Colloquium Series Archive

The Colorado Rockies span an elevation range of more than 2000 m, extending from the foothills with limited winter snow up to high mountain slopes, where snow lasts most of the year. This talk will cover catchment to regional-scale research that addresses questions about where, when, and how tributary streams...

Stable isotopes of carbonate have long been used to reconstruct past climate and environmental conditions. The recent development of the clumped isotope paleothermometer has expanded the range of possible applications of these isotopic techniques to cover more environments and time periods. My research uses these isotopic tools to reconstruct past...

The physical and biological architecture of the Earth’s Critical Zone controls hydrologic partitioning, storage, and chemical evolution of precipitated water. The Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) network is a consortium of field sites that provides an ideal platform to research linkages between catchment structure and hydrologic function across a gradient of...

British Columbia: 2017 Wildfire Index* Total number of fires: 1217 Ignitions by lightning on July 7: 138 Days in a provincial state of emergency: 69 Number of temperature records 'shattered' this summer: 85 Percent of province in moderate to extreme fire danger on August 10 and 11: >99 Size in...

Throughout history, humans have always valued the view from above, seeking high ground to survey the land, find food, assess threats, and understand their immediate environment. The advent of aircraft early in the 20th century took this capability literally to new levels, as aerial photos of farm lands, hazards, military...

The availability of water and nutrients in soil and weathered rock influences the distribution of vegetation and its vulnerability to land use and climate change. We explored these relationships by combining geochemical and geophysical measurements at three mid-elevation sites in the Sierra Nevada, California, where a recent historic drought killed...

Over the twentieth century, it became more difficult for children born to poorer parents to climb the socioeconomic ladder. Declining upward mobility in the United States is now understood as a local problem, which could be addressed through place-based policy. Relatively little is known, however, of the malleability or historical...

In this talk, Strawhacker discusses her work with social scientists and Indigenous communities in the Arctic to build digital tools to ensure data and information are ethnically shared and managed for the future. As a result of the ‘open data’ movement, an increased focus on how data should be attributed...

In the southeastern coastal city of Ulsan in Korea, people continue to defy the global taboo on eating whale meat, which they believe is an important social practice for local identity. The Nam-gu District in the City of Ulsan has created the Special Zone for Whale Culture as a spatial...

What if our GIS were Geographical Imagination Systems? How might we develop GIS that understand space as relational and that reflect knowledge as positioned and interpretive? What might a GIS more adequate to the theoretical commitments of the critical social sciences and theoretical humanities look like? Here, I will approach...