Jack Humiston ’15 and David Chambers ’14 measure clearings in the cloud forest using a GPS unit and a laser range finder. This allows them to calculate areas of deforestation. The students worked on this project with 2011 graduate Ian Pope.
Dawn Bowen, professor of geography, supervised an undergraduate research trip to Guatemala over spring break with University of Mary Washington students.
Jack Humiston ’15 and David Chambers ’14 researched a project titled “Mapping Deforestation in the Sierra Yalijux Mountains of the Alta Verapaz, Guatemala” over a nine-day period.
“This experience is incredibly important because students actually apply the concepts/techniques that they learn in the classroom to a real world setting. In this case, the students are also helping to produce maps for Community Cloud Forest Conservation, the local NGO that I work with, to show landowners the threats to their property, the consequences of not protecting land, and promoting a preservation plan with the local community,” said Bowen. “These young men can now state that they have done field work and used the data that they collected to produce maps.”