The Department of Geography has been making distinctive, fundamental contributions to understandings of how changing societal and environmental patterns and processes are shaping the unprecedented perils and promises facing the world. Reflecting the productivity of our research on human-environment interactions, our faculty and students are actively publishing their work on wide-ranging topics, including environmental changes on long time scales, the dynamics of river-scapes and related fluvial geomorphic processes, spatial modeling, racial/ethno-cultural dynamics, environmental justice and vulnerability, the politics of social and economic development, and so on.
Read a selection of the department’s publications
Christian, J.E., Robel, A.A., Catania, G., Stearns, L., Miller, L.E. and Munevar Garcia, S. (2026)
Grounding-zone wedge formation and effects on ice-stream retreat and stability
Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 131, e2025JF008509
Fish, C.S., Thatcher, J.E. and Retchless, D.P. (2026)
Cartography: The translational science of maps and mapping
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 116, 1453–1467
Franklin, R.S., Delmelle, E.C., Andris, C., Cheng, T., Dodge, S., Franklin, J., Heppenstall, A., Kwan, M.-P., Li, W., McLafferty, S., Miller, J.A., Munroe, D.K., Nelson, T., Öner, Ö., Pumain, D., Stewart, K., Tong, D. and Wentz, E.A. (2023)
Making space in geographical analysis
Geographical Analysis, 55, 325–341
Gavin, D.G., Rocchio, F.J., Hribljan, J.A., Heckman, K.A., Herring, E.M., Shaw, J.R. and Cooper, D.J. (2026)
Holocene peat accumulation rate, hiatus events, and hummock development affected by climate, tephra deposition, and geomorphic setting
Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 50, 370–394
Johnson, L. (2026)
Exit climate, stage right? Performance, practice, and methods for what becomes of climate finance
Environ Plan A, 58, 462–466
Kuentz, L., Ryan, J.C. and Carey, M. (2025)
The slow violence of waste flowing through the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Polar Geography, 48, 217–236
Levenson, E.S. and Fonstad, M.A. (2022)
Characterizing coarse sediment grain size variability along the upper Sandy River, Oregon, via UAV remote sensing
Geomorphology, 417, 108447
Lucash, M.S., Lamping, J.E., Nowell, B., Scheller, R.M., Banerjee, T., Buettner, W.C., Fawcett, J.E., Hurteau, M.D., Parks, S.A., Rancher, W., Robbins, Z.J., Denis, L.St., Stasiewicz, A.M., Urza, A.K. and Weiss, S.A. (2026)
Roadmap for the future of extreme wildfire events
Fire Ecology
Pulido, L., Ford, S. and Leavitt, M. (2025)
Paving over the past: Oregon historical markers, white innocence, and manifest destiny
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 115, 1907–1925
Su, X. (2026)
Counterhegemony at work: the Belt and Road Initiative and the restructuring of international political economy
Review of International Political Economy, 33, 885–918
Read the latest research from our department
An 1867 Washington deluge shows the region’s potential for flooding
An 1867 flood in western Washington surpassed anything that the region has seen in the last century, new University of Oregon research shows, offering a foreboding look at what storms fueled by climate change could now produce.
In that long-ago flood, an atmospheric river combined with snowmelt to deliver record amounts of precipitation over a three-day period. The event provides a pre-industrialization benchmark for what flooding in Washington’s modern urban corridors could now look like, the researchers report Dec. 19 in the journal PLOS Climate.
Preserving our State’s Forests for Generations to Come
The Elliot State Research Forest is home to 93,000 acres of dense forest just north of Coos Bay, Oregon, and is a source of rich biodiversity, providing trees and streams that house endangered species and timber production to support employment in surrounding rural areas. Preserving this rich forest is a priority for the state.
Thanks to a $96,155 grant from the Oregon Department State Lands, University of Oregon professors of Geography Melissa Lucash and Co-Principal Investigator Neil Williams, will be collaborating with Oregon State University to support the development of a forest management plan for the Elliot State Forest.