The Department of Geography at UGA has been a leading center of scholarship about earth's landscapes and human relationships to the envoronment. Our inquiries encompass a wide range of topics, from the economies of cities and cultures of built landscapes, to tropical climates and the flow of polar ice sheets. We combine rigorous empirical work with deeply conceptual theoretical analyses, always recognizing the importance of both spatial processes and accumulated histories. We use geographic analyses to illuminate the abiding problems of the modern world.
Geographic Information Science (GIScience) is a vibrant research field of multidisciplinary research and applications.
Work in GIScience seeks to redefine geographic concepts and their use in the context of geographic information systems (GIS). GIScience draws from and overlaps with more specialized research fields such as computer science, statistics, mathematics, and psychology, while it also contributes to further developments in those fields.
GIScience research in the geography department at UGA includes a wide range of work on remote sensing, cartographic visualization, urban and resource modeling, and qualitative GIS. In addition, the faculty employs or develops state of the art GIS, remote sensing, and geocomputation techniques to explore various geospatial systems in order to advance our understanding of the real-world complexities.
The department has superb computing facilities for GIScience research and instruction. It also hosts the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping which undertakes interdisciplinary research projects. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of GIScience, the department has strong collaborative ties across and beyond campus. The university is a long-standing member of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS).
