Other geography students recognized, as well
Master’s student and teaching assistant (TA) Steve Cardinal, who is due to complete his thesis and graduate in May 2020, recently took first place in the master’s oral presentation competition during the 2019 American Association of Geographers (AAG) West Lakes Division Conference at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Other geography grad students from Mizzou won awards, as well.
About 130 individuals from 31 universities were in attendance, and Cardinal’s presentation was based on his thesis research he is doing with Professor Grant Elliott. The research utilizes repeat photography at five sites within the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado.
“Repeat photography is the practice of capturing multiple photographs of a specific location at two different times then trying to make inferences as to what changes have taken place,” Cardinal says. “My overall findings were that spruce beetle infestations have taken place dramatically at three out of five of the sites between 2002 and 2019. A lot of tree mortality has taken place because of the infestations that have been plaguing Colorado for the past decade or so.”
Cardinal’s work was a “repeat” off Elliott’s photography work, which the geography professor started in 2002 as part of his master’s thesis. Cardinal visited five of his sites in summer 2019 and took identical photos as Elliott.