Geography and Planning

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released its Sixth Assessment Report, described as the most up-to-date assessment of the global climate system and climate change. The news is not good. According to Dr. Andrei Lapenas, the projections and data outlined in the report echo climate predictions made in the early 70’s by a Soviet climatologist named Mikhail Budyko. Dr. Lapenas is a climate scientist and Professor of Geography and Planning at the University at Albany. He was an author of the first IPCC report in 1990, and was also a mentee of Mikhail Budyko.

Congratulations to Geography and Planning students Jesse McCaughey, Ben Turin, Jonathan Kappel and Falon Treis for winning these outstanding 2021 awards: American Planning Association (APA) Outstanding Planning Student Award, Paul D. Marr Memorial Award for Excellence in Planning, David Mark Prize in Geography: Graduate award, and MSGIS student’s NISS Award.

United States zoning laws are the legacy of racism, according to participants in the five-day Planning for Racial Justice Conference that begins Feb. 23.

Geography and Planning graduate student Christopher Plummer is spotlighted in eSpatially New York in the Geospatial Student Spotlight section. Chris is pursuing his masters in Biodiversity, Conservation, and Policy. His research focus is using drones to assess white-tailed deer abundance and habitat preference in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve. Read the article.

The Department of Geography and Planning would like to welcome new full time lecturer Jared R. Enriquez this fall.  Jared begins his appointment in the Department of Geography and Planning following a year as Consortium Fellow for Faculty Diversity at St. John’s University in MN. Prior to his doctoral studies in City and Regional Planning at Cornell, Jared received a B.A. in Architecture from Yale College and Master’s in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan.