Contents 2 Farewell and Good Luck 2 New Staff 2 Leicester Student Awards 2016 3 Congratulations 3 Britain’s Most Diverse Street on Channel 4 4 Graduation July 2016 6 Royal Geographical Society Award 6 Welcome Home Reception for Astronaut Tim Peake 6 Degree Success 7 Cupcake Day for Alzheimer’s Society 8 The Routledge Research Companion to Geographies of Sex and Sexuality - Gavin Brown 8 CLCR in Numbers 8 Welland Rivers Trust Partnership 9 Heiko Balzter Interviewed for Guardian article 9 Leicester Institute of Space and Earth Observation 10 Recent Presentations and Events 11 Recent Publications 12 Twitter Top Picks (May - June) 13 Twitter Top Picks (July) @leicestergeog · /leicestergeography Department of Geography May - July 2016 \geog_news
Transcript
Contents2 Farewell and Good Luck
2 New Staff
2 Leicester Student Awards 2016
3 Congratulations
3 Britain’s Most Diverse Street on Channel 4
4 Graduation July 2016
6 Royal Geographical Society Award
6 Welcome Home Reception for Astronaut Tim Peake
6 Degree Success
7 Cupcake Day for Alzheimer’s Society
8 The Routledge Research Companion to Geographies of Sex and Sexuality - Gavin Brown
8 CLCR in Numbers
8 Welland Rivers Trust Partnership
9 Heiko Balzter Interviewed for Guardian article
9 Leicester Institute of Space and Earth Observation
10 Recent Presentations and Events
11 Recent Publications
12 Twitter Top Picks (May - June)
13 Twitter Top Picks (July)
@leicestergeog · /leicestergeography
Department of Geography
May - July 2016
\geog_news
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New Staff
Veebha Dandikar joined the department as CLCR Administrator/Finance Administrator.
Risha Jadeja joined the College Finance Hub as Finance Administrator.
Dr Julia Toone has joined the department on a summer project investigating the potential impact of signal crayfish activities on diurnal variations in stream water phosphate concentrations. The project is a collaboration between Leicester and Loughborough Geography departments.
Farewell to Adam Barker who has been a tremendous help to the Human Geography team as a Teaching Fellow over this academic year.
Also to Susan Perry who has been a part time Laboratory Technician over the last year, Susan has worked in all areas of the Technical Team.
And finally, to Janette Thompson who had (re-)joined the department to look after the CLCR administration and Finance Hub.
We would like to wish all farewell and good luck in their future endeavours.
Farewell and Good Luck
Adam Barker Susan Perry Janette Thompson
Veebha Dandikar Risha Jadeja
•Heiko Balzter’s registration request to the Copernicus Space Component Data Access (CSCDA) was accepted. This gives us access to Copernicus data in our role as National Reference Centre for Land Cover.
• Susan Davies from University of Edinburgh has been awarded a NERC Knowledge Exchange fellowship for forest risk and finance, which Heiko Balzter is named on as a contributor. This can be a valuable link for the department to network with these sectors.
•Heiko Balzter was appointed to the Royal Society’s Commonwealth Conference Grants Committee for the coming year to select funding applications to attend the conference in Singapore.
•Kirsten Barrett was successful with the NERC REP (Research Experience Placements) grant and is hosting an Informatics undergrad student for 10 weeks this summer.
• Juan-Carlos Berrio won some money from the EU Networking fund. He has visited Dr. Valenti Rull at the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera of the Spanish Scientific Research Council (ICTJA-CSIC) in Barcelona in preparation for the future Marie-Curie fellowship application.
•Gavin Brown was awarded just under £500 from the EU Networking fund for Cesare di Feliciantonio to come
Congratulations
to Leicester for a few days in June to work on his Marie Curie fellowship application.
•Yahaya Ibrahim passed his PhD viva on 14 July. His thesis considered land degradation in West Africa over the last three years. Some of his research has already been published in peer-reviewed literature. Yahaya was supervised by Heiko Balzter and Joerg Kaduk.
• Loretta Lees has also been invited onto the editorial board of the Journal of Urban Affairs.
• Sue Page has been invited to join the newly convened ODA Steering Group.
•Azad Rasul passed his PhD viva on 20 June. His thesis titled ‘Investigating Surface Urban Heat and Cool Islands in Erbil, Iraq Using Remote Sensing and GIS’ had only minor amendments. Azad was supervised by Heiko Balzter and Claire Smith.
•Honorary visiting professor Nick Veck received an MBE in June during the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to environmental science. Read full news article.
•Mick Whelan, Mark Powell and Arnoud Boom have been awarded a one year project by Anglian Water to assess the fate of metaldehyde (a chemical used in slug pellets) applied to arable soil. This will fully fund a one year MRes / MPhil studentship.
The 4th University of Leicester Student Awards, hosted by Leicester Students’ Union and the Career Development Service took place at Athena on Wednesday 8th June 2016 and are in place to honour students who have excelled in a variety of endeavours from graduate internships to Union Council membership and a range of student group activities.
Abdullahi Tijjani a student in MSc Environmental Informatics won the ‘Environmental Achiever’ Award. This is awarded to an individual who has engaged in sustainability and shown the initiative to take action beyond the expected and has influenced those around them.
Abdullahi said “Winning the Environmental Achiever of the Year - Student Award was a great joy and exalted honour. It was even more humbling to know it was the first time the award was offered at the University of Leicester. We are all winners when we take the initiative and go beyond the expected to help our environment. Our planet will be a much healthier and happier place to live.”
Abdullahi attributes this achievement firstly to his passion for the environment which motivated him to do all that he could to help. But also to the hard work of several of his peers which gave him inspiration and hopes to continue supporting sustainability projects that affect local communities directly and the globe in general.
Also nominated for an award was Laura Patton a second year BA Geography undergraduate who was shortlisted for the ‘Student of the Year’ award.
Well done to both for such outstanding achievements!
Leicester Student Awards 2016 Emeritus Professor Ian Smalley has been spotted on Channel 4 introducing programmes as part of a week-long ‘Britain’s Most Diverse street’ campaign. From the 23rd July - 29th July, twenty one Narborough Road locals took over the airwaves, introducing peak-time shows like Eden, Ramsey’s Hotel Hell and new dating series Naked Attraction. Channel 4’s Continuity Team and 4creative, Channel 4’s in-house creative agency, spent four days in Leicester recording the announcements.
The interest started as research carried out by geographers at the London School of Economics who were studying the most ‘diverse’ streets in Britain. It turned out that Narborough Road where Ian’s bookshop is, is the most ethnically diverse street in the UK.
The original study led to newspaper exposure which led to TV interest. Ian says, “They came and we were filmed saying ‘and now the Hungarian grand prix’.. and similar things. I got to introduce Job Interview & Ramsays Hotel Hell”
The people of Narborough Road in Leicester originate from over 35 different countries, from India and Pakistan to Poland, Cameroon and Zimbabwe.
There is due to be a BBC1 pilot programme ‘United Nations Street’ coming out on 5 September which follows the shopkeepers of the Narborough Road area.
View promo video on YouTube
We hear the video may be popping up in future Human Geography lectures next year...
Geography’s graduation ceremony was held on Tuesday 12 July at Demontfort Hall and was followed afterwards by a reception in the Bennett Building. Professor Kevin Tansey made a speech to congratulate the graduates and also handed out this year’s prizes.
Graduation July 2016
4 UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER \GEOGNEWS 5
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Kerry Allen hosted a Geography and Geology #CupcakeDay for Alzheimer’s Society on Thursday 16th June in the Department. A huge amount of baking, and decorating had commenced during the week which culminated in a fantastic display of sponge and icing masterpieces offered up to staff and students.
Alongside the cupcake sale was a ‘Guess the sprinkles’ competition which was taken much more seriously and mathematically than expected! The final winner was
Cupcake Day for Alzheimer’s Societyannounced as Stefano De Sabbata in Geography who was the winner of the ‘healthy’ blueberry cake. Well done Stefano.
A massive thanks go out to everyone in both departments who baked, decorated, bought, sweated over hot ovens on a week night and finally bought cupcakes. A fantastic £144.00 was raised and has been split between Alzheimer’s Society and Age UK.
We announced in the last edition that Dr Margaret Byron was this year’s recipient of the Taylor & Francis Award from the Royal Geographical Society, awarded for ‘excellence in the promotion and practice of diversity in the teaching of Human Geography’.
The RGS-IBG Awards evening was held on Monday 6th June 2016. It was expertly hosted and organised by the staff at the RGS in Kensington Gore, London. Dr Margaret Byron’s award was one of over twenty medals and awards for contributions to the discipline.
Read full article
Royal Geographical Society Award
Sarah Johnson attended the Welcome Home Reception for the astronaut Tim Peake on 18 July at 10 Downing Street in London.
The Prime Minister attended, despite it being her first week in office and fresh from the debate on renewing Trident in the Commons. She gave a speech talking about the benefits of Tim Peake’s mission especially with regards to inspiring the next generation of scientists.
Tim Peake highlighted the benefits of international cooperation, the UK’s continued support to the European Space Agency and the importance of the UK’s satellite manufacturing industry.
From Leicester, Roland Leigh from the physics department also attended. They met a number of other academic researchers which generated some interesting and beneficial discussions. Despite the heat, they had a great evening, and enjoyed being welcomed into Downing Street.
Welcome Home Reception for astronaut Tim Peake
The Department of Geography at the University of Leicester is delighted to announce that 72% of our graduating cohort this year achieved a 1st and a 2.I Honours degree. 22% of our graduates received a 2.II.
Professor Kevin Tansey, Head of Department, said, ‘I wish to congratulate our finalists for their hard work over the past three or four years that has resulted in the award of their degree. Our geographers should be extremely proud of their achievements that will hopefully provide the launch pad to an exciting and rewarding career. I look forward to congratulating our graduates in person on the 12th July at their graduation ceremony’.
Geography undergraduates at Leicester read for a 3 year programme or a 4 year programme that includes a year abroad in Europe, North America or Australia. Their programmes include a number of opportunities to study in the field in places like the Amazon rainforest, New York, Spain, Dartmoor and Corby. The University appoints External Examiners, senior academics from reputable UK institutions, to play a major role in ensuring the academic standards and awards of the University.
Comprehensive and authoritative, this state-of-the-art review both charts and develops the rich sub-discipline geographies of sexualities, exploring sex-gender, sexuality and sexual practices. Emerging from the desire to examine differences and exclusions as a key aspect of human geographies, these geographies have engaged with heterosexual and queer, lesbian, gay, bi and trans lives.
Developing thinking in this area, geographers and other social scientists have illustrated the centrality of place, space and other spatial relationships in reconstituting sexual practices, representations, desires, as well as sexed bodies and lives.
This book reviews the current state of the field and offers new insights from authors located on five continents. In doing so, the book seeks to draw on and influence core debates in this field, as well as disrupt the Anglo-American hegemony in studies of sexualities, sexes and geographies.
This volume is the definitive collection in the area, bringing together many international leaders in the field, alongside scholars that are well-established outside the Anglophone academy, and many emerging talents who will lead the field in the decades to come.
The introduction and other sample chapters are available.
The Routledge Research Companion to Geographies of Sex and Sexuality - Gavin Brown
Heiko Balzter has put together some summary statistics on CLCR. They illustrate in brief what CLCR has been able to achieve since its inception in 2012.
• 2 major academic awards - Royal Society (Wolfson Research Merit Award 2012) and Royal Geographical Society (Cuthbert Peek Award 2015)
• 29 funded research grants started since 2012
• bringing £2,641,700 in grant income to the University (partially attributed to CLCR and other departments)
• 23 fixed-term research staff recruited since 2012
• currently employing 11 staff
• 18 new PhD students attracted to CLCR since 2012
• extensive press coverage: 96 records in Nexis database
CLCR in Numbers
On 5 July Heiko Balzter attended the trustees’ meeting of the Welland Rivers Trust in Loddington, who have agreed to be CASE partner on a NERC Industrial CASE studentship application, worth £84,000 plus £4000 CASE partner support.
This application is called “Resilience, trade-offs and synergies of ecosystem services against climate and land use change in the Welland River catchment” and has now been submitted to NERC.
It proposes to study using Sentinel-2 data at 10 m resolution to assess trade-offs and synergies between five key ecosystem services in the Welland catchment with the InVEST toolbox.
Welland Rivers Trust Partnership
On 30 June the University announced four new interdisciplinary research institutes to build on Leicester’s established strengths and drive global research excellence.
The four new institutes are:
• Precision Medicine
• Structural and Chemical Biology
• Space and Earth Observation Science
•Cultural and Media Economies
Professor Paul Boyle, President and Vice-Chancellor, said: “Our commitment to discovery is about imaginative new thinking and understanding of the world around us. These new institutes will bring a renewed focus on our strengths and will bring together colleagues from across the university to grapple with fundamental questions that arise at the intersection of different disciplines. They will drive our global research excellence and will be a key part of our commitment to pioneer a distinctive elite of research-intensive institutions.” University of Leicester blog article
Leicester Institute of Space and Earth Observation
After Fort McMurray: where are the world’s most fire-prone cities?The article considers the aftermath of the devastating wildfires in the Canadian city of Fort McMurray in May which burned more than half a million acres and destroyed 2,400 homes.
Wildlife-urban interfaces are discussed as well as the increased risk of fires for recently mapped regions across the US and Europe. This includes densely built suburban and tourist towns such as those found in Portugal, southern France and throughout Greece.
The flammability of the building materials used in the settlements as also a significant factor which leads to a divide between western cities and informal settlements in developing countries.
Heiko was interviewed for the guardian on 10 May, citing the recent paper:
Modugno, S., Balzter, H., Cole, B. and Borrelli, P. (2016): Mapping regional patterns of large forest fires in Wildland Urban Interface areas in Europe. Journal of Environmental Management 172, 112-126.
The article will give it worldwide publicity, and Heiko has noticed more people following this paper on ResearchGate. Read the guardian article.
Heiko Balzter attended the opening soiree of the Royal Society Summer Exhibition on 6 July and would highly recommend the event.
Heiko Balzter and Sarah Johnson attended the launch of the IPP programme in Harwell on 28 June. Despite the impacts of Brexit on public finances and the UK economy, this year’s funding has been confirmed by BIS but for the coming years funding is uncertain. Heiko is in discussions with a number of companies about possible bids.
Heiko Balzter attended a reception for a delegation from Yunnan Province in China at the end of June, hosted by the Vice-Chancellor, and presented the work of CLCR to them. The delegation included academics from Kunming Technical University and from an investment company. The University of Leicester is keen to expand its collaborative activities in China.
Heiko Balzter, Pedro Rodriguez-Veiga and Ciaran Robb attended the NCEO conference in Warwick at the end of June.
Heiko Balzter attended the Royal Society conference “From satellite to soil: connecting environmental observation to agritech innovations” on 17 June. The conference brought together two technologies, satellites and agritech, to identify how satellite technology can help improve agricultural productivity and resilience. The conference was co-organised by Professor Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FREng FRS (Executive Chairman, Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd), Stuart Martin (CEO, Satellite Applications Catapult) and Professor Melanie Welham (interim Chief Executive, BBSRC), and included speakers from DEFRA, Harper Adams University, Rezatec and Agrii.
Gareth Crisford from Earth-i visited on 13 May. The company sells very-high-resolution satellite imagery from the DMC-3 constellation at 1 m resolution. We can propose test areas where we would like to have some demo data acquired for evaluation purposes.
Iain Gillespie, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, visited Geography and CLCR in June. He was really excited by the research done in Geography & CLCR. The meeting was very positive.
Loretta Lees was invited to attend and participate in a discussion evening for leading professionals at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) on Monday 20 June 2016 on the topic of London’s housing crisis. The evening brought together expertise from across relevant professional sectors, spanning practitioner, policy and research communities. Discussions at the invite-only dinner were held under Chatham House rules.
On Friday 3 June Sir Mark Walport (Government Chief Scientific Advisor) and Gareth Davies (Director General of
Recent Presentations and EventsBIS) visited the University of Leicester for the whole day for talks and discussions around Midlands Innovations. They were given a Space and EO tour of kit/facilities and presentations, including a discussion on the National Space Park. Heiko Balzter talked about overseas development aid and our research project in Kenya to them. It was very well received.
Sarah Johnson, Virginia Nicolas-Perea and Heiko Balzter met with Point4, a local company from Melton Mowbray on 17 May who are interested in tree monitoring applications to meet industry needs. They will follow up and try to find a mechanism to fund this activity.
Mick Whelan-TAC Europe (Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) Nantes, France, May 2016. Platform Presentation: Krogseth I.S., Whelan M.J., Christensen G.N., Breivik K., Evenset A., Warner N.A. The importance of temporal variables in environmental modelling: Rationalizing measured concentrations of cyclic volatile methyl siloxanes in an Arctic lake.
Mick Whelan-EGU (European Geosciences Union) Vienna, Austria, April 2016. Platform Presentation: Whelan M.J., Ramos A., Guymer I., Villa R., Jefferson B. Evaluating the potential of ‘on-line’ constructed wetlands for mitigating pesticide transfers from agricultural land to surface waters. Session HS2.3.10 Micropollutants, pathogens and nutrients in the soil-groundwater-river continuum: advances in modelling and monitoring.
Mick Whelan was an invited speaker at a Royal Society of Chemistry seminar on Taste and Odour compounds in drinking water, Burlington House, London, on the 7 July 2016.
Mick Whelan was also invited to Anglian Water’s “Water Professors Annual Meeting and Dinner” in Peterborough in June.
Recent Publications•Arellano, P., Tansey, K. and Balzter, H. (submitted):
Plant family-specific impacts of petroleum pollution on leaf chlorophyll content in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador. PLoS-ONE.
• Brandt, M., Hiernaux, P., Rasmussen, K., Mbow, C., Kergoat, L., Tagesson, T., Ibrahim, Y.Z., Wélé, A., Tucker, C.J. and Fensholt, R. (2016): Assessing woody vegetation trends in Sahelian drylands using MODIS based seasonal metrics, Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 183, 15 September 2016, Pages 215-225, ISSN 0034-4257
•Chuvieco,E., Yue, C., Heil, A., Mouillot, F., Alonso-Canas, I., Padilla, M., Pereira, J.M., Oom, D. and Tansey, K. (2016): A new global burned area product for climate assessment of fire impacts. Global Ecology and Biogeography 25, 619–629, DOI: 10.1111/geb.12440
•Comber, A.J., Davies, H., Pinder, D., Whittow, J.B., Woodhall, A. and Johnson, S.C.M. (2016): Mapping coastal land use changes 1965–2014: methods for handling historical thematic data. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
•Huesca, M., García, M., Roth, K.L., Casas, A. and Ustin, S.L. (2016): Canopy structural attributes derived from AVIRIS imaging spectroscopy data in a mixed broadleaf/conifer forest, Remote Sensing of Environment, 182, 208-226, doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.04.020
• Ibrahim, S., Balzter, H. and Tansey, K. (submitted): Remote sensing of tree/grass fractional cover in African savanna using phenological signal decomposition of MODIS time-series data. Remote Sensing
• Johnson, S.C.M., Yu, D., Rivas Casado, M. and Butler, J. (2016): Enhanced flood mapping using a Sentinel-1 time serie. RSPSoc Nottingham
•Ningthoujam, R.K., Tansey, K., Balzter, H., Morrison, K., Johnson, S.C.M., Gerard, F., George, C., Burbidge, G., Doody, S., Veck, N., Llewellyn, G.M. and Blythe, T. (2016): Mapping forest cover and forest cover change with airborne S-band radar. Remote Sensing 8(7), 577; doi:10.3390/rs8070577.
•Ningthoujam, R.K., Balzter, H., Tansey, K., Morrison, K., Johnson, S.C.M., Gerard, F., George, C., Malhi, Y., Burbidge, G., Doody, S., Veck, N., Llewellyn, G.M., Blythe, T., Rodriguez-Veiga, P., Van Beijma, S., Spies, B., Barnes, C., Padilla, M., Wheeler, J., Louis, V., Potter, T., Smith, A.E. and Polo Bermejo, J. (in press): Airborne S-band SAR for forest biophysical retrieval in temperate mixed forest of UK. Remote Sensing.
•Rasul, A., Balzter, H. and Smith, C. (submitted): Diurnal and Seasonal Variation of Surface Urban Cool and Heat Islands in the Semi-Arid City of Erbil, Iraq. Remote Sensing
•Rodriguez-Veiga, P., Saatchi, S., Tansey, K. and Balzter, H. (2016): Magnitude, spatial distribution and uncertainty of forest biomass stocks in Mexico. Remote Sensing of Environment 183, 265–281. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.06.004.
•Wang, H., Richards, M., Cumming, A., Kaduk, J., Clark, D., Morrison, R. and Balzter, H. (submitted): Simulating vulnerability of soil carbon stocks of agriculturally managed peatland in the East Anglian Fens to climate change with JULES-ECOSSE-FUN, Soil Research
