CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH

GEOG 140 Article Report Guidelines
Introduction to Physical Geography

A general education survey course is pretty much a whirlwind tour of a great (!!!) deal of material in some basic division of a discipline. Unfortunately, students can come away with a rather superficial understanding of what it takes to create the knowledge conveyed in such a class.

The purpose of this report is to give you a glimpse of this discipline, physical geography, as it is actually practiced by professional researchers in the field and in closely related disciplines, on which physical geographers draw. You are to read one article from the list below, which reviews the results of actual original research projects. Such articles are published in "refereed journals." Refereed journals are those that depend on panels of experts in a given subfield to advise the editor whether the research was done properly and resulted in some sort of advance in the discipline. Research not published first in a refereed journal is regarded with suspicion by other researchers or is viewed as just a tentative progress report pending proper review and publication.

By reading those articles in which scientific knowledge is actually created and tested, you have an opportunity to view a "research frontier" and to see what kinds of skills and background someone would have to pick up in order to do work at this level. By noting the preparation involved, you can start taking responsibility for your own advising, if you would like to go on in geography or a related field. You can design your curriculum to acquire the skills you need to be either a researcher in some field that interests you or an informed citizen and employee with a well-rounded education, who can be properly skeptical of news about hot new findings.

So, please select one paper from the list below and retrieve it from the library. They can be rather difficult to follow if you're not familiar with the topic, and you may need to reread your chosen article a few times. To help you follow the paper, take notes on the following as you read.

• In introductions, authors will tell you a little bit about the work done by others on the subject. What seems to be the problem this paper aims to solve?
• Are there any hypotheses or research questions tested or reviewed in this paper?
• Which sorts of data were used, and how were they collected?
• What sorts of procedures or methods were applied to the data in order to analyze them?
• In a nutshell, what are the findings?
• How does this article fit the broader discipline of physical geography that you've been racing through this term? Does it contradict or elaborate concepts given in class or in the textbook? (Contradiction is a small possibility, by the way, because it may take some time for textbooks and lectures to reflect a new finding or interpretation)
• Presumably, you picked a particular article because you're at least somewhat interested in the subject. If someone wanted to get into this subject professionally, which undergraduate courses here would you recommend they take? Look through the catalogue in geography and in other related scientific disciplines.
• If your own personal educational and career plans do not include more physical geography, think instead about how the process described in the article might help you in a completely different area of life. Can the scientific style of thinking and reasoning help an artist, businessperson, elementary school teacher, social worker, journalist, or lawyer, for example? How?

Now, notes strewn about you and the article and online lecture notes open before you, compose your paper. It should be roughly three pages long, double-spaced and very carefully proofread and edited (since writing mechanics count for about a third of your points). It is a good idea to finish a solid draft a few days ahead of time and enlist a literate friend to go through it (or just to make sure you can proofread it and catch any errors on your own). For some idea about how I evaluate writing, you can review my notes on writing mechanics by clicking here. You can make use of the actual grading form I will be using, too. You can find it at https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog140/report2form.html. You can use it to grade yourself, using really harsh standards. That will call your attention to the worst problems in your draft, so you can go back and pay close attention to the weakest areas. You might ask a friend to use it on your paper, telling them to be really nasty!

In your paper, very succinctly discuss the article's introduction, any hypotheses discussed, any data and methods used, findings, and how they relate to the concepts given in the class. Each of these can probably be done in about a paragraph. The idea here is to convince me that you read the article and thought about it. Then, write concluding paragraphs, in which you address either of the following:

• the preparation you would recommend for anyone interested in understanding and maybe contributing to this subject or
• the processes used in the article that might be of more general usefulness far from the subject of the article.

You may, if you like, add a paragraph on your own personal reactions to the article or to the issues it raises for you (and it's okay if you didn't like something about the paper).

This report is due Tuesday, 25 November.

Please let me know which article you have chosen by 21 October. In your statement, identify the lead author, the title, and give me a short paragraph describing what it's about (I'm trying to ensure that you have done enough work to be able to summarize the article by 30 April, so that you aren't overwhelmed by having procrastinated!)

It is a very good idea to get working on this paper right now. You might want to download two or three of the articles below to scan them ahead of time to make sure they are of interest to you and that you can figure out their analyses and write them up in time. That way, you have a Plan B!

List of Research Review Articles

Andrews, Patricia; Finney, Mark; and Fischetti, Mark. 2007.

Predicting wildfires. Scientific American 297, 2 (August): 46-55.

Bell, Robin E. 2008.

The unquiet ice. Scientific American 298, 2 (February): 60-67.

Collins, William; Colman, Robert; Haywood, James; Manning, Martin R.; and Mote, Philip. 2007.

The physical science behind climate change. Scientific American 297, 2 (August) : 64-71.

Donlan, C. Josh. 2007.

Restoring America's big, wild animals. Scientific American 296, 6 (June): 70-77.

Epstein, Paul R. 2000.

Is global warming harmful to health? Scientific American 283, 2 (February): 50-57.

Gende, Scott M.; Quinn, Thomas P.; S. M. G.; and T. P. Q. 2006.

The fish and the forest. Scientific American 295, 2 (August): 84-89.

Gasparini, Luca; Bonatti, Enrico; and Longo, Giuseppe. 2008.

The Tunguska mystery. Scientific American 298, 6 (June): 80-86.

Gurnis, Michael. 2001.

Sculpting the earth from the inside out. Scientific American 284, 3 (March): 40-47.

Hodges, Kip. 2006.

Climate and the evolution of mountains. Scientific American 295, 2 (August): 72-79.

Hoffman, Paul F. and Schrag, Daniel P. 2000.

Snowball Earth. Scientific American 283, 1 (January): 68-75.

Karl, Thomas R. and Trenberth, Kevin E. 1999.

The human impact on climate. Scientific American 281, 6 (December): 100-105.

Keppler, Frank, and Rvckmann, Thomas. 2007.

Methane, plants, and climate change. Scientific American 296, 2 (February): 52-57.

Losos, Jonathan B. 2001.

Evolution: A lizard's tale. Scientific American 284, 3 (March): 64-69.

Marks, Jane C. 2007.

Down go the dams. Scientific American 296, 3 (March): 66-71.

Mee, Laurence. 2007.

Reviving dead zones. Scientific American 295, 5 (November): 78-85.

O'Brien, Stephen J. and Johnson, Warren E. 2007.

The evolution of cats. Scientific American 297, 1 (July): 68-75.

Stix, Gary. 2008.

Traces of a distant past. Scientific American 299, 1 (July): 56- 63.

Suess, Erwin; Bohrmann, Gerhard; Greinert, Jens; and Lausch, Erwin. 1999.

Flammable ice. Scientific American 281, 5 (November): 76-83.

Trenberth, Kevin E. 2007.

Warmer oceans, stronger hurricanes. Scientific American 297, 1 (July): 44-51.

Valley, John W. 2005.

A cool early Earth? Scientific American 293, 4 (October): 58-65.

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Last Updated: 09/27/08