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Stephen Young
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Professor Stephen Young (Geography and Sustainability Department) spent two-and-a-half weeks at the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty Kazakhstan this April, followed by a two-and-a-half-week exploration of the Caucasus in Armenia and Georgia. Professor Young was hosted by the Department of geography, land management and cadastre where he is the principal international advisor to 6 Ph. D. students. The geography department at the 25,000-student university has over 1400 undergraduates along with 80 master鈥檚 students and over 60 Ph. D. students. The Kazakh National University is the top ranked university in Central Asia and one of the top 150 universities world-wide.
During his stay Professor Young advised Ph. D. students on the use of satellite imagery and Geo-Information Systems (GIS) for their dissertation research into land degradation and climate change. In addition to advising graduate students, Professor Young ran satellite image processing workshops for faculty at the University鈥檚 Laboratory of Geoinformation Analysis of Landscape Degradation, one of the key environmental labs in Kazakhstan. The workshops focused on the use of the TerrSet software to determine land cover change, model potential future land cover changes and model different climate change trends such as temperature change, precipitation change, snow cover change and vegetation change. Professor Young also gave lectures about his work with GIS and Artificial Intelligence in the University鈥榮 Department of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data.
With graduate students Professor Young travelled to research sites and well as some famous national parks in Eastern Kazakhstan. In addition to work at the University, Professor Young advised researchers about the use of satellite imagery and GIS at the Central Asian Regional Glaciological Center and the Kazakh Research Institute of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, both in Almaty Kazakhstan. On his way back to the United States Professor Young spent two-and-a-half weeks trekking through the Caucasus.
