Physical Geography: The Global Environment

Joseph A. Mason
Professor of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Joseph A. Mason has published dozens of publications and reports both as a faculty member and as a member of Nebraska's Conservation and Survey Division. An active teacher, he has taught a broad array of courses at the college and graduate level. Dr. Mason's research centers on eolian and hillslope geomorphology; loess stratigraphy/ sedimentology; pedology and soil geomorphology; paleopedology; Quaternary landscape evolution; and geomorphic response to Quaternary climate change, with a geographic focus on the Great Plains, northern China, the central Rocky Mountains, and the Upper Mississippi Valley.

James E. Burt
Professor of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The author of two textbooks--Understanding Weather and Climate, Sixth Edition (2012), and Elementary Statistics for Geographers, Third Edition (2009)--James E. Burt is the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in teaching, textbook authorship, and courseware development. Dr. Burt's graduate training was in climatology and quantitative spatial analysis, and he has long had research interests located at the intersection of physical geography and geographic information science. His current research projects revolve around expert systems modeling of the physical environment and knowledge discovery methods for geospatial data.

Peter O. Muller
Professor of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami
Peter O. Muller's many works include The World Today: Concepts and Regions in Geography, Sixth Edition (2012); Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, Fifteenth Edition (2011); and Economic Geography, Third Edition (1998). Dr. Muller's articles have appeared in numerous journals including The Professional Geographer, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and American Quarterly. His research interests focus on the changing geography of the United States, particularly new forms of suburbanization. He is coeditor of the journal Urban Geography, and has also served as academic production consultant for the original Annenberg/Corporation of Public Broadcasting video series, The Power of Place.

H. J. de Blij (deceased)
John A. Hannah Professor of Geography, Michigan State University
An undergraduate course in physical geography was Harm de Blij's eye-opener. As a graduate student, he conducted field research in the Swaziland (Africa) Lowveld, working on the hypothesis that this 120-kilometer-long, steep-sided valley might be a southern spur of the great East African rift valley system (PhD, Northwestern University). Since then he has addressed topics ranging from continental drift to climate change and from heat summation in viticulture to rogue waves in oceans. His more than thirty books include technical, text, and trade titles and have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Italian, and other languages. In the media he vigorously promoted geography as indispensable to education, decision-making, and domestic and foreign policy formulation.