Author: averslui

Geography Professor Bob Douglas’ knowledge of the waterfalls of the Minnesota River watershed is featured in the current edition of Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. Bob and his wife Judy have searched for and documented 30 falls in the region. “Waterfalls for me are beauty,” Bob is quoted as saying in the article. “They evoke a sense…

We’ve heard about movements to grow food in urban gardens, rooftop gardens, on college campuses, and (maybe illegally) in basements under grow lights. But how many students grow food in their dorm room? Will dorm room agriculture be the movement of the future? Gustavus students Vinai Vang and Anthony Adams, Geography/Environmental Studies and Biology/Environmental Studies…

Among the many great posters presented at this year’s Celebration of Creative Inquiry at Gustavus Adolphus College, were two posters by Geography students Skylar Davis and Andrew Byron. Skylar presented a poster titled “A Demographic Analysis of Cook County, Minnesota.” Cook County, the most northeastern county in Minnesota, is a popular place to own land…

The Geography 105 class took at field trip to Kasota Prairie on April 13 to study the geologic history of the area. We also saw a lot of wildlife: turkeys, deer, turtles, numerous birds, and a big nest of (carpenter?) ants.

This blog is by Gustavus student Andrew Byron as part of his Remote Sensing of Environment class. This past February, NASA celebrated the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), an effort to remotely sense the topography of earth’s surface using shuttle-borne radar. The system actively mapped a 139 mile…

This blog is by Gustavus student Ethan Degner as part of his Remote Sensing of Environment class. When you think of remote sensing, you probably think of satellites and planes taking pictures of the earth’s surface. You probably don’t think of what lies beneath ground level, and might not even care, but knowledge of what…

Due to precipitation, fast snow melt and soil that was still frozen, the Minnesota River at Saint Peter was at flood stage last week. Some roads and bridges were closed, but property damage was minimal. The flood was less severe than the floods of 1997 and 2001.

I am conducting interviews with people living in the displaced persons camps in Haiti. Here are a few photos from yesterday and today.

I’ve arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for a week of research on the situation after the January 12, 2010, earthquake disaster. I’m also carrying with me eight tents that students, staff and faculty at Gustavus donated to people in Haiti. The tents are in high demand! I wish you could hear people’s voices when they say,…