UMD- Department of Geographical Sciences-Students & Alumni

Salmon, caribou, wild berries and Denali now grace the walls of Fairbanks City Hall in Alaska. 🐟🏔️

Through the NSF-funded ARCA project, GEOG Associate Research Professor Vera Kuklina, Alaska Native artists, Elders, community members co-created murals that reflect Indigenous knowledge, community storytelling and Arctic climate resilience.

Learn more:

Associate Research Professor Vera Kuklina Contributes to Fairbanks Biocultural Heritage Mural Initiative Associate Research Professor Vera Kuklina Contributes to Fairbanks Biocultural Heritage Mural Initiative Breadcrumb Home Featured Content Associate Research Professor Vera Kuklina Contributes To Fairbanks Biocultural Heritage Mural Initiative NSF-funded ARCA project brings Indigenous knowledge and c...

Congratulations to our PhD candidates who earned MPower grants!

Wen Qi will study stroke care access across the US, while Adebowale Adebayo will develop GeoAI tools for agricultural drought monitoring in East Africa. 🌎🛰️

Two Doctoral Candidates Awarded MPower Grants Two Doctoral Candidates Awarded MPower Grants Breadcrumb Home Featured Content Two Doctoral Candidates Awarded MPower Grants MPower funding will support research on stroke care access in the United States and agricultural drought monitoring in East Africa. Doctoral candidates Wen Qi and Adebowale Ad...

A satellite dish once helped Sergii Skakun look out at the world from his apartment in Kyiv.

Decades later, satellites help him look back toward Ukraine, using AI and remote sensing to support farmers, government statistics agencies and recovery efforts during war.

🔗 https://go.umd.edu/2bwe

In a new post for European Geosciences Union (EGU) Cryospheric Sciences Blog, Ph.D. student Monojit Saha explores a persistent challenge in Arctic remote sensing: the difficulty of measuring sea ice conditions near coastlines. 🧊

The Arctic’s Blind Spot: Why Satellites Struggle Where Ice Meets the Coast The first time I stood on sea ice, I could not tell which direction the coast was. A community member named Bryan could. That gap in situational awareness, between what a trained remote sensing scientist could read from the landscape and what a local hunter understood instinctively, turned out to mi...

Learn a little bit about John Jasen, GEOG’s director of IT. Before joining UMD, he helped secure one of NASA’s largest climate supercomputing environments.

Today, he brings that expertise to supporting research and technology across the department while spending his free time rewilding his Maryland yard. 🌱💻

Read more: https://geog.umd.edu/profile-showcase/john-jasen-director-it

Congratulations to GEOG alum Val Bonhomme (B.S. ’00) on receiving the 2026 Dean’s Outstanding Employee Award 👏👏👏

Through her work with UMD’s Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences (MEES) Graduate Program, she supports admissions, recruitment + student success.

Valerie Bonhomme goes above and beyond to ensure that Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences and Atmospheric and Oceanic Science graduate admissions and recruitment run smoothly. This year, she received the Dean's Outstanding Employee Award!

For Val, the award affirmed for her that returning to her alma mater as an employee—something she’d dreamed of since graduating in 2000—was the right career move.

“As a Terp alumna, Val represents the very best of our university—not only through competence, but through kindness, grace and unwavering positivity,” said Val's supervisor, Tamara Hendershot.

A new UMD Global Land Analysis and Discovery team study shows that nearly 1/3 of global tree cover loss in 2018 led to permanent forest conversion.

Using high-resolution satellite imagery, researchers identified where forests are disappearing and where they may recover. 🌎🌳

UMD Study: While Some Forest Losses Recover, Others Permanently Lost UMD Study: While Some Forest Losses Recover, Others Permanently Lost Breadcrumb Home Featured Content UMD Study: While Some Forest Losses Recover, Others Permanently Lost UMD’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) Lab uses high-resolution satellite data to quantify global forest change in unp...

Could rising seas make mangroves less effective at storing carbon? 🌊

A new study co-authored by Assistant Professor Danghan Xie finds that while some mangrove areas may store more carbon as sea levels rise, entire forests could lose carbon as habitat shrinks and soils erode.

Read more:

Rising Seas Could ‘Drown’ Mangroves, Release Carbon Rising Seas Could ‘Drown’ Mangroves, Release Carbon Breadcrumb Home Featured Content Rising Seas Could ‘Drown’ Mangroves, Release Carbon Assistant Professor Danghan Xie co-authored a study showing that mangroves could store less carbon—and even begin releasing it—as sea levels rise. A ne...

🌲🛰️ Congrats to GEOG Associate Research Professor Adrián Pascual on receiving the 2026 BSOS Early Career Impact Award!

Read how his remote sensing & LiDAR research advances sustainable forest management and inspires the next generation of environmental scientists ⤵️

Associate Research Professor Adrián Pascual Receives BSOS Early Career Impact Award Associate Research Professor Adrián Pascual Receives BSOS Early Career Impact Award Breadcrumb Home Featured Content Associate Research Professor Adrián Pascual Receives BSOS Early Career Impact Award Pascual is advancing sustainable forest management through innovative remote sensing research and...