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On Tuesday, October 18th, 2016 The UCSB brown-bag forum on spatial thinking presents The informative bug: A case study defining areas of endemism Katja Seltmann Director, Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration University of California, Santa Barbara 12:00 p.m. Tuesday, October 18, 2016 | 3512 Phelps Hall (map)   Abstract. It is thought to be difficult to study insects. Identification is not trivial and the majority of them are smaller than comfortably seen without assistance from a good microscope. In this talk, I hope to demonstrate that large amounts of highly interesting data about insects, and where they live, is already available through ongoing efforts to digitally capture specimen data found in natural history collections. Many of these specimens have high quality locality data, although some challenges exist to making these ready for research. In a recent paper, my co-authors and I used about 1,399 species of insects to define the areas of endemism (i.e. areas defined by the congruent distribution of species) for North America. We compare our results with a similar study using mammals and find that insects are an excellent group to study in this context because they combine high species diversity, a history of modern taxonomic revisions, comprehensive electronic data capture, and often small distribution ranges. Bio. Katja Seltmann is the Director of the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration (CCBER) at University of California Santa Barbara. CCBER houses a large, regionally focused collections of plants, algae, insects and vertebrates. Her research focus is the field of biodiversity informatics, or data science research of digitized natural history collection records, arthropod diversity in restoration habitats and insect evolution. — The objectives of the ThinkSpatial brown-bag presentations are to exchange ideas about spatial perspectives in research and teaching, to broaden communication and cooperation across disciplines among faculty and graduate students, and to encourage the sharing of tools and concepts. Please contact Werner Kuhn (805-893-8224, kuhn@geog.ucsb.edu) to review and schedule possible discussion topics or presentations that share your disciplinary interest in spatial thinking. Follow spatial@ucsb on Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Google...

Center Director Werner Kuhn is the program co-chair of the 9th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2016), taking place in Annecy, France, July 6th-9th, 2016. FOIS conferences have always had a strong link to spatio-temporal information and cognition and this year’s program includes a high number of papers of interest to our...

spatial@ucsb.local2016 Spatial Information for Human Health Thursday, June 2, 2016 Corwin Pavilion Agenda Speakers Posters   In addition to a poster exhibit, the event featured the Channel Islands Regional GIS (CIRGIS) presentation of their 2016 high-resolution LiDAR elevation data program and the 2015 aerial imagery acquisition project. The Plenary Session, featured presentations by David Kerr (Sansum Diabetes Center) and Aaron Blackwell (UCSB, Dept.of Anthropology), moderated by Susan Cassels (UCSB, Dept. of Geography). Presenters discussed their research and gave their perspectives on how spatial information technologies can be applied to the study and enhancement of human health. While the theme is in regard to human health, posters and demos that illustrate the application of spatial thinking on any topic related to spatial studies were presented in the Poster Exhibit. Thirty-six posters and two demos were presented to a diverse audience from the private sector and academic communities. Speakers Aaron Blackwell, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara Market Integration and the Health of Amazonian Amerindians Many Amazonian peoples are currently undergoing transitions from subsistence to market based economies. Along with these changes in subsistence, come changes in diet, disease, and sociality. Here, I discuss work with two Amazonian populations, the Shuar of Ecuador and the Tsimane of Bolivia. Both have lived traditionally through small scale horticulture, hunting, fishing, and gathering, and both groups have seen substantial changes in market integration over the past decade. However, these changes have not been distributed uniformly in space. Often, those living closer to or with greater access to towns and roads experience market integration more quickly, while those living more remotely continue traditional livelihoods. We use this spatial distribution as a proxy for changes through time, to examine how market integration impacts children’s growth, body composition, disease transmission, acculturation, fertility, and other health outcomes. Bio: Aaron Blackwell is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a human biologist and behavioral ecologist whose research examines health and life history in small scale Amazonian societies. His research examines how immune function develops in populations exposed to high levels of pathogens and how early life experiences shape health later in life in both small scale and industrialized populations. His research incorporates both field and laboratory work to examine biological outcomes. Blackwell’s other interests include examining how market integration affects health and development, senescence and aging, and ecological effects on parental investment and growth. David Kerr, M.D. FRCPE Director of Research, Sansum Diabetes Center A Diabetes Digital Village For clinicians, scientists and diabetes industries, the online diabetes #wearenotwaiting community is making it clear that the traditional approach to healthcare is not providing the quality and outcomes that are desired by adults and children...

“The Hidden Geometry of Complex, Network-driven Contagion...