Geography, Environment, and Sustainability

Basic Areas

The UNCG Geography program offers PhD degrees in an applied program designed to allow concentration in a clearly defined sub-field as well as honing a foundation in the breadth of geography. Comfort with diversity is necessary for communicating with fellow geographers; comfort with the depth of a sub-field is necessary for making original contributions to research scholarship. Degrees provide advanced-level proficiency in:

Sustainable, Urban Planning, Transportation and Regional Economic Development
This area includes work in urban and economic development applied to metropolitan and regional areas on a variety of scales, including issues of transportation, tourism, demographics, political boundaries, and business site selection, with an emphasis on sustainability. Departmental national and international specialties include North America, Europe, and Asia.

Earth Science and Natural Resource Management
This area includes departmental specializations in climatology, hydrology, geomorphology, and biogeography, with sub-specialties in tree-ring science, hydrological modeling, soil and sediment research, remote sensing of environment, and environmental planning and assessment.

Geographic Information Science
This area comprises the techniques and research focus of cartography, geographic information systems, and remote sensing including work in statistics, computational modeling, and visualization.

The PhD program centers on a research-oriented application of geographical concepts to solving real-world problems. The degree culminates in one of two projects: the traditional dissertation, or a three article option. Concentration is in one of the three areas outlined above.