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Dr Reza Goljani Amirkhir was the Geography colloquium speaker Friday Nov 7, hosted by the Center for Open Geospatial Sciences’ Vegetation and Landscape Ecology lab (Janet Franklin, PI). Dr Goljani holds two prestigious postdoctoral Fellowships at UC Santa Cruz – the Chancellor’s Fellowship and, notably, the highly competitive Smith Fellowship from the Society for Conservation Biology.

COGS researcher Santiago José Elías Velasco joins a consortium of international biodiversity scholars in publishing an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This article argues that the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework cannot meet its goals if it continues relying mostly on retrospective monitoring, and it calls for integrating predictive biodiversity models into conservation planning.

Supported by COGS and CNNCTS, Dr. Janet Franklin brought Mr. Connor Magee into her class, Geography 570: Environmental Conservation Practice – Social-ecological Impacts of Climate Change on March 12, 2025. Connor Magee is an ecology Ph.

Dr. Janet Franklin recruited distinguished remote sensing scientist Dr Compton J. Tucker, from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to give a research seminar at SDSU on November 8 2024 entitled “A tool to address restoration efforts and the role of trees outside of forests in rural livelihoods: Mapping African semi-arid trees at the tree level south of the Sahara & north of the Equator.

On October 14, 2024, San Diego State University geographer Janet Franklin was invited to give the 13th Virginia & J. Edward Holtry Distinguished Lecture in Geospatial Science at ‘the other SDSU’ – South Dakota State University.

Dr. M. Brooke Rose, a postdoctoral scholar working with Professor Janet Franklin in the Center for Open Geographical Sciences, Department of Geography, receives both the Cowles award for Best Paper in Biogeography, and an award for the AAG Biogeography Specialty Group (BSG) Student Paper Award in the Doctoral Category.

Janet Franklin gave a presentation titled “Science partnerships support the Collaborative of Native Nations for Climate Transformation and Stewardship (CNNCTS) in Southern California” in a special symposium on Co-production through Science Partnerships at the International Association of Landscape Ecology - North America chapter meeting (4/16/2025) in Raleigh North Carolina.

I reflect on developments in species distribution modelling, illustrate how embedded the methodology has become in all areas of biogeography and speculate on future directions in the field. Areas of progress in SDM that may become more widely accessible and useful tools in biogeography include genetically informed models and community distribution models

Brooke Rose, PhD candidate working with Janet Franklin in the VALE group, published the first chapter of her dissertation in the high-ranking journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, entitled “Rarity, geography, and plant exposure to global change in the California Floristic Province.

Aim: Rarity and geographic aspects of species distributions mediate their vulnerabil-ity to global change. We explore the relationships …