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This fall, we welcomed Jessica Finlay to the Department. Dr. Finlay, featured in this newsletter, is an Assistant Professor examining health geographies, neighborhoods, aging, and well-being. We also welcomed Sean Dunn as the Department’s new program administrator. Sean has quickly become an integral and valuable member of the Geography Department.  

Sadly, our outstanding and dedicated Program Administrator, Darla Shatto, retired at the end of August. Many thanks to Darla for her fantastic work as a member of the Geography Department Staff for the past eighteen years. Darla was a joy to work with; her commitment and dedication to the Geography Department were exceptional and commendable. We miss you, Darla!

Our colloquium series this semester began with Dr. Lionel Lyles, who received his M.A. and PhD from the CU Boulder Geography. In addition to his presentation, Dr. Lyles met with several leaders across campus to share his ideas for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice work on campus. We look forward to collaborating with Dr. Lyles on implementing and improving DEI efforts in the Department and on campus. Jennifer Greenburg, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Sheffield, presented a dynamic and engaging talk about her new book At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War, Cornell University Press. Our Colleague from the CU-Colorado Springs Geography Department, Rebecca Theobald, discussed the state of Geography Education in the United States and the steps necessary to improve Geography education in Colorado. Elsa Culler, Earth Data Science Instructor for Earthlab and ESIIL, two centers founded by Associate Professor Jennifer Balch within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES), spoke about her work developing accessible Earth Science Data. 

We initiated the first “Geography Day” at CU-Boulder, which brought 30 high school students and their teachers to campus for a day of hands-on Geography activities. Students began their day in the Map Library, where our outstanding map librarians, Ilene Raynes, and Naomi Heiser, provided the students with an overview of the map collection and several engaging activities. We then walked with the students from the Map Library to Guggenheim while plotting GPS coordinates along the way, allowing the students to produce a map using GIS technology with the assistance of Teaching Associate Professor Sarah Schlosser. Assistant Professor Katherine Lininger taught a hands-on lesson about rivers, streams, and fluvial geomorphology with a stream table. I facilitated experiential activities for the students about the experiences of refugees forced from their homes due to climate-related devastation, environmental disasters, or political conflict. Due to the success of this program, we look forward to working with high school teachers and students across the front range to promote Geography teaching and learning in Colorado. 

In November, we participated in the intercampus GIS Day and hosted the 2^nd Annual Geography Buff Trivia Night: Space, Place & Justice. The GIS Day included planned events in Boulder and at the CU-Denver and Colorado Springs campuses, with a keynote address, Generating Historical Data to Map and Archive the Suppression of the Slave Trade, by Henry Lovejoy, Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Geography Buff Trivia night was co-sponsored by the Center for African and African American Studies, the Center for Asian Studies, the Latin American and Latinx Studies Center, and the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies and featured questions focused on geographies of social, political, economic, and environmental justice.  

Many thanks to our department research assistant and graduate student, Gabriela Subia-Smith, who led the organization of the Geography Day and Geography Buff Trivia night. She has also worked diligently on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEI/J) efforts in the Department. Gabriela will step down as the Department RA this spring semester because she received the Gilbert White Award from the Geography Department. This award provides senior Ph.D. students with a semester of funding to focus on completing their dissertation.

We are able to provide funding to support independent research for our graduate and undergraduate students due to the generous donations of our alums and friends of the Geography Department. Many thanks to you for your continued support.

Best Wishes and Happy Holidays, 

Jennifer Fluri 

By Keith Musselman

Through this research, their goal is to better understand potential future impacts of climate change on rivers, fish, and Indigenous communities in central and northern Alaska and the Yukon Territory in Canada. To achieve this goal, the project team formed an Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC) and together developed guidelines for how we can work collaboratively with Indigenous communities. The process of forming an IAC and related guidelines is a new way to approach collaborative research when working across a large geographic area. The paper is led by USGS social scientist Nicole Herman-Mercer and co-authored by Indigenous leaders and the interdisciplinary project team. Together, they present their research process so that it may provide an example for other scientific efforts.

Now in its fourth year, the Arctic Rivers Project has provided support and research opportunity for over 10 undergraduate researchers, one Ph.D. student (Dylan Blaskey, Civil Engineering), and one postdoctoral fellow (Dr. Peyton Thomas, INSTAAR). 

Link to the paper:

Sarah Schlosser's OER Grant for GEOG 3053 GIS: Mapping at CU Boulder

Sarah Schlosser, Associate Teaching Professor, applied for a grant through CU Boulder to adopt an OER textbook for GEOG 3053 GIS: Mapping. The course typically enrolls over 200 students per academic year. With rising textbook costs along with the current textbook going out of print, the need for an OER textbook became very apparent. Sarah was awarded a $1500 grant to adapt and compile currently available resources  

Jessica is a health geographer who uses mixed methods to investigate how built, social, and natural environments impact health and wellbeing across the life course. She has developed a new concept, Cognability, to capture how neighborhoods may support brain health through opportunities to exercise, socialize, and think/learn in later life. You can check out a preliminary Cognability score for your neighborhood . 

Jessica grew up on the other side of the Rocky Mountains in Vancouver (Canada). When not at her desk, Jessica is most often chasing after her two fast-moving children (aged 2 and 4), running the Boulder trails with her partner Matt, or curled up with a pop fiction book.

“A lot people still consider SHGs as only being about group savings and access to credit,” Pris said, “but our research shows the potential of these groups when members take ownership of the group and define their own priorities.” Pris presented evidence of two collectives of SHGs doing just that. In the first collective, strong leadership helped to produce a group identity and sense of solidarity through which all members begun to recognize themselves as integral parts of the group. Women leveraged the sense of trust and interdependence that this created to tackle an important community priority: lack of consistent grain supply year-round. Employing a skill that the women already had, they established a village grain bank, which helped eliminate dependence on moneylenders, reduce outmigration, and mitigate food insecurity. The success of the grain bank helped establish the SHGs as legitimate community institutions, which the women then leveraged to tackle alcohol consumption: a considerably more controversial goal that required behavioral change on the part of men. Women did this by recognizing the need for support and cooperation of other SHGs in surrounding villages. The SHGs did all of this without any external support.

In the second collective, SHGs worked together to create a mango orchard and then had their access to it revoked by the landlord when the trees began to bear fruit. Pris described the mechanisms that enabled the groups to fight for their access to the land and the impacts this in turn made for the solidification of group identity, solidarity, and unity. The second case study is important, however, because it demonstrates the structural barriers women are still liable to face, even when they are united, have a strong sense of solidarity, and have institutional support behind them. These women faced considerable opposition to their attempt to generate an income stream of their own, and a lot of that had to do with the challenge to established power asymmetries based on caste, class, and gender that this project effectively posed. Pris concluded her presentation by commenting on a number of ways in which SHGs could be better supported to enable such processes of change, while simultaneously outlining the limits to interventions and the dangers of over-expecting from them. 

By presenting her research at the World Bank, Pris sought to expand understanding of the potential of the SHG among individuals in positions to effect change. “Development is full of faddism,” Pris said, “and my concern is now that everyone is disillusioned with microfinance and moving on to designing other poverty alleviation mechanisms, we forget or even reject SHGs in the process. There exists some 8 million SHGs in India alone – they are by far the most common form of women-only, village-level group here and possibly in other parts of the world as well. This for me represents a network with tremendous potential as to how we can reach women and support them to take active roles in decision-making processes regarding the issues of concern to them. While lots of NGOs focus their service delivery through SHGs, a lot of that remains rather top-down. We are not really creating opportunities for women to develop their problem solving, project management, and leadership skills, such that they are in a position to adopt positions of authority in their communities.”

Pris’ research shows that when SHGs work on self-identified projects for collective benefit, it can lead to changes in norms regarding women’s roles by shifting perceptions in women’s capabilities. While structural barriers continue to pose limits to project outcomes, women’s legitimacy as community decision makers can nonetheless be directly established when group members work together on a collectively-identified problem. The status of the SHG as a legitimate decision-making entity can then be leveraged into challenging the cultural norms and social structures that limit women.

The first stage of the project is to use NASA/USGS Landsat satellite data and AI computer vision methods to automatically identify human-made reservoirs and distinguish them from natural water bodies. Small reservoirs are ubiquitous in Brazilian agriculture, but these will be the first comprehensive maps of very small reservoirs (<0.5 ha), helping analyze this under-studied impact of agriculture on water in the region. The spatial distribution of reservoirs over time will be modeled over time in relation to land-use/land-cover change using existing data from MapBiomas Brasil.

The machine learning and remote sensing part of the research will be paired with qualitative interviews with farmers and ranchers in eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil about water use and management, particularly in response to climate change. Due to climate change, the rainy season that much of Brazil's agriculture depends on is becoming shorter and less predictable, driving farmers to rely more on reservoirs to store and access water. The potential impacts of these changes are not well understood. By combining both remote sensing and qualitative field interviews, this project will help researchers, policy-makers, and water users more fully understand the past, present, and future impacts of agriculture on surface water in Brazil.

What I appreciate most about the work experience is the way that my mentors at NREL,  and , treat me like a full member of their team. We have weekly team check-ins, I sit side-by-side with my colleagues twice per week, and I have access to the state-of-the-art visualization spaces, both 2D and 3D. I have even had a chance to travel with them to two data visualization conferences in the last year, in Idaho and in Oklahoma. It is a privilege to work with them and other NRELians on problems at the heart of the sustainable energy transition going on in the U.S. right now. 

Last August I started a PhD residency at . X is a research and development branch of Google (or more precisely Alphabet). is a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. The goal is 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problem. X approaches projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research with the speed and ambition of a startup. 

In 2010, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to form a new division of the company to work on moonshots: far-out, sci-fi sounding technologies that could one day make the world a radically better place. It was a grand experiment with ambiguous wording in vision. 10 years in, X website mentions that it has incubated hundreds of different moonshot projects, many of which have gone on to become independent businesses. 

As an AI Resident, I'm engaged in an early stage project where I work on various facets of GeoAI model development and deployment, encompassing everything from model design to DevOps and MLOps practices. This role has afforded me the great opportunity of learning the implementation and deployment of AI models at the forefront of the industry, while also being exposed to the practical, conceptual, and theoretical challenges that emerge due to scalability issues.

My academic background and research in the Geography Department at CU Boulder have been instrumental in preparing me for this role. In particular, courses such as Geospatial machine learning in the Geography Department, along with deep learning courses in the Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Departments, have been significant. Additionally, an equally impactful course, software engineering for scientists, has also greatly contributed to the skills I use on a daily basis in this position.

In light of this experience, I look forward to my return to academia to complete my PhD leveraging the insights and skills I have gained in this role. I am excited to integrate the practical knowledge I have acquired from the industry into my doctoral research.

Behzad Vahedi page

Lucy Citrine

We conducted topographic surveys, vegetation surveys, and calculated discharge at transects along the river corridor to evaluate how straightening the river impacted the riparian vegetation and river morphology. In the fall, I created 1D steady flow models using ArcGIS and HEC-RAS to analyze the topographic data collected from the summer. The flood inundation models were used to assess how channel morphology affects lateral hydraulic connectivity in the Fremont River corridor. 

I have always had a deep interest in hydrology (specifically anthropogenic impacts) and topographic mapping. Through working with the Fluvial Geomorphology Research Group, I explored and strengthened these interests. In addition to learning new technical skills, I learned that I have a passion for surveying. Developing these skills while still an undergraduate student prepared me for the workforce and helped when looking at various career paths. 

I currently work at Harris Kocher Smith in the subsurface utility engineering department where I create maps of underground utilities using AutoCAD Civil 3D, where I am able to apply the cartography and surveying skills that I acquired from my time at the geography department.  

My name is Molly Guiney, and I graduated in 2021 with a master’s degree specializing in fluvial geomorphology. Advised by Dr. Katherine Lininger, I studied how landscape disturbances, such as floods and fires, can influence the deposition of wood onto floodplains in the Colorado Front Range. 

My time at CU Boulder was incredibly important in building what I call my “geomorphic toolkit,” and my experiences gave me the confidence to continue developing as a geomorphologist in Colorado. After graduation, I began my own freelance consulting business to work for and with local consultants dedicated to improving stream function and watershed health. For the past two years, I have worked on a variety of projects on streams across the state, including the Yampa River (Steamboat Springs), Coal Creek (Crested Butte), and the Colorado River (Grand Junction). Some of my most interesting projects have included mapping watersheds to identify hazardous areas that people may be unaware of, such as alluvial fans. Other projects assessed watersheds for their potential in reducing post-wildfire impacts on communities. One of my favorite tasks, however, was building imitation beaver dams (beaver dam analogs)!

Most recently, I bade Colorado farewell and moved to Seattle, WA to work as a Fluvial Geomorphologist for Jacobs. In this role, I will be assessing streams for the purpose of improving salmon passage through bridge and culvert crossings, as well as working on stream restoration projects in the Pacific Northwest. I cannot wait! 

As mentioned at the top of the newsletter, if you have any updates, please let us know using our alumni update form or send an email with your information to the department. We would love to hear from you about how your career has progressed since attending CU. The updates below came to us via the form.

Frederick (Rick) Bein, BA 1969

• Completed the MA in Geography at the University of Florida 1971, Thesis: Geographic Shifts in Florida Citrus 
• PhD in Geography at the University of Florida 1974, Dissertation: Patterns of Pioneer Settlement in Southern Mato Grosso, two case studies.
• 1974-77 Visiting Professor of Geography University of Khartoum
• 1977-78 Visiting Professor of Geography University of North Dakota
• 1978-1996 Chair, Department of Geography, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis 
• 1996-1999 Research Professor, University of Technology, Lei, Papua New Guinea
• 1999-2016 Professor of Geography, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis
• 2005-2006 Fulbright Professor, Universidade Eduardo Mondlani Maputo, Mozamibique
• 2011-2012 Visiting Professor Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya
• 2016- present Professor Emeritus, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis

The BA Degree at CU opened the door to an academic career in Geography. From 1964-66, I served in United States Peace Corps in Brazil. Agricultural extension in southern Mato Grosso. I've published 50 some articles and papers.

Donald Friend, MA 1988

I have not wavered from the theme of mountain geography garnered at Boulder. I am now Distinguished Professor of Geography at Minnesota State University. I served AY 2019-2020 as a National Academies Jefferson Science Fellow in the Office of Global Climate Change at USAID.

I am honored and inspired every day to continue on as a geographer serving as a University Professor.

Andrew Canales, BA 1999

My degree in Geography set the stage for a successful 20 year career at DigitalGlobe, now Maxar Technologies.

We realize that COVID19 and its effects have been hard on everybody. However, if you are in a relatively resilient financial situation, your support now will go a particularly long way for those who are most precarious and who have been most severely affected, including some of our students. 

Your gift to the Department of Geography can take many different shapes. The information below may help you find the type of gift that best meets your needs, the impact you want, and the way you want to give. The CU Foundation can also assist you with your needs, be they for targeted or unrestricted programs.