We will build an extraordinary community for creating new knowledge about planet earth and its inhabitants. The Department of Geography aims to be the intellectual home of choice for studies of Earth as the home of humanity. Such studies need to integrate knowledge from a wide range of sciences and, consequently, require two conditions: access to specialists whose collective interests span both human and physical dimensions of the Earth system, and an infrastructure that supports information-rich, computationally-based investigation. Both the specialists and infrastructure are available at UCSB, but Geography aims to achieve a much greater level of creativity by ensuring that they exist in close proximity and by nurturing a population of undergraduate and graduate students who are methodologically equipped to contribute.

We will create new methods and models to advance geographic information science. Studies of the Earth system inevitably require access to vast stores of information - in the form of raw data and of accumulated scholarly knowledge. In collaboration with Computer Science, UCSB's Department of Geography is already at the forefront in the development of technologies and infrastructures that allow such information to be found and accessed across distributed networks. Such studies also require a solid foundation of tools for exploring spatial data and for implementing knowledge of process in computational models. In our vision, we anticipate a steady shift from our current emphasis on the infrastructure for sharing data and tools to a greater emphasis on the sharing of knowledge of dynamics, particularly in the form of computational models. This shift will also require more specialization in the unique properties and problems associated with geographic information and geographic information science.

We will use integrated science to better understand spatio-temporal dynamics. Study of the Earth system also requires access to knowledge of dynamic processes that range from those that operate in the oceans and atmosphere, to migration processes that redistribute humans across the landscape, and to processes of land use change. In our vision, Geography will include specialists in all of the major processes that influence the Earth system at human timescales, and who are committed to integrating their knowledge with others to solve problems. To maximize the value of our studies and to minimize duplication of effort, we are firmly committed to an interdisciplinary collaboration with process specialists in other departments.