Category: Geography

A Ph.D opportunity

10/1/2020

My research group Environmental Decision Making at the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama is accepting applications for a Ph.D student with research assistantship, in social dimension of hazards in general and flood hazards in particular. The assistantship provides a stipend plus tuition remission.

The successful applicant will work with me and two research groups at the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering and will be involved in projects focused on human dimension of flood hazards.

Qualified candidates should have a Master’s degree in Geography, Environmental Studies/Sciences, Planning or a related discipline. Candidates should have a strong interest in the intersection of social and physical dimensions of hazards and be eager to work in an interdisciplinary environment. Experience in quantitative data analysis, survey design, geographic information systems (GIS) are desired. Strong oral and written communication skills are required.

For more information about this assistantship, please contact me at wshao1@ua.edu well in advance of February 15, 2021 (the application deadline). Please include a copy of your CV, unofficial academic transcripts, and a brief personal statement that highlights skills relevant to the position.

For more information about the department, please see https://geography.ua.edu/.

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The website of my lab Environmental Decision Making at UA is up and running

9/13/2019

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The website of my lab Environmental Decision Making at UA is up and running. Please check it out.
We encourage inquires from prospective Master of Science or Ph.D students with research interests in environmental decision making within a geographic context. In particular, we seek students with training in statistics, data analysis, quantitative methods, and Geographic Information System (GIS). Students' specific research interests can include:

1. environmental risk perceptions
2. individual adaptive behavior/intention
3. community vulnerability and resilience
4. environmental planning/policy
5. environmental hazards and public health

If you are interested in joining us, please send your inquiry along with your CV., unofficial transcripts, test scores to Dr. Wanyun Shao at wshao1@ua.edu.

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I am now an associate editor of Palgrave Communications

8/28/2019

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I have joined the International Editorial Board of Palgrave Communications (a Nature journal). I am an associate editor in the subject area of Geography and Demography.

Palgrave Communications is a fully open-access, online journal publishing peer-reviewed research across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. Palgrave Communications welcomes the submission of in-depth interdisciplinary studies.

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A new paper in Palgrave Communications

8/20/2019

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In a new paper, we used Google Trends to reveal the spatiotemporal patterns of US drought awareness. This paper has been published in Palgrave Communications (a Nature journal, now Humanities and Social Sciences Communications). Here is more information about this paper:

Article Title: Spatiotemporal Patterns of US Drought Awareness

Summary:
Drought is a creeping climatological phenomenon with persistent precipitation deficits. The intangible and gradual characteristics of drought cause a lack of social response during the onset. The level of awareness of a local drought increases rapidly through mass media reports and online information searching activities when the drought reaches its peak severity. This high level of local drought awareness drives concerns for water shortage and support for water policy. However, spatiotemporal patterns of national-scale drought awareness have never been studied due to constraints imposed by time-consuming and costly survey data collection and surveys' limited sample sizes.
Here, we present the national-scale study to reveal the spatiotemporal patterns of drought awareness over the contiguous United States (CONUS) using Google Trends data and an advanced statistical technique, Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Results show that the first two PC modes can explain 48% (38% for PC1 and 10% for PC2; see Figures below) of the total variance of state-level drought awareness. We find that the PC1 mode relates to a national pattern of drought awareness across the CONUS. The spatiotemporal patterns further imply that residents in the Northeastern US region are the most aware of the emergence of drought, regardless of the geographic location of the occurrence. The results illustrate how search engine queries and social media data can help develop an effective and efficient plan for drought mitigation in the future.

The following Figure comes from Kim et al. (2019):

Figure 1: Major principle components of state-level drought awareness and state-level drought risk over the contiguous United States. Temporal correlations of Drought Awareness from the first two major modes with individual state-level drought awareness ((c) and (d), respectively) and individual state-level drought risk ((e) and (f), respectively). White colored states depict the states with insignificant temporal correlation at the 99% confident level.

Figure 2: State-level correlation analysis of drought awareness and drought risk. Colors in the grid cells depict temporal correlation coefficients of state-level drought awareness (left triangle) and state-level drought risk (right triangle) of one state with those of the rest 48 states. To assist interpretation, areas that depict interstate relationships within the region (green colored boundaries) and across regions (blue colored boundaries) are shown in the legend box at upper-left corner.

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Our new paper on flood perceptions

12/21/2018

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Our new paper on how physical geography influences perceptions of flooding just got published online in the Journal of Hydrology (impact factor: 4.405). Here is the abstract of this paper:

"How does physical history of flood-related hazards affect individuals’ perceptions? The present study represents a unique effort to understand perceptions of flood hazards in light of the geographic background. Situated in Alabama, the United States, the cities of Mobile and Huntsville display two different physical geographic contexts. Despite one being a coastal city (Mobile) and the other being an inland city, both are similarly vulnerable to flooding. We first present results of historical analyses of heavy precipitation in both cities and analysis of storm surge history in the city of Mobile. We then report results of both descriptive statistical and inferential statistical analyses based on a two-city residents’ survey that was conducted in the spring of 2016. We find that residents in both cities are able to connect the particular natural hazard of flooding with their physical environments. Residents in both cities are influenced by their perceptions of precipitation when making assessments of flooding. Despite the fact that Huntsville has not experienced heavy precipitation events as much as Mobile in recent history, residents of Huntsville tend to link heavy rainfall – the most frequent cause of flooding in that city, with flooding. In contrast, residents of Mobile tend to link hurricanes, more particularly hurricane number, with flooding. These results show that people are attuned to their physical environments and take into consideration their personal observations when forming perceptions of natural hazards. More studies need to be conducted to further investigate the dynamics of physical exposure to hazards and risk perceptions in other geographic areas."

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Our paper published in Annals of AAG

3/19/2018

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Our new paper on aggregate perceptions of hurricane risks has been published on the Annals of American Association of Geographers.

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County-level perceptions of hurricane risks along the U.S. Gulf Coast

12/15/2017

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In a study that has been accepted by the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, my coauthors and I have examined how community resilience along with objective hurricane risks impacts aggregate perceptions of hurricane risks. We first applied spatial techniques to transform individual-level perceptions to the aggregate level, in this case, counties. The map below displays the geographic pattern of hurricane risk perceptions among coastal counties along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Clearly, there is a concentration of heightened hurricane risk perceptions stretching from southeast Texas to west Florida. Given the recent enormous impact of Hurricane Harvey in southeast Texas and West Louisiana, it is likely that risk perception has further increased among coastal residents who have been affected by Harvey.

Further, we found two aspects of community resilience measured by Cutter et al. (2014), namely economic resilience and community capital, are positively related to aggregate perceptions of hurricanes risks. This indicates that communities with more economic resources and social capital tend to perceive greater threat of hurricanes. The policy implication is that counties with less economic and social capitals need to direct efforts on educating the public about scientific assessments of hurricanes risks.

County Level Risk Perception Scores (Source: Shao, Gardezi, and Xian, forthcoming)

Reference:
Cutter, S. L., Ash, K. D. and Emrich, C. T. 2014. The geographies of community disaster resilience. Global Environmental Change, 29, 65-77.
Shao, W, Gardezi, M., and Xian, S. (forthcoming). Examining the effects of objective hurricane risks and community resilience on risk perceptions of hurricanes at the county level in the U.S. Gulf Coast: An innovative approach" Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

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Geography in everything: increasing obesity rate in America

10/13/2017

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       The obesity rate has been rising rapidly in America over the past two decades. Many factors have been identified as contributors to this ongoing public health crisis. The food industry plays a powerful role shaping public perceptions of food and eating behaviors, as this Vox article explains.

      As a geographer, I am always concerned with the influence of our surrounding environment on what we perceive and how we behave. In this paper, my coauthors and I have considered the impacts of built and natural environments on physical inactivity and correspondingly obesity rate. We have made a couple of findings. First, higher street connectivity and walk scores are related to lower physical inactivity and obesity rates. In a more pedestrian-friendly environment with more streets and connections, people tend to be more physically active and less likely to be obese. Second, higher ratio of fast-food restaurants in a community is positively related to physical inactivity and obesity. Surprise, surprise, fast-food makes people become more obese, well, because in the fast-paced modernity, fast-food is literally fast and therefore convenient for people to grab and eat on the go.

        Last but not least, the number of extreme weather events is also found to lead to physical inactivity and obesity. When extreme weather events occur, the environment outside the window all of a sudden becomes hostile. People are constrained inside, much less likely to get engaged in any exercises. So, these extreme weather events pose threats to not only public safety but also public health.

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Globalism vs. Nationalism

5/8/2017

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France just elected the youngest person ever to rule that republic. This French presidential election has historical meaning. Since "Brexit" and the 2016 US presidential election, the western world has been at the crossroad, with "globalists" who advocate globalization via free trade and open border and "nationalists" who resist globalization constantly being involved in the tug of war. Anti-globalization sentiment handed nationalists two substantial victories in 2016. Nationalism seemed to be on a path to erode the western democracy by riding a wave of popularity. Now, the French presidential election put the temporary brakes on this movement.

Globalists may feel a sense of relief now, but this tug of war is not going away any time soon. As a matter of fact, a war over Paris Accord between these two factions is unfolding in the White House.

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A Ph.D opportunity

The website of my lab Environmental Decision Making at UA is up and running

I am now an associate editor of Palgrave Communications

A new paper in Palgrave Communications

Our new paper on flood perceptions

Our paper published in Annals of AAG

County-level perceptions of hurricane risks along the U.S. Gulf Coast

Geography in everything: increasing obesity rate in America

Globalism vs. Nationalism

Wanyun Shao, Ph.D

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