The Conversation: ‘Excessively high rents are a major burden for immigrants in US cities’

March 26, 2024

Nashville is one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities and increasingly a destination for immigrants. Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Madhuri Sharma, University of Tennessee and Mikhail Samarin, University of Tennessee

Rents across the U.S. have climbed to staggering levels in recent years. Millions of renters spend more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities, a situation that housing experts call being cost burdened.

High rents affect almost all segments of the population but are an especially heavy burden for immigrants, particularly those who have not yet become U.S. citizens. Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, play important roles in the U.S. economy. They often provide the cheapest labor in the riskiest of industries. Yet they are still not broadly accepted or supported in many U.S. cities.

We are geographers who study housing market issues, including racial-ethnic diversity and housing affordability. Our research on Nashville, which has emerged as an immigrant metropolis in the Southern U.S., suggests that foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens are far more burdened by high rents than other groups.

Many immigrant workers in Nashville spend more than 50% of their incomes on rent. This makes it hard for them to afford education and job training, healthy food, health care and other necessities that can help them participate as productive residents. Heavy rent burdens undermine their ability to have a higher standard of living and to be included in mainstream society.

As immigrants increasingly fan out across the U.S., we believe cities receiving new foreign-born residents should anticipate a growing need for affordable housing.

A 2022 study found that immigrant families in San Diego faced some of the highest rent burdens in the surrounding county.

Hard times for renters

The past 15 years have been challenging for renters across the country. In the 2008-09 recession, which was triggered by a collapse in the housing market, millions lost their homes to foreclosure and became renters. Tighter financing made it harder for others to buy homes. By 2015, almost 43 million households had been pushed into renting.

Today about 37% of U.S. homes are occupied by renters. By 2020, almost 46% of U.S. renters paid more than 30% of their household income toward rent. As of June 2021, the median monthly rent in the 50 largest U.S. cities was $1,575 – an 8.1% increase from June 2020.

The heaviest rent burdens fall disproportionately on minorities. Almost 46% of African American-led renter households are rent burdened, compared with 34% of white households.

The COVID-19 pandemic worsened housing insecurity for people of color because of longstanding racially targeted policies and widespread health and economic disparities. Renters of color faced higher cost burdens and eviction rates. In Nashville, this was especially true in Latino and Somali communities.

Why immigrant housing matters

Immigration is the main driver of population growth in the U.S., which is important for filling jobs and boosting tax revenues. After dipping because of pandemic-era restrictions in 2020-22, immigration to the U.S. started growing again, adding 1.1 million new residents in 2023.

Foreign-born residents make up 7.15% of the U.S. population today. Most of these immigrants are not citizens, although more than 878,000 people became citizens in 2023. The median length of time these new citizens spent in the U.S. before becoming naturalized was seven years.

Nashville is the largest metropolis in Tennessee and one of the fastest-growing immigrant gateways in the South. It is home to over 37% of Tennessee’s Latino population and has been a major destination for Latinos and other foreign-born residents since the early 2000s.

For our research, we used census data estimates for 2015-19 from the National Historical Geographic Information System covering metro Nashville’s 13 counties, which contain 372 census tracts. We found that Nashville’s most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods had the highest levels of rent burden.

This includes census tracts with high shares of foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens, especially if those residents are Black or Latino. Our analysis of the 37 census tracts (10% of the region’s total) with the largest shares of foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens shows that the average monthly rent paid by a household in these tracts was $1,306.20, compared with $1,288.70 metrowide.

In the 37 tracts with the largest shares of Latino residents and Black residents, we found that about 21% of households spent more than 50% of their household income on rent.

Our findings corroborate other scholarly analyses of Nashville’s Somali refugees, who tend to be clustered in communities that also house other diverse groups, including Egyptians and other African immigrants. In these areas, gentrification and urban renewal have forced several Black and Somali communities from ownership into renting.

We believe specific groups of foreign-born residents may either have been ineligible or didn’t know how to apply for government-funded housing and rental assistance programs and may have had to rent from predatory landlords as a result. Some Muslim immigrants also avoid applying for bank loans because of a concept in Islamic banking called ribā, which views charging interest on loans as unjust and exploitative.

More encouragingly, we found that tracts with newer housing stock, built since 2000, have relatively lower rent burdens even though those tracts are home to many Black and non-Asian minority residents. This suggests that newer development has an important role to play in mitigating rent, especially in suburban, relatively affordable locations. In the 37 census tracts with the most foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens, about 28% of the total housing stock was built in 2000 or later, compared with 23% across Nashville.

A row of men in hard hats, shoveling dirt. — Federal, state and city officials break ground in 2022 on a mixed-income residential development at Cayce Place, Nashville’s largest subsidized housing property. The city is replacing aging structures on the site, built between 1941 and 1954. Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, CC BY-ND

Easing rent burdens

One of the best ways to mitigate rent burdens is to build more housing and create affordable housing. However, communities sometimes oppose affordable housing projects and pro-development zoning because of fears of crime, traffic congestion or populations viewed as undesirable. Nashville is not immune to this syndrome.

The cost of housing has been a heated topic in the Nashville region since the mid-2010s. A 2023 Urban Institute report recommended creating more affordable housing in Nashville by promoting partnerships among academic, faith-based and health care institutions that own land that could be developed for housing. And the Metropolitan Council for the Nashville region plans to substantially revamp building codes to promote new housing construction.

However, critics argue that the council gives too much weight to anti-development arguments. And there is little discussion of specific ways to help groups that are ineligible for benefits and assistance that are available to U.S. citizens.

A crowded meeting room with speakers clustered at a podium. — Members of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition celebrate on March 26, 2019, after the defeat of a state bill that would have barred most landlords from renting housing to people in the U.S. illegally. AP Photo/Jonathan Mattise

A priority for cities

Our research shows that creating more rental opportunities can help reduce rent burdens for all. We see great potential to take this research further through community-based investigations of local nuances that may add to rent burdens, especially factors and processes that can’t be adequately captured in quantitative data analysis. Many local actors have important roles to play, including elected officials and local nonprofits and community organizations that work to promote rights for immigrants and refugees.

Given the important role that immigrants play in filling jobs and contributing to local economies, we believe that helping them afford housing is a smart strategy, especially for growth-oriented cities.

Madhuri Sharma, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee and Mikhail Samarin, Lecturer in Geography and Sustainability, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation: ‘National parks teach students about environmental issues in this course’

March 15, 2024

TK. John Hudson Photography via Getty Images

Seth T. Kannarr, University of Tennessee

Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

Environmental Issues in National Parks

What prompted the idea for the course?

The University of Tennessee is a natural fit for this course, with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and all the learning opportunities it offers being only a one-hour drive away.

Although I did not create this course, I jumped at the opportunity to serve as an instructor for it. Growing up as a Boy Scout, and later a merit badge counselor, I found a love for place-based education. I have always valued using the outdoors to teach about the theoretical concepts shared in the classroom.

What does the course explore?

Each week of the semester we discuss an ongoing environmental issue and then dive into an applied case study in a different national park. For example, in one week students learn about fire regimes, or patterns of wildfires over time. Then, in the next class, we discuss how the fire regimes in Sequoia National Park in California naturally maintain the ecosystem of the sequoia groves there.

The highlight of the semester is an in-person field trip to Look Rock in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Here, my students and I meet a park ranger who teaches them about how trees sequester carbon from the atmosphere and how to measure it. The group also enjoys a hike to Look Rock Tower to learn more about the local area and see awesome views all around.

Why is this course relevant now?

Visitation numbers at national parks continue to rise each year. Most of my students have been to at least one or two national parks and are exposed to their increasing presence on social media.

If this course was just titled Environmental Issues, I do not believe it would have the same kind of draw it has now. Typically, the course fills to capacity early on every semester.

Using the parks as teaching tools not only keeps students engaged and entertained in the class but also gives them real-life lessons about environmental issues. They get front-row seats in learning about how landscapes change and the physical factors that affect them, like climate, topography and vegetation.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

I tell my students up front and repeatedly that the world is not black and white. Environmental issues are complex and difficult to solve.

For example, the bald eagle population in the U.S. fell drastically after World War II, and eventually they were declared endangered. This was a result of being poisoned by the insecticide DDT.

Upon quick reflection, it seems that banning DDT in the U.S. in 1972 was the obvious solution to save the bald eagle. Since then, there have also been international efforts to ban DDT across the world for environmental reasons. But this leaves out the context that DDT kills mosquitoes, which spread the deadly disease malaria. In other parts of the world, DDT had saved an estimated 500 million lives from malaria by the 1970s.

This example shows the nuance that’s required when thinking about environmental issues and solutions. Sometimes there is not an obvious right answer, and students visibly struggle to address ethical questions like these.

What materials does the course feature?

I do not use a central textbook or provide specific assigned readings. Instead, students participate in group activities, enjoy illustrated lecture slideshows and YouTube videos and work with online resources.

One assignment has students use Google Earth to create a guided tour of a national park of their choice. They play the role of a park ranger through their written descriptions of tour stops. Students enjoy getting to choose which national park they would like to explore and highlight for visitors.

What will the course prepare students to do?

Upon completing the course, I want students to become critical visitors of national parks and protected areas. I want them to be aware of the role they play in what happens in those spaces and of the complexities of the issues there. Examples could include the continual overcrowding of national parks, the removal of Indigenous peoples from these lands or the history of Black discrimination in our parks.

Whether grappling with strictly environmental issues or the larger political and social struggles related to the national parks, I want students to open their minds to new perspectives. In a way, this course is an intervention for students to understand that they can make a difference and help shape an ever-changing world.

Seth T. Kannarr, PhD Student in Geography, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

King’s Research Community Takes Root to Grow North American Climate History

March 13, 2024

Researchers across many scientific fields found themselves adapting investigative methods in the spring of 2020 to accommodate social-distancing and remote-work guidelines in the face of the COVID pandemic.

Karen King discovered that much of her actual fieldwork already met guidelines.

“As a dendrochronologist, ‘working remotely’—which I interpret as searching for old trees in some of the most remote forests of western North America—was something I’d already had a lot of experience doing,” she said.

King joined UT in August 2023 as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability. She brought with her expertise in dendrochronology, plus experience in paleoclimate studies, biogeography, forest ecology, and fire-climate interactions. She applies these skills as lead author on research published in the January 2024 Science Advances. Her team used tree-ring chronologies to develop data that reconstructs a 500-year history of summer temperatures in the paper “Increasing Prevalence of Hot Drought Across Western North America Since the 16th Century.”

They combined their new dataset with preexisting drought and precipitation data to connect a historical record with current geographical climate conditions. COVID-related travel restrictions did lead them to find creative ways to fill in international gaps in data.

“I was able to get numerous preexisting collections from collaborators mailed to me,” said King. “This was particularly important for the southern Canadian portion of the network that would have otherwise been inaccessible. This project really is a testament to the power of building a strong and collaborative scientific community.”

Their results represent not just the needed data, but also contributions and expertise of fellow scientists, land managers, land stewards, technicians, and students.

“As my co-author and postdoc mentor Ed Cook once told me, ‘Atlases truly are community efforts,’ said King. “My co-authors and I are extremely proud to have built a dataset with our community that is also for our community.”

Their effort combines observational and modeling records with their new paleorecord, building evidence that hot drought—combined extreme heat and drought conditions—has been more frequent over the last century than ever before.

“Compared to the last circa 500 years, the data show an increasing trend in the frequency and spatial footprint of hot drought,” said King.

The data history reflects the imprint of the 1930’s era Dust Bowl and the modern megadrought, from around 2000 to the present, both characterized by some of the warmest temperatures over the 500-year time frame.

“I hope to clarify that recent trends in the occurrence of drought, simply defined by a lack of precipitation, are not unprecedented. Western North America is a very drought-prone region,” said King. “Instead, the nuance here with the recent decades is that these recent droughts are hotter on average than any previous droughts recorded since the mid-15th century.”

King’s ongoing research builds on their findings in the west as they establish a comprehensive North American Temperature Atlas—including studies in some favorite Tennessee natural areas.

“We are using slightly altered sampling approaches in the eastern US,” she said. “For example, we are targeting different species of trees. Here in the eastern US, we are primarily looking at data from Eastern Hemlock and Red Spruce. Some of our sample sites include Mount LeConte and Clingman’s Dome in the Smokies.”

Her team continues to find creative ways to maximize the depth and detail of their sample data.

“In addition to collecting living and remnant samples, we are also looking into using archeological samples—e.g., wood samples from historical structures—to help extend the tree ring data even further back in time,” she said.

King and crew’s adaptability exemplifies the Volunteer Spirit as they build research foundations for both environment and community.

Derek Alderman Published in ‘The Conversation’:

February 23, 2024

Black communities are using mapping to document and restore a sense of place

These highways displaced many Black communities. Some Black activists are using mapping to do the opposite: highlight hidden parts of history. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Joshua F.J. Inwood, Penn State and Derek H. Alderman, University of Tennessee

When historian Carter Woodson created “Negro History Week” in 1926, which became “Black History Month” in 1976, he sought not to just celebrate prominent Black historical figures but to transform how white America saw and valued all African Americans.

However, many issues in the history of Black Americans can get lost in a focus on well-known historical figures or other important events.

Our research looks at how African American communities struggling for freedom have long used maps to protest and survive racism while affirming the value of Black life.

We have been working on the “Living Black Atlas,” an educational initiative that highlights the neglected history of Black mapmaking in America. It shows the creative ways in which Black people have historically used mapping to document their stories. Today, communities are using “restorative mapping” as a way to tell stories of Black Americans.

Maps as a visual storytelling technique

While most people think of maps as a useful tool to get from point A to point B, or use maps to look up places or plan trips, the reality is all maps tell stories. Traditionally, most maps did not accurately reflect the stories of Black people and places: Interstate highway maps, for example, do not reflect the realities that in most U.S. cities the building of major roads was accompanied by the displacement of thousands of Black people from cities.

Like many marginalized groups, Black people have used maps as a visual story-telling technique for “talking back” against their oppression. They have also used maps for enlivening and giving dignity to Black experiences and histories.

An example of this is the NAACP’s campaign to lobby for anti-lynching federal legislation in the early 20th century. The NAACP mapped the location and frequency of lynching to show how widespread racial terror was to the American public.

Another example is the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s efforts to document racism in the American South in the 1960s. The SNCC research department’s maps and research on racism played a pivotal role in planning civil rights protests. SNCC produced conventional-looking county-level maps of income and education inequalities, which were issued to activists in the field. The organization also developed creative “network maps,” which exposed how power structures and institutions supported racial discrimination in economic and political ways. These maps and reports could then identify urgent areas of protest.

More recently, artist-activist Tonika Lewis Johnson created the “Folded Map Project,” in which she brought together corresponding addresses on racially separated sides of the same street, to show how racism remade the city of Chicago. She photographed the “map twins” and interviewed individuals living at paired addresses to show the disparities. The project brought residents from north and south sides of Chicago to meet and talk to each other.

Maps for restorative justice

Restorative mapping is an important part of the Living Black Atlas: It helps bring visibility to Black experiences that have been marginalized or forgotten.

An important example of restorative mapping work comes from the Honey Pot Performance, a collective of Black feminists who helped create the Chicago Black Social Culture Map, or the CBSCM. This digital map traces Black Chicagoans’ experiences from the Great Migration to the rise of electronic dance music in the city. The map includes historical records and music posters as well as descriptions of important people and venues for that music.

Five Black young men, dressed in suits, sit atop a white car with an Illinois number plate. — Millions of African Americans migrated from the Deep South to the industrial North between 1942 and 1970. In this photo, Black youngsters are dressed for Easter on the South Side of Chicago, April 13, 1941. AP Photo/Library of Congress/FSA/Russell Lee

While engaging Black Americans in the effort, the CBSCM map tells the story of Chicago through a series of artistic movements that highlight African Americans’ connection with the city.

After years of gentrification and urban renewal programs that displaced Black people from the city, this project is helping remember those neighborhoods digitally. It is also inviting a broader discussion about the history of Black Chicago.

Restoring a sense of place

An important idea behind restorative mapping is the act of returning something to a former owner or condition. This connects with the broader restorative justice movement that seeks to address historic wrongs by documenting past and present injustices through perspectives that are often ignored or forgotten.

The CBSCM map is not a conventional paper map. While it includes many things you would find in such a map, such as road networks and political boundaries, the map also includes links to fiction writing and the Chicago Renaissance, art and music, as well as expressions of food, family life, education and politics that document a hidden history of Black life in the city. The map provides links to specific historic documents, socially meaningful sites, and to the lives of people that tell the story of Black Chicago.

Thus, the map helps highlight how this geography is still present in Chicago in archives and people’s memories. Through this digital representation of Black Chicagoans’ deep cultural roots in the city, the mapping aims to restore a sense of place. Such work embodies what Black History Month is about.

Joshua F.J. Inwood, Professor of Geography and Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State and Derek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gabe Schwartzman Published in ‘The Conversation’

February 23, 2024

Carbon offsets bring new investment to Appalachia’s coal fields, but most Appalachians aren’t benefiting

For decades, railroad tracks carried coal from eastern Tennessee to power plants in the eastern U.S. Appalachian Voices, CC BY

Gabe Schwartzman, University of Tennessee

Central Appalachia is home to the third-largest concentration of forest carbon offsets traded on the California carbon market. But while these projects bring new investments to Appalachia, most people in Appalachia are not benefiting.

The effect of this new economic activity is evident in the Clearfork Valley, a forested region of steep hills and meandering creeks on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

Rural communities here once relied on coal mining jobs. As the mines shut down, with the last closing in 2022, the valley was left with thousands of acres of forests and strip-mined land but fewer ways to make a good living.

Today, corporate landowners and investment funds have placed most of that forest land into carbon offset projects – valuing the trees for their ability to absorb carbon dioxide emissions to help protect the climate.

These carbon offset projects can be lucrative for the landowner, with proceeds that can run into the millions of dollars. Companies subject to California’s carbon emissions rules are willing to pay projects like these to essentially cancel out, or offset, the companies’ carbon emissions. However, my research shows that few local residents are benefiting.

The projects are part of a wider and growing trend of investor-owners of rural land making money but providing little local employment, local investment or community involvement in return.

Few local jobs, little economic benefit

The rise of carbon forest offset projects in Appalachia has coincided with the historic decline of the coal economy.

Central Appalachia lost 70% of its coal jobs from 2011 to 2023 as its coal production fell by 75% in that same period. As corporate landowners looked for new revenue streams, they found a burgeoning forest carbon offset market after California instituted a forest carbon offset protocol in 2011.

Much of the Clearfork Valley was originally owned by the American Association, a British coal corporation that accumulated the land in the 1880s. That property passed between other coal companies before NatureVest, a climate change-driven investment firm owned by The Nature Conservancy, created an investment fund to purchase the land in 2019.

The previous owner, a forestland investment company, had established carbon offsets on that land in 2015, making a 125-year commitment to retain or grow the forest carbon stock. When NatureVest purchased the land in 2019, it generated at least US$20 million in proceeds from the sale of additional offsets. The details of such transactions are typically private, but offset sales can be structured in a number of ways. They might be one-time payments for existing credits, for example, or futures contracts for the potential of additional credits.

A map shows large areas of forest in several states that are on the carbon market. — Forest carbon offset projects in Central Appalachia that are on the California carbon market. The Clearfork Valley is on the Kentucky-Tennessee border in the lower left. California Air Resources Board, ESRI

The investment fund is attempting to demonstrate that managing land to help protect the climate can also generate revenue for investors.

In Appalachia, offset projects largely involve “improved forestry management.” These offsets pay landowners to sequester carbon in trees – additional to what they would have pulled in without the offset payment – while still allowing them to produce timber for sale. In practice, this often means letting trees stand for longer rotations before cutting for timber.

Recent research, however, indicates that the carbon storage of improved forestry management projects may be getting overcounted on the California market, the largest compliance offset market in the Americas. Other approaches to carbon offsets could produce better outcomes for people and the climate.

And while the landowners and investors profit, my research, including dozens of interviews with residents, has also found that former mining communities in this valley have seen little return.

The Nature Conservancy has offered support to local communities. But while the organization operates a small grant program from coal mining and gas drilling royalties it receives from the land, the investment in the local economy has been relatively small – roughly $377,000 in the three states since 2019. Furthermore, while some communities have benefited, these investments have largely bypassed struggling former coal communities in the Clearfork Valley in Tennessee.

Looking for other revenue sources on these lands, by 2022, The Nature Conservancy had also leased access to nearly 150,000 acres of its Cumberland Forest Project, including parts of the Clearfork Valley, to state agencies and outdoor recreation groups. As a result, permits and fees are often now required to enter much of the forestland.

As one interviewee told my co-author for our forthcoming book, “For three generations my family has been able to walk and use that land, but now I could be arrested for entering it without a permit.”

The rise of TIMOs and climate ‘rentierism’

While a century ago many of the landowners in Appalachia were coal companies and timber companies, today they are predominantly financialized timber investment management organizations, or TIMOs. TIMOs are financial institutions that manage timberlands to generate returns for institutions, such as endowments and pension funds, and private investors. While NatureVest is more diversified than a TIMO, its timberland investments operate in a similar fashion.

The financial ownership of timberlands is part of the much wider trend of financialization of the United States economy. Wall Street-based investors have become major owners of all sectors of the U.S. economy since the 1970s, from agriculture and manufacturing to natural resources.

Financial profits, however, often do not entail job creation or investments in infrastructure in the surrounding communities. Yet the investor-owned timberlands in Central Appalachia do generate millions of dollars in revenue for their investors.

The hills above a home have been strip mined, where forests once stood. — Homes below a coal strip mine in Campbell County, Tennessee, home to part of the Clearfork Valley. Appalachian Voices via Flickr, CC BY

Political economists have diagnosed the trend of falling employment that accompanies increasing economic activity as partially the result of growing rentierism.

Rentierism is a term for generating income predominantly from rents as opposed to income from production that employs people. Rural communities have acutely felt the effects of increasing rentierism in various sectors since the 1970s.

Researchers have noted growing trends of rentierism in forestland management. Many TIMOs seek new revenue streams from timberlands outside of wood products and timbering, such as in conservation easements. As firms such as NatureVest seek to generate income from controlling carbon stocks or conservation resources, there is now a growing climate rentierism.

Rural resentment and a crisis of democracy

A robust body of research in sociology and political science shows how the hollowing out of rural North American economies has fed into a kind of rural resentment. Trust in government and democracy is particularly low in rural North America, and not only because of economic woes. As sociologist Loka Ashwood documents, it is also because many rural residents believe that the government helps corporations profit at the expense of people.

Carbon offsets in Appalachia, unfortunately, fit within these troubling trends. Government regulation in California generates sizable revenue for corporate landowners, while the rural communities see themselves locked out of the economy.

Gabe Schwartzman, Assistant Professor of Geography and Sustainability, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

King Team Studies 500 Years of North American Hot Drought

January 26, 2024

Assistant Professor Karen King joined the UT Department of Geography and Sustainability in August 2023, bringing with her specialties in dendrochronology, paleoclimate, biogeography, forest ecology, and fire-climate interactions. She applies her experience in these areas as lead author on research published in the January 2024 Science Advances.

Her team used tree-ring chronologies to develop data that reconstructs a 500-year history of summer temperatures across western North America in the paper “Increasing Prevalence of Hot Drought Across Western North America Since the 16th Century.” They combined their new dataset with preexisting drought and precipitation data to connect a historical record with current geographical climate conditions.

Their findings indicate that hot drought—combined heat and drought conditions—has been more severe over the last century than ever before. The reconstruction allows for important new findings regarding the influence of summer temperatures on the development of notable past droughts in western North America.

King’s ongoing research builds on these findings.

“I am currently working on expanding the Western North American Temperature Atlas to provide complete spatiotemporal coverage of the entire North American continent over at least the past 500 years: the North American Temperature Atlas,” said King. “This will allow for a more complete evaluation of the spatial patterns of temperature-drought interactions back through time.”

Her research was picked up by The Washington Post and State of The Planet.

AAG Fellowship Recognizes Shaw’s Innovations in Geography

January 12, 2024

Written by: Randall Brown

Professor Shih-Lung Shaw joins a distinctive group of UT Department of Geography and Sustainability colleagues this month in his election as a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers (AAG).

Shaw is a UT Chancellor’s Professor and the Alvin and Sally Beaman Professor of Geography. This new designation enhances another long-held fellowship, adding appreciated depth of recognition to his accomplishments within his field and confirming his contributions as a geographer.

“It’s a great honor of being elected as a Fellow of the AAG, in addition to the honor of being elected as a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2008,” said Shaw. “The AAG Fellow reflects a recognition from my peers in the field of geography while the AAAS covers a much broader science community. It is very rewarding to be both an AAG Fellow and an AAAS Fellow.”

AAG’s fellowships recognize geographers who have made significant contributions to advancing geography through research, practice, and careers devoted to strengthening the field, including areas of teaching and mentoring. AAG fellows contribute to the association’s initiatives; advise on AAG strategic directions and grand challenges; serve on AAG task forces or committees, and/or mentor early and mid-career faculty.

“I have been doing some of these tasks for the AAG and anticipate doing more down the road to serve the field of geography and beyond,” said Shaw. “These works also are likely to further enhance the visibility of UT at the national level.”

AAG recognizes Shaw as a leader in the areas of time geography and applications of geographic information systems (GIS) to transportation. In his research, he has focused on the development of a space-time GIS framework, used to analyze a large variety of human dynamics phenomena. These include longtime issues such as travel dynamics and more recent phenomena such as COVID infection patterns. As modern technologies made it easier for people to carry out a variety of activities and interactions online in a virtual space (e-shopping, online social networks, e-education, telehealth, etc.), Shaw further proposed human dynamics research to study the interactions between what happens in the physical world and what occurs in the virtual world as a hybrid physical-virtual world.

“Shaw has been a visionary throughout his career in showing how GIS can better represent the reality of our lives,” said Nicholas Nagle, professor and head of the geography and sustainability department. “His demonstration of how to practically map and analyze human activities in space-time have been duplicated in commercial GIS and are now standard. Currently, he is pushing GIS into new frontiers where both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of space and place are represented.”

Shaw and his collaborators have organized a Symposium on Human Dynamics Research at the annual AAG meetings for 10 years. He also serves as the lead editor of a book series of Human Dynamics in Smart Cities published by Springer, which has published six books since 2018.

Beyond his innovative and important research, Shaw has been a leader in the AAG, serving as chair of the Transportation Geography Specialty Group, treasurer of the GIS group, and on the AAG membership committee. He has also been president of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) and has been a strong supporter of a project to promote the professional development of women in GIScience.

Nationally, AAG announced 17 geographers as 2024 fellows in a variety of practice areas.

“The breadth and depth of experience among this year’s AAG fellows is a tribute to their commitment and to the breadth of the discipline of geography,” said Gary Langham, executive director of AAG. “We are grateful for their insights and leadership in advancing AAG and the field.”

Patrick Grzanka, divisional dean for social sciences, noted Shaw’s high level of scholarship and leadership in his area, and the impact of such a fellowship on the UT community.

“Shaw’s election to fellowship in the AAG is a testament to his pathbreaking, field-shaping work,” said Grzanka. “He joins several other AAG Fellows in the department, which is a gem in the crown of the College of Arts and Sciences.”

Shaw’s election brings the total number of AAG fellows on the UT geography and sustainability faculty up to six, including Derek Alderman, LaToya Eaves, Sally Horn, Budhendra Bhaduri (UT/ORNL), and Carol Harden (Emerita).

“Geography is a diverse field that covers research from physical geography, human geography to geospatial technologies,” said Shaw. “The six AAG fellows in the department conduct their research with different focuses.”

Shaw’s research spans across human geography and geospatial technologies that complement the research of these colleagues, collectively covering many key research topics in geography and sustainability to form a strong AAG team at UT for moving the field forward.

AAG Hardwick Award Honors Alderman’s Mentorship

January 10, 2024

Professor Derek Alderman’s scholarship in geography lives in tandem with a keen awareness of the way involved mentorship impacts education and professional development. His approach has now earned him the 2024 Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award from the American Association of Geographers (AAG).

The Hardwick award recognizes AAG members who demonstrate extraordinary leadership, build supportive academic and professional environments in their institutions, and guide the academic and or professional growth of their students and junior colleagues.

“Derek’s mentoring of talented new geographers is at the heart of his work as an educator and researcher,” said Gary Langham, executive director of the AAG. “He has enriched his students’ lives and fundamentally shaped geography in the 21st century. It gives us great pleasure to present him with this award.”

The award will be formally bestowed at the annual AAG meeting April 16-20, 2024, in Honolulu, Hawaii. It is a deeply meaningful acknowledgement for Alderman, both professionally and personally.

“Within our discipline of geography, and within the AAG, it’s a major recognition,” said Alderman. “So, it’s obviously very humbling and flattering that my discipline is recognizing the work I’ve been doing.”

Alderman is a former president of the AAG, previously served as head of the Department of Geography and Sustainability, and is president-elect of the UT Faculty Senate. He sees the award as a mark of his successful contribution within an ongoing legacy of mentorship.

“On a more personal level, it means a great deal because, over the years, I’ve had tremendous mentors,” he said. “There’s no way I would have been able to get into my field and feel like I’ve succeeded without having that mentorship that they’ve given me. So as much as this recognizes my mentorship of other people, it is in many ways a recognition of the role that mentorship plays in my field.”

One former student is now a UT faculty member thanks to Alderman’s mentorship. He served as thesis chair for Stefanie Benjamin while on the faculty of East Carolina University. She now is an associate professor in the Department of Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management within the College of Education, Health, and Human Services.

“I can honestly share that he is the reason I continued on my academic path,” said Benjamin. “Derek has such an incredible heart and love for his students, and it is evident with everything he embodies—a mentor who truly centers empathy, patience, and joy.”

Alderman’s mentoring of early-career colleagues also contributed to this recognition. Solange Muñoz, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in geography and sustainability, has appreciated Alderman’s collaboration since joining the department.

“Derek takes his role as mentor extremely seriously,” said Muñoz. “He isn’t simply available when you need him, but rather behind the scenes he is actively making sure that his mentees are being considered for awards, recognition, or some kind of professional development.”

Alderman keeps in touch with former graduate students like Jordan Brasher, who now works with ESRI, a leading developer for geographic information system (GIS) software.

“His mentorship reaches beyond merely giving academic advice,” said Brasher. “It is also about building confidence and resilience in students so that we can thrive no matter where life takes us upon the completion of our studies. He regularly asks how my family is doing, how I’m healing or growing after a challenging life event, or what he can do to support my next endeavor.”

Katrina Stack, a current geography PhD candidate and research fellow, is one of the latest students supported by Alderman’s mentorship.

“A doctoral program is not an easy endeavor to navigate, but having Professor Alderman as my advisor has made this time truly enjoyable and beyond rewarding,” said Stack. “I know that if I need help or input—whether it be on a paper I am writing, a conference session, grant application, or just an idea I need to talk through—he is quick to take a call or make time for a meeting. He also challenges me, encouraging me to stretch my thinking and ideas in new ways. Professor Alderman inspires me to push myself in the work I do and become a positive force in the communities I am a part of, just like he is.”

As these connections show Alderman’s personal legacy of mentorship, he also appreciates sharing it with the geography and sustainability department as a whole.

“That collaborative relationship that develops between mentors and those who are being mentored is not just happening here with me, it is happening all across the hallways,” said Alderman. “One of the other reasons I’m very proud about getting this award is that it sheds important light on the really fantastic things that we do in this department.”

Katrina Stack Published in ‘The Conversation’

December 8, 2023

Gettysburg tells the story of more than a battle − the military park shows what national ‘reconciliation’ looked like for decades after the Civil War

The North Carolina memorial stands in Gettysburg National Military Park on Aug. 10, 2020. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Katrina Stack, University of Tennessee and Rebecca Sheehan, Oklahoma State University

On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to dedicate a cemetery at the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Four months before, about 50,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or captured at the Battle of Gettysburg, later seen as a turning point in the war.

In his now-famous address, Lincoln described the site as “a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that (their) nation might live,” and called on “us the living” to finish their work. In the 160 years since, 1,328 monuments and memorials have been erected at Gettysburg National Military Park – including one for each of the 11 Confederate states.

A black and white photo of a crowd of men in coats and stovepipe hats. — Abraham Lincoln, seated at center, before delivering the Gettysburg Address. Library of Congress/Getty Images

Confederate memorials in the American South have attracted scrutiny for years. In October 2023, a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee was melted down in Charlottesville, Virginia, six years after plans to remove it spurred the violent “Unite the Right” rally.

Gettysburg has received relatively little attention, yet it occupies a unique space in these debates. The battlefield is one of the most hallowed historic sites in the country, and, unlike other areas with memorials to Confederate soldiers, is located in the North. The military park’s history offers a window into the United States’ attitude toward postwar reconciliation – one often willing to overlook racial equality in the name of national and political unity.

The ‘Mecca of Reconciliation’

Today, Gettysburg draws nearly a million visitors each year. In addition to visiting the museum, visitors can drive or walk among the monuments and plaques that cover the landscape, dedicated to both Union and Confederate troops. There are markers that explain the events of the battle, as well as monuments dedicated to individual people, military units and states.

As with any war memorial, particularly for a civil war, Gettysburg commemorates an event whose survivors held dramatically different views of its meaning. In his book “Race and Reunion,” historian David Blight identifies three main narratives of the Civil War. One emphasizes the “nobility of the Confederate soldier” and cause, while another focuses on the emancipation of slaves. The third is the “reconciliationist” view, with the notion that “all in the war were brave and true,” regardless of which side they fought for.

We are cultural geographers who study commemorative landscapes, with a focus on issues of race and memory. In our view, Gettysburg is a prime example of that reconciliation narrative: a site that aims to reconcile the North and the South more than it addresses the racial motivations of the conflict. The park’s own administrative history refers to Gettysburg as an “American Mecca of Reconciliation.”

No praise, no blame

From 1864 until 1895, the battlefield was under the administration of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, which placed markers along military units’ battle lines.

Starting in 1890, the U.S. War Department began actively preserving Civil War battlefields. Congress approved the creation of a commission of Union and Confederate veterans to mark the armies’ positions at Gettysburg with tablets that each bore “a brief historical legend, compiled without praise and without censure.” These policies were also included in the Regulations for the National Military Parks, published in 1915.

This guiding idea – “without praise and without censure” – was also evident at ceremonies for the battle’s 50th anniversary in 1913. Reconciliation was central in speeches and formal photographs, many featuring elderly veterans from both sides shaking hands.

A black and white photo shows two rows of elderly men in suits -- one row in black, the other in light-colored fabric -- shaking hands. — Union and Confederate veterans pictured at 50th anniversary events in Gettysburg, Pa. Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs/Library of Congress

At the time, there were no monuments to Confederate states; most markers, both for Union and Confederate troops, were for individual battle units.

State memorials

In 1912, the Virginia Gettysburg Commission had submitted plans for an equestrian statue of General Lee and other figures, with an inscription saying the state’s sons “fought for the faith of their fathers.” The chairman of the Gettysburg National Park Commission, however, had warned that such a statue would likely not be approved by the War Department because “inscriptions should be without ‘censure, praise or blame.‘” The chairman said that while “they fought for the faith of their fathers” might be true for Virginians, “it certainly opens the inscription to not a little adverse criticism.”

Eventually, the state commission agreed to inscribe simply, “Virginia to her sons at Gettysburg” – creating the first Confederate state monument.

But enforcement of the no praise, no blame policy was uneven.

Efforts to erect a monument for Mississippi, for example, began in the early 1960s. The state commission’s intended inscription read:

On this ground our brave sires fought for their righteous cause
Here, in glory, sleep those who gave to it their lives
To valor they gave new dimensions of courage
To duty, its noblest fulfillment
To posterity, the sacred heritage of honor.

The park superintendent pointed to two objections, however: first to the use of “righteous” and second to “here,” since Southern soldiers’ bodies were mostly relocated after the battle.

Mississippi Supreme Court Judge Thomas Brady, who collaborated on the inscription, wrote to the monument commission expressing his frustration over the objection to the “righteous cause” language. Even the “South’s most bitter critics … never questioned that the South felt that its cause was righteous,” he noted.

“The South has had the most to forgive in this matter and the South has forgiven,” Brady wrote. “Let us hope that the North has done likewise.”

In late 1970, a new superintendent was put in place at Gettysburg. Mississippi’s commission asked him to revisit the “righteous cause” wording – and expressed “genuine pleasure” that the new superintendent was a fellow Mississippian.

The monument was dedicated in 1973, with the “righteous cause” language included in its inscription.

Two side-by-side photos of a statue on a pedestal, showing one man swinging a rifle as he steps over the other one. — The Mississippi state monument at Gettysburg today. Katrina Stack Finkelstein, CC BY-ND

‘Unfinished work’

From the start, the policies for monuments at Gettysburg called for a commemorative landscape that would recall the actions of those who fought and died on the battlefield. In reality, several monuments scattered over the landscape perpetuate the Lost Cause myth, which argues that the Confederate states’ chief goal was simply to protect the sanctity of state rights – whitewashing the atrocities of slavery and romanticizing the antebellum South.

In recent decades, however, the park has begun to do more to emphasize slavery in its historical exhibits and descriptions.

National Park management policy treats commemorative works as historic features reflecting “the knowledge, attitudes, and tastes of the persons who designed and placed them.” As a result, the monuments cannot be “altered, relocated, obscured, or removed, even when they are deemed inaccurate or incompatible with prevailing present-day values.”

The Gettysburg website notes that legislation and compliance with federal laws would be required to move many monuments.

When Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, he called for Americans to dedicate themselves “to the unfinished work” of the Union dead, and to dedicate a portion of the battlefield to their memory. A century and a half later, however, the site also illustrates a messy postwar debate: the U.S.’s struggle to reconcile sharply opposed understandings of the Civil War.

This article has been updated to correct information about casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Katrina Stack, PhD Student, University of Tennessee and Rebecca Sheehan, Professor of Geography, Oklahoma State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dr. Derek Alderman interviewed by Detroit’s NPR Station

July 31, 2023

Our esteemed colleague, Dr. Derek Alderman, was recently interviewed by Detroit’s NPR Station to discuss the proposal to rename Hart Plaza in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Detroit City Councilmember Mary Waters has put forth the proposal to rename the iconic plaza, and Dr. Alderman was invited to join Ms. Waters and other guests on the Detroit Today show to discuss the topic. In case you missed it, you can listen to Dr. Alderman’s insightful contribution to the conversation here (his interview begins at 43:43).

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