperature regulation, and biodiversity. Yet estimating these effects using remote sensing is challenging. Four persistent methodological and definitional issues shape these estimates: spatial scale, forest definition, forest type, and the substitution of space for time.

Surveying the recent literature, Dr. Fagan will explain how these issues have likely led to the systematic over-measurement of edge effects in urban, riparian, and upland forests.

The full Fall 2026 GES Seminar Series schedule is attached.

New and returning Geography and Environmental Systems (GES) majors are invited to join us for our Student Welcome!

Come meet GES faculty, staff, and fellow students while learning more about the department and connecting with the GES community. We look forward to welcoming you and kicking off the new academic year together!

The event will take place outside between Sondheim Hall and the RAC.

The Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at UMBC invites you to a special presentation by John Galetzka of NOAA’s Continuously Operating Reference System (CORS) Network.

UMBC is part of the CORPS Network. A GPS/GNSS base station operated by the University from the roof of the AOK Library is one of hundreds of independently operating base stations across the US that contribute continuous positional data to the CORPS Network. These base stations improve the precision of data gathered by GPS satellites, allowing us to pinpoint our locations. We leverage this information every time we navigate on our phones.
Mr. Galetzka's work involves planning, installing, and maintaining base stations across the world (in some pretty interesting places). He will be on campus to tour UMBC's facility. He generously offered to present on the CORS Network and the role of our base station plays in it to the UMBC community.

Please join us for this engaging presentation and discussion on the technology behind modern navigation and geospatial precision.

The Purple Giants within Tropical Forests: A Complex Legacy of Deforestation and Fires, by Felipe Saad

The Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at UMBC invites you to attend the PhD Dissertation Defense of Felipe Saad

Abstract: Emergent trees play a disproportionate role in tropical forest function, yet their low density, long lifespans, and uneven distributions have limited understanding of their responses to disturbance. This dissertation develops an open-access, multi-sensor remote-sensing framework to detect individual crowns of Dipteryx panamensis and estimate persistence and mortality risk across northern Costa Rica and southern Nicaragua. First, I compared four optical and radar sensor configurations and found that models combining phenological and SAR structural information most accurately mapped D. panamensis across forest and non-forest environments (F1 = 0.94). Second, Bayesian hierarchical state-space models applied to 77,270 trees over nine years showed high baseline persistence (98.2%) but higher mortality risk under pasture isolation, fire exposure, and cumulative forest clearing, with weaker and more localized edge effects. Finally, a propensity-score-matched evaluation of protected areas showed that demographic protection did not always align with legal protection: annual mortality risk was lower in Costa Rica than Nicaragua overall, but increased inside protected areas in both countries, especially for disturbed trees in Nicaragua. Together, these results show that open-access remote sensing can move beyond forest-cover mapping to monitor individual tropical trees and evaluate conservation outcomes using demographic indicators.

Join us in celebrating the end of the academic year immediately following Commencement. The Year-End Celebration will take place outside the basement level of Sondheim Hall near the pool. In the event of inclement weather, the celebration will be moved indoors to the basement level of Sondheim Hall.

We look forward to coming together as a community to close out the academic year!

Join us for the final GES seminar of the academic year featuring five graduate student presentations:

• Anisha Jayadevan: Planting trees in open natural ecosystems leads to limited carbon gains
• Hasan Ahmed: Tropical forest structural responses to fragmentation vary regionally and along biophysical gradients
• Megan Curtiss: Differential Tree Growth Responses Across Urban Site Types
• Leo Pecora: Looking Ahead: Digital Extraction of Geomorphic Metrics for Stream Assessment
• Felipe Saad: Persistence of Tropical Giants Across Disturbed Landscapes

Please join the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems for our Spring Seminar Series.

Dr. Sarah Paige (University of Heidelberg) will present:

"How a Medical Geography Research Program Informed a Global Policy to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Novel Zoonotic Disease Outbreaks."

This talk highlights how geographically informed research, particularly from the Kibale EcoHealth Project (KEP) in western Uganda which helped shape global health security frameworks. KEP supported interdisciplinary research from 2005–2017 on bat behavior, microbiomes, and zoonotic spillover risk in a region with high levels of human–animal contact. The project's findings contributed to the formation of a One Health Committee and influenced global policy approaches to emerging infectious diseases.

All GES Spring Seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12–1 PM in Sondheim Hall, Room 001.

Faculty, students, and guests are welcome.

Please join the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems for our Spring Seminar Series.

Dr. Sarah Paige (University of Heidelberg) will present:

"How a Medical Geography Research Program Informed a Global Policy to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Novel Zoonotic Disease Outbreaks."

This talk highlights how geographically informed research, particularly from the Kibale EcoHealth Project (KEP) in western Uganda which helped shape global health security frameworks. KEP supported interdisciplinary research from 2005–2017 on bat behavior, microbiomes, and zoonotic spillover risk in a region with high levels of human–animal contact. The project's findings contributed to the formation of a One Health Committee and influenced global policy approaches to emerging infectious diseases.

All GES Spring Seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12–1 PM in Sondheim Hall, Room 001.

Faculty, students, and guests are welcome.

How Cool Are Your Trees? Heat and Vegetation in Cities

Every year people die because of extreme heat. Trees help combat the lethality of an increasingly warm planet, where cities are even warmer. Vegetation provides shade and evapotranspirative cooling, which lower temperatures and may save lives.

This talk draws from a review of more than 115 research papers from across the globe on urban vegetation and heat from 2018 to 2024. The When, Where, and How of urban cooling will be discussed, with attention to current knowledge and knowledge gaps.

We will also zoom into New Haven, CT to examine how bike mounted temperature sensors better reflect lived experience and demonstrate local level cooling from tree canopy cover with and without cloud cover. Ongoing bike based heat research in Baltimore will also be shared.

The goal is to describe the state of the field and provide a specific place based example of how trees provide cooling at the human scale.

Please join the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems for our Spring Seminar Series.

Dr. Dexter Locke (United States Forest Service) will present a talk titled:

"How Cool Are Your Trees? Heat and Vegetation in Cities."

This seminar examines the relationship between urban vegetation, tree canopy, and heat exposure, highlighting how green infrastructure can shape environmental and social outcomes in cities.

All GES Spring Seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12–1 PM in Sondheim Hall, Room 001.

Faculty, students, and guests are welcome.