Welcome to my ODU faculty website. Here I will post my professional research and teaching and share highlights for folks interested. Herein you’ll find highlights of my ongoing and recent research and teaching with ODU Geography and the Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience (ICAR), in which I serve as Program Head for Climate Science and Sea Level. I welcome you to check out either research or teaching pages here, and please reach out and contact me if you’re interested in collaborating.

This year I am revamping a general education foundations course GEOG 102T Digital Earth: Geospatial Technology and Society.  The class introduces the full breadth of geospatial tech, digital globes, GIS, GPS/GNSS, remote sensing/earth observation, and spatial analysis. I’m adding some novel lab experiences for this class, including georeferencing a historic 1861 map of Hampton Roads and using spatial analysis for a Search for Sasquatch to demonstrate spatial thinking and ecological conservation.  You can check out some visualization examples of this in my Hampton Roads Maritime Landscape story map.  In the sprping, my teaching focus is on GEOG 422W-522 Coastal Geography, focusing on coastal landscapes, geomorphology, policy and planning for sunstainability. I am redeveloping this online with new virtual field trips. One of the first is the virtual Suffolk Scarp and Great Dismal Swamp tour. 

I am continuing to offer and update two courses in upper-level advanced and graduate GIS, Marine Geography: GIS for a Blue Planet, and Spatial Analysis of Coastal Environments (SpACE). With ODU alum Keith Vangraafeiland from Esri, we’re developing free lessons for Esri ArcGIS Pro for these courses, including seafloor geomorphology, downscaled climate model analysis, machine learning for aquatic habitat mapping, and GIS applications of environmental models, satellite and drone data.  They’ll be forthcoming as Esri “Learn Lessons” for free, global use.

GEOG 420/520 Marine Geography

Marine GIS Story Map (“a 21st Century syllabus” https://arcg.is/01PXCD)

On the Surfliner train between San Diego and Oceanside, CA, during the Esri User Conference, July 2018.

I returned to Old Dominion in summer 2016 after 10 years at East Carolina University. My research agenda and teaching continue in Geographic Information Science for coastal environments, hazards, and resource sustainability. I participate in research as a faculty fellow with the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency (CCRFR) and engage with communities in Hampton Roads, North Carolina coastal plain and Outer Banks and beyond tackling sea level rise, coastal hazards, and challenges to sustainability.

If you’re a potential research collaborator, student, or stakeholder, please contact me by email: tallen@odu.edu