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DESCRIPTION:Counting Crops in Space and Time: Large-Scale Analysis of Crop 
 Diversity\n\nGraham Macdonald\n\nAbstract: The number and distribution of 
 crops grown on the landscape is an important component of agricultural sus
 tainability and resilience. A diverse mix of crops both spatially and temp
 orally can have important implications for agricultural yields\, soil heal
 th\, and surrounding non-agricultural ecosystems. For this reason\, a grow
 ing area of research seeks to examine the large-scale spatiotemporal patte
 rns of crop diversity and links to this to underlying drivers within agric
 ultural landscapes as well as broader implications for the food system. In
  this talk\, I will provide an overview of our team’s ongoing work on crop
  diversity analysis in Canada\, the United States\, and globally. North Am
 erican examples show how we can leverage remote sensing products and machi
 ne learning to examine field-level temporal crop sequences across millions
  of fields. We also identify some areas with uncharacteristically high spa
 tial crop diversity\, which can serve as a guidepost for informing potenti
 al to enhance crop diversity. Recent global work examines how crop diversi
 ty relates to land cover complexity across thousands of agricultural lands
 capes worldwide\, including the presence of non-crop cover types and the d
 istribution of field and patch sizes. I close with a discussion of how the
 se insights can be applied to inform strategies toward crop diversificatio
 n efforts at different scales\, including a simple framework for assessing
  potential ‘low hanging fruit’ for enhancing crop diversity.\n\n \n\nThe G
 azan Riviera and other entrepreneurial imaginaries\n\nSarah Moser\n\nAbstr
 act: The scale and pace of destruction in Gaza since October 2023 has prom
 pted many discussions about what post-war Gaza will look like\, how it wil
 l be rebuilt\, and by whom. Particularly since Trump became president for 
 the second time in January 2025\, Americans and Israeli officials have pro
 posed a number of rebuilding schemes. These are premised on the belief tha
 t Gazans and other Palestinians residing in Gaza have no claim to the land
  or right to remain and are guided by an entrepreneurial logic that views 
 Gaza as economically unproductive waterfront property that is wasted on Pa
 lestinians and requires ‘improvement’ in order to be profitable for invest
 ors. American and Israeli political elites imagine a sort of luxurious int
 ernational ‘Gazan Riviera’ as a ‘space of exception’ where normal laws and
  regulations are suspended and which is regulated and governed using disti
 nct legislation and autonomous non-state actors. In this research I trace 
 some of the origins and antecedents of the Gazan Riviera scheme and examin
 e some of the ways in which they are circulated. While these schemes are a
 udacious and will break international law\, I argue that they echo many re
 cent urban mega-developments in which ethnic cleansing\, land grabbing\, a
 nd the establishment of zones governed by separate laws and regulations ar
 e increasingly normalized.\n\n \n
DTSTART:20251201T150000Z
DTEND:20251201T160000Z
LOCATION:Room 426
SUMMARY:Geography Faculty Talks: Professors Sarah Moser & Graham Macdonald
URL:/centre-montreal/channels/event/geography-faculty-
 talks-professors-sarah-moser-graham-macdonald-366881
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