MSU Geography Faculty Contribute to Book about Landscape Dynamics Across Central Asia

May 5, 2020 - Diane Huhn

Important research about the drylands of the greater Central Asia region by several professors in the Michigan State University Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences has recently been featured in a book published by Springer Nature. The volume is edited by the department’s own Drs. Jiquan Chen and Geoffrey Henebry, in conjunction with Garik Gutman, Program Manager for the NASA Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program, and Martin Kappas, University Professor of Geography and the head of the Cartography, GIS and Remote Sensing Section of the Georg-August University of Göttingen, Landscape Dynamics of Drylands across Greater Central Asia: People, Societies and Ecosystems provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the dramatic land changes and subsequent environmental consequences triggered by the changing climate, the collapse of socialist governance, and abrupt changes in the economies and land management across various parts of northern Eurasia, including the former republics of Soviet Central Asia, Mongolia, and northern drylands of China.

The volume represents an international effort by a team of scientists from the U.S., Europe, and Central Asia. It features a compilation of studies, including the research of several MSU faculty members and others on the interactions of changes in land cover, land use, and climate with people, societies, and ecosystems in drylands. Topics include water resources, effects of institutional changes on urban centers and agriculture, landscape dynamics, and the primary drivers of socioeconomic-environmental changes in dryland environments.

In addition to the work of Chen and Henebry, both full professors in the department and members of the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations at MSU, the volume features research by Profs. Peilei Fan, Jiaguo Qi, Nathan Moore, and Steven Pueppke, as well as Drs.  Zutao Ouyang and Ameen Kadhim. Additional authors include former MSU faculty Drs. Joseph Messina and Ranjeet John, former staff members Connor Crank and Shiqi Tao, as well as several long-term collaborators with MSU from Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2yCwGKW.