Dr. Tim Stojanovic will be coming to the Department of Geography at Hunter College, CUNY next week to give a talk entitled: “Analysing Change in the Human Development of the World’s Oceans”. The talk will be held on June 5th, 2013 at 3:00 p.m. in the Hunter North building, room 1004. The talk is hosted by the Department of Geography, and the poster is available here.
Abstract
The World’s oceans are a frontline for sustainability, given the expansion of human activity in coasts and seas, changes brought about by human forcing factors, and changes in the global ocean-atmosphere system. Making an assessment of the extent and significance of change is a challenge for science, given the relative paucity of data and the multiple variables involved. This paper reports on a study to empirically tests notions of ‘industrialisation’ and ‘colonisation’ in the oceans for the first time. The approach draws on a key global spatial dataset developed by Halpern et al (2008). The methods include the combined use of Raster and R to overcome methodological challenges in analysing large spatial datasets which map the footprint of human activity in the world’s oceans. The findings show that human activity in the oceans has increased by multiple factors in the most recent long term wave of economic development and show distinct spatial patterns of development. Further refinement of this assessment is required and is likely to be driven by a recently established UN Global Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment.
Speaker bio
Dr. Tim Stojanovic is a Lecturer (i.e. Associate Professor) in Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews, UK. He has a PhD and BSc in Marine Geography from Cardiff University, UK. Dr Stojanovic’s research interests relate to the sustainability of oceans and coasts, including work with interdisciplinary research teams in issues such as climate adaptation and ecosystem services, and social science research on effective governance.
If you would like to learn more about the talk, the venue, or Dr Stojanovic’s work, please contact me for further details.
