From North Texas’ Cross Timbers to the White Sands of Las Cruces, New Mexico

Students and faculty from the UNT Department of Geography made a return trip to the Annual Meeting of the Southwest Division of the Association of American Geographers (SWAAG) held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, from 25-27 October 2012.

Led by Dr. Matthew Fry, undergraduate and graduate students drove two UNT vans (Photo 1) clear across Texas (Photo 2). As part of GEOG 5160: Foundations of Geographic Thought, graduate students prepared a field guide and organized a series of planned stops along the way.

The first night, the group camped at Monahans Sandhills State Park (Photo 3) and spent the second day visiting sites en route to Las Cruces. Their first stop was 'Oil, Farming, Cattle Country' in Mentone, Loving County - the most sparsely populated county in Texas (Photo 4). Outside of town, they also visited the once-mighty, now much-diminished, Pecos River.

After a few stops to look for fossils at road cuts, the group arrived at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park visitor's center where they discussed altitudinal zones and biogeography below the highest summit in Texas, Guadalupe Peak (2,667 m) (Photo 5).

The final stop of the pre-conference trip was west of the park at the Salt Flats (Photos 6 and 7), where they ate lunch at the landmark, 83-year old restaurant Salt Flat Café (Photo 8).

At the conference, the group caught up with the rest of the UNT crowd. Several undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty members presented their research at the meeting. Current SWAAG secretary, Dr. Murray Rice, also organized a session where students could learn about geography graduate programs in the region.

After an exciting few days in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the crew navigated its way back to the Guadalupe Mountains, where they stopped and hiked through the fall colors at McKittrick Canyon (Photo 9-10) before making it back to Denton.

Undergraduate Students

Marcio DaSilva (UNT). Finding Farmland in an Urban Neighborhood: A GIS Approach (Poster).

Tabitha Kao (UNT), George F. Maxey (Speaker) (UNT). Golden-Cheeked Warbler Population Estimation to Determine conservation Methodology in Texas (Paper).

Kate Lester (UNT) and Joseph Whitney (UNT). Evaluating Bicycle Rack Placement in Downtown Denton, Texas (Poster).

Graduate Students

Alicia Gray (UNT). Linking Geographic Information Systems and Cost Benefit Analysis to Aid Land Management Decisions Related to Eco-Labeled Viticulture (Poster).

Kereen T. Griffith (UNT), Alexandra Ponette-González (UNT), Lisa M. Curran (Stanford University). Spatio-Temporal Variability in Atmospheric Wet Deposition across Borneo: Biomass Burning, ENSO, and Urbanization (Poster).

Faculty

Matthew Fry (UNT). Cement: Dependency, Global CO2 Emissions, and Reorientation (Paper).

Kent McGregor (UNT). Comparison of the Causes of the 1980 and 2011 Heat Waves in the Southern Plains (Poster).

George F. Maxey (UNT), Madeline Hackenberg (UNT). Prius Vs. Honda Fit: In Respect to Carbon Footprint (Poster).