Department News
Babs Buttenfield Awarded听Distinguished Teaching Honors
Congratulations to Babs Buttenfield听on receiving the for her career-long devotion to GIScience education. It is a well-deserved honor and a fitting conclusion to her teaching career. She is retiring at the end of December 2020.听听Buttenfield, who established one of the first campus curricula in GIScience, is renowned for her engaging teaching style, remarkable ability to explain complex concepts through example and metaphor, and skill at blending theory with technical skills. In a rapidly evolving field, she delivers courses that are at the cutting edge of GIScience.
Since 1951,听听have been offered annually to recognize outstanding accomplishments by members in research and scholarship, teaching, education, service to the discipline, public service outside academe, and for lifetime achievement.听The听AAG Honors Committee is elected by the AAG membership and charged with making award recommendations for each category, with no more than two awards given in any one category.听 For more than 100 years, The American Association of Geographers (AAG) has contributed to the advancement of geography. Our members from nearly 100 countries share interests in the theory, methods, and practice of geography, which they cultivate through the AAG's Annual Meeting, scholarly journals (,听听迟丑别听and听), and the online听. The AAG is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 1904.听
Economic Aftermath of the Virus in Colorado
The 听(BAHRA) co-directed by Jennifer Fluri, Abby Hickcox (PhD in Geography from SM调教所 Boulder and currently Associate Director of the Honor Program), and Sabrina Sideris (Program Director of INVST Community Studies Program at SM调教所 Boulder), will focus their ongoing research efforts on the impacts of COVID-19 on housing affordability and housing insecurity in Boulder County and the Denver Metro area.
Emily Yeh Elected Vice President of AAG
Emily Yeh, Geography Department Chair, was elected Vice President of听the American Association of Geographers (AAG) earlier this year. Her term started July 1, 2020 and will be followed by a year as president of the association and a year as immediate past-president.听
Holly Barnard, Katherine Lininger NSF Grant
Geography professor听Holly Barnard听is the Principal Investigator听and Geography Professor听Katherine Lininger, with Eve-Lyn Hinckley, are the Co-Principle Investigators on a new 5-year $6.9M NSF grant to study the Critical Zone in the American West. Critical Zone Observatories have done a lot of work discovering and quantifying fundamental critical zone processes. But how do those processes integrate and affect each other? That鈥檚 the next frontier for critical zone research, and this project jumps right in. The researchers will look at how water, trees, soils, and rocks interact and change each other in the fire- and drought-prone landscapes of the American West. Their discoveries will uncover links between how water is stored in the landscape and how that affects key processes in forest ecology, rock chemistry, and soil chemistry. Further, they will help predict how climate change will modify these interactions and change water and therefore life in the West.听
Colleen Reid听Emerging Scholar Award
Professor听Colleen Reid听was awarded the Emerging Scholar Award from the Health and Medical Geography Section of the American Association of Geographers.听
Yaffa Truelove听SM调教所 Research and Innovation Seed Grant
Professor听Yaffa Truelove听received a听SM调教所 Research and Innovation Seed Grant, together with co-PIs Geography Professors听Katherine Lininger听and听Azita Ranjbar, 鈥淎dapting to the 鈥榃aterless鈥� City: The Production of Extreme Water Scarcity in Shimla, India.鈥� The project will be a comparative study of waterless cities across South Asia, including Chennai, Latur, and Bangalore. It will assess feedback loops between socio-political and biophysical mechanisms that produce extreme forms of urban water scarcity and insecurity.听
Deep Learning in Geospatial Uncertainty Modeling
Dr.听Guofeng Cao听received $265,058 in funding听from National Science Foundation for the project听 "'.听With this support, Guofeng will develop a new deep learning-based spatial statistical framework to address long-standing problems in geospatial analysis, including complex geospatial patterns, geospatial heterogeneity and geospatial uncertainty. This project will offer novel solutions to fundamental analysis, modeling, and integration problems involving geospatial data, and advance the understanding of the nature of geospatial uncertainty. This project will enhance the proper and cost-effective utilization of geospatial data, and will have broader impacts on disciplines in which听geospatial data are involved. Furthermore, with a public outreach component on uncertainty-aware spatial thinking, this project will advance the public good by increasing the public awareness of听geospatial uncertainty and critical map reading and usage. The performance听of the developed methods will be evaluated in two domain applications: spatiotemporal disease mapping in public health and modeling uncertainty of land cover changes and the impact on atmospheric models.
Seth Spielman
Seth Spielman served on the National Academy of Science's Committee on National Statistics working group on privacy and the US Census. 听
Dr. Spielman also joined the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oak Ridge National Labs Geospatial Science and Human Security Division; Georgia Tech's External Data Advisory Committee; and was appointed to SM调教所 Boulder's Idea Council which is charged with implementing strategies to transform the SM调教所 Boulder community to make it more equitable, diverse, and inclusive.
Former SM调教所 Geography Professor Konrad Steffen Passed Away in Greenland
Konrad Steffen, former SM调教所 Geography Professor and Director of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), died following an accident听 on the听Greenland ice sheet this past August (August 8 2020). Konrad ("Koni") Steffen was a professor in the SM调教所 Geography department from 1990-2012, as well as Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) from 2005-2012. He had been conducting reserach into climate change - notably in the Arctic and Antarctic - for over 40 years and was regarded as one of the world's leading authoirities in the field. At the time of the accident he was at research station called "Swiss Camp" that he had founded thirty years ago.
With Koni Steffen's death, the world's climate research community听lost an extremely prominent researcher who was also a uniquely kind and committed man. Geography Professor and CIRES Director Waleed Abdalati, who earned his PhD under Steffen, noted, "For those who knew Koni, you will appreciate that he was in a place he loved, doing exactly what he loved. The first time I went to Greenland with him as a graduate student, I remember when the helicopter landed and he got out. He leaned back with arms outstretched, smiling up at the sky, as if he was just drinking and savoring the cold Greenland air. He will be missed."听
Born in 1952, Konrad Steffen was a dual Swiss and American citizen.听Having studied natural sciences, he gained a doctorate from ETH Zurich in 1984. After serving as a professor in the Department of Geography from 1990-2012, he returned to Switzerland, where he was Director of WSL as well as听Professor for Climate and Cryosphere at ETH Zurich and at EPFL in Lausanne. The Geography department expresses our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.听
Also see:
听(Original article鈥�)听
听(CIRES tribute)
Waleed Abdalati听Elected American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow
At the end of last year,听Professor Waleed Abdalati听was elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow, a lifetime distinction honoring invaluable contributions to science and technology.听
Jennifer Balch NSF CAREER Award
Also in 2019,听Professor Jennifer Balch听received a prestigious, five-year National Science Foundation CAREER award, 鈥淔ire impacts on forest carbon recovery in a warming world: Training the next generation of Earth analysts by exploring a missing scale of observations.鈥澨齌he project addresses the fact that forests in the western U.S., which are important in regulating the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, are burning more rapidly with the increased extent and number of wildfires. As a result, the amount of carbon stored in these forests has decreased significantly.听听The project uses innovative remote sensing and ecosystem carbon measuring techniques to advance understanding of when forests shift from carbon sinks to carbon sources under changing fire regimes.
Alumni Updates
Update from Steven Drake, BA 2010
I am living in Kentucky, and working for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.听I am currently the Lead Cartographer for the Official Highway Map of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I took this position in early 2019 and finished the .
An elective class in Geography opened my eyes and mind to how people relate to their surroundings, and the ways that can be visually represented. While my degree allowed me to begin a career progression that has taken me to where I am now, it was my education in Geography, and the passion shared with the people around me, that has truly impacted me.
Joe Tucillo, PhD 2020
Joe Tuccillo, who recently received his PhD from the department, has joined Oak Ridge National Lab as an R&D Associate Research Scientist in the Geospatial Science and Human Security Division.听Joe completed a dissertation on generating high resolution synthetic populations for measuring hazard vulnerability, exposure, and response.听
Sarah Tynen,听PhD 2019
Sarah Tynen听completed over two years of fieldwork in Xinjiang, China.听After working for over a year for SM调教所 Boulder's Graduate School and helping other graduate students in writing their dissertations and grant applications, she听joins the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague as a post-doc in the Oriental Institute's Chinese ethnic policy research group.听Sarah is involved in advocating for an end to听听in China, where Uyghur Muslims--including cultural and intellectual leaders--are being detained in large numbers.听Sarah's research, reported in the SM调教所 Arts and Sciences Magazine听explores how authoritarian actions can trickle down to shape peoples鈥� everyday lives, and how human beings push back in small but sometimes powerful ways.听
Carol Harden, PhD 1983
Professor Emerita Carol Harden of the University of Tennessee, an alumnus of this department was recently awarded the for her career of research, teaching, and service to the discipline of Geography. She was also named an .
Michelle Olsgard Stewart, PhD 2014
Michelle Olsgard Stewart, recently became the Executive Director of the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council in Steamboat Springs, CO. In this position she will develop and lead climate action programs in the community.听