Hi, I'm Rebecca Dobbs. I'm a geographer and a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences. Though I'm no longer physically present in Emporia, I'm teaching a variety of ESU geography courses online, in cluding upper level courses in geographic techniques (geographic information systems, cartography). I'm passionate about geography, and about the kinds of geography I do. Geography, to me, is the way of viewing the world that makes the most sense, and I love to pass that on.

Australia is one of my real loves. That's me on the overlook of Lake George in New South Wales. What, you want water in your lakes?? Lake George, like lots of other lakes in Australia, is dry most of the time. Want to understand why that is? Take my Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific course.

My main research ties together several of my other loves. I got to wondering about the development of a particular urban pattern in North Carolina, where I'm from. Some folks said it derived from an indigenous trail called the Indian Trading Path, other folks said, no, the pattern was random. Turns out nobody had actually researched it at the regional level to prove it one way or the other, so I set to do that using land grant records from the 18th century, the first wave of documented European settlement in the area. My work incorporates archival data with geographic information systems (GIS) to allow a kind and scale of analysis not previously possible for questions like this, and the resulting synthesis is very exciting. By now it's clear that what began as a dissertation project will continue on into my career, as there remains much to be explored with this data.

I'm also working on an applied GIS project funded by the US Bureau of Reclamation. The goal of this project is to develop a model within GIS to predict recreation demand on 30 reservoirs around California. I'm doing this by modifiying a classic formula called the gravity model, which consists of a metaphorical version of Newton's gravity equation in which a town's population size takes the place of a planet's weight and travel conditions between the town and the lake (including distance) stand in for Newton's distance measurement.

For my "day job," I'm now a Visiting Assistant Research Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

View my c.v.

You can reach me by e-mail at gdobbs@emporia.edu.