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KEARNEY — Research on tornadoes, their life cycles and forms will be the focus of two presentations Thursday as part of Geography Awareness Week at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Adam Houston, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will present “The Initiation of Deep Atmospheric Convection” at 3:30 p.m. in Copeland Hall Room 131.

Deep convection in the atmosphere involves the vertical transport of heat and moisture through a considerable fraction of the troposphere. It plays a significant role in regulating the water cycle, so regional and local variations in the occurrence of deep convection can significantly affect how water resources are managed.

Deep convection can also produce large hail, damaging winds, tornadoes and flooding rains and therefore pose a significant threat to health and safety.

At 7 p.m., Houston will present “Using Unmanned Aircraft to Probe Tornadic Storms in VORTEX-2.” The evening talk will be in Copeland Hall Room 142. The presentations are free and open to the public.

The basis of both talks will be Houston’s $11.9 million research project, VORTEX-2. Last summer, Houston and his 11-member team flew a $25,000 unmanned, radio-controlled plane near a tornado in order to help them understand the tornado’s life cycle and form.

VORTEX-2, which stands for the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2, is being conducted by Houston and his team. They plan to study more tornadoes and super-cell thunderstorms again in the summer of 2010. The research gained national attention this past summer.

Houston received his bachelor’s degree in meteorology from Texas A&M University and his doctorate in atmospheric sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After serving as a visiting assistant professor at Purdue University, he became an assistant professor at UNL in 2006. At UNL, he teaches classes that include dynamic meteorology, radar meteorology, the dynamics of severe thunderstorms and computational fluid dynamics.

The UNK geography and physics department sponsors Geography Awareness Week events. For more information, contact Jean Eichhorst, an instructor in the UNK geography department, at 865-8684.