Faculty Profile - Patricia Gober

• About
• Grants / Awards
• Research & Publications
• Courses

In addition to being a faculty member at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (JSGS), Patricia Gober is a research professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University (ASU). Her work there is focused on water management decision making  in the face of climatic uncertainty in Greater Phoenix. She has established a complementary research program at the University of Saskatchewan, serving as a bridge between JSGS the Global Institute of Water Security in research, stakeholder engagement, and graduate supervision and instruction. Gober's current activities center on climate adaptation in the Saskatchewan River Basin. She is especially interested in the use of science and visualization for real-world decision-making. Gober is past president of the Association of American Geographers, former member of the Population Reference Bureau's Board of Trustees and former chair of the College board's Advanced Placement Human Geography Committee. She was awarded the Prince Sultan Abdulaziz International Price for Water in November 2008, the ASU Alumni Association's Faculty Research Award in February 2009 and the Association of American Geographer's Presidential Achievement Award in April 2011.

Download Patricia Gober's abridged CV.

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Designations

• PhD, Ohio State University, 1975
• MA, Ohio State University, 1972
• BS Ed, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, 1970

Areas of Interest

• Water policy
• Decision making under uncertainty
• Urban systems
• Science-policy interface and stakeholder engagement
• Applied climatology

Recent Grants/Awards

Recent Awards

• AAG Presidential Achievement Award, April, 2011
• Faculty Research Achievement Award, Arizona State University Alumni Association, May, 2009
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, February, 2009
• Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, Water Resource Management and Protection Division, November, 2008

Recent Grants

• Investigator. Global Institute for Water Security. A collaborative approach to defining water security in the Saskatchewan River Basin. $70,800. (2011-2013) (with Douglas Clark, Lalita Bharadwaj, Bran Noble, Robert Patrick, and Howard Wheater).
• Principal Investigator/Program Director. Decision Center for a Desert City II: Urban climate adaptation. National Science Foundation, Award ID SES-0951366, $6.5 million, 2010-2015 (with Charles Redman, Dave White, Craig Kirkwood, and Margaret Nelson).
• Co-Principal Investigator. Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) International Project Office. National Science Foundation, Award ID 0937777, $585,000, 2009-2012 (with Charles Redman, Alan Artibise, Anthony Rock, and Sander van der Leeuw).
• Co-Principal Investigator. Integrated water and land planning as a climate adaptation strategy: Comparisons of Portland, Oregon and Phoenix, Arizona. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Sector Applications Research Program, $111,111, 2009-2011 (with Heejun Chang, Colin Polsky, Vivek Shandas, Kelli Larson, and G. Hossein Parandvash).
• Co-Principal Investigator. Implications of simultaneous extreme heat and drought events for electricity generation and consumption and water shortage in the desert Southwest. The Bipartisan Policy Center's National Commission on Energy Policy, $35,183, 2009-2010 (with David J. Sailor and David A. Sampson).
• Co-Principal Investigator. DT/DCDC/AWI Collaborative Climate Workshops. Arizona Water Institute, Award AWI-09-01a, $39,333, 2009-2010 (with George Basile).

Select Publications

Books

• Patricia Gober. 2006. Metropolitan Phoenix: Place Making and community Building in the Desert. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 233 pp.
• Michael Kuby, John Harner, and Patricia Gober. 2009. Human Geography in Action (Fifth Edition). New York: Wiley, 523 pp.

Chapters

• Patricia Gober. 2011. Decision making under uncertainty: A new paradigm for water resources planning and management. In Handbook of Water Engineering, Vol. 15, eds., Lawrence K Wang and Chi Ted Yang. Humana Press, Inc. and Springer Science, in press.
• Jonathan Fink and Patricia Gober. 2009. Using stakeholder engagement and visualization to aid decision-making about water use in the Middle East. In Jordan and Dead Sea Basin: Cooperation Amid Conflict, eds. C. Lipchin, D. Sandler, and E. Cushman. Springer Scientific Press, 257-276.

Refereed Articles 

• Patricia Gober, Kelli Larson, Ray Quay, Colin Polsky, Heejun Chang, and Vivek Shandas (2012) Why land planners and water managers don't talk to one another and why they should! Society and Natural Resources: in press. 
• Alan T. Murray, Patricia Gober, Luc Anselin, Sergio J. Rey, Paul D. Padegimas, and David Sampson (2012) Spatial optimization models for water supply allocation. Water Resources Management 26(8): 2243-2267.
• Patricia Gober, Ariane Middel, Anthony Brazel, Soe Myint, Heejun Chang, Jiunn-Der Duh, and Lily House-Peters (2012) Tradeoffs between water conservation and temperature amelioration in Phoenix and Portland: Implications for urban sustainability. Urban Geography 33(7): in press.
• Winston T. L. Chow, Wen-Ching Chaung, and Patricia Gober (2011) Vulnerability to extreme heat in metropolitan Phoenix: Spatial, temporal, and demographic dimensions. Professional Geographer 64 (2): 286-302. 
• D. A. Sampson, V. Escobar, M. K. Tschudi, T. Lant, and P. Gober (2011) A provider-based water planning and management model – Watersim 4.0 – for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. Journal of Environmental Management 92 (10): 2596-2610.
• A.Middel, A. J. Brazel, P. Gober, S. W. Myint, H. Chang, and J.D. Duh (2011) Land cover, climate, and the summer surface energy balance in Phoenix, AZ and Portland OR. International Journal of Climatology 18 (4): 61-79.
• Soe W. Myint, Patricia Gober, Anthony Brazel, Susanne Grossman-Clarke, and Qjhoa Weng (2011) Per-pixel vs. object-based classification of urban land cover extraction using high spatial resolution imagery. Remote Sensing of Environment 115(5): 1145-1161.
• Winston T. L. Chow, Wen-Ching Chaung, and Patricia Gober. 2011. Vulnerability to extreme heat in metropolitan Phoenix: Spatial, temporal, and demographic dimensions. Professional Geographer, in press.
• Patricia Gober, Elizabeth A. Wentz, Timothy Lant, Michael K. Tschudi, and Craig Kirkwood. WaterSim: 2011. A simulation model for urban water planning in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Environment and Planning B 37(10), in press.
• Patricia Gober and Craig Kirkwood. 2010. Vulnerability assessment of climate-induced water shortage in Phoenix. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(50): 21295-21299.
• Dave D.White, Amber Wutich, Kelli L. Larson, Patricia Gober, Timothy Lant and Clea Senneville. 2010. Credibility, salience, and legitimacy of boundary objects: water managers'assessment of a simulation model in an immersive decision theater. Science and Public Policy 37(3): 219-232.
• Patricia Gober. Desert urbanization and the challenges of water sustainability. 2010. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2: 144-150.
• Patricia Gober, Anthony J. Brazel, Ray Quay, Soe Myint, Susanne Grossman-Clarke, Adam Miller, and Steve Rossi. 2010. Using watered landscapes to manipulate urban heat island effects: How much water will it take to cool Phoenix? Journal of the American Planning Association 76(1), 101-121.
• Patricia Gober, Craig Kirkwood, Robert C. Balling, Jr., Andrew W. Ellis, and Stephanie Deitrick. 2010 Water planning under climatic uncertainty in Phoenix: Why we need a new paradigm. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100(2): 357-372.
• Subhrajit Guhathakurta and Patricia Gober. 2010. Residential land use, the urban heat island, and water use in Phoenix: A path analysis. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 31(1): 40-51. 
• John B. Braden, Daniel G. Brown, Jeff Dozier, Patricia Gober, Sara M. Hughes, David R. Maidment, Sandra L. Schneider, P. Wesley Schultz, James S. Shortle, Stephen K. Swallow, and Carol M. Werner. 2009. Social science in a water observing system. Water Resources Research 45 W11301, doi: 10.1029/2009WR008216.
• K. L. Larson, D. D. White, P. Gober, S. Harlan, and A. Wutich. 2009. Divergent perspectives on water resource sustainability in a public-policy-science context. Environmental Science and Policy 12: 1012-1023.  
• Seung-Jae Lee, Elizabeth A. Wentz, and Patricia Gober. 2009. Space-time forecasting using soft geostatistics: A case study in forecasting municipal water demand for Phoenix, Arizona. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment 24: 283-295.

Non-Refereed Articles 

• Patricia Gober (2013) Decision making under uncertainty: A new paradigm for water resources planning and management. In Handbook of Water Engineering, Vol. 15, eds., Lawrence K Wang and Chi Ted Yang. Humana Press, Inc. and Springer Science, in press. 
• Reza Ghanbarpour, Howard Wheater, and Patricia Gober. (2012) Sensitivity analysis of environmental flow rule curves for water allocation optimization: Case study, the Upper Oldman River Basin, Alberta, Canada, IMESS International Conference on Environmental Modeling and Software, Leipzig, in press.
• Ray Quay and Patricia Gober (2011) A cautionary note for Sun Corridor water planners. In Watering the Sun Corridor: Managing Choices in Arizona's Megapolitan Area, Morrison Institute for Public Policy, Arizona State University.
• Jonathan Fink and Patricia Gober (2009) Using stakeholder engagement and visualization to aid decision-making about water use in the Middle East. In Jordan and Dead Sea Basin: Cooperation Amid Conflict, eds. C. Lipchin, D. Sandler, and E. Cushman. Springer Scientific Press, 257-276.
• Patricia Gober. 2009. Desert city visions: Decision making under uncertainty. Stockholm Water Front 2009(2):16-17. 
• Patricia Gober. 2008. Climate adaptation and water resource management in Phoenix. Water Resources Impact 10(4): 10-13.
• Patricia Gober (ed.). 2007. Land Use: Challenges and Choices for the 21st Century. 91st Arizona Town Hall Report. Phoenix: Arizona Town Hall.
• Patricia Gober. 2007. Water, climate and the future of Phoenix. Geographische Rundschau 3(4), 20-24. 
• Anthony J. Brazel and Patricia Gober. 2007. Urban-scale climate change effects on water use. Southwest Hydrology 6(5), 10-11.

Current Courses

• JSGS 865 Decisions in Organizations  
• JSGS 870 Water Policy  
• JSGS 851 Qualitative Methods

Current Research

• Climate change and water management in the Colorado River Basin
• Urban climate adaptation
• Vulnerability assessment
• Urban heat island development in Phoenix
• Strategies for decision making under uncertainty
• Best practices in science-policy engagement