News

Annika Hirmke Receives Wenner-Gren Fellowship for her Dissertation Research on Community Solar in Montana

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:03:34 +0000

Annika Hirmke Receives Wenner-Gren Fellowship for her Dissertation Research on Community Solar in Montana Gabriela Rocha Sales Wed, 04/15/2026 - 12:03

Annika is a PhD candidate in the doctoral program of Geography at ̽��Ƶ working with Prof. Jill Harrison and Prof. Joe Bryan. Her dissertation project titled “Solar Possibilities: Community Solar Against Monopoly Power” investigates the promises of community solar in Montana where the renewable energy industry in Montana has picked up significant speed in recent years, but most projects built end up exporting energy and serving communities outside Montana. In this context, community solar promises accessibility and benefit to the communities in its direct vicinity and environmental organizers have increasingly pushed for these kinds of projects amidst escalating electricity costs, higher frequency of extreme weather disrupting the grid, and rising energy demand in the state.

The Wenner-Gren dissertation fieldwork grant funds research that advances anthropological knowledge. This prestigious grant will support Annika in conducting in-depth fieldwork for the remainder of the year, enabling her to build deeper community relationships, work with environmental organizers, and conduct research across the state and across several community solar sites. With the support of several other awards from CU and the Department of Geography (CARTSS, Beverly Sears, Dinaburg Memorial Fellowship, and the John Pitlick Field Research Award), Annika has already gotten started on this fieldwork and has learned a lot about the different community solar sites and statewide energy landscapes which the remaining research will build on.

The dissertation research includes an ethnographic study of three existing community solar projects and how these three sites fit into the larger energy landscape in Montana and beyond. While each of these sites are created by rural electric cooperatives (more directly governed by the membership they serve) and share the same basic structure of community solar, their experience and (re)imagination of energy and space differ in ways that shape the infrastructural problems they aim to solve and how they do so. 1) Fergus Electric Cooperative (Lewistown): In “cattle country” this project serves an agricultural region and former gold rush area struggling with changing economic conditions and billionaires driving up the price of land. Community solar offers a path to economic survival through saved costs and to promote the use of renewables when climate change threatens their way of life. 2) Beartooth Electric Cooperative (Red Lodge): Historically central to Montana’s coal economy, now a tourist hub with little affordable housing for the workers that sustain its economy. Here, community solar offers possibilities to both sustain the people living there and conserve the landscape that draws tourists. And 3) Blackfeet Community Solar Energy Project (Blackfeet Reservation): This project entails a solar farm as well as jobs and job training for the solar industry and related fields for Native youth. It aims to address the longstanding structural neglect of Native tribes by rebuilding community and ecological relations. This site brings in considerations of energy sovereignty, economic development of the tribe, and restoring tribal ecological relations. Together, the three project sites provide an opportunity to investigate both the convergences and divergences of community solar projects in Montana and their particular geographical and historical settings.

Off

Traditional

White

Geography Graduate Students Receive National Science Foundation Award Offers for the 2026 Graduate Research Fellowship Program

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:34:43 +0000

Geography Graduate Students Receive National Science Foundation Award Offers for the 2026 Graduate Research Fellowship Program Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/13/2026 - 09:34

Congratulations to our first year graduate students; Danielle Losos (MA), Emily Nagamoto (MA), and Lauren Palermo (MA, BA alumna, 2023) for receiving award offers from the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) in 2026!

The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to help ensure the quality, vitality, and strength of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. Since 1952, the program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing full-time research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including STEM education. NSF GRFP was established to recruit and support individuals who demonstrate the potential to make significant contributions in STEM, including STEM education. NSF encourages applications from the full spectrum of talent that the U.S. has to offer.

Congratulations to our first year graduate students; Danielle Losos, Emily Nagamoto, and Lauren Palermo for receiving award offers from the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) in 2026!

Off

Traditional

White

Waleed Abdalati: CIRES Director Shares Impact NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Grant Funding Pause

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:27:32 +0000

Waleed Abdalati: CIRES Director Shares Impact NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Grant Funding Pause Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/13/2026 - 09:27

Article copied for archival purposes.

Trump administration holds up NOAA grant funding

by Rachel Frazin - 04/13/26 6:00 AM ET

The Trump administration is holding up some National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grant funding.

Earlier this month, the University of Colorado released a statement saying that a federal pause on grant funding has put scientists who collect data about the atmosphere “at risk for elimination.”

It specifically pointed to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), saying it “has not released these funds.”

Waleed Abdalati, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research In Environmental Sciences (CIRES), told The Hill that about 30 days before the institute was slated to run out of funds to pay the scientists in question, “we were informed that NOAA has put a pause on all grant actions.”

“We are all told to assume no funding is moving through the grants management division until a spend plan has been approved,” he said.

NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster referred budget-related questions to OMB. Rachel Cauley, an OMB spokesperson, did not respond to questions from The Hill.

Nature reported in February that other agencies that award research grants, including the National Institutes of Health, were also experiencing delays in getting their grant funding approved.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, which funds NOAA, said that holding up the money violates the law.

“On a bipartisan basis, we rejected Trump’s attempt last year to slash NOAA’s budget — making clear that the Administration must continue programs to predict and track extreme weather, support the fishing industry, boost the resilience of our coastal communities, and more,” Van Hollen said in a statement to The Hill.

“But Russ Vought is ignoring these directives from Congress by preventing the obligation of funds, a clear violation of the law. It’s time for Vought to follow the law and release the funds as Congress intended for the public services that NOAA provides, which are vital to our economy,” he added.

A spokesperson for Van Hollen’s office said it’s their understanding that OMB is holding up money laid out for NOAA operations, research, and facilities, which prevents the agency from issuing new awards and funding opportunities across nearly all of its programs and only allowing it to plan for 15 days at a time.

In the case of CIRES, the funding holdup could mean the lab isn’t able to pay scientists working at the Global Monitoring Lab.

“We’ve had to notify our people that … should funds not become available by May 15, they will be on furlough,” Abdalati said.

CIRES has had to give furlough notifications to 42 of its employees at the lab, while some other people were reassigned to other work. The lab also has federal employees whose pay is not directly affected by the grant funding issue.

CIRES studies Earth system science, including weather and climate, changes at Earth’s poles, atmospheric chemistry and water resources. The Global Monitoring Lab studies greenhouse gases, ozone recovery and more.

Abdalati said that if the funds don’t come through, in the short term, “we lose observations and data that … help us understand the condition of our atmosphere, the content and makeup of our atmosphere, how much carbon dioxide is in it, how much is the ozone hole recovering, what other constituents are in the atmosphere.”

“In the longer term, it’s the loss of capability, the ability to make these observations, because, like many things, it’s much easier to break than it is to reconstitute,” he said, noting that some work is already stopping.

He added that this impacts research into topics ranging from pollution to global warming to ozone recovery. He also said that the information is important for understanding seasonal weather variability, which has implications for crops and cattle ranching — as well as the variability over years and decades.

A congressional joint explanatory statement accompanying the spending package passed earlier this year directs NOAA to spend about $104 million on climate laboratories and cooperative institutes, as well as $94 million on weather laboratories and cooperative institutes through its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.

NOAA, the climate research that it funds, and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research have been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. A document that leaked last year showed the Trump administration eyeing eliminating the office and cutting 74 percent of its funding.

For fiscal 2026, the Trump administration proposed zeroing out NOAA’s climate research. The latest proposal released by the White House last week includes a $1.6 billion cut to NOAA’s operations, research and grants.

Andrew Rosenberg, former deputy director of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, described the grant delays as abnormal.

“It’s atypical. OMB normally wouldn’t hold up money like this,” said Rosenberg, who is retired and now co-edits the newsletter SciLight on Substack.

He said he believes it is part of a larger effort by the administration to hamper climate and other science.

“NOAA is mostly a science agency, and there’s a real anti-science bent to all of this,” Rosenberg said. “They’re using the budget as a weapon to fundamentally change what people have access to and the work that the government does.”

Off

Traditional

White

Holly Barnard: Receives the 2026 Hydrology Days Award

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:31:57 +0000

Holly Barnard: Receives the 2026 Hydrology Days Award Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/07/2026 - 08:31

Professor Holly Barnard, co-chair of the Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Program and former Arts and Sciences Associate Dean of Research, has received the Colorado State University 2026 Hydrology Days award. "The Hydrology Days Award is presented each year in recognition of outstanding and significant contributions to hydrologic science."

Professor Barnard will be presented the award and give a keynote address on April 8th at the Colorado State University during the American Geophysical Union Hydrology Days conference.

Find out more about the award and previous recipients here.

Off

Traditional

White

Digital Geographies and The City: Queer Methodologies of Hope

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:03:25 +0000

Digital Geographies and The City: Queer Methodologies of Hope Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/06/2026 - 09:03

Dr. Sarah Elwood
Professor and Chair
Department of Geography
University of Washington

Abstract:

Critical digital geographies scholarship has a well-developed repertoire for theorizing adverse relations between technology, media, society and space, setting up an enduring ambivalence in analysis of minor, small scale, improvisational efforts to rewrite these relations. At this impasse, I argue for an intentional turn to analytic frames rooted in methodologies of hope. This approach emerges from Jose Esteban Muñoz’s writings on queer futurities, which he crafted as an epistemological-political frame for apprehending hope, justice and life-affirming futures from positions of deep material and ideological exclusion. Muñoz’s approach offers vital offramps from the theoretical cycles of negation found in much critical digital geography thought. My paper demonstrates how orienting to minoritarian digital activisms through a queer methodology of hope illuminates dynamic cycles of critique and creation that transgress accepted limits to urban inhabitations and demonstrate normatively unthinkable – yet already existing – possibilities for being and being in relation in the city. I demonstrate this approach through a close reading of the digital mediations and mediatizations advanced in the social media tactics of Stop the Sweeps Seattle, a local collective fighting systematic eviction of tent encampments of unsheltered people by municipal authorities. A queer relational analysis of these emplaced politics illuminates the digital, material and ideological pathways they forge toward staying put and living well in the city against seemingly impossible odds.

Zoom Option: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/94307419659

Off

Traditional

White

Jennifer Fluri: Winner of the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Leadership and Service

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:13:01 +0000

Jennifer Fluri: Winner of the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Leadership and Service Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/06/2026 - 08:13

Jennifer Fluri, Chair of the Geography Department, has won the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Leadership and Service.

Excellence in faculty leadership and service is defined as all of those professional activities other than teaching and research that are performed by faculty members as part of their University responsibilities or as community outreach (internal, external, or both kinds of service).

See here for a complete list of BFA's 2026 Excellence Awards Winners.

Jennifer Fluri, Chair of the Geography Department, has won the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Leadership and Service.

Off

Traditional

White

Geography Alumna Abby Hickcox (PhD 2012): Winner of the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Teaching

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:00:01 +0000

Geography Alumna Abby Hickcox (PhD 2012): Winner of the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Teaching Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/06/2026 - 08:00

Abby Hickcox (Geography PhD 2012 alumna), Associate Director of the Honors Program and Teaching Professor, has won the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award recognizes the vital importance of teaching and mentoring students as significant components of faculty duties that are central to the university’s mission.

See here for a complete list of BFA's 2026 Excellence Awards Winners.

Abby Hickcox (Geography PhD 2012 alumna), Associate Director of the Honors Program and Teaching Professor, has won the 2026 Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Off

Traditional

White

Millie Spencer and Emma Tyrrell: New York Times Article "How Do You Measure Snow From Space? First, Climb a Mountain."

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:12:03 +0000

Millie Spencer and Emma Tyrrell: New York Times Article "How Do You Measure Snow From Space? First, Climb a Mountain." Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 03/24/2026 - 09:12

Article copied for archival purposes.

How Do You Measure Snow From Space? First, Climb a Mountain.

A new satellite could transform how water is studied worldwide. But to help unlock its capabilities, scientists first needed to take critical measurements on a mountaintop.

By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

Photographs and Video by Nina Riggio

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey and Nina Riggio reported from high in the Colorado Rockies alongside a team of scientists on skis.

March 24, 2026

At 4:30 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, three alpine scientists arose from fitful sleep in a chilly research lab in the Colorado mountains, 11,500 feet above sea level. They drank some grainy coffee, strapped into their skis and headed out into the moonlight, dragging a sled loaded with gear.

They had a satellite to meet.

The scientists were on an unusual mission. They needed to measure the depth of the snow at a particular mountaintop location just as a new satellite passed directly overhead. That satellite, equipped with powerful radar, has the potential to be the first one capable of estimating how much water is on the ground, in the form of fallen snow, from outer space.

It would be an extraordinary technological milestone, providing global data on snowpack, precipitation and how much water might be available to feed rivers and reservoirs downstream in spring and summer. But first, the satellite would need to be calibrated.

And one of the most accurate ways to do it is to be physically present on the mountain to measure the snow under the exact same conditions, and at the exact same time, that the satellite does. Other scientists are doing similar things around the world.

Precise timing matters. Snow changes quickly and the satellite passes over the same spot only once every 12 days.

So with hearts pounding from the thin alpine air the three skied out onto moonlit snow. Two of them towed the sled, equipped with a small portable radar that is capable of measuring the snow’s depth and density simply by dragging it back and forth across the mountainside.

“Only 4 centimeters deep here!” one of the scientists, Emma Tyrrell, called out. She was leading the project as part of her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. At the back of the sled, helping her pull it, was Arielle Koshkin, a postdoctoral researcher in the same lab, who made a note of the measurement.

For two hours, Ms. Tyrrell and Dr. Koshkin skied back and forth in precise zigzags across the slope of the ridgeline, pulling the radar with them and plunging a ruler into the snow every few feet. Somewhere, invisibly above them, the satellite charted its own path across the sky.

The satellite, known as NISAR, was launched last summer by National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Indian Space Research Organization. The satellite’s capabilities are the closest humans have come to measuring water content in snow across vast regions, from space, the holy grail of snow science.

The new technology comes at a critical time. As the world warms, snow is vanishing across many parts of the planet. That includes Western United States, which is currently undergoing a record snow drought. In states including Colorado and Utah, the snowpack is the lowest since comprehensive modern recording began, 40 years ago. That’s a problem because these states rely on snow melt for up to 80 percent of their water.

Snowpack, Ms. Tyrrell said, acts like a frozen water tower, storing and releasing water that then gets used by communities and farms downstream throughout the year. She paused to gesture across the mountain peaks, where the snow was visibly patchy and thin.

The area she was working, known as Niwot Ridge, would typically be blanketed in a thick layer of snow this time of year. The area is part of a watershed that provides a third of the water needed by the city of Boulder, which was visible that morning, some 25 miles away, as cluster of twinkling lights.

The warming world will doubtlessly transform Colorado, but because of the state’s high elevation there’s uncertainty about precisely how that might play out, Dr. Koshkin said, speaking as she helped Ms. Tyrrell adjust a GPS sensor on the top of the sled. Some precipitation might fall as rain instead of snow, but rain doesn’t remain stored on the mountainside to steadily provide meltwater later in the year. She also said the swings between good and bad snow years are likely to become more drastic.

The sun had started to rise, tinting the mountains scarlet. Several dozen yards away, Millie Spencer, a Ph.D. candidate in the same research group helping out on the day’s mission, was digging a snow pit with a shovel.

This old-school approach remains the gold standard for accurate data on snow. Even when working with modern technologies, like the sled radar, scientists often take analog measurements from snow pits at the same time.

Water managers still rely on long-term records from manual snow measurements to predict how much water to expect from snow each year, from which they create complex forecasting models that patch together different kinds of data. Perhaps most important of these is a large federally run network of snow-weighing sensors that take daily measurements across Western states.

But these sources capture only conditions at a single, isolated point. That’s a problem, because snow can vary significantly across even a short area. And as snow vanishes from the places it used to fall, scientists and water managers say these methods will become less reliable.

The new satellite has some important caveats. It can’t measure snow in densely forested areas, or if the snow becomes too wet. And the satellite’s radar doesn’t always strike Earth at an optimal angle for snow measurements.

The problem is that it wasn’t designed or intended to measure snow, said Jack Tarricone, a scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA. The original mission, first proposed more than two decades ago, was to monitor crops and a variety of other Earth systems like natural disasters, tectonic activity and glaciers.

While the new satellite may be no silver bullet, it’s the best chance scientists have had to measure snow on a wide scale. Researchers at universities and federal agencies alike said they had spent years anticipating the satellite and preparing for its launch.

Now, the clock is ticking. Satellites often stay up well past their intended life spans, but the snow-measuring radar on this one is planned to operate for only three years.

That’s one reason Ms. Tyrrell felt urgency to do these calibration measurements now. Other teams of scientists are also taking measurements at other locations around the world, using a variety of different techniques, to give the satellite the best chance of being accurately calibrated against differing locations and geographical conditions.

Some are flying helicopters and drones with laser scanning devices, other are using radars like Ms. Tyrrell. Each method has pros and cons, but for all its scientific benefits, dragging a sled is certainly hard and slow going.

After several hours, around 7:30 a.m., Ms. Tyrrell and Dr. Koshkin started wrapping up for the day. The satellite had moved on.

They dragged their radar sled back toward the mountainside lab while Ms. Spencer, still working on her snow pit, struggled to examine lumps of snow crystals with a magnifying glass. The task was made nearly impossible by the ribbons of sleet pelting her face.

Back at the shed, Ms. Tyrrell unzipped the cloth covering over the radar and spotted a problem. Snow had somehow gotten onto the device. Worse, one of its many wires had become unplugged.

But there was nothing to be done. It was probably fine, Dr. Koshkin reassured her. The device was made for snow, after all. And most likely the wire fell out as they hauled it indoors.

Next would come a harrowing 45-minute drive back down the mountain in an open-air vehicle with caterpillar treads. Fully checking her data would have to wait until she was back in Boulder. Either way, she said she intended to try again when the satellite comes back in a couple weeks, as long as the snow doesn’t melt in the meantime.

That’s just the nature of studying snow. “There’s only so much you can control,” she said. “We have to work with what we’ve got.”

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey covers climate and the environment for The Times.

A new satellite could transform how water is studied worldwide. But to help unlock its capabilities, scientists first needed to take critical measurements on a mountaintop.

By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

Off

Traditional

White

Katherine Siegel Named in The Story Exchange's Saving Nature: 11 Women to Watch in Science

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:57:15 +0000

Katherine Siegel Named in The Story Exchange's Saving Nature: 11 Women to Watch in Science Gabriela Rocha Sales Fri, 03/06/2026 - 09:57

Copied from The Story Exchange (https://thestoryexchange.org/11-women-to-watch-in-science-2026/) for archival purposes.

Letter from the Editor

We live in a time when words like “women,” “gender” and “diversity” are banned or restricted in federal research grants, particularly at agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.

Yet that has not stopped trailblazing women from searching for urgent, innovative, science-based solutions to the human-caused “climate crisis” (another phrase that’s been banned, along with “global warming” and “emissions”).

These scientists are working to safeguard the safety of our water, air and soil. They’re seeking the smartest ways we can transition to clean energy. They’re pushing their limits to stop deforestation and curb greenhouse gas emissions. And they’re doing it within a system that – on top of the banned words and the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental protections — has long discriminated against them. Research confirms that women in science are paid less, given fewer leadership roles, and receive far less recognition than their male peers.

We can help with that last problem.

At The Story Exchange, we have long elevated women’s voices and achievements. Today, we are thrilled to spotlight these women scientists — nominated by peers — who are working tirelessly on our behalf. Their efforts alone will, of course, not be enough to save our natural world. We need thousands of committed scientists (and business and industries) like them. But their stories, dedication and perseverance can surely inspire others to try to do the same – and maybe just give the Earth a fighting chance.

Kathleen Alexander

Marianne Cowherd

Liz Dennett

Cynthia Gerlain-Safdi

Madeline Walker Miller

Rebecca Peters

Katherine Siegel

Ada Smith

Paige Stanley

Sarah Waickowski

Yagmur Yegin

"These women are using their hard-earned knowledge to protect our planet already ravaged by brutal storms, epic floods and intense wildfires."

Off

Traditional

White

Illegality and the transformation of low-wage labor regimes in the context of rural gentrification

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:47:59 +0000

Illegality and the transformation of low-wage labor regimes in the context of rural gentrification Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 03/02/2026 - 14:47

Dr. Lise Nelson
Professor
School of Geography & Development
University of Arizona

Abstract: Over the last three decades, domestic amenity or “lifestyle” migration has stimulated a process of rural gentrification across the United States, shifting landscapes of production to landscapes of consumption--from Jackson Hole, Wyoming to Highlands, North Carolina. My research investigates an under-appreciated dimension of rural gentrification: the recruitment of low-wage, mostly undocumented Latine immigrant workers essential to building and maintaining gentrifying landscapes and lifestyles. The talk at UC Boulder focuses on the emergence and consolidation of immigrant-based labor regimes in two case study communities between the late 1990s and late 2000s, Steamboat Springs, CO and Rabun County, GA, exploring qualitative data that illustrate how and why employers in gentrification-linked sectors recruited an unfamiliar labor force. I trace how, over time, employers transformed their business model to reach new levels of profitability predicated on access to racially marked, “illegal” workers. I also discuss how these racialized labor regimes shaped life and work for immigrant newcomers navigating rural landscapes of affluence.

Over the last three decades, domestic amenity or “lifestyle” migration has stimulated a process of rural gentrification across the United States, shifting landscapes of production to landscapes of consumption--from Jackson Hole, Wyoming to Highlands, North Carolina.

Off

Traditional

White