Article review assignment #1

Peer reviewed articles only, from established journals.
Double-spaced, 12 point font, 1-inch margins, Times Roman or Ariel font. 1-2 pages.

The assignment:
write a 1-2 pages review of a Journal article with the following sections/components:

1. Citation example:
McDonald, G.M., Szeicz, J.M., Claricoates, J., Dale, K.A. 1998. Response of the central Canadian treeline to recent climate change. Annals of the Association of Geographers 88: 183-208.
2. Link to article, or copy/paste Abstract

3. Problem statement

What is the central question, hypothesis, or problem statement of the article?
What is the relevance to processes/phenomena/management?
4. Data/ Methods

What data are used? (and is it primary data or mined data?)
If temporal or spatial analysis is used, what is the scale?
What are the analytical methods (statistics, modeling, etc.)
5. Results

What are the findings of thearticle?
6. Your own evaluation of the article

Did the author(s) answer the hypotheses?
What, if any, further study or analysis is discussed?

Bellow is the professor directing me to choose a topic:

One of the things that I like about my class is that students have very diverse educational experience.
The paper doesn’t necessarily have to be scientific in a “data” sense. It can be about water rights, agricultural practices in arid areas, human health related to water resources, trans-border disputes and water resources, cultural adaption to water and climate hazards, etc.

I would say, start with a geographic location that is of interest. Once you have a place identified, look at whether it has any water-specific, or weather-related hazard issues. From there you may be able to formulate a general topic that you can find information about.

I will upload an example paper in the additional materials.

Read the Witvliet, Ludwig, & VanderLaan (2001) paper.
Keep in mind you are reading more for the organization and type of writing, rather than the content or topic of the paper.

Notice as you are reading:
– The different sections of the paper (Intro, Method, Results, Discussion), and how they form an
hourglass structure (general → specific → general).
– The type of writing (scientific writing – what it sounds like, what it looks like, words and
phrasing used).
– How previous research is referenced or cited (and what types of statements require citations).
– Identify transition sentences and conclusion sentences.
– Identify the hypothesis.