Biology

Faculty and students in WKU’s Department of Geography and Geology have been busy in recent months preparing and submitting manuscripts to national and international journals that report on several research initiatives.

Dr. Nahid Gani

• Dr. Nahid Gani, the department’s newest Assistant Professor of Geology, has an article in the December issue of Sedimentology co-authored with several colleagues in Pakistan and England titled “Controls on large-scale patterns of fluvial sandbody distribution in alluvial to coastal plain strata: Upper Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation, Wasatch Plateau, Central Utah, USA.” Their data-driven analysis indicates that alluvial to coastal plain stratigraphic architecture reflects a combination of various allogenic controls and autogenic behaviors.
• Dr. Xingang Fan, Assistant Professor of Geography (Climate Science), has published research in the latest issue of Journal of Tropical Meteorologywith colleagues from China titled “A Comparative Study of Two Land Surface Schemes in a WRF Model over Eastern China.” The purpose of this study is to reveal the effects of land-surface changes on regional climate modeling in China.

   

  

  Medellin, Colombia, from the slopes of the Andes mountains.

• Dr. David Keeling, University Distinguished Professor of Geography, with colleagues Dr. Holli Drummond, Associate Professor of Sociology, and Dr. John Dizgun, Assistant Director of the Kentucky Institute for International Studies (KIIS) and Adjunct Professor in Geography, published an article in the December issue of FOCUS on Geography detailing their research in Medellín, Colombia. Dr. Drummond and Dr. Dizgun worked with a local community organization, Sal y Luz, to conduct a detailed youth survey in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the city, while Dr. Keeling examined the new cable car system that has enhanced connectivity to the people who live up the southwestern slopes of the Andes mountains.
• Dr. Chris Groves, University Distinguished Professor of Geoscience and Director of the Hoffman Institute, published research with Chinese collaborators in the journal Acta Geologica Sinica titled “Carbon Fluxes and Sinks: the Consumption of Atmospheric and Soil CO2 by Carbonate Rock Dissolution.” The uptake of atmospheric/soil CO2 by carbonate rock dissolution plays an important role in the global carbon cycle, being one of the most important sinks, and Dr. Groves and his team continue to expand their research on this critical issue.
• Dr. Rezaul Mahmood, Professor of Geography (Climate Science) and Associate Director of the Kentucky Climate Center, published “Seasonal Variation in heat fluxes, predicted emissions of malodorants, and wastewater quality of an anaerobic swine waste lagoon” in the journal Water, Air, and Soil Pollution with several colleagues from the United States and Mexico. Their research found that, although improvements in the concentrations of wastewater malodorants may be due to catabolism by lagoon bacteria, evaporative losses that occurred as the lagoon warmed may also play a strong role.
• Dr. Jun Yan, Associate Professor of Geography (GIS), published an article titled “Bicarbonate Daily Variations in a Karst River: the Carbon Sink Effect of Subaquatic Vegetation Photosynthesis” in the August issue of Acta Geologica Sinica with colleagues from China. They found that HCO–3 entering the river from karst underground streams was either consumed by plants or trapped in the authigenic calcite, thus constituting a natural sink of carbon for the Guancun, China, karst system.

Contact: David Keeling, (270) 745-4555.