Sunday, November 20, 2011

Geography graduate student was panelist for a discussion on Moroccan-American relations and islamophobia




Graduate Student, M. Anwar Sounny-Slitine, served as a panelist for a screening and discussion of the documentary Crossing Borders at the Texas Union.  The event was sponsored by the International office of The University of Texas at Austin which featured the seventy minute documentary that followed four Moroccan and four American university students as they travel together through Morocco.  The film explored the group’s frank discussions, in which the students confront the complex implications of the supposed "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West.  After the screening of the film, Sounny-Slitine and other UT affiliated students, faculty, and staff had a discussion about this complex issue of international relations and islamophobia.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Plaid Avengers Sweep Trivia Title!

It's not all fun and games for Texas Geography Grads. In a surprising victory this week, the Plaid Avengers won first place at the McCombs Business School International Week Trivia Night, narrowly beating out Talk Nerdy To Me by two points. The 12 teams of five that competed focused on such topics as geography, food, country flags, potpourri, and famous faces. The Avengers (pictured at right) started off slow, but picked up momentum as the event drew on, seizing the title with an almost unheard of 88 points. Said Team Captain, Brian Mills upon victory: "It was all possible worlds out there... it could really have been anybody's game. This was just one win for us. This game's just a matter of scale..."

Geography Students Take to the Field

In an attempt to break out of the classroom, Geography students with Dr. Edgardo Latrubesse's paired up with the Austin Water Utility's Center for Environmental Research (CER) this Saturday to study at the Colorado River at Hornsby Bend. After a brief overview of the cultural and political history of the Colorado River bottomlands, students marched to the field, learning how this unique river system has adapted in the face of human pressure. Once lined with dense forests of sycamore and maple, Kevin Anderson of CER explained to students how this bottomland has began to make the transition back to forest after the vegetation was stripped bare by settlers and cattle. Anderson, who received a PhD in Geography from Texas, instructed students in both contemporary river morphology and practical water testing through the collection of benthic macroinvertabrates (also known as bugs).
Willing students (above) took to the river with nets and wash tubs to collect a sampling of bugs that would indicate river health. With the help of Elizabeth Welsh from Austin Youth River Watch (also a UT Geographer!) students categorized critters from damselflies and caddisflies to freshwater shrimp, to determine that even in one of Texas' worst drought ever, the Colorado is still a flourishing healthy river.

The three and a half mile Hornsby Bend, which is owned by the City of Austin, is also the home of Austin's Biosolids Management Plant, which processes two-thirds of the city's solid waste. From tap to toilet, Anderson explained how the city disposes of waste water and how what we see as sewage can be sterilized and recycled into compost rather than being dumped in landfills. Even urban water systems have a unique ecology that must be carefully managed.

The take-home message: even urban areas have unique ecologies that are constantly changing and adapting to climatic and human pressures. All one needs to do is take a close look around to see that not all is in fact lost.