Professor named Outstanding Scholar in Geography
James B. Campbell, of Blacksburg, professor of geography in Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources, has been named Outstanding Scholar in Geography by the Virginia Social Science Association in honor of his lifetime achievements in the discipline.
Campbell, a member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 1976, served as geography department head from 1993 to 2002. His research efforts concentrate on areas such as land use, soil and landscape variability, and land reclamation, from the vantage of aerial photographs and related images collected by aircraft and satellites. In 2003 while in residence at the Department of Archaeology, University of Rennes, France, he studied the history of coastal reclamation in southwestern France.
As a member of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, he has held offices at both local and national levels. In 1994, he received the Society's Outstanding Service Award, and in 1996, the Fellow Award. In 1997, he received the Outstanding Service Medal awarded by the Remote Sensing Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.
His text, Introduction to Remote Sensing (Guilford Press), now in its third edition, is widely used for university courses in several disciplines in the United States and Canada and is published in Europe by Taylor & Francis for distribution overseas.
The Virginia Social Science Association annual awards have been named since 1981 in recognition of outstanding scholarship in social sciences.
The College of Natural Resources at Virginia Tech consistently ranks among the top five programs of its kind in the nation. Faculty members stress both the technical and human elements of natural resources and instill in students a sense of stewardship and land-use ethics. Areas of studies include environmental resource management, fisheries and wildlife sciences, forestry, geospatial and environmental analysis, natural resource recreation, urban forestry, wood science and forest products, geography, and international development.
