2007-2008 Pruitt Minority Fellowship Recipients

My name is Mamata Kumari Akella and I am honored to have been chosen as one of this year’s recipients of the Evelyn Pruitt Minority Fellowship. I am currently a second year Master’s student in the Department of Geography at The Pennsylvania State University. Prior to attending Penn State, I completed my undergraduate degree in Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Cartography has always fascinated me and I knew this was the avenue I wanted to pursue in graduate school.

My Master’s research is focused on map symbology for emergency responders. I am exploring how human factors research and testing methods can be used by cartographers to improve the design, effectiveness and comprehension of pictographic symbol sets. In 2004, the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Homeland Security Working Group (HSWG) developed a set of pictographic symbols for use by the emergency management and first responder communities. In 2006, the symbol set became an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard. I will examine the comprehension level of the proposed FGDC HSWG Emergency and Hazard Management Mapping Standard – Point Symbology using the ANSI recommended open-ended testing method. This testing method is typically used in human factors research to test the comprehension of common day hazard warning signs and symbols placed on consumer products. Applying the open-ended testing method to emergency map symbology will be an interesting application because both emergency map symbols and common day hazard signs and symbols need to be interpreted quickly, often times under pressure, by the end user.

Cartographic principles aid us in the design process, but there is no required comprehension testing method that has been developed for the usability of the symbols that we design and place on our maps for use by the general public. As a result, misinterpretation of symbols that appear on maps is likely to happen more often than we realize. In terms of map use in a crisis situation, map elements have to be easily understood and interpreted at a glance. There have been many studies conducted on how map design and/or human cognitive processes affect the reading and comprehension of maps, but few studies have approached the subject of the design and usability of pictographic map symbols.

There is little understanding of how first responders actually use maps and symbols while engaging in response activities. There is also little understanding of whether or not pictographic symbols are indeed the best choice for this user community. Conducting open-ended testing will offer concrete answers to these questions, provide practical design solutions as well as contribute to cartography literature on symbol design, map use and testing methods.

Fall semester has been very productive in terms of my research. In October I went to the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) meeting in St. Louis, Missouri and presented a poster on my research. It was a great experience to meet other cartographers, share my research ideas and get some feedback. In October I also defended my thesis proposal and this December I will begin conducting open-ended testing with fire fighters. I will also continue testing into Spring semester. Recently, the FGDC HSWG symbology subgroup decided to reconvene and make improvements to the standard. I have been in contact with two members of the subgroup and they are interested in considering both the testing method and my results as ways to improve their symbol standard.

I am a Masters student in the Department of Geography at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, interested in the impact of global warming on wildfire ignition patterns in forested areas. Specifically, my thesis research focuses on the interactions between wildfire ignition and the environmental controls of lightning occurrence, weather, and vegetation type in the sub-arctic Forest-Tundra of the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. I became interested in the sub-arctic Forest-Tundra as an undergraduate student at York University, in Toronto, Canada, and for my undergraduate thesis completed a dendrochronological study on the ring width sensitivity of white spruce and its relationship with latitude and tree age along the Anderson River.

My interest in northern forest research was sparked by a longstanding fascination with physical geography and forests and in general. Originally from Trinidad, I grew up in a valley vegetated by dry tropical forest, and spent most of my childhood hiking through the valley in our backyard. However, the fascination with northern forests and fires was generated by my family’s emigration to Canada in the late 1990’s and my subsequent immersion into an undergraduate degree which focused on the dynamics of Canada’s vast forested areas.

The sub-arctic Forest–Tundra is a transitional ecotone between the boreal forest and the arctic tundra, and because of this it serves as a marker of global warming impact. My continued interest in the ecotone was informed by its potential use as a global warming gauge. Northern forests are large carbon sinks, and there has been much discussion in the literature about how the effects of an increase in temperature, changes in precipitation patterns, and melting of the permafrost layer will impact wildfire frequency, in northern forests. If we assume that wildfires will increase in frequency, then logically, the conditions necessary for ignition also need to improve to support this increase in occurrence. My thesis posits the question of how the spatial patterns of lightning, weather, and vegetation type influence the occurrence of fires in the NWT. This is of critical import, because if we understand the current relative influence of each of these environmental controls on wildfire occurrence, future research will be able to focus on how changes in these controls over time, have, and will influence wildfire occurrence in the sub-arctic Forest–Tundra.

Last fall I obtained and commenced analysis of continuous weather, locational lighting and wildfire data from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) in the NWT for the 2005 to 2007 summer fire seasons. The scientists at the ENR have been instrumental in the acquisition these data. With the generous support of SWG, I will travel to the NWT in the summer of 2008 to ground truth vegetation types classified using satellite imagery. This semester I will TA for the upper level Advanced Geographic Information Science class while completing most of my thesis writing. After completing my Masters degree, I hope to return to Syracuse University to pursue my Ph.D., so that I can continue examining wildfire ignition dynamics.

I am currently in the second year of my Master’s program at Kent State University. I would like to consider myself a human geographer which both an interest in cultural and economic geography. My current research interests are consumption, ethnicity, and immigration with a regional focus on Japan. When most people think of Japan, they think of it being one homogenous nation. Through my research, I wish to show how Japan is becoming more heterogeneous on various scales.

My thesis will be examining the consumption places of Brazilian immigrants in Japan as they pertain to the creation of various subjectivities. Currently, there are about 286,557 Brazilians in Japan. The main driving force behind Japan accepting a large influx of Brazilian immigrants has to do with how the Japanese government constructs the economic and cultural subjectivities as Brazilians. The reason that these Brazilians are able to immigrate to Japan is because they are of Japanese blood, thus they are considered returnees as opposed to immigrants. Because a large number of Brazilians work in factories, many Japanese create a subjectivity of Brazilians which is bound to the factories; in other words, many believe that the Brazilians are only capable of doing factory work.

The Japanese government, media, and business sector are not the sole actors in creating economic subjectivities for the Brazilians. The Brazilians have created economic subjectivities for themselves as well, many which have been created to resist the subjectivity created by Japanese society. While many Brazilians do work in the factory, others have decided to create their own businesses. My research wishes to focus on how these economic subjectivities contribute to the creation of Japanese-Brazilian places and spaces and how they have multiple meanings in both the Japanese and Brazilian communities.

My interest in this subject came from my study abroad experience in Japan. I studied abroad at Hiroshima University for one year and I noticed that there were a large number immigrants in the small town that I lived in. One reason for this was because Hiroshima University had a significant international student body. In addition, there were many immigrants from Peru and Brazil who worked in the factories nearby as well. When I started my Master’s degree, I was alarmed that there was virtually nothing written about the Japanese-Brazilian immigrants from a geographic perspective. Through my research, I hope to fill this gap.

Because of the Pruitt Fellowship, I was able to conduct my fieldwork in Japan over the summer for my thesis. I spent eight weeks in Nagoya, which is located in Aichi prefecture. Not only did I do fieldwork around Aichi prefecture, but I also traveled to nearby prefectures as well. I can truly say that this fieldwork has changed me. Not only did I learn a lot about the Brazilian community in Japan, but I was able to make some friendships as well. I also learned that research is not a static, one-dimensional process, but rather dynamic; researchers should let the process of doing research change them a new understanding of their research and allow them to explore areas that were not previously explored. I initially wanted to focus on the consumption patterns of the Japanese-Brazilians, but after interviewing a few of the business owners, I decided to also focus my research on the role that these businesses play in creating multiple subjectivities.

This fall, I have completed a significant portion of my thesis, and I hope to finish by March. I do not only wish to disseminate my work in the academic community but through the general public as well. I hope to do this by not only participating in the AAG annual meeting, but also through publishing my work, and making my work accessible through the Internet, and giving presentations on my topic to the general public. Since many of my respondents wanted to see the final product of my research, I hope I can have my work published in Portuguese as well.