Departmental Unit № 1
Department of Geography and Environment
PhD in Geography and Environment
100% Full Funding via Graduate Assistantships (GTA/GRA)
Funding Package: Full tuition waiver + 9-month living stipend (~$24,000–$28,000/yr + summer support) + health insurance package provided via GTA/GRA appointments.
Fall Priority Deadline: January 15 (Fall Admission)
GRE Policy: Not required / Waived
English Minimums: TOEFL iBT 80 or IELTS 6.5
MA in Geography and Environment (Thesis Option)
Eligible for GTA/GRA Tuition Waivers and Stipends
Funding Reality: UH Mānoa Geography supports thesis master's students on departmental TAships when available.
Application Deadline: January 15
Admissions Advisory: If full funding is required and MS is self-funded, students are strongly advised to apply directly to the PhD track.
Vetted Matched Scholars (2 Profiles)
Prof. Qi Chen
Professor of Geography and Environment
In Plain Terms · What This Scholar Does:
He shoots laser pulses (LiDAR) from planes, drones, and the International Space Station to reconstruct complete 3D digital copies of forests, measuring tree heights and carbon storage down to the single leaf branch.
Core Research Topics: Remote sensing, airborne and terrestrial LiDAR, GIS, forest carbon inventory, tropical ecosystem canopy structure.
Recent 2024–2026 Works & Grants: Developing individual-tree detection algorithms from drone and spaceborne LiDAR (GEDI, ICESat-2) to map 3D tropical canopy biomass and forest degradation across Pacific island watersheds (USFS / NSF Project 2024–2026).
Laboratory Instruments & Methods: Point cloud LiDAR processing (CloudCompare, PDAL), GEDI waveform analysis, Python, R, machine learning classifiers, ArcGIS Pro.
Recruiting Context: Leader in LiDAR point-cloud processing and 3D geospatial environmental modeling.
Candidate Match:
Remote SensingGISLiDARGeoAI
Tailored Cold-Email Opening Hook:
"Discussing your interest in LiDAR point-cloud processing, forest canopy structure modeling, and GEDI spaceborne remote sensing in your lab."
Prof. Thomas W. Giambelluca
Professor of Geography and Director of Water Resources Research Center (WRRC)
In Plain Terms · What This Scholar Does:
He directs island-wide automated weather stations across mountain peaks and coastal plains to calculate how much rainfall actually sinks into the ground to replenish island drinking water supplies.
Core Research Topics: Hydroclimatology, ecohydrology, island water resources, evapotranspiration mapping, climate change impacts on rainfall.
Recent 2024–2026 Works & Grants: Leading the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal and Hawaiʻi Mesonet, deploying automated climate and soil moisture stations across diverse microclimates to model groundwater recharge vulnerability under severe droughts (NSF EPSCoR 2024–2026).
Laboratory Instruments & Methods: Eddy covariance, automated weather mesonet telemetry, Penman-Monteith evapotranspiration models, GIS hydrological routing, spatial interpolation.
Recruiting Context: Director of the UH Water Resources Research Center; monumental figure in Pacific hydroclimatology.
Candidate Match:
HydrologyHydroclimatologyGISWater Quality
Tailored Cold-Email Opening Hook:
"Discussing your interest in island ecohydrology, automated mesonet climate modeling, and groundwater recharge estimation at WRRC."