Department News & Events

Department News

New Bachelor of Arts Sustainability Science Degree

Beginning in Fall 2025, undergraduate students will have the opportunity to complete a BA degree in Sustainability Science. This new degree program will provide students with a solid foundation in the natural sciences, exposure to an interdisciplinary perspective from the social sciences and the humanities, and instruction in research skills necessary to compete in the ever growing field of sustainability Learn more about the BA Sustainability Science degree.

Faculty Updates

Research Grants

Dr. Michael Kerwin is co-PI on a recently awarded NSF grant titled "IRES: Nature-based Solutions research to support water security in peri-urban areas”. Furthermore, this project includes former PhD student Dr. Joe Hoover (co-PI)  and former PhD student and former visiting professor Dr. Thomas Lavanchy (PI).

 

Dr. Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong is a co-applicant with a large team of scholars who secured grant funding  in the amount of CAN$2,499,630 from the Government of Canada to work on climate change, agroecology and equity issues in Africa. The project is titled Participatory Agroecological Research for Transforming Knowledge and Equity in African Communities (PARTAKE Africa). The grant duration is 7 years and will support numerous students in our department.

In the News

Dr. Andrew Goetz was interviewed by 9News, Denver7, and Fox 31 regarding the neighborhood impacts for the preferred new Broncos stadium site at Burnham Yards.

• KDVR Fox31
• KMGH Denver7
• KUSA 9News

Dr. Michael Kerwin was interviewed about Colorado geology and Colorado River water resources issues.

• An Expert's Guide to Colorado's Coolest Rock Formations
• The Colorado River: What we can do to help water conservation efforts?
• The Colorado River: Lifeblood for the American West

 

Dr. Hillary Hamann was interviewed about Denver Water's approach to climate change challenges.

• Denver Water takes climate change challenges head on

Recent Faculty Publications

Boschmann, E. (2024). Daily trip making during the COVID-19 pandemic: A national survey of older adults in the United States. Travel Behaviour and Society, 34, 100683.

Dobruszkes, F., Chen, C.-L., Cidell, J., Condeco-Melhorado, A., Goetz, A. R., Ryley, T., & Thevenin, T. (2023). New and emerging pathways for transport geography. In Jerzy Banski & Michael Meadows (Eds.), Research directions, challenges, and achievements of modern geography. (pp. 39-59). Cham: Springer. 9789819966042.

Goetz, A. R. (2023). The Interstate Highway 70 reconstruction project in Denver: Repeating a 1960s planning failure? In Robin Hickman & Christine Hannigan (Eds.), Discourse analysis in transport and urban development: Interpretation, diversity, and controversy. London: Edward Elgar. 9781802207194.

Goetz, A. R., Perl, A. D., Bruun, E. C., & Zimny-Schmitt, D. (2023). Exploring the potential of providing high-speed intercity passenger rail service to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Chicago, IL: High Speed Rail Alliance.

Hazen, H. D., Alberts, H. C., & Zaniewski, K. J. (2023). Population geography: Social justice for a sustainable world. New York: Routledge. 9780367697075.

McCarroll, M., LaVanchy, G. T., & Kerwin, M. W. Tourism resiliance to drourhg and climate shocks: The role of water literacy in hotel management. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights, 5(4), 1-10.

He, Z., Zhang, T., Wang, W., & Li, J. (2024). A Deep Pedestrian Trajectory Generator for Complex Indoor Environments. To appear in Transactions in GIS.

Entwistle, J.R. & Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H. (2025). Community land governance in Liberia: Implications for tenure security and land concessions. Land Use Policy, 153, 107555.

Stock, R. & Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H. (2025). Laboring for light: energy unfreedoms and freedom dreams of solar labor in Ghana. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 52 (2), 235-257

Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., & Carlson, A. (2024). Seed sovereignty, knowledge politics, and climate change in northern Ghana. In Rachel Wynberg (Ed.), African perspectives on agroecology: Why farmer-led seed and knowledge systems matter. (pp. 115-132). Rugby, UK: Practical Action Publishing. 9781788530224.

Boafo, J., Yeboah, T., Guodaar, L., Yamoah, S. & Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H. (2024). Understanding non-economic loss and damage due to climate change in Ghana. Climate and Development, 16 (2), 109-118.

Dinko, D. H., Kansanga, M., Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., & Luginaah, I. (2024). Unpacking the dynamics of natural resource conflicts: The case of African rosewood. Land Use Policy, 136, 106962: 1873-5754.

Kpienbaareh, D., Kerr, R. B., Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., Iverson, A., Luginaah, I., Lupafya, E., ... & Shumba, L. (2024). Ecosystem service demand and supply dynamics under different farming systems: A participatory GIS assessment in Malawi. Applied Geography, 171, 103372.

Rasmussen, L.V., Grass, I., Mehrabi, Z., Smith, O.M., Bezner-Kerr, R., Blesh, J., Garibaldi, L.A., Isaac, M.E., Kennedy, C.M., Wittman, H., Batáry, P., Buchori, D., Cerda, R., Chará, J., Crowder, D.W., Darras, K., DeMaster, K., Garcia, K., Gómez, M., Gonthier, D., Hidayat, P., Hipólito, J., Hirons, M., Hoey, L., James, D. John, I., Jones, A.D., Karp, D.S., Kebede, Y., Bezner Kerr, C., Klassen, S., Kotowska, M., Kreft, H., Llanque, R., Levers, C., Lizcano, D.J., Lu, A., Madsen, S., Marques, R.N., Martins, P.B., Melo, A., Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., Olimpi, E.M., Owen, J.P., Pantevez, H., Qaim, M., Redlich, S., Scherber, C., Sciligo, A.R., Snapp, S., Snyder, W.E., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Stratton, A.E.,Taylor, J.M.,Tscharntke, T., Valencia, V., Vogel, C. and Kremen, C. (2024). Joint Environmental and Social Benefits from Diversified Agriculture. Science, 384 (6691), 87-93.

Najjar, D., Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., Devkota, R., & Bentaibi, A. (2023). A feminist political ecology of agricultural innovations in smallholder farming systems: Experiences from wheat production in Morocco and Uzbekistan. Geoforum, 146, 103865.

Dinko, D. H., & Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H. (2023). Uneven geographies of the embodied effects of water insecurity among women irrigators in northern Ghana. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 113(10), 2417-2434.

Stock, R., Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., Antwi-Agyei, P., & Yeleliere, E. (2023). Volta photovoltaics: Ruptures in resource access as gendered injustices in Ghana. Energy Research & Social Science, 103, 103222: 2214-6326.

Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., Dinko, D. H., & Bezner Kerr, R. (2023). Floodplain farming and maladaptation to extreme rainfall events in northern Ghana. Climate and Development, 15(3), 201-214. 1756-5537.

Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., Christian, A. K., Ganle, J., & Aryeetey, R. (2023). “Now we’ve all turned to eating processed foods”: A photovoice study of the food and nutrition security implications of ‘galamsey’ in Ghana. African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development, 23(1).

Elvidge, C. D., Zhizhin, M., Sparks, T., Ghosh, T., Pon, S., Bazilian, M., Sutton, P. C., & Miller, S. D. (2023). Global Satellite Monitoring of Exothermic Industrial Activity via Infrared Emissions. Remote Sensing, 15(19), 4760.

Rothman, D. S., Raskin, P., Kok, K., Robinson, J., Jäger, J., Hughes, B., & Sutton, P. C. (2023). Global Discontinuity: Time for a Paradigm Shift in Global Scenario Analysis. Sustainability, 15(17), 12950: 2071-1050.

Moran-Taylor, M. J., Taylor, M. J., & Galemba, R. Migration and Climate in Western Guatemala. Focus on Geography.

Zhang, G. (2024). A web-based geovisualization framework for exploratory analysis of individual VGI contributor’s participation characteristics. Cartography and Geographic Information Science. 1545-0465.

Huang, X., Wang, S., Yang, D., Hu, T., Chen, M., Zhang, M., Zhang, G., Biljecki, F., Lu, T., Zou, L., Wu, C. Y. H., Park, Y. M., Li, X., Liu, Y., Fan, H., Mitchell, J., Li, Z., & Hohl, A. (2024). Crowdsourcing geospatial data for earth and human observations: A review. Journal of Remote Sensing, 4, 0105.

Zhang, G., Gong, X., & Zhu, D. (2024). Geographic proximity and homophily effects drive social interactions within VGI communities: An example of iNaturalist. International Journal of Digital Earth, 17(1), 2297948.

Zhang, G., Luo, W., Wu, M., & Ye, L. (2025). Exploring social interaction patterns and drivers in VGI communities using a custom geovisual analytics tool. Annals of GIS, 31(3): 413-431

Graduate Student Updates

Graduate Student Publications

Baysal, U. (2024). Desperately Seeking Sustainable Human Well-Being: A Review of Indicators, Concepts, and Methods. SCIPublish. 1(3). DOI: 10.35534/ecolciviliz.2024.10004

Chatterjee, N., Tilottama G, Christopher D E, Mikhail Z, Tamara S. (2023).Uncovering the Effects of the Southwest Monsoon on Fishing Activity in the Indian Ocean with VIIRS Boat Detection Data. Oceanography Fish Open Access Journal 16(5): 555948. DOI: 10.19080/ OFOAJ.2023.16.555948

Elvidge CD, Ghosh T, Chatterjee N., Zhizhin M, Bazilian M. (2023). Discovering Hidden Offshore Lighting Structures with Multiyear Low-Light Imaging Satellite Data. Oceanography Fish Open Access Journal  16(4): 555944. DOI: 10.19080/OFOAJ.2023.16.555944

Elvidge, C. D., Ghosh, T., Chatterjee, N., & Zhizhin, M. (2023). Lights on the Water? Accumulating VIIRS boat detection grids in Southeast Asia spanning 2012–2021. Fish for the People, 21(1), 33-38.

Tenenbaum, J. (2023). Competing National Identities in the Landscape of Rapa Nui. Focus on Geography  66. DOI: 10.21690/foge/2023.66.2f 

Undergraduate Student Receives Honda Inspiration Award. 

Sidney Barbier (BS Environmental Science 2025) was named the recipient of the Class of 2025 Honda Inspiration Award. Celebrating its 37th year, the Honda Inspiration Award recognizes a female collegiate athlete in NCAA Division I, II, or III who has triumphed in the face of extraordinary physical and/or emotional adversity, injury, illness, or personal sacrifice during her collegiate experience, and who has returned to achieve athletic success.

• Class of 2025 Graduates

  Congratulations to the Class of 2025!

  PhD (Geography):

  Uma Baysal, Toward a Sustainable Well-Being: A Multidimensional Assessment for Colorado, (Sutton)          
  Jecca Bowen, Political Ecologies of the Livestock Industry, (Nyantakyi-Frimpong) 
  Namrata Chatterjee, Lights at Night: Indicators of Urbanization, Socio-economic Change, and Sustainability Progress, (Sutton)           
   

  MS (Geographic Information Science):

  Jack Borski, Utilizing Spatial Criteria to High-grade Wyoming EOR Opportunities Along Proposed Pipeline Corridors: A Value Driven Approach, (Hick)    
  Robert Brown, A Comparative GIS Analysis of United and Southwest Airlines Route Networks, (Hick)          
  Marc Di Placido, GIS-Based Water Reservoir Locations, (Kuzera)          
  Devin Escue, Visualization of Indiana and Northern Long-Eared Bats Using Spline Surfaces To Enable Targeted Land Management, (Hick) 
  Hanna Gilhooley, How Short-Term Rentals Impact Summit County, Colorado, Spa;ally and Economically: A GIS Analysis, (Hick)    
  Erik Gilmore, A GIS Approach to Predictive Wildfire Mapping in the Pike National Forest, (Hick)    
  Joslyn Hays, Wet Meadow Restoration Prioritization Modeling Project,(Hamman)   
  Tara Hoelzer, Object-Based Image Analysis and Artificial Intelligence Identification of Anthropogenic Disturbance on Lesser Prairie Chicken Habitat in Cheyenne County, Colorado, (Hick)   
  Amelia Horton, Spatial Analysis of PM2.5 Pollution Using Crowdsourced Data in Chicago, Illinois, (Hick)   
  Jake Hostnik, Wolverine Habitat Suitability Analysis in Lake County, Colorado, Using GIS, (Hick)  
  Daniel Kinkaid, Using Historic Glacial Data and GIS to Predict Mount Rainier National Park’s Glacial Future, (Hick) 
  Bianca Kumar, Developing a Public Integrated Web GIS Hub Portal for Summit County, Colorado, (Hick)  
  David Lackajs, Key Largo Mangrove Population Monitoring: A Remote Sensing Analysis and Classification Methodology Review, (Hick)  
  Brandon McAllister, A Spatial Analysis of Residential Photovoltaic Adoption in New Jersey: Focusing on 2020 With Trends Through 2025, (Hick)  
  Austin Rushinsky, Comparison and Critique of Radon Data in Jefferson County, Colorado, (Kuzera)       
  Georgia Schneider, Navigating the Challenges of Creating a Secure, Spatial Cave and Karst Resources Inventory and Tracking Geodatabase for the Geologic Resources Division of the National Park Service, (Hick) 
  Alex Van De Water, Salmon Fishery Management, (Nyantakyi-Frimpong)          
   

  BA (Environmental Science): Benjamin Albro, Nadeen Ameer, Kathryn Baker, Kaela Belknap, Chloe Benson, Charles Contag, Emilia Cooper, Nathan Cox, Giovanna Davison, Giovanna Drake, Grant Endresen, Rose Keaton, Ella Marsden, Colleen Meighan, Morgan Oglesby, Sidney Parker, Casie Parrish, Maggie Ryan, Nina Sachs, Samantha Sameshima, Logan Simson, Nicollette Tanino-Springsteen, Lillian Wertz, Rebekah Wright.

  BA (Geography): Ines Allen, Charlotte Bond, Abigail Brewer, Jack Callahan, Aden Callahan, Griffin Cascarino, Gerardo Cruz, Carmen Cunningham, Maclean Donovan, Michael Fitzsimmons, Daniella Holstein, Maxwell Jadlos, Carson Jones, Jacqueline Lanning, Mark Mazzatta, Peter Michel, Audrey Singer, Kenna Stephen.

  BS (Environmental Science): Albertine Arnfield, Sidney Barbier, Rose Bracken, William Christensen, Makenna DiDonato, Emily Fisher, Rachel Jaeger, Eleanor Jones, Olivia Kachulis, Alicen King, Kaimbry Kugeler, Joseph Lumer, Catherine Malatesta, Anna Marlow, Ella Mathews, Meghan O'Reilly, Sarah Olson, Sammy Ortiz, Uriel Perez, Timothy Place, Isla Saylor, Norah Schroder, Rebecca Short.

  BS (Geographic Information Science): Claire Batson, Sarah Brinkmann, Theodore Canji, Freya Crook, Johanna Hunt, Skylar Mc Williams, Jason Tipler.

• 2025 Department Awards

  Congratulations to this year's award recipients!

  Dr. Laurence C. Herold Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistants: Joslyn Hays, Alexandra van de Water

  Dr. Robert D. Rudd Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Research: Namrata Chatterjee

  Dr. David B. Longbrake Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Service in Geography: Logan Simson

  Professor Moras L. Shubert Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Scholarship in Environmental Science: Sidney Barbier

  Environmental Science Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research in Environmental Science: Kiena Campbell, Norah Shroder

  Paul Stanford Bernhard Memorial Scholarship in Environmental Science: Tatiana Peccedi

  Alan Bryce Henry Memorial Scholarship in Environmental Science: Haven White

  Dr. Thomas M. Griffiths Memorial Award for Undergraduate Scholarship and Research: Carmen Cunningham, Audrey Singer

   

• 2025 Herold Fund Research Awards

  Created in 2010, this fund honors the memory of Professor Laurance C. Herold, a faculty member in the Geography Department from 1963 through 1996, who led many student field research expeditions, notably to study prehistoric agricultural terraces in the Sierra Madre Occidental of Chihuahua and Sonora, Mexico. The Laurance C. Herold Fund supports field research by graduate and undergraduate students as part of their degree programs in the Department of Geography & the Environment.

  Additional support provided by the Longbrake Family Foundation.

  Congratulations to this year's Herold Fund awardees:

  Julia Entwistle: A qualitative approach to understanding large-scale plantation agriculture and dietary diversity in Liberia.
  Andrews Ofosu: A decolonial approach to exploring climate change maladaptation in Ghana.
  Queen Olafadahan: Impacts of ecotourism on deforestation and revenue distribution: A qualitative exploration of local community perspectives at Lekki Conservation Center, Nigeria.
  Stephanie Yamoah: Evaluating the efficacy and community engagement of agroforestry-based climate solutions in Ghana.

Department Events

Fall 2025

All seminars are in Boettcher Auditorium 101 and start at 4:00 pm.

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Dr. Diego Pons, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver and Centro de Estudios Ambientales y de Biodiversidad (CEAB), Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.

Feeding the Caribbean: Navigating Food (In)Security in a Changing Climate

Across the Caribbean, food is deeply tied to culture, livelihoods, and community well-being. Yet, this region is facing increasing uncertainty as droughts, hurricanes, and shifting rainfall patterns reshape the region’s ability to grow or catch food. This talk draws on recent work in Belize, Jamaica, and Grenada to show how variability and climate change is already impacting food production and what that means for everyday food security. In Belize, small-scale farmers are struggling with more frequent droughts, but Early Warning Systems and Anticipatory Actions offer hope for protecting harvests before disaster strikes. In Jamaica, changing temperatures and rainfall threaten the suitability of key crops, leaving vulnerable smallholders with fewer reliable options. In Grenada, the devastation of hurricanes collides with sea-level rise and shifting climate patterns, putting island food systems under growing stress. By weaving these stories together, this presentation highlights not only the risks but also the creative solutions emerging—from climate-smart farming calendars to web-based risk atlases—that can help Caribbean communities adapt.

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Julia Entwistle, Andrews Ofosu, Queen Olafadahan, Stephanie Yamoah, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

Reflections from the Field: Graduate Student Field Research Experiences

Graduate students provide updates on their summer field research experiences:

• Julia Entwistle: A qualitative approach to understanding large-scale plantation agriculture and dietary diversity in Liberia.

• Andrews Ofosu: A decolonial approach to exploring climate change maladaptation in Ghana.

• Queen Olafadahan: Impacts of ecotourism on deforestation and revenue distribution: A qualitative exploration of local community perspectives at Lekki Conservation Center, Nigeria.

• Stephanie Yamoah: Evaluating the efficacy and community engagement of agroforestry-based climate solutions in Ghana.

Thursday, November 13, 2025

Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, Douglas and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy, Joseph Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver

• 2024-2025 Seminars

  Thursday, October 10, 2024

  Peter Tsigaris, Department of Economics Thompson Rivers University-Kamloops, British Colombia

  Assessing the Value of a Park in the Rural-Urban Fringe Zone: A Case Study of Kenna Cartwright Nature Park in the Interior of British Colombia

  This research evolved from the graduate course I taught in 2021. We all worked on creating a book assessing the value of parks in Kamloops in terms of ecosystem services they provide and their valuation as a natural asset. It is co-authored with all of my students. One of the chapters, with my student Jake Truscott, was eventually published in the Journal Rural and Community Development and the other from Arwinddeep Kaur's project thesis which I supervised is under review in the journal Parks. The paper with Jake Truscott provides estimates for the value of green infrastructure and ecosystem services and the paper with Arwinddeep Kaur assesses the recreational use value of Kenna Cartwright Nature Park in Kamloops, British Columbia (B.C.), the largest municipal park in the province. The 749 ha park, also the ninth largest in Canada, offers significant natural, human, social, and built capital benefits, with an estimated worth of $2.96 billion. Using an opportunity cost assessment of green infrastructure and benefit transfer function from a meta-analysis, the park yields $45.7 million to $58.6 million annually in ecosystem services, translating to $500 per person per year, with each resident having approximately $28.8 thousand in green infrastructure capital. On a Kamloops per-capita basis, Kenna Cartwright Park represents 20% of the value of all single-detached homes in the city. The travel cost method was used to estimate of the recreational ecosystem services and use value of the park, where the average consumer surplus per person per visit was approximately CAD $20 in 2022, resulting in a minimum annual value of CAD $4.2 million. During the COVID-19 lockdown in Spring 2020, visits to the park nearly doubled, significantly increasing the consumer surplus to CAD $6.8 million for the year. The findings emphasize the crucial role that Kenna Cartwright Park plays in promoting community well-being and sustainable urban planning, providing not only economic value but also enhancing quality of life through accessible green space.

  Thursday, January 30, 2025

  Sean Tierney, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Finances of the US Government

  In 2024, the US government spent $1.8 Trillion more than it collected in taxes; the sixth straight year where the deficit was at least one trillion dollars. Why?  Because there are a lot of things that our government can and should do, but voters and politicians prefer low taxes.  Unfortunately, there is a growing consensus that we now face an inflection point because the total debt owed by our government exceeds the size of our economy.  Elon Musk has been tasked with reducing the deficit and Congress will have to either cut spending or raise taxes.  Both will be unpopular.  How did we get here and what comes next?

  Thursday, February 20, 2025

  Yu Zhang, Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos, National Laboratory

  Coastal Wetland Hydrology Under Climate Change: Dynamics, Consequences, and Eco-geomorphologic Feedbacks

  Coastal wetlands, some of the Earth's most valuable ecosystems, face unprecedented threats due to the accelerating impacts of climate change—sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion, hurricanes, and storm surges. These forces are fundamentally altering the ecosystem functions, threatening their survival. Will these ecosystems adapt and persist, or are they doomed to disappear? In this talk, Dr. Yu Zhang explores this critical question through an integrated hydrologic and eco-geomorphologic lens. By examining the dynamic interactions between water, vegetation, and landforms, Dr. Zhang's research offers new insights into the potential futures of coastal wetlands and the intricate feedbacks that may shape their resilience in the face of changing climates.

  Thursday, February 27, 2025

  Cathleen Balantic, Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, National Park Service

  Emerging Tools in Bioacoustics Help Decode Natural Sounds Across Public Lands 

  In a world confronting changes in land use, changes in the temperature of the earth's surface and oceans, and changes in ecosystems, effective methods for monitoring natural resources are critical. Audio recordings of the environment can yield a variety of insights about sound-producing wildlife over time and across vast spatial scales. The National Park Service manages over 400 units across the United States, each with unique resource protection needs. Many parks have natural resource conservation priorities that include the protection of natural soundscapes and the sound-producing species who contribute to them. The sounds wildlife produce can provide critical information about their activities, such as communication, territory establishment, mate attraction, and predator avoidance. It is challenging, however, to translate terabytes of raw audio into useful information for diverse research and management questions. Recent advances in terrestrial bioacoustics are making this process more tractable, particularly as emerging tools enable the detection of diverse assemblages of sound-producing species across varied ecosystems. We illustrate the utility of using emerging tools in combination with open code and visualizations to answer multi-taxa questions about species occurrence, phenology, and wildlife responses to management. This work demonstrates both the iterative nature and challenges inherent to keeping a federal agency astride the leading edge in a rapidly progressing, data-heavy field, amid a backdrop of global change.

  Thursday, April 17, 2025

  Kendra McSweeney,  Department of Geography, Ohio State University

  The Drug War and Climate Change: Making the Connections

  The ‘war on drugs’ seems unrelated to climate change. But insights from long-term geographic research in Central America highlight how efforts to keep drugs out of the U.S. can have serious climate consequences for all of us.

  Thursday, April 24, 2025

  Aaron Strain, Whitman College

  Sinking Seaweed: Cultural Economies of Ocean-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal and The Case Against 'Saving The World'

  Dreams of "unf**king the planet" and "saving the world" with massive seaweed-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects exploded into prominence during the past seven years. The "Seaweed Revolution" quickly became a darling of the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, liberal media outlets, and a wide array of geoengineering, marine permaculture, and green start-up gurus. The movement capitalized on seaweed's charisma and a really good story: Seaweeds, the narrative ran, are the "rainforest of the ocean," "carbon-sucking sea trees." Even as start-ups and investors rushed forward with multi-million-dollar projects backed by this brilliant story, there was a sense that the science didn't add up and the analogy didn't work. Only a few years after the boom began, seaweed CDR now faces significant scientific challenges--and deep investor skepticism (particularly after the dramatic failure of the industry's most prominent start-up). Examining the wild ride of seaweed CDR, this talk goes beyond technical debates about the effectiveness and desirability of seaweed carbon projects to explore the cultural economic forms that surround them. It argues that, regardless of where one stands in debates about the potential benefits of seaweed CDR, the dominant cultural form adopted by these projects undermines the goal of developing long-term climate solutions. In place of the "performative superiority" and overblown world saving promises of environmental start-up culture, a more boring approach to developing and governing CDR technology might have a more profound and just impact on climate change. 

  Thursday, May 1, 2025

  Nicolas Tarasewicz, Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder

  Ecohydrological Patterns in Subalpine Forests: Linking Canopy Structure, Water Availability, and Carbon Storage

  Subalpine forests, which play a crucial role in storing carbon and providing freshwater, are increasingly threatened by climate change. As temperatures rise and snowfall declines, these forests face a greater risk of drought, wildfires, and insect outbreaks. How well they can withstand these changes depends largely on the availability of water and energy, which vary across small-scale differences in forest structure. To better understand these patterns, we used a specialized cart system to measure sunlight filtering through the forest canopy along a 120-meter path in Colorado’s Como Creek watershed. Our measurements revealed three distinct zones based on soil moisture: a dry zone with sparse tree cover, a dense transition zone, and a wetland zone with more open tree cover. These differences were also reflected in estimates of soil moisture along the transect. We then used 3D laser scanning (lidar) data to create a model that simulates how sunlight moves through the forest, helping us to map energy availability at a high spatial resolution. This model was validated using our cart-based measurements and applied to the wider surrounding area to identify similar zones based on canopy structure. To further assess how these zones relate to carbon storage over time, we are analyzing changes in tree mass using lidar data from 2010 and 2025. Our research helps clarify how forest structure interacts with water and energy availability at fine scales, providing valuable insights into which parts of the landscape may be more resistant to climate-related disturbances.

  Thursday, May 15, 2025

  Matt Cross, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Tropical Forest Tree Species Classification Using  High-Resolution Imagery

  Accurate identification of tropical tree species is critical for assessing forest habitat, composition, biomass, and ultimately the role of trees in climate change mitigation through carbon uptake. High-resolution multispectral imagery for a study area in Costa Rica was corrected for atmospheric and geometric variability, and surface reflectivity was verifed using a field spectrometer. A statistical analysis determined which derived imagery products would be most applicable for tropical tree species descrimination. An object-based image analysis accurately idenitfied tree species in the study area. The results show that select imagery bands and vegetation indices can produce an accurate tree species classification in a complex tropical forest.

   

• 2023-2024 Seminars

  Thursday, September 21, 2023

  Morgan Toschlog, Stephanie Yamoah, Jecca Bowen, Cody Silveira, Jesse Tenenbaum, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver.  

  Reflections from the Field: Graduate Student Field Research Experiences

  Thursday, September 28, 2023

  Dr. Phil Cafaro, School of Global Environmental Sustainability, Colorado State University 

  Fewer People and Smaller Economies: Humanity's Path Toward Environmental Sustainability

  Thursday, November 2, 2023

  Dr. Katie M. Grote,  Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Studies of (in)Equality (IRISE), University of Denver

  Indigenous Community Exclusion in U.S. Environmental Impact Assessments

  Thursday, February 22, 2024

  Nandita Bajaj, Executive Director, Population Balance

  Confronting Technological Fundamentalism Amid Socio-Ecological Unraveling

  Thursday, February 22, 2024

  Jack Alpert, Stanford Knowledge Lab, Stanford University

  Designing a Viable Civilization

  Thursday, April 4, 2024

  Elena Arroway, Department of Geography & the Environment, University of Denver

  Wildfire Damage Modeling at the Property Level

  William Keenan, Department of Geography & the Environment, University of Denver

  A Machine Learning and Geospatial Framework for Forecasting Ground Level Ozone

  Thursday, April 25, 2024

  Francis Rengers, U.S. Geological Survey   

  Post-fire Debris Flow Observations Following the Grizzly Creek Fire, Glenwood Canyon, Colorado

  We studied the performance of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) models for postfire debris flow rainfall intensity thresholds volumes over a two-year period in the 2020 Grizzly Creek Fire burn perimeter in Glenwood Canyon, Colorado, USA.  This was done by first developing a debris flow response inventory using a network of 11 rain gauges for rainfall intensity measurements and repeat lidar data for volume estimates.  Our results showed that 89% of the observed debris flows during storms in the first year postfire were triggered by rainfall rates higher than the USGS modeled rainfall threshold produced by the current operational model (M1). In contrast, during the second year postfire, despite eight rainstorms with intensities higher than the modeled rainfall threshold, no debris flows were observed. The volume model overpredicted the observed volumes, with observed volumes between one-fifth to one-quarter of the volume model prediction. Consequently, the operational model for debris flow initiation rainfall thresholds worked well in the study area during the first year but may be too conservative in the following years due to vegetation recovery. Additionally, it may be necessary to apply a correction factor to volume predictions in this region using the current operational volume model, to account for regional differences in the volume production. This study indicates that overall vegetation recovery and sediment exhaustion may affect the second-year rainfall threshold, as well as the first-year volume prediction.

  Thursday, May 2, 2024

  Melanie Vanderhoof, Geoscience and Environmental Change Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey

  Using Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis to Explore Hydrologic Connectivity and Inform Policy

  The storage of surface water in wetlands, ponds, lakes, and the movement of that water into streams and rivers influences the transport of sediment, nutrients, pollutants, and biota, and has implications for water quality, land use, and the impact of extreme events, like floods and droughts, on communities. Natural variability in surface-water extent, however, makes it challenging to gather timely and accurate information on the distribution and connectivity of surface water. Remote sensing provides a unique opportunity to track surface water dynamics including the frequency and duration of surface water connections, as well as their dependence on landscape characteristics. Multi-source remote sensing approaches, as well as integrating remote sensing with hydrologic models and field-work campaigns, can all help further our ability to monitor and predict future changes in surface water dynamics and connectivity in response to natural disasters as well as shifts in climate, land use. In this talk, we share insights from research projects on hydrologic connectivity across the United States, and how this research has helped contribute to science-informed policy.

  Thursday, May 16, 2024

  John Norman, Teren 4D Inc.

  The Teren Climate Enhanced Topographic Wetness Index (CETWI) Model

  Digital terrain indices to predict soil wetness generalize topographic variables that drive hydrological processes and are commonly used to help identify hydrological flow paths for geochemical modeling, as well as to characterize biological processes such as annual net primary production, vegetation patterns, and forest site quality. Topographic Wetness Index (TWI) is a basic analytic for local soil property (biogeochemistry) and ecosystem modeling (vegetation communities and wetland delineations), but limited when implemented over large landscapes. The TWI is derived from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), using the specific catchment area modified by local slope angle.  It does not consider factors, such as different soil moisture conditions due to varying characteristics in precipitation, aspect, terrain position, temperature, solar radiation, and hydrologic processes. 

  To address these issues, Teren has developed an enhanced TWI called Climate Enhanced Topographic Wetness Index ( CETWI). It is a highly dynamic TWI model by being adaptable by capturing variability at multiple scales while adjusting input weights down the network based on individual climatic or topographic drivers of importance. The weights of these drivers and how they impact the local or network soil moisture gradients can be adjusted based on local knowledge. The resulting CETWI model has proven useful for mapping soil (type, drainage, chemical, and physical properties), soil trafficability, and species- or community-based vegetation distributions. Ultimately, the model will guide land management and operational decision making. For instance the CETWI model proved very useful in fire potential and severity prediction. By examining existing vegetation or forest stand composition and density against the CETWI model, dry hillslopes with high fuel loads could be isolated and prioritized for vegetation treatments.

• 2022-2023 Seminars

  Thursday, September 22, 2022 
  Dr. Chris Bystroff, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 
  Footprints to Singularity: A Global Population Model Explains Late 20th Century Slow-down and Predicts Peak Within Ten Years

  Thursday, September 29, 2022 
  Dr. Mara Goldman, University of Colorado Boulder 
  The effects of COVID-19 on Dryland Communities

  Thursday, October 6, 2022 
  Dr. Jessie Luna, Colorado State University 
  Lions, Tigers and Malthus! Racialized Nature and Naturalized Race at the Denver Zoo

  Thursday, October 20, 2022 
  Dr. Sara Hughes, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor 
  Flint, Michigan and the Politics of Safe Drinking Water in the US

  Thursday, October 27, 2022 
  Dr. Corey Martz, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver
  Exploring Youth Relationships with Nature Using Qualitative GIS

  Thursday, November 3, 2022 
  Dr. Joel Correia, University of Florida 
  A Critical Physical Geography of Indigenous Water Justice in South America’s Chaco

  Thursday, February 16, 2023 
  Dr. Erika Polson, University of Denver

  Thursday, February 23, 2023 
  Dr. Tilottama Ghosh, Colorado School of Mines

  Thursday, March 2, 2023 
  Nandita Bajaj, Population Balance

  Thursday, April 20, 2023 
  Dr. Colby Brungard, New Mexico State University  
  Digital Soil Mapping across Spatial Scales 

  Thursday, April 27, 2023
  Dr. Joe Bryan, University of Colorado Boulder 

  Thursday, May 4, 2023
  Dr. Kristopher Kuzera, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Thursday, May 18, 2023
  Dr. Adam Berland, Ball State University 
  Host: Zhang

  Thursday, May 25, 2023
  Dinko Dinko, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver 

• 2020-2021 Seminars

  The Department of Geography & the Environment hosts weekly seminars featuring guest speakers, faculty and student researchers, alumni and campus professional development advisors.   Seminars take place most Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. via Zoom.

  Spring Virtual Colloquium, May 20, 2021 at 4:00 pm:

  Cycling for Sustainable Cities

  Presented by
  Dr Ralph Buehler
  Professor & Chair, Urban Affairs & Planning, School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech Research Center

  and

  Dr John Pucher
  Professor Emeritus, Urban Planning & Policy Development, Rutgers University Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy

  Cycling is the most sustainable means of urban travel, practical for most short- and medium-distance trips—commuting to and from work and school, shopping, visiting friends—as well as for recreation and exercise. Cycling promotes physical, social, and mental health, helps reduce car use, enhances mobility and independence, and is economical for both public and personal budgets. This presentation explores how to make city cycling—the most sustainable means of travel—safe, practical, and convenient for all. Buehler and Pucher discuss the latest cycling trends and policies around the world and consider specific aspects of cycling. Taken together, the presentation demonstrates that successful promotion of cycling depends on a coordinated package of mutually supportive infrastructure, programs, and policies. Cycling should be made feasible for everyone and not limited to especially fit, daring, well-trained cyclists riding expensive bicycles.

  Zoom Link / Flyer

  October 22, 2020

  Christopher Woods and Alison Johnston, Cornell Ornithology Lab, Cornell University

  eBird: Monitoring Biodiversity with Community Data

  The goal of eBird is to engage the global community of bird watchers to gather species observations in order to identify, explain, and predict how a species’ distribution and abundance vary through time, space, and with features of the environment. Measuring these distributions patterns and predicting their responses to change are not simple tasks but involve- 1) coordinating public engagement, 2) designing sound data management extensible systems development strategies, 3) creating novel ways to analyze and visualize the data, and 4) translating the information to conservation action. The first half of this presentation will describe the eBird data collection and community building. Already, over 500,000 people around the world have taken part in reporting observations to eBird – from community members in the Yucatán Peninsula, to tour guides in Costa Rica, to researchers in India. The second half of this presentation will describe some of the analytical process for eBird data to estimate the distribution and abundance of bird species. Using these amazing data, we are able to estimate the weekly distribution and abundance of 600 bird species in North America and throughout the Western Hemisphere. These analyses have given us an unprecedented look into bird migration, habitat use and distribution. These analyses have also been used to precisely target local conservation actions to provide resources for migrating bird species. Overall, we demonstrate how data collected by the community can provide new ecological knowledge and lead to a better environment for birds and people. 

  November 5, 2020

  Uttiyo Raychaudhuri, Vice Provost for Internationalization, University of Denver.

  Humans and the Environment: A Global Citizenship Perspective 

  Most institutions of higher education in the U.S. acknowledge that the future workforce of America depends on a citizenry that is sensitive to, and aware of, global issues. Primary among these global issues are environmental and sustainability concerns and we aspire that students participating in international experiences will reflect an interest in nurturing a global citizenry that is not only sensitive to, and aware of, complex human - environment relationships but is willing to act in a manner consistent with the new needs and demands facing society. The presentation discusses the impact of experiential education abroad programs in sustainable development on promoting pro-environmental behaviors. The theoretical model proposes that understanding and promoting pro-environmental responsible behaviors combined with international experiences constitutes a transformational learning experience and promotes global citizenship. 

  December 3, 2020

  Helen Hazen, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Reviving the Oral Exam as an Assessment Tool 

  Oral exams have generally fallen out of favor for undergraduate instruction. Many instructors consider the administering of oral exams time-consuming and their grading subjective, in addition to concerns over raising student stress levels. However, oral exams provide many potential benefits, including the opportunity to assess deeper levels of student understanding, to provide instant feedback to students, and to develop students’ oral communication skills. Orals also present huge potential for assessing student learning in field-based classes where challenging field conditions and the need to synthesize information from diverse sources may make oral assessment particularly useful. In this presentation I will present some of the potential pros and cons of oral exams, based on primary research conducted in geography classes at DU over the past four years. 

• 2019-2020 Seminars

  September 19 - Brandon Bailey, Chris Hancock, Lucas Brown, Meghan McCarroll, Michael Madin and Corey Martz, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Reflections from the Field - Graduate Student Field Research Experiences

   

  September 26 - Zoe Pearson, School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies, University of Wyoming

  "¡Kawsachun Coca, Wañuchun Yanquis!” (Long Live Coca, Death to Yankees): The Formalization, Implementation, and (Geo)political Implications of Coca Policy Reform in Bolivia 

  Punitive drug control policies in the Western Hemisphere have failed to meaningfully reduce rates of illegal drug consumption and production, while at the same time causing harm to individuals, families, communities, health, livelihoods, and the environment. The Plurinational State of Bolivia is a major producer of the coca leaf—a medicinal plant native to the Andes, and the primary ingredient in cocaine—and is one of the first countries to institute comprehensive reforms to orthodox supply-side drug control policy. Under the leadership of President Evo Morales, cocaleros (coca growers) are carrying out a “community-based” approach to controlling coca cultivation. This approach is considered to be an innovative rejection of decades of “drug war” geopolitics by drug policy reform advocates. Drawing on research carried out in Bolivia since 2012, I will illustrate how, despite important successes, the formalization and implementation of Bolivia’s coca control approach faces serious challenges. To understand these challenges, we must consider the underpinning logics that drive drug control geopolitics, and the constraints of Bolivia’s “revolutionary” politics in light of the limits symptomatic of the state form. 

   

  October 17 - John Corbett, President and CEO, aWhere

  High Resolution Weather Data for Agricultural and Environmental Insights for Climate Change Adaptation

  Weather drives agriculture. Traditionally the paucity of weather observations - too few and irregularly spaced ground stations - severely limited utilization of weather insight to address challenges in food production that stretch from the farmer behavior (in-time digital agriculture) to research on agronomics (plant breeding to on-farm practices), inputs (fertilizer, crop protection), supply chain management (business risk and investment) and risk (insurance, famine and insecurity monitoring/response). aWhere’s daily generated 9km (5 arc-minute) weather grid unlocks a myriad of opportunities for analytics across each segment of every agricultural value chain. aWhere’s vision, mission, and goal focuses on emerging markets that disproportionately depend on rainfed agriculture for food security and GDP growth and yet have poor access to accurate, localized, and timely weather data. aWhere utilizes - and trains partners on - predictive analytics and modelling along with downscaled weather data to provide both field-level tactical information for farmers and macro-level estimates of crop stress and production risk for industry and governments to adapt to climate change. 

   

  October 24 - Jing Gao, Department of Geography & Data Science Institute, University of Delaware

  Data-Driven Spatiotemporal Modeling for Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Studies

  Over the 21st century global environmental change may pose critical challenges for societies across the world. To understand its potential impacts, global long-term spatial projections of societal conditions are needed as well as those of physical environmental stressors. Due to the lack of spatially-explicit large-scale time-series observational data, human-dimension studies conventionally often had to limit their scales or/and scopes, though the big picture of global patterns and long-term trends are needed for national and international assessments and decision making. With recent unprecedented development in geospatial data availability and computational technology, many new advancements become attainable. In this talk, I will present two projects: (1) a creative application of machine learning and data mining for simulating global spatiotemporal patterns of urban land expansion over the 21st century, using best available data on urbanization, spatial population, and economic development, including a global time series of fine-spatial-resolution remote-sensing observations spanning the past 40 years, and (2) a theoretical data-science effort developing new model diagnosis method to aid the design and the performance improvement of data-driven geospatial models. Both works demonstrate rewards and challenges of employing data-driven methods for studying long-term large-scale human-environment interactions.

   

  November 7 - Luca Coscieme, Trinity College Dublin

  The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs): Synergies, Trade-offs and Indicators 

  Implementing the SDGs presents opportunities for further improvement of post-2030 sustainability initiatives. Dr. Coscieme will discuss how synergies and trade-offs exist among the SDGs and how progress towards some of them can reinforce, or impair, the achievement of others. The rising awareness of the economic, security, social and moral dimensions of environmental challenges is calling for a broader consideration of environmental policy as an essential tool for delivering sustainable human and ecological development, wellbeing, and resilience. In addition, the increasing availability of environmental measures from satellite observations has the potential to substantially contribute to a broader implementation of the environmental SDGs at the global scale. All of this will likely shape future initiatives for UN-SDGs-like agreements and assessment of progress towards sustainable development. 

   

  January 23, 2020 - Katherine Lininger, Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder

  River Corridors and the Carbon Cycle: Floodplain Organic Carbon Storage in the Central Yukon River Basin

  Rivers influence the global carbon cycle by delivering carbon to the oceans, providing sites for carbon processing, and storing carbon in floodplains for decades to millennia. However, the amount and residence time of organic carbon (OC) stored in river corridors (channels and floodplains) and the geomorphic influences on the spatial distribution of OC are not well understood. High latitude regions are experiencing rapid warming and permafrost thaw, and these regions contain large amounts of OC in the subsurface. Very little work has quantified OC storage in floodplains in the high latitudes. I present data on floodplain OC concentrations and stocks in sediment in the Yukon Flats in interior Alaska. The large spatial extent of floodplain soil OC samples collected across multiple rivers in the Yukon Flats allows for investigating the geomorphic controls on the spatial distribution of OC across spatial scales. Differences in soil OC occur across the large spatial scale of river basins (102-106 km) are likely due to geomorphic influences such as differences in planform characteristics, grain size, and soil moisture. However, there is greater variation in soil OC at the river reach scale (100-101 km) among geomorphic units (e.g., wetlands, bars, fill surfaces, and other floodplain surfaces), which can also be explained by geomorphic factors such as grain size, surface stability over time, and soil moisture. Fieldwork that recognizes floodplains as distinct environments relative to uplands can result in more accurate estimates of soil OC stocks in permafrost regions. I also constrain floodplain residence times in the Yukon Flats using radiocarbon dates. Because of warming and permafrost thaw, geomorphic and biogeochemical processes may be significantly altered in high latitudes boreal regions. Determining floodplain OC variations and stocks and the geomorphic influences on those stocks is important for accounting for carbon within the Earth system. 

   

  January 30, 2020 - Brenden McNeil, Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University

  Revisiting "The Adaptive Geometry of Trees" Using Hyper-remote Sensing

  The relationship of tree form and function has long fascinated humans, and now, much of our ability to improve maps and forecasts of the vital interactions of forests and global change hinges on our ability to understand this adaptive tree crown architecture.  To help address this challenge, I revisit Henry Horn’s classic 1971 monograph “The Adaptive Geometry of Trees”, and blend his theoretical framework with a contemporary ecological theory of species’ functional traits.  Then, I describe how this trait-based theory tree crown architecture can be robustly tested using state-of-the-art hyper-remote sensing techniques.  This suite of imaging techniques from hyper-spatial (e.g. UAV and satellite imagery), hyper-spectral (e.g. AVIRIS imagery), hyper-temporal (e.g. phenocams and tree- or tower-mounted time-lapse cameras), and hyper-dimensional (terrestrial and UAV LiDAR) sensors now enables us to visualize and measure the spectral and architectural properties of individual trees with unprecedented accuracy and precision.  Through analysis of hyper-remote sensing datasets collected in forests across the eastern USA, I highlight how this testable trait-based theory of tree crown economics is already providing fresh insights into several important, but heretofore unresolved patterns of spatial and temporal variability in forest functioning.

   

  February 6, 2020 - Heidi Hausermann, Department of Anthropology and Geography, Colorado State University

  The Political Ecology of Landscape Change, Malaria and Cumulative Vulnerability in Central Ghana's Gold Mining Country

  Following the 2008 financial crisis, small-scale gold mining operations proliferated worldwide. Along Ghana’s Offin River, the landscape has been radically transformed. Within 300-meters of the river, mining expanded 7,900 percent between 2008 and 2013, a time corresponding with historic highs in gold prices; water in abandoned mining pits increased by nearly 33,000 percent during the same period. Landscape changes possess adverse health implications for local people, including increased malaria incidence. Combining ethnography, remote sensing, quantitative methods and long-term fieldwork, this talk details how the socioecological outcomes of mining—from food insecurity and water-logged pits to profound anxiety and mercury contamination— combine to increase malaria incidence. I demonstrate how socioecological and landscape changes interact with existing socio-structural conditions and Plasmodium falciparum’s unique biological capacities to render women and children most vulnerable to infection. This research contributes to geographic debates in several ways. First, a cumulative vulnerability approach helps scholars conceptualize how biological, psychological, structural, and social conditions interrelate to shape humans’ conjunctural vulnerabilities along axes of difference, particularly in health contexts. I also highlight the important role of materiality in vulnerability and malaria dynamics. Finally, I urge geographers pay more attention to familial relationships of care and mental health, heretofore largely unexplored topics in political ecology.

   

  February 20, 2020 - Kevin Wheeler, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

  Negotiating Climate Uncertainty, the Drive for Development, and Regulatory Transformation on Transboundary Rivers: The Colorado River and the Nile River 

   The decision to build major infrastructure on a river has many facets. People tend to highlight certain aspects of dam development while dismissing others based on their own view of how the world should be. A surge of dam development through the mid-1900s helped to push economic growth through hydropower development, management of floods, and promoting urban and agricultural expansion. This was followed by a period of strong resistance due to their social and environmental impacts, particularly in countries that had already felt their cost and reaped their benefits. Today the dam movement is facing a major resurgence across the developing world, not merely imposed by external forces, but often coming from within. Complicating the issue of dam development is the transboundary nature of international rivers, where geographic advantages and unequal rates of development lead to a myriad of physical and socio-political challenges. 

  Two iconic rivers, the Colorado and the Nile, symbolize this evolution over time. The early development of the Colorado River led to the economic growth of the western United States and north-western Mexico, but the region now faces the major challenge of improving coordination between the countries to adapt to increasing pressures of consumptive uses, climate uncertainties, environmental concerns. Meanwhile the challenges within economically deprived contexts is demonstrated today by the imminent completion of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, which seeks to bring much needed energy and economic growth to one of Africa’s poorest nations. As a result, the downstream countries of Sudan and Egypt are grappling with the implications of their upstream co-riparian neighbour seeking to push its way out of the poverty trap it has been locked in since time immemorial. Intense international negotiations have been ongoing in both basins, and both are at a critical juncture in time. The decisions that will be made in the forthcoming weeks, months and years will unequivocally shape the ink of the future books of history. 

• 2018-2019 Seminars

  Thursday, October 18, 2018 

  Bronwen Powell, Department of African Studies and Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University.

  Agricultural Intensification and Landscape Change and Diet Quality

  Rural landscapes in developing countries are rapidly changing. Land-use policymakers are faced with competing demands and limited (and often overly simplified) evidence on which to formulate policies meant to achieve development and food security at local and national scales, for rural and urban populations. In some cases, narratives of food security are used to prop up agricultural and land use policy that do little to improve the food security or diet quality of rural populations. 

  Although narratives are slowly shifting, agricultural intensification (so as to increase food production without jeopardizing conservation of nurture and associated ecosystem services) (Phalan et al. 2011), remains the most pervasive paradigms (Powell et al forthcoming). The result of “agricultural intensification” in many places has been increasingly large-scale agriculture and a focus on increasing yields of staple crops. While many countries in Africa continue to have some of the highest rates of impaired child growth (under-nutrition), a large number of countries in Africa now have obesity rates and impaired glucose tolerance rates that are higher than those of most European countries (IFPRI 2016). Agricultural and land-use policies that focus on intensification and increasing yields of staple crops, without attention to nutritionally important foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and lean animal foods, will do little to improve the nutrition situation in Africa. African policymakers need to support agricultural systems that produce diverse and affordable foods, especially nutritionally important foods. Emerging evidence suggests that in some contexts, a large portion of these healthy foods come from the wild and that diverse agricultural landscapes that include trees and forests are better able to provide a healthy and diverse diet. The production of cheap staple foods has led to rapid change in agricultural landscapes. Continuing this trajectory will not likely have a positive impact on either human nutrition or environmental sustainability. 

   

  Thursday, October 25, 2018

  Paul Sutton, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Smart Cities and the SDGs: Do the Limits to Growth Apply to Smart Cities that Have Achieved the Sustainable Development Goals? 

  The year 2022 will mark the 50 year anniversary of the much maligned and controversial ‘Limits to Growth’ study which asserted that economic growth and population growth cannot continue indefinitely. Since then the world has seen major declarations and aspirations relevant to the limits to growth including: 1) The 1987 WCED (Brundtland Report coining the phrase ‘sustainable development’), 2) The 1992 UNCED (the Rio Declaration establishing Agenda 21, the UNFCCC, CBD, and UNCCD, 3) The 2005 Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, and 4) the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. A nascent ‘Smart City’ movement is purporting that information technology and webs of sensors will enable the perhaps contradictory goal of ‘Smart Growth’. This presentation explores the challenge of achieving ‘sustainable cities and communities’ with ‘no poverty’, ‘clean water’, ‘clean energy’ and the many other sustainable development goals through the lens of ‘Limits to Growth’. The city of Shanghai in China has determined that it hopes to cap it’s total population at 25 million people. Here, we will contemplate the questions: Can a city become too big? Will smart cities know when they have become too big? Is the smart city movement avoiding the unpleasant limits to growth question and merely enabling the building of larger and larger cities that are even more vulnerable to exogenous shocks to their systems? 

   

  Thursday, November 15, 2018 

  Ron Bisio, Vice President, Geospatial at Trimble, Inc.

  The Increasingly Important Role of The Geospatial Professional in Building Information Modeling (BIM)

  This presentation will introduce the relevant concepts of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and examine the role of the geospatial professional in surveying, designing, building and operating modern structures. This evolving role will require the next generation of geospatial professionals to work with a variety of technology including terrestrial and UAV-based image capture and scanning; point cloud manipulation and mixed reality visualization. 

   

  Thursday, January 17, 2019

  Andrew Goetz and Eric Boschmann, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Metropolitan Denver: Growth and Change in the Mile High City 

  Drs. Goetz and Boschmann provide an overview of their new book, highlighting the history of growth of Denver.

   

  Thursday, January 24, 2019

  Laleh Mehran, Department of Emergent Digital Practices, University of Denver

  Inscribing Topographies 

  Mehran creates elaborate environments in digital and physical spaces focused on complex intersections between politics, religion, and science. The progeny of Iranian scientists, her relationship to these frameworks is necessarily complex, and is still more so given the political climate in which certain views are increasingly suspect.

   

  Thursday, February 7, 2018

  Frank Winters, Geographic Information Officer for the State of New York 

  GIS in Emergency Response, Sandy and Beyond -or- “It’s Really not a Disaster Until the GIS Guy Shows Up” 

   

  Thursday, March 7, 2019

  Helen Hazen, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Denver

  Risk and Responsibility: Birth Centers as the “Best of Both Worlds” 

  The US has witnessed a recent resurgence in interest in alternative birth and an increase in out-of-hospital births. Although most out-of-hospital births occur at home, there is a growing movement towards birth centers and other places that fall somewhere between home and hospital. The notion of risk is integral to the place-based decision-making that women undertake in weighing up the pros and cons of different sites of birth, with notions of “responsible motherhood” pushing women towards more institutionalized spaces, while feelings of comfort and control draw women to out-of-hospital locations. Within this framework, the birth center has been widely touted as providing the “best of both worlds”—an in-between space that offers the comforts of home with the purportedly lower risk of the hospital. Through exploring the lived experiences of women who have had recent birth center or home births, I explore how risk and responsibility are integral to constructions of the birth landscape.

   

  Thursday, April 18, 2019 

  Nicholas Crane, School of Politics, Public Affairs, and International Studies, University of Wyoming

  Politicizing Landscapes of Disappearance in Central Mexico 

  Organized communities in Latin America have for decades used the concept of “disappearance” to describe being forcibly made absent from economic and political life. Across the hemisphere, patterns of disappearance have historically been produced through targeted repression of perceived threats to government stability. In Mexico today, these patterns are typically attributed to the generalized violence that accompanies the Drug War. The government of Andres Manuel López Obrador recently recognized 40,000 disappearances since the declaration of the Drug War in 2006. In this talk, I argue for an expanded conceptualization of disappearance, as a condition violently produced by forms of governance that generate social vulnerability but allow authorities to deny responsibility for it. I also provide an explicitly geographical account of disappearance by highlighting a politics of landscape by which organized communities in central Mexico are challenging its various forms. I present lived experiences of disappearance (violence against women, failing infrastructure, and a war on the poor) and focus on a shared characteristic of political organizing and mobilization against disappearance in central Mexico: the work of making visible the forces that produce the disappeared and assigning responsibility for their endurance. The paper concludes with reflections on an active role for geographers in this conjuncture, emphasizing modes of engagement by which we can accompany people whose lives are directly affected by this violence in Mexico and elsewhere. 

   

  Tuesday, April 23, 2019 

  Michael D. Meyer, Senior Advisor, WSP USA, Inc. 

  Research Supporting a Bottoms-Up “National” Policy in Climate Change and Transportation: Examples from Around the U.S.” 

  This presentation will describe climate change-related transportation adaptation actions that are occurring throughout the U.S. (in the absence of any national policy). Typical research and consulting studies that have informed these efforts will be discussed. Examples of efforts to understand transportation system resiliency in light of extreme weather events will be presented. Prospective research topics that could provide substantive contribution to the on-going national discussion on how to prepare transportation systems for future climate change-related shocks will be suggested. 

   

  Thursday, May 2, 2019 

  Wenwu Tang, Center for Applied GIScience, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

  Large-scale Agent-based Simulation of Urban-Rural Land Development: A Cyberinfrastructure-enabled Approach 

  Agent-based models have been extensively used for the simulation of complex land use and land cover change (e.g., urban-rural land development) across multiple spatiotemporal scales. However, massive data and computation are involved for large-scale agent-based land change modeling, posting a big data challenge. In this study, I present a cyberinfrastructure-enabled approach for resolving the big data challenge facing large-scale agent-based land change modeling. The study area is in North Carolina, USA. The agent-based model was developed at a fine spatial resolution. Parallel algorithms were implemented to accelerate the agent-based land change model. While the cyberinfrastructure-enabled approach shows substantial acceleration in the agent-based simulation modeling, this approach provides unique support for the understanding of spatiotemporal complexity of land use and land cover change, represented by urban-rural land development. 

   

  Thursday, May 16, 2019 

  Rebecca Lave, Department of Geography, Indiana University

  Bridging the Gap: Integrating Critical Human and Physical Geography in Practice 

  The relationship (or lack thereof) between physical and human geography is a longstanding discussion within our field. Some commentators assume the possibility of synthesis and call for integrated work; others assume that deep integration is neither possible nor desirable. But even a brief review of the literature makes two points glaringly clear: this discussion has been going on for a long, long time and, given its regular reoccurrence, it would seem we have little to show for it. Rather than debate the possibility or desirability of such integration, I argue here that there is already a strong and growing body of work that draws together critical human and physical geography in an emerging sub-field: critical physical geography. Individually or in teams, critical physical geographers are bridging the gap, combining insights from geomorphology, ecology, and biogeography with approaches from political ecology, science and technology studies, and environmental history. The key characteristics that unify this work are its emphasis on treating physical processes and unequal power relations with equal seriousness, its acknowledgement of the politics of knowledge production, and its normative agenda of using research to promote eco-social transformation. By way of illustration, I present the results of a critical physical geography study of market-based environmental management in the US that I conducted with Martin Doyle (Duke), and Morgan Robertson (U Wisconsin). Drawing on social science data from document analysis and interviews and natural science data from geomorphic fieldwork, I argue that while the fluvial landscape bears a clear signature of environmental policy, the development of ecosystem service markets in “stream credits” has different consequences than could be expected. 

   

  Thursday, May 23, 2019 

  Matthew A. Schnurr, Department of International Development Studies, Dalhousie University

  Africa’s Gene Revolution: Genetically Modified Crops and the Future of African Agriculture

   Africa has emerged as the final frontier in the global debate over the potential for Genetically Modified (GM) crops to enhance agricultural productivity and alleviate poverty and hunger. Proponents argue that GM crops represent one of the most promising means of improving yields and livelihoods across the continent, and have invested just under half a billion dollars in these new technological possibilities under the banner of Africa’s Green Revolution. Opponents voice concerns over intellectual property, adverse health and environmental impacts, and the increasing control of multi-national corporations over the continent’s food supply. Both sides have worked hard to frame the terms of this polarized debate, the result being they often speak past one another, rarely engaging in meaningful dialogue. This presentation seeks to bridge this gap by assessing the ecological, social and political factors that are shaping Africa’s ‘Gene’ Revolution and evaluating its potential to achieve its lofty goals. It summarizes an analysis of whether Genetically Modified crops constitute an appropriate technology given existing agricultural systems, and evaluates the implications of these findings for scholars, policy makers and farmers. 

  
  Thursday, June 6, 2019 

  Pete Peterson, Climate Hazards Working Group, University of California-Santa Barbara 

  How to Make a Satellite Rainfall Product: Why Would You and Then What? 

  Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) is a 30+ year quasi-global rainfall dataset. Spanning 50°S-50°N (and all longitudes), starting in 1981 to near-present, CHIRPS incorporates 0.05° resolution satellite imagery with in-situ station data to create gridded rainfall time series for trend analysis and seasonal drought monitoring. As of February 12th, 2015, version 2.0 of CHIRPS is complete and available to the public. For detailed information on CHIRPS, please refer to our paper in Scientific Data. 

• 2017-2018 Seminars

  Thursday, October 5, 2017 

  Austin Troy, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Colorado – Denver 

  Datafying Urban Sustainability

  As cities increasingly practice data-driven management there is growing interest in utilizing performance indicators to measure the outcomes of efforts aimed at promoting urban sustainability and equity. This presentation gives a broad outline of urban sustainability indicators, including the value proposition, key definitions, frameworks and protocols. It illustrates the potential for urban sustainability indicators through an example from West Denver, where the CityCraft® Integrated Research Center, in partnership with the Denver Housing Authority, is working to establish a trend-setting system of urban indicators that can be used to assess outcomes as this 6400 acre area of Denver undergoes significant transitions, including large-scale redevelopment. 

   

  Thursday, October 26, 2017 

  Heyddy Calderon, Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG-CIGEO) UNAN-Managua, Nicaragua 

  Hydrogeology of Nicaragua: Challenges and Opportunities 

   

  Thursday, November 2, 2017 

  Steven D. Prager, Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) 

  AR4D and the Life Geographic 

  AR4D is shorthand for “Agricultural Research for Development”. All around the world there are dedicated individuals working to improve the livelihoods of smallholder agricultural producers and the environments on which those livelihoods (and lives) depend. AR4D covers an incredible gamut of topics from understanding the sustainability of food systems to improving crop varieties to developing highly tailored and locally adapted approaches for “climate smart agriculture”. In nearly every aspect of the AR4D process, geographers have the potential play an important role in helping smallholders adapt to the challenges presented by climate change, ever increasing globalization, and the changing food system. 

  In this talk, we will cover a range of AR4D-realted themes and discuss where geographers fit into this important discipline. Whether you are interested in understanding spatial dimensions equity and access to markets or improving seasonal agro-climactic forecasts for a specific region, geography and geographic information are critical. At the same time, “selling geography” is not always easy, and entry points for geographers into the AR4D world are not necessarily obvious. As such, in addition to considering a variety of different potential research areas, we will also address how to prepare oneself for an AR4D-related career. 

   

  Thursday, November 16, 2017 

  Kristine Hopkins, Texas Policy Evaluation Project, Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin 

  Reproductive Health Policies: What Can Texas Teach the Nation?

  This talk will review key findings from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, which is a collaborative group of university-based investigators who evaluate the impact of legislation in Texas related to women’s reproductive health. Specifically, I will highlight the impact of budget cuts and the defunding of Planned Parenthood in Texas on family planning clinic closures and access to contraceptive methods among low income and immigrant women. I will also discuss the impact of abortion restrictions on the relationship between the number of abortions and distance to abortion clinics that remained open. I will conclude with a discussion of what these findings might tell us about federal and other state policy changes being contemplated.

   

  Wednesday, January 31, 2018 

  Junjun Yin, Institute for CyberScience & Social Science Research Institute, Penn State University 

  Geo-Complexity and Human mobility: Through the Lens of Geospatial Big Data to Understand Urban and Population Dynamics 

  This presentation centers on my research work in using geospatial Big Data for human mobility study and its applications for urban studies. In light of the increasing availability to a variety of data sources that are capable of tracking movements of individuals in the urban environments (e.g., GPS trajectories, transportation logs, and location-based social media data), this presentation introduces the combination of a computational geography approach and geospatial Big Data to model the relations between spatial urban structures and human interactions. It includes several emerging methodologies, such as advanced data mining techniques, geovisual-analytics methods, and high-performance computing frameworks, for delineating the spatiotemporal geography of urban and population dynamics. In particular, this presentation will illustrate how geo-tagged Twitter data can be utilized for the investigations and how a geospatial Big Data synthesis approach can enhance the geographic contexts for revealing various mobility and activity patterns. Further, this presentation will showcase several ongoing projects as the applications, which are based on the developed methodologies, to illustrate the potential and vision of the research line, namely, Geo-Complexity. 

   

  Thursday, January 25, 2018

  Yihong Yuan, Department of Geography, Texas State University

  From One Step to a Million: Characterizing Human Mobility from Big Geo-Data

  Today’s mobile information society depends increasingly on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as mobile phones and the Internet. Meanwhile, the wide spread use of location-aware technologies (e.g., sensors that allow users to instantly locate themselves) has brought another crucial element to this development: location. The usage of these technologies has generated various types of big geo-data, such as georeferenced call detailed records (CDRs), social media check-in data, etc. Unlike traditional travel surveys, these datasets often cover a large sample size and can be easily accessed through crowd-sourcing toolkits, and can therefore help predict people’s mobility patterns and provide important guidelines for maintaining sustainable transportation, updating environmental policies, and designing early warning and emergency response systems.

  This talk covers several applications that use big geo-data to extract and characterize human mobility patterns in three aspects: individual-oriented, urbanoriented, and global-oriented. These extended human mobility models and data mining algorithms provide new insights to urban planners and policy makers in the age of instant access. This talk also addresses related data quality issues and the efficacy of applying big geo-data in human mobility modeling, as well as how these results can be used in future research about building data-driven and smart city services.

   

  Monday, January 29, 2018 

  Guiming Zhang, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison 

  A Representativeness Directed Approach to Spatial Bias Mitigation in VGI for Predictive Mapping 

  Information on spatial variation of geographic phenomena is essential to many environmental modeling and geographic decision making. Predictive mapping is a framework for mapping geographic phenomena whose spatial variation is highly related to their environmental covariates (e.g., soils, biodiversity). It requires representative field samples that are often obtained through well-designed geographic sampling to achieve high mapping accuracy. Geographic information contributed by volunteer citizens (VGI) can provide field samples at low cost for predictive mapping over large areas (e.g., eBird). However, due to the opportunistic nature of voluntary observation efforts, VGI samples usually are concentrated more in some geographic areas than others (i.e., spatial bias). Such spatial bias impedes the representativeness of VGI samples. This research proposes a representativeness directed approach to spatial bias mitigation in VGI samples for predictive mapping. The approach first defines and quantifies sample representativeness in environmental covariates space. Spatial bias is then mitigated by weighting samples towards maximizing sample representativeness (i.e., minimizing spatial bias). Samples falling in over-represented environmental niches are weighted less than those falling in under-represented niches. Manifested in geographic space, spatially clustered samples receive smaller weights than sparsely distributed samples. The effectiveness of the approach is evaluated through two case studies: species habit suitability mapping (using eBird data) and soil mapping. Results show that the accuracy of predictive mapping using weighted samples is higher than using unweighted samples. A positive relationship between sample representativeness and prediction accuracy was observed, suggesting that the quantified sample representativeness is indicative of predictive mapping accuracy. The approach can effectively mitigate spatial bias in VGI samples to improve quality of inferences made from VGI. 

   

  Thursday, February 8, 2018 

  Scott Hutson, Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky 

  Very Old Urbanism as New Urbanism? Mixing at an Ancient Maya City 

  New Urbanists often claim that cities should be socially diverse. Neighborhoods should contain a mix of people of different wealth levels, ethnicities, ages, and occupations. These claims are based on ideas, such as contact theory (heightened interaction between diverse groups reduces prejudice), as well as pragmatic concerns, such as the viability of tax bases (segregation by wealth creates structural inequality through, for example, underfunded school systems). At the same time, social science research as well as urban planning projects gone wrong suggest that economic mixing is difficult to attain and not always desirable. Can archaeological research on ancient cities contribute to these contemporary debates? This presentation argues that modern and ancient cities share enough characteristics to enable comparisons. In particular, this presentation documents a striking amount of spatial mixing among rich and poor people within neighborhoods at the ancient Maya city of Chunchucmil, Yucatan, Mexico. The success of this ancient city suggests that the tenets of New Urbanism have a rather old genealogy. 

   

  Tuesday, February 20, 2018 

  Antonio Ioris, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University 

  Where Less Space is More: Frontiers, Capitalism and (dare we say?) Resistance 

  Capitalism is fundamentally based on ‘accumulation by frontier-making’ where processes of enclosure, production and extraction are recreated and further integrated. The dynamics of frontier-making under capitalist relations of production and reproduction can be summarised as the ‘law of scarcity-abundance’ (LSA), which recognises that human made scarcities in areas of relatively advanced capitalism require, and prompt, the formation of new economic frontiers where there is perceived abundance of valued assets. The talk will revisits what has happened in Brazil, a nation largely shaped by the expansion of internal and external economic frontiers. The State of Mato Grosso, in the southern tracts of the Amazon, has been at the forefront of frontier-making for many centuries, accelerated in the last 30 years with the spiralling growth of agribusiness. Mato Grosso paradoxically reached the macro-economic centre, but in practice remains a frontier where abundances and scarcities rapidly follow each other. The state is now considered as highly successful agribusiness experience, but this is a totalising narrative that disregards mounting contradictions. In that context, there is continued and silent resistance, although not easily noticeable, which creates a remarkable opportunity for further research and critical analytical approaches. 

   

  Thursday, February 22, 2018 

  Tim Hawthorne, Department of Sociology, University of Central Florida 

  The (Often Forgotten) Importance of People in Geospatial Technologies 

  The community is where mutually beneficial research and education outcomes are discovered together through the power of citizen science, maps, apps, and drones. Citizen science GIS seeks to engage academics and community organizations/residents in shared knowledge production focused on community-engaged research that benefits real-world communities. In this talk, we unravel the potential of engaging communities and science in meaningful collaboration. We will highlight opportunities to use interactive and visual mapping technologies to share the spatial stories and knowledge of community members around the world to understand some of the most pressing challenges in coastal communities. Together we will move beyond the idea of communities as merely dots on a map in research. Instead, we offer the idea of communities as active contributors to science empowered through interactive technologies to understand the most challenging social and environmental issues of our time. 

   

  Thursday, March 29, 2018 

  Wendy Jepson, Department of Geography, Texas A & M University

  Comparative Perspectives on Household Water Insecurity: From TexasColonias to Brazilian Urban Comunidades 

   

  Thursday, May 3, 2018 

  Connor Bailey, The Wilderness Society

  State of Federal Public Lands: Developing Strategies for Conservation and Development Transparency on Federal Public Lands Through GIS 

   

  Thursday, May 24, 2018 

  Chris Stiffler, Colorado Fiscal Institute 

  An Alternative Measure of Economic Well-Being: Applying the Genuine Progress Indicator at the State Level in Colorado 

  GDP per capita in Colorado has more than tripled since 1960 but does that mean we are 3 times as well off? Join a discussion about the flaws of equating GDP to well-being. The Colorado Fiscal Institute calculated an alternative form of Economic Well-Being for Colorado since 1960 known as the Genuine Progress Indicator. It measures things from volunteer hours to commute time to the cost of pollution to lost forest area to give a depiction of how economic well-being has changed over time. Have a look at the results and discuss ways such a frame work should be incorporated into public policy discussions. 

   

  Thursday, May 31, 2018 

  William Moseley, Department of Geography, Macalester College 

  Rice Value Chains, Geographic Context and Poor Female Farmers: A Political Ecology of the New Green Revolution for Africa and Women’s Nutrition in Burkina Faso