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PhD with Specialization in: Physical Geography & Environmental Systems

The Department of Geography offers graduate work at the Ph.D. level for students interested in taking courses and conducting research in Physical Geography and Environmental Systems (PhyGES).

PhyGES PhD Program

The PhyGES graduate program focuses on advanced courses and research in:

  • Biogeography (forest, conservation and landscape ecology, land cover change),
  • Soils (morphology, pedomorphology, agriculture, drainage, salinization, pollution problems, and land development, erosion),
  • Geomorphology (river channel forms and processes, drainage basin morphometry, and hillslope hydraulic processes), and
  • Environmental Assessment (ecohydrology, earth system science, landscape modeling and assessment with GIS and remote sensing).

PhyGES Research and Teaching Facilities

The departmental facilities include four laboratories for coursework and research in:

The Biogeography Laboratory contains equipment to support tree-ring and fossil pollen analyses of forest and landscape ecology. The equipment for fossil pollen analysis includes a Livingstone piston corer, a mini-Glew surface sampler, and a Nikon Labophot microscope. The equipment for tree-ring analyses includes increment borers from 12" to 40" in length, and a Velmex-based tree-ring measurement system.

The department possesses a large Geomorphology Laboratory designed to study the hydraulics and erosion mechanics of overland flow. The laboratory contains two flumes and a rainfall simulator. This facility is intended primarily for graduate student and faculty research.

In addition, the department just reopened a new research laboratory for Landscape-based Environmental System Analysis & Modeling (LESAM). The former soils laboratory allows students to conduct field research including various soil testing experiments in the field and in the lab. The new facilities include an experimental computational platform and database that integrates environmental models with GIS to analyze and model landscape processes.

The Geographic Information and Analysis Lab (GIAL) is a multipurpose computing facility shared by the Department of Geography and the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA). The laboratory supports the teaching and research needs of student and faculty with site licenses of various GIS, remote sensing and environmental modeling software packages, such as ArcGIS, ArcView, ERDAS, ILWIS, and PCRaster. In addition there are limited number of computers with environmental software for natural resources management and conservation, assessment of processes in earth systems, landscape ecology, soils, geomorphology, and hydrology.

Further field measurement equipment includes a sophisticated electromagnetic current meter, four Price Type AA and Pygmy current meters, a stage recorder, four bed load and suspended sediment samplers, a turbidity meter, and a prefab bridge. In addition, there are a variety of surveying instruments, such as theodolites, transits, automatic levels, and Abney levels.

PhyGES graduate course requirements

The PhyGES faculty offers (in addition to the undergraduate courses) a range of graduate courses in soils, geomorphology, biogeography and environmental assessment (course requirements and options are listed below). Students who wish to apply for the graduate PhyGES program are required to consult initially with one of the PhyGES advisors given below as soon as the decision is made to map out the plan of study and research.

While the detailed course sequence will be worked out for each graduate student, usually nine to twelve credits are taken during the first term and are selected from the following courses

Required PhyGES Core Courses

____ GEO 500 Introduction to Graduate Geography (3)
____ GEO 501 Research Design (1)
____ GEO 505 Univariate Statistics in Geography (4)

Elective PhyGES Courses

 

____ GEO 515 Conservation Biogeography
____ GEO 544 Environmental Change
____ GEO 547 Advanced Earth Systems Science
____ GEO 549 Fluvial Geomorphology 
____ GEO 561 Ecohydrology 
____ GEO 570 Integrated Watershed Management
____ GEO 575 Landscape Modeling with GIS

Other Geography Electives

____ GEO 506 Geographic Information Systems
____ GEO 553 Remote Sensing
____ GEO 559 GIS & Environmental Modeling
____ GEO 591 Intro to GIScience
____ GEO 594 Geographic Information and Society
____ GEO 595 Database Design for GIS
____ GEO 597 Geostatistics
____ GEO 605 Spatial Statistics
____ GEO 655 Advanced Topics in GIS

 

Admission Requirements

PhysGES Faculty and Main Specialties

Sean Bennett, Professor: Sediment transport and gully erosion, seanb@buffalo.edu

Chris Larsen, Associate Professor: Landscape ecology/vegetation dynamics, larsen@buffalo.edu

Scott Mackay, Associate Professor: Ecohydrology and land surface hydrology, dsmackay@buffalo.edu

Chris Renschler, Associate Professor: GIScience & environmental modeling, rensch@buffalo.edu


Department of Geography University at Buffalo