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Six University of Wisconsin Oshkosh students were among the researchers who offered more than 5,000 presentations, posters and workshops in April at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The AAG has held an annual meeting every year since the association was founded in 1904.

UW Oshkosh’s Stephen Thomas, a graduating senior from Green Bay, gave a slide presentation about “Hmong-Americans in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley.”

“I examine the effect of American (and more specifically, Wisconsinite) culture on the lives of Hmong immigrants through observation and immersion into the Hmong communities of the Fox Valley,” he explained. Thomas’ adviser was associate professor Heike Alberts.

Thomas’ work focused particularly on the impact of Wisconsin’s culture on the lifestyles of second-generation immigrants.

Zach Newton’s poster presentation focused on “Path Distance Analysis and the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service.” Newton, a graduating senior from Phillips, looked at the projected response times compared with recent incident reports of Germany’s equivalent of the U.S. Coast Guard, known as the DGzRS, to increase the efficiency of operations.

“The objective of this project is to identify zones with longer response times and to make suggestions to the DGzRS on how reallocating ships may better serve their area of operation,” said Newton, who also worked with Alberts.

Graduating senior Dakota Burt, of Green Bay, and junior Dylan King, of Manitowoc, worked with adviser and assistant professor Mark Bowen on two poster presentations: “Carbon Sequestration within Wetland, Cropland and Grassland Soils of the High Plains; and “Distribution and Morphometry of Playa-Lunette Systems on the High Plans of Kansas.”

The other UWO student poster presentations were “Comparing Local Ecological Knowledge and State Management of Non-Timber Forest Products,” by graduating senior Vanessa Bailey, of Watertown, with geography department chair and adviser Colin Long; and “Comparing Local Ecological Knowledge and State Management of Non-Timber Forest Products,” by graduating senior Karmen Fiedler, of Oshkosh, with assistant professor Elizabeth Barron.

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