PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

Contemporary physical geography draws on a long-standing earth science tradition as well as current approaches in the environmental sciences to produce knowledge about natural systems, especially as they relate to society. In recent decades, physical geography has come to organize itself in terms of systems and processes, both natural and human-caused, which are involved in environmental change at global, regional and local scales. Physical geographers embrace a variety of quantitative methods in their work, including dynamic modeling, statistical approaches, geographic information science, remote sensing tools and good old-fashioned field work. Increasingly, physical geography has come to play a pivotal role in many kinds of interdisciplinary environmental research projects that integrate natural and social science perspectives within and outside the discipline. Furthermore, while the traditional subfields of geomorphology, climatology and biogeography are still present, many leading scholars now work in a mix of these areas and in overlapping fields such as human-environment geography, environmental planning and policy.

Current research areas in physical geography at the University of Arizona include:

• Climate variability and change
• Landscape dynamics and biogeography
• Fire ecology
• Remote sensing of environmental change