UMass Amherst geographers will present eight different papers at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, April 12-16, 2011.

(Detailed abstracts and times for these papers follow this list)

Janelle Cornwell* – Ph.d Candidate, University of Massachusetts – Amherst
Subjects of Scale: scale methodologies and the textural practice of possibility

Piper Gaubatz* – Professor, University Of Massachusetts, Amherst
Urban Transformation & Mega-Events in Chinese Cities

Abby Templer* – Ph.d Candidate, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Leo L. Hwang-Carlos* – Ph.d Candidate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Rethinking the Creative Economy: Participatory Action Research with Artists and Artisans in the Greater Franklin County

Yong Q Tian* – Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts – Boston
Qian Yu – Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Robert F Chen – University of Massachusetts at Boston
Sensitivity of terrestrial DOC export to climate change from urban landscape

Eve Vogel* – Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts – Amherst
Divvying up the Watershed: Inter-Jurisdictional Negotiations, Distributive Policy and River Transformation on the Columbia River, 1933-2011

Ted White* – Ph.d Candidate, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Harvesting Economic Possibility? Community Supported Agriculture as a Catalyst for Diverse Economic Practices

Qian Yu, Assistant Professor* – University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Weining Zhu, Ph.D candidate – University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Yong Tian, Assistant Professor – University of Massachusetts-Boston
Bob Chen, Professor – University of Massachusetts-Boston
High resolution estimation of colored dissolved organic carbon in riverine and plume area

Weining Zhu* – Ph.d Candidate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Qian Yu – Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Uncertainties of remote sensing of colored dissolved organic matter: evaluations and comparisons for three rivers in North America

Subjects of Scale: scale methodologies and the textural practice of possibility

is part of the Paper Session:

For Julie Graham: Questions of scale, mapping and subjectivity

scheduled on Wednesday, 4/13/11 at 14:40 PM.

Abstract:

In this paper I consider the common leftist claim that a lack of “scale” is or will be the inevitable downfall of economic experiments. Situating the “scale critique” in the context of a wider debate about scale, I take up A. Moore’s 2008 call for a research methodology that considers scale as a category of practice, suggesting that as geographers we are practicing and thus “performing” scale. I offer an inversion of the scalar framework as a conscious practice of scale that addresses six conceptual problems discussed by Marston, Woodward and Jones (2005) and Moore (2008). The inversion is a playful reflexive methodology that could lend insight into our own hierarchical/scaled patterns of thinking and suspend, if only momentarily, a seeming attachment to the certain failure of economic experiments and ethical economies in order to ask (again) the question: What if?

Keywords: scale, worker co-operatives, diverse economies, texture

Urban Transformation & Mega-Events in Chinese Cities

is part of the Paper Session:

Beijing and Beyond: Mega-events in Chinese Urban Transformation

scheduled on Wednesday, 4/13/11 at 8:00 AM.

Abstract:

As China’s cities have undergone dramatic changes catalyzed by the hyper-growth and globalization of the post-1979 reform era, approaches to mega-event planning have changed in response to shifting conceptualizations of both urban space and China’s role on the world stage.  This paper analyzes the role of mega-event planning in Chinese urban transformations through a series of case studies of large-scale events such as the Canton Fair, the Kunming World Horticultural Exposition, the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo.  It focuses in particular on the ways in which mega-event planning has been used to shape or change the course of urban growth and development through re-configuration of development coalitions, infrastructure development and image management.

Keywords: China, Urban Transformation, Olympics, Expo, Beijing, Shanghai

Leo L. Hwang-Carlos* – Ph.d Candidate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Rethinking the Creative Economy: Participatory Action Research with Artists and Artisans in the Greater Franklin County

is part of the Paper Session:

For Julie Graham: The Next Generation

scheduled on Wednesday, 4/13/11 at 16:40 PM.

Abstract:

Franklin County Massachusetts is often seen as a region in need and lacking economic agency. In the context of the creative economy proposed solutions to this need have been primarily to bring in external resources in the form of tourism and industry. In this vision of the creative economy, artists and artisans lay in wait, subject to the wane of tourism in a struggling economy.  Using the participatory action methods employed by J.K. Gibson-Graham, we collaborated with regional artists and artisans to make visible the rich economic practices already in existence.  This paper details how the transformative element of rethinking an epistemology; shifting from a focus on needs and lack to a focus on assets and abundance led to novel and empowering ways of viewing the region’s creative economy.  Rather than passively awaiting assistance and dollars external to the region, artists and artisans in the Greater Franklin County actively build community and livelihoods through a diverse range of economic practices.

In this project we worked in collaboration with 23 artists and artisans who interviewed their peers about the values and economic practices which motivate and animate their work. Here we highlight the transformation engendered in ourselves and the artist and artisan researchers with whom we worked as we all engaged in the process of discovering what we, and the regional artists and artisans, contribute to the broader community.

Keywords: participatory methods, diverse economies, economic subjectivity, creative economy, art and culture, asset based assessment

Qian Yu – Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Robert F Chen – University of Massachusetts at Boston

Sensitivity of terrestrial DOC export to climate change from urban landscape

is part of the Paper Session:

Climate Change and the Urban Environment

scheduled on Wednesday, 4/13/11 at 8:00 AM.

Abstract:

We conducted a field-data analysis to investigate the sensitivity of terrestrial DOC export to climate (temperature and precipitation) from urban landscape. A total of 30 sub-basins in an urban watershed with forest, agricultural, wetland, residential, and industrial landuses with total of 360 DOC concentration monthly samples and accompanying discharge measurements were used in this analysis. There is a clear increase in DOC concentration during the year with higher temperatures and precipitations for all land cover scenarios. The DOC concentrations from different land cover varied significantly in corresponding to the temperature increases. The relationship between storm water discharge and DOC concentration is regulated by temperature and watershed properties, with a larger response to events during spring periods and periods where the preceding discharge was low. The temperature relationship also shows seasonality indicating a potential link to soil carbon storages.  The study also considered the variation of annual DOC flux at sub-basin scale and watershed scales in response to climate changes

Keywords: DOC flux, temperature, land cover, watershed, coastal ecosystem

Divvying up the Watershed: Inter-Jurisdictional Negotiations, Distributive Policy and River Transformation on the Columbia River, 1933-2011

is part of the Paper Session:

Water governance and the politics of scale: A critical examination of water governance in a multi-scalar environment – Part III

scheduled on Thursday, 4/14/11 at 16:40 PM.

Abstract:

Many people believe that integrated watershed and river basin governance can transcend the limited geographies and entrenched politics of traditional jurisdictions. Examining long-lived river basin institutions and their patterns of decision-making, policy and material effects helps to test this claim. The Columbia River has for seventy years been conceptualized and administered within a river basin-based region that deliberately encompasses a wide range of the river’s interconnected aspects – hydrology and habitat, land and water, urban and rural areas, industry and fisheries, private profit and public benefit. Yet the repeated pattern over time is that river decision-making and policy have been structured to please the region’s jurisdictional parts and the politically influential constituents that can influence higher-level jurisdictions, not to achieve a greater sum. On the river itself, the premium has been on producing divisible benefits – especially hydropower and money – that can be distributed among the states, tribes, localities, industries and the Canadian province that make up the Columbia River’s region.  In recent years, however, vast sums of money have been dispersed on both sides of the international border to various jurisdictions and groups for fish, wildlife and community projects; this has altered the river basin in more restorative, if still fragmented, ways. This paper highlights several eras in which divvying up the watershed drove policy and management, and provides a political-geographical framework to consider how river basin governance is likely to interact with both larger and smaller traditional jurisdictions.

Keywords: watershed governance, political geography, river basin, resource management

Harvesting Economic Possibility? Community Supported Agriculture as a Catalyst for Diverse Economic Practices

is part of the Paper Session:

Food and Alterity in a Diverse Economy: Exploring a Politics of Possibility (3)

scheduled on Thursday, 4/14/11 at 16:40 PM.

Abstract:

As a compelling alternative to mainstream agribusiness food production and distribution networks, the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement is becoming increasingly visible. For 25 years, the CSA model has been replicated, mutated, and expanded upon by it’s farmers and farm shareholders—continually rejecting a fixed ideology yet simultaneously strengthening CSA as a popular conceptual “brand”in the US and abroad. How has participation in the numerous flexible spaces of production and consumption impacted those engaged in CSA? Transcending a hegemonic vision of economy—are CSA participants gaining a new view of economic possibility? If so, are they putting this sense of possibility into practice?  This case study looks at five divergent CSA enterprises in Western Massachusetts and examines how their participants knowingly or less knowingly are enacting new economies. In addition to yielding foods, can CSA also help create diverse resilient economies that can be transplanted beyond farmscapes and if so, where might they take root?

Keywords: agriculture, economy, community

Weining Zhu, Ph.D candidate – University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Yong Tian, Assistant Professor – University of Massachusetts-Boston

Bob Chen, Professor – University of Massachusetts-Boston

High resolution estimation of colored dissolved organic carbon in riverine and plume area

is part of the Paper Session:

Remote Sensing Applications in Coastal and Wetlands (II)

scheduled on Wednesday, 4/13/11 at 14:40 PM.

Abstract:

Estimating riverine CDOM concentration is essential to understand the carbon export from terrestrial coastal watershed to the ocean. Remote sensing of CDOM is dominant in ocean using coarse resolution sensors such as MODIS and SeaWiFS. The newly available 8-band WorldView2 image provides high resolution image with enhanced spectral resolution. Particularly an additional coastal blue band locates in the most sensitive wavelength of CDOM. Its potential in retrieving CDOM concentration is tested in the Neponset River in southwest Boston. Image preprocessing includes atmospheric correction using ENVI FLAASH and surface reflectance removal using HydroLight simulation. Then, we used a revised quasi-analytical CDOM algorithm developed in our earlier research to estimate CDOM, based on four bands, coastal blue, blue, green and red. The result was validated by field data. The CDOM sources are also discussed, which are identifiable from high resolution WorldView2.

Keywords: remote sensing, water carbon, high resolution

Qian Yu – Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Uncertainties of remote sensing of colored dissolved organic matter: evaluations and comparisons for three rivers in North America

is part of the Paper Session:

Remote Sensing Applications in Coastal and Wetlands (II)

scheduled on Wednesday, 4/13/11 at 14:40 PM.

Abstract:

Estimating riverine CDOM concentration is essential to understand the carbon export from terrestrial coastal watershed to the ocean. Very high spatial resolution field measurements of colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), above-surface reflectance and other water properties were conducted for three rivers’ estuaries – the Mississippi River, Hudson River, and Neponset River as well as their nearby coastal regions. At the same time, EO-1 Hyperion images covering the same sites were acquired, and then have been used to estimate CDOM, chlorophyll and detrital concentrations, using a quasi-analytical CDOM algorithm (QAA-CDOM), developed from our previous study. The three coastal watersheds and estuaries have different physical and environmental properties, such as land covers land use, topography, vegetation density and scales, and hence cause different cases of in-water optical components. This study shows that at a high spatial resolution, around 30 m, there are many watershed factors influencing the uncertainties of remote-sensing estimations. In those factors, vegetation densities, seasonal variations and land uses interacting with hydrological path to determine the CDOM distributions in a large spatial scale. On the other hand, CDOM’s stratifications, surface waves, and especially in-water particulate matters, either organic or inorganic, play important roles in each step of remote-sensing inversion. Our measurements and inversion results also indicate that waters in estuarine and coastal regions are very complex, so that ocean color inversion algorithms should be carefully chosen and adjusted accordingly to be applied to coastal waters.

Keywords: CDOM, remote sensing, ocean color, uncertainty