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THIS ISSUE Mapping Ground Zero—p. 1 Chair’s Column—– p.2 Editor’s Column—–p. 2 Technical Column—p. 2 Hunter Geographers Help NYC OEM With "Ground Zero" Re-covery—p. 5 G e o g r a p h y A w a r e n e s s Week—see insert USACE-CUNY internship pro-gram—p. 6 Where are they now?—p. 7 Position notices—p. 7 GeoClub goes to the Grand Canyon—p. 8 USA Today Competition—p. 10 Professor Profile: Dr. Haydee Salmun—p. 11 NYC Walking Tours—p. 12 MSD—AAG meeting—p. 12

H U N T E R C O L L E G E D e p a r t m e n t o f G e o g r a p h y

Mapping Ground Zero By Maddalena Romano Last spring, Hunter College's Center for the Analysis and Re-search of Spatial Information, or CARSI, introduced the NY-CMap, an ortho-rectified photograph of the five boroughs of New York City accurate to within 18 inches. On September 11, the geographers at CARSI used this map to aid in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center (WTC) attack site, now commonly re-ferred to as “Ground Zero”. Jeff Bliss, a research associate at the CARSI Lab, gave a timeline of the development, and ex-plained how the visual spectrum, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), and thermal imagery were brought into play to detect areas of possible collapse. September 11—Researchers began at 7 pm on the day of the at-tack, assisting the New York City Office of Emergency Manage-ment (OEM) by printing 54” by 70” cartographic maps from the

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Volume 15, number 1, October 2001

Above: LIDAR image of WTC after the attack, with superimposed planemet-rics (outlines) of where the buildings once stood. Numbers indicate locations.

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Chair’s Column By Charles Heatwole A warm welcome to the 2001-2002 academic year to all members of the Geography family. Special greetings to our new faculty members, Haydee Salmun and Ropal Oza (joint with Women’s Studies), new graduate stu-dents, and newly declared majors. Chair’s columns have a his-tory of being almost insuffera-bly upbeat, but I think you will understand if this one is a bit subdued, even by my stan-dards. The world has changed since the first day of class. Lots of things that mat-tered to me on September 10th don’t seem very impor-tant now, while basic things I took for granted have gained in value. Things like friends and family and neighbors and attachment to place. I could go on about this but I suspect just about all of you feel the same. The first order of business is to say “Thank you!” to Sara McLafferty for serving as Chair last year and for being a terrific colleague for . . . what? 15 years? It seems like just yesterday when she walked in the door. As most of you know, Sara and family left NYC last summer for the relative tranquility of the Corn Belt. But Sara assures me she is and always will be a

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Editor’s Column By Maddalena Romano Fall 2001 marks the start of my appointment as editor of GeoNews. I want to thank Anthony Grande, the Assis-tant to Chair of the Geogra-phy Department and this newsletter’s faculty advisor, for the opportunity. This issue focuses on the World Trade Center disaster, and particularly with the arti-cle Mapping New York, we will see how Hunter College’s CARSI, located in the Geog-raphy Department is aiding in the rescue efforts. As with any change in admini-stration, there are a few

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Editor: Maddalena Romano Faculty Advisor: Anthony F. Grande All submissions are welcome. Alumni are invited to keep us apprised of their activities. Send all submissions and correspondence to: GeoNews Department of Geography Hunter College City University of New York 695 Park Avenue, 10th Fl New York, NY 1002, USA Phone: 212.772.5265 E-mail GeoNews: news@geo.hunter.cuny.edu E-mail Editor: mromano@geo.hunter.cuny.edu

Technical Column By Rita Noorzad This semester there have been quite a few changes on the technical side of the de-partment. We have new computers, new web pages and new departmental com-puting policies. First of all, the department has hired a new NT systems administrator this past sum-mer: Pete Bartling. He will be working full-time as our win-dows systems administrator. Tom Walter, our UNIX/Linux systems administrator, is now working half-time for the Ge-ography department and half-time for the Computer Sci-ence Department. With the addition of our new staff member, we now have a new server and a few new PC’s in the department. The new PC’s are Dell Precision 330 Workstations. They have a 1.7 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 Processor and 512MB of RAM; one has a 20GB hard drive and the other has a 70GB hard drive. As with every other semester we have a new flavor of virus to look out for. The Nimda vi-rus was detected in mid Sep-tember and had spread around the world. Nimda is a complex virus with a mass mailing worm component that spreads itself in attachments named README.EXE. It af-

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(Mapping Ground Zero, Continued from page 1)

NYCMap database. Specifi-cally, these maps contained building “footprints” (outlines of buildings, street center-lines, curb lines, etc.) This is a planimetric or blue-print su-perimposed over the original ortho-rectified photograph of the area. Once completed, these maps were delivered to bunkers at the temporary command center at the policy academy. September 13—Daily Fly-overs of the WTC site took aerial photographs of the de-bris surface, yet in printing out these new ortho-rectified images, a good portion of the images were smoke-compromised, and thus it was difficult to get a good idea of what the site looked like. It was at this time that LIDAR was suggested as a way to penetrate the smoke. September 15—The first LI-DAR dataset is produced from the EarthData Interna-tional flyovers. LIDAR meas-ures the time it takes for a la-ser pulse to travel to the ground and back. Not only can LIDAR penetrate the smoke, but global positioning instruments on the plane give the locations coordinates and elevations, producing 3-dimensional dataset accurate to within six inches. A grid of about 100,000 points spaced about a yard apart is pro-duced, and then analyzed by CARSI. Colors were used Since September 15, LIDAR

Above: Aerial photograph of Ground Zero. Notice the noise created by the level of smoke, and the reduction in visibility. Below: Cut-away profile of the debris surface as seen by LIDAR. The tall triangular “building” is actually not a building at all—the LIDAR pass detected and depicted a construction crane.

Above: Aerial photograph of Ground Zero. Notice the noise created by the level of smoke, and the reduction in visibility. Below: Cut-away profile of the debris surface as seen by LIDAR. The tall triangular “building” is actually not a building at all—the LIDAR pass detected and depicted a construction crane. Arrows indicate depths of 50-60 feet below sea level.

passes have been done every other day. September 16—Thermal im-agery measures the progres-sion of underground heat on

about a weekly basis. These images are produced in 8-bit grayscale, with brightness levels of 0-255, 0 being the hottest and expressed as

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by Maria Terrone, Director of PR, Hunter College This was the press release issued by Hunter at www.hunter.cuny.edu/news. New York, September 26, 2001 -- Within hours of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, Hunter College's Center for the Analysis and Research of Spatial Information (CARSI), directed by geography profes-sor Sean Ahearn, was using its technology and expertise to help city officials map the shifting terrain of "ground zero"--and warn firefighters and rescue workers of danger zones. An expert on remote sensing and geographic information systems, particularly for envi-ronmental-monitoring pro-jects, Professor Ahearn is providing direct support to

Alan Liedner, director of city-wide geographic information systems for DoITT and a key official in the recovery effort. Every two days, the Hunter scientists are monitoring changes in elevation at the Ground Zero site to detect any settling or collapsing, which may indicate weakness in the underground infrastruc-ture. The data is derived from laser-based instruments called LIDAR, short for Light Detection and Ranging. "We're also analyzing thermal imagery of the site to deter-mine where fires may still be smoldering, and are monitor-ing the damage of every building and the progress of debris removal," says Profes-sor Ahearn. An essential tool being used is the NYCMap (pronounced "nice map"), a database of highly detailed geographic in-

Hunter Geographers Help NYC Office of Emergency Management With "Ground Zero" Recovery

formation on the entire city, accurate to within 18 inches. This database was created over a period of five years by combining thousands of aerial photographs with information about the city's surface fea-tures (such as buildings, parks, alleys, even curbs) and subsurface features (such as water mains, sewers and gas lines. The map was a joint project of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommu-nications (DoITT), the Depart-ment Environmental of Pro-tection, and Hunter's CARSI lab. Immediately following the dis-aster, Professor Ahearn moved computers containing the NYCMap data to the city's emergency command center, where its physically detailed information on the World Trade Center area is continu-ing to prove invaluable.

(Mapping Ground Zero, Continued from page 3)

pure white. This is known as emissive data, or heat being given off from the structure from underlying hot debris or

molten steel. Smoldering is yet undetectable, because potential fires appear cold un-til they are exposed to air. The first thermal images pro-duced began on September 16, and are repeated on two- day intervals. I would like to thank Jeff Bliss for the wonderful information and imagery he provided for this story, and acknowledge the 16-20 hours days CARSI Lab director Dr. Sean Ahearn has been putting in at the

OEM. I would also like to credit Jeff Bliss, Constandi-nos Theophilides, and Bob Sklar for their tireless analy-sis. For a more in-depth look on CARSI, see the upcoming January special issue.

Left: Thermal Imagery of the pro-gression of molten steel hotspots from September 18 to September 25. Notice how the heat becomes concentrated towards the center from the fringe areas. The thresh-old between color ranges was 1/2 of the energy, so that in a range of 0-255, everything above 127.5 was kept (0-127.5) and everything below was ignored.

See the article by Kenneth Chang in the Sunday New York Times on September 23, 2001, entitled, From 5000 feet up, Mapping Ter-rain for Ground Zero Work-ers, available for sale at http://www.nytimes.com.

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CUNY Launches Joint Summer Internship with USACE By Dr. Jeffrey Osleeb The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) has entered into an agreement with the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide highly qualified students (graduate and advanced undergradu-ate) to assist the CHL in the wide variety of research and development activities. In this manner CUNY students have an opportunity to work on actual projects hands on, gaining valuable research ex-perience and the CHL can meet its temporary staffing needs in an effective way. Students are paid between $8,000 and $12,000 plus travel expenses, for the sum-mer depending on level of ex-perience and amount of time expended. This was the first year of four years for this project. Last summer four graduate stu-dents were accepted into the program: Joshua Caulkins, Geography Department, Hunter College; Peter Fleischer, Earth and Environ-mental Sciences, CUNY Graduate Center; Maddalena Romano, Earth and Environ-mental Sciences, CUNY Graduate Center; and Eric Sorenson, Graduate School of Education, Brooklyn Col-

lege. Students were as-signed to work on projects based on their experience and their interests. Each of the students worked for ap-proximately 2-months as in-terns in Vicksburg, Missis-sippi at the Waterways Ex-perimental Station. The projects the students worked on included:

• A GIS to estimate sand transported and deposited on a spit in Texas.

• A rejoinder to those who claim that beach nourish-ment programs under-taken by the Corps of En-gineers have minimal value.

• Development of a physical model for erosion and channel filling of an inlet on the Washington Coast.

• The potential impacts of a storm surge in the New York Bight under condi-tions of sea level rise.

• A science web page for K-12 grades demonstrating the environmental value of beaches and the need for beach protection.

In at least one case, fieldwork was required and the student went offsite to work on the project. Several of the stu-dents are pursuing ideas from this research experience for master's theses and doctoral dissertations. In some cases the Corps of Engineers plans to continue to fund the stu-dents as they pursue their work.

This is a wonderful opportu-nity for students to learn first hand how to evaluate and solve a wide variety of prob-lems. Any students inter-ested in becoming an intern for next summer should con-tact Professor Jeffrey Osleeb, Earth and Environmental Sci-ences, CUNY Graduate Cen-ter, at josleeb@gc.cuny.edu.

(Editor’s Column, Continued from page 2)

changes. We have a new logo, the newspaper and globe. Another new and regularly occurring feature is the Technical Column by Rita Noorzad, which will highlight the non-geographic yet im-portant computer-related side of the department. In addi-tion, a new piece called Pro-fessor Profiles will become a regular feature as we inter-view the new additions to our faculty, as well as learn about those who are already in our department. My intention is to put out two issues per semester, with a special issue in January and during the summer. This January we will focus more intensely on the CARSI lab, the history of the NYCMap and its creation, as well as applications of both the map and other technologies to the study of geography. I hope you enjoy all of our ef-forts, and I encourage you to contact us with comments, ideas, and submissions.—MR

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Where are they now? Amy Jeu, (Hunter College, BA Geography, 1999). Pictured here straddling the prime meridian in Greenwich, UK during her trip to London in August 2001, Amy is now a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Patrick Florence (Hunter College, MA Geography, 2000). “I am a Digital Cartography Spe-cialist working for the Harvard Map Collection of the Harvard College Library in Cambridge, MA. “I manage electronic geospatial re-sources at the Harvard Map Col-lection and help coordinate GIS at Harvard University. Specifically, I manage a small Geospatial Com-puting Lab, teach introductory GIS and cartography, and create in-structional materials. Part of my job is to develop historical GIS and Internet mapping applications and applications that improve access to geospatial data. In addition, I recommend the acquisition of car-tographic and GIS software, data, and books.”

Position available: The Sanborn Map Company, the oldest and one of the fastest growing map companies in the United States, seeks individuals to work in its Pelham, New York, office. This is an exciting opportunity with tremendous growth potential for a highly professional, organized and enthusiastic individual. Founded in 1866, the Sanborn Map Company specializes in all areas of geographic information systems (GIS) consulting including GIS needs assessment, database design, implementation, data conversion, photogrammetry, surveying, and software development. Their clients range from county and municipal governments to private industry. Based in Pelham, Sanborn has of-fices across the US. Please send your resume by e-mail to tdalexander@sanmap.com or by fax to 914.738.1680. Visit their website at www.sanbornmap.com to learn more about them.

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GeoClub Goes to the Grand Canyon By Rita Noorzad The GeoClub worked hard to organize a trip to the Grand Canyon. With funds raised from the AAG 2000 t-shirt sales, the GeoClub budget, and some out of pocket ex-penses, we were able to send six members on this field ex-cursion. The six members were Luz Mendez, president, Rita Noorzad and Pauline Lo, co-treasurers, Tracy Chan, member, Thresine Chitan-gala, public relations man-ager, and Nora Donnelly, ad-ministrative assistant. Anyone in the Geography Department that was interested was wel-come to join us. We started out our trip in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 12th. After two nights of fun in the city, we left for the Grand Canyon on the 14th. Driving over the Hoover Dam, through historic Route 66,

and through an Indian reser-vation, we began to realize how different New York City was from this part of the US. The first day at the Canyon we hiked all day along the West Rim Drive and arrived at Hermit’s Rest just in time to watch the sunset and to see rapids on the Colorado River. The next day we had hoped to hike down the Bright Angel trail to the bottom of the can-yon and camp overnight, but unfortunately the rangers in the back country office in-formed us of a water pipe leak at Phantom Ranch. So we were eager to camp on the rim that night since we lugged all our camping gear from New York City. Along with the 30-degree tempera-ture at night and our close en-counter with two voracious looking coyotes on the way to the campground, we made a unanimous decision to sleep at our hotel. For the remain-der of the trip we visited an Indian ruin, saw condors from the top of the desert view tower, viewed distant galaxies

Above: Geoclub members (top, l-r) Chitangala, Donnelly; (bottom, l-r) Lo, Chan, Noorzad, Mendez

Above: Hoover Dam

Above: Noorzad beside drawing on the wall of the Desert View Tower, located on East Rim of the Canyon.

through expensive tele-scopes, hiked partially in the canyon, went on a geology walk and a fossil walk, and of course stopped at every view point along the way for a pic-ture. While sitting on the edge of the Coconino Pla-teau, I considered myself very lucky to see one of the Earth’s most spectacular creations. I hope to go back there soon.

Here are some comments from the other members: ‘The four days in Grand Can-yon was really too short al-though we already well used every minutes in this beautiful nature. I missed the “big hole” of the canyon, the morning mist, the sunset scene, the star sky, the fresh air, the mountain, the stones, the birds, the deer, and the six hours trail walk and many more. Grand Canyon is a great place. By comparison,

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(Chair’s column, Continued from page 2)

New Yorker. Especially after what’s happened. So life goes on. If it’s the be-ginning of fall term, then you just know that Geography Awareness Week (GAW) cannot be far way. This year’s activities will run from November 7th through the 16th. Now, those of you who are not quantitatively chal-lenged will quickly discern that the “Week” is actually 10 days. Are we adjusting for in-flation? Are we making the transition to Geography Awareness Fortnight (GAF)? No, we just have a lot of things we’d like to squeeze in, and a week is not enough. Stay tuned for the posting of the official schedule; and “posting” reminds me to en-courage all students to par-ticipate in the annual poster contest. As always, the GAW highlight will be our Annual Dinner. Please mark your cal-endar for Tuesday, November 13 from 7-9PM. Better still, plan to join us, and bring a friend. Finally, I want to thank Mad-dalena Romano for taking over as Editor-in-Chief of GeoNews, and say “Thanks and well done!” to Michael Morgan for doing such a great job last year. I’m sure both will join me in saying, however, that the success of this venture ultimately de-pends on the contributions of people like you. So please contact Maddalena and plan to pitch in.

Las Vegas is just too bored. ’ -Tracy Chan

‘Just looking out over this Grand Canyon makes you re-alize your human insignifi-cance.’

-Nora Donnelly ‘All I have to say is that the Grand Canyon was very beautiful.’

-Pauline Lo

Above: Chan ‘getting her kicks’ on the Historic Route 66 in Arizona

Above and below: Picturesque views of the Grand Canyon. Below you can see the Colorado River as it meanders through the canyon. This erosive process is what was responsible for the Canyon’s formation.

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U S A To d a y Competition By L. Michael Griffel, Associ-ate Dean for Academic Af-fairs, SAS

USA TODAY is running a competition to select "the na-tion's best and brightest col-lege students." Sixty students will be named to the First, Second, and Third Teams of the 2002 All-USA Academic Team. They will be featured in a two-page spread in the USA TODAY newspaper in February 2002. The 20 mem-bers of the First Team will each receive a $2,500 cash award. The criteria are designed to find students who excel not only in scholarship but also in leadership roles on and off

campus. A key element given most weight by the judges will be a student's outstanding original academic or intellec-tual product. The judges will be influenced by the student's ability to describe that out-standing endeavor in her/his own words. If you know of a deserving student, you may wish to nominate her/him. I have some nomination forms in my office and would be happy to provide you with one if you are interested. You can also send a deserving student to me, and I will get her/him started with the nomination process. More information is available at: http://allstars.usatoday.com. Any full-time undergraduate of a four-year institution in the

U.S. or its territories is eligi-ble. U.S. citizenship is not re-quired. A full-time under-graduate is one carrying at least 12 credits in pursuit of an undergraduate degree or one who anticipates earning an undergraduate degree at the end of the current semes-ter. Students in 5-year pro-grams who have not received a baccalaureate degree are eligible. Students who already have a baccalaureate and are pursuing another are not. Stu-dents graduating in Decem-ber 2001 are eligible. Winners will be selected by a panel of educators. Nomina-tions must be postmarked by Friday, November 30, 2001. Please call Carol Skalski at 703-276-5890 or e-mail all-stars@usatoday.com if you have any questions.

(Tech Column, Continued from page 2)

fects Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000 us-ers. You can read more about it on http://www.f-secure.com. There are also new depart-ment computing policies that are already in effect. Two new help desks have been created to request service or report a problem, GEOHELP and CLTHELP. To request computer related services, you must send an email to geohelp@geo.hunter.cuny.edu and in the email you should give details of the problem and an indication of

the seriousness of the prob-lem. I am working full-time for the department as the Col-lege Laboratory Technician (CLT). To request course and output related services, s e n d a n e m a i l t o clthelp@geo.hunter.cuny.edu. For more information on this, please pick up a copy of the flyer outside the lab rooms. Finally, we will be launching our new websites soon. Frances Santiago was an in-tern this summer from Con-tinuing Ed. She helped us give our web pages a whole new look. One of the main changes that was incorpo-

rated was a switch from the drop down menu on the top to a clickable side menu that stays in its own frame when you move to a new page. The web pages work best in Internet Explorer because the side menu mouse over script has an animation-like effect where as in Netscape the text is just highlighted when you move the mouse over it. I hope to have the new pages up and running with in the next two weeks. AAG 2001 meeting T-shirts are still available in the De-partment of Geography Of-fice for $5.00. Contact Rita Noorzad at rnoorzad@geo.hunter.cuny.edu.

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Professor Profile: Haydee Salmun By Maddalena Romano Professor Salmun joins this department this Fall, bringing her knowledge of Environ-mental Fluid Mechanics and Global Climate Models, as well as an emphasis on women in sciences and the message that science can be accessible to all. Born in Miramar, Argentina, Professor Haydee Salmun at-tended the University of Bue-nos Aires and obtained a BS in Physics in 1977. The at-mosphere of Argentina in the late 1970s was one of uneasi-ness where human rights was concerned. Having the op-portunity to go to St. Louis, MO, she left Argentina in 1977. Speaking no English at the time, Salmun studied for

Above: Salmun with daughter Delfina, 11, at their home in Baltimore, MD.

seven months to pass the TOEFL exam, and was ac-cepted into the Masters Pro-gram in Physics at the Uni-versity of Missouri-St. Louis, and found that she was the only woman in the depart-ment at the time. Her inter-ests were in the physics of fluids, but she learned quickly that, in traditional American universities, one does not do

physics of fluids in a physics department. It was at this time that she met Gerald North (now at Texas A&M), a physicist doing climate re-search, who encouraged her to continue her studies in an Earth Sciences department. Taking his advice, she moved on to the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at Johns Hopkins University af-ter receiving her MS from the University of St. Louis. Find-ing a mentor in Owen Philips-a highly regarded contributor to the field of geophysical fluid dynamics—she com-pleted her dissertation in 1989. Salmun is interested in how to link the different scales at which fluid processes occur. Global Climate Models, or GCMs, is another of her inter-ests. She is working with col-leagues to improve upon how GCMs reflect fundamental processes. In both cases, she is interested in how to properly model the effect of unresolved processes (in this case, small-scale processes) on a larger scale. Coming to Hunter from her position in the Geography and Environmental Engineer-ing Department at John’s Hopkins University, Salmun’s first impressions of the De-partment of Geography was one of a friendly and welcom-ing department. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, geographer David Harvey, and daughter Delfina, 11.

Above: Salmun on a recent trip to the South of France. This photo was taken near Nice..

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All submissions are welcome. Alumni are invited to keep us apprised of their activities. Send all submissions and correspondence to GeoNews, address above. E-mail: news@geo.hunter.cuny.edu

Department of Geography Hunter College of the City University of New York 695 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021 USA

UPCOMING NEW YORK CITY WALKING TOURS With Prof. Jack Eichenbaum

Frontiers of Central Flushing 10:30-1PM Sat, October 27 Explores the area between the 19th century industrial River front and the early 20th century railroad suburb that developed around the Murray Hill LIRR station. Sponsor: Municipal Art Society 212-935-3960 Fee: $12/15 Member/Nonmember. Flushing, Whitestone & Malba 2:30-5:30 PM Sun, October 28. A three mile walk through d i ve r se we l l - l and scap e d residential neighborhoods sporting fall foliage. Begins at the Queens Historical Society and includes admission to the exhibits (come at 2PM). This walk features the intense “cathedral” building activity by

immigrants in North Flushing, Victoriana in Whitestone, bridge views and Malba’s excesses. The Queens Historical Society (718-939-0647) is the sponsor and starting point. Fee TBA For more information contact Jack Eichenbaum at Jaconet@aol.com or (718) 961-8406. 2001 Annual Meeting

Middle States Division of the

Association of American Geographers

Brookville, New York, October 19 - 20, 2001 C. W. Post Campus,

Long Island University

http://planetx.bloomu.edu/

The department's an-nual dinner and awards presentation will be Tuesday, Nov. 13 from 7-9 PM in the Faculty Dining Room, 8th floor of West Building. SAVE THE DATE!