 |
|
Rebirth of Geography
in 1970s: Simonett and Estes
|
| In
1975 a major new venture was undertaken in the wholesale reconstitution
of the Geography department under Professor David Simonett, a distinguished
geographer from Australia. Within five years the staff of five faculty
members, all but one of them hired in 1975, had doubled to ten, extramural
research funds had reached the level of $650,000 annually, and the graduate
program was expanding rapidly (approval to offer the doctorate was received
at the opening of 1980).
The principal impetus toward this swift development came in the vigorous activity of the Department's Geography Remote Sensing Unit, which quickly gathered an international reputation for imaginative application of recently developed remote sensing technology, using among other sources, satellite-generated data. Aimed at earth resources management, the program developed and put to use a sophisticated data processing system. Originating in 1971, when Professor John Estes of the department gathered a research team in remote sensing, the unit was soon working with geologists, engineers, physicists, chemists, computer scientists, and environmental scientists, on remote sensing projects around the world which focused on forests, oceanography, farming, water resources, soils and similar phenomena. --Robert Kelley (who was then a history professor
at UCSB), Transformations: UC Santa Barbara 1909-1979, published
by the Associated Students in 1981, Page 118 |
 |
|
June 6, 2002
|