Feature-Faculty

Waleed Abdalati Selected as Sesquicentennial Faculty Scholar

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:23:23 +0000

Waleed Abdalati Selected as Sesquicentennial Faculty Scholar Gabriela Rocha Sales Wed, 04/29/2026 - 15:23

In celebration of 91��ý’s 150th anniversary, the Sesquicentennial Faculty Scholars recognition program spotlights some of the university’s most inspiring voices—faculty members whose research and creative work transform lives and serve the public good. This prestigious program elevates faculty whose scholarship benefits communities, informs policy, advances innovation, and addresses society’s most pressing challenges.

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Two Geography professors were selected for the University of Colorado Boulder’s Sustainability Research Initiative Fellowship

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:34:35 +0000

Two Geography professors were selected for the University of Colorado Boulder’s Sustainability Research Initiative Fellowship Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 15:34

Katherine Siegel, and Keith Musselman along with 18 other researchers will participate in a year-long incubator designed to bring 91��ý researchers together to collaborate and conduct research that addresses complex, multidimensional, boundary-spanning sustainability issues.

The SRI Research Fellowship is built on a simple premise: when talented people are given the space, time and community to dream big together, transformative ideas emerge. Sustainability challenges are complex and multidimensional, and addressing them requires intellectual approaches that cross boundaries, challenge assumptions and leverage diverse perspectives.

This fellowship is designed to cultivate exactly that environment. This first cohort of fellows includes 20 researchers from departments and research institutes across campus. Through a series of intensive trainings and retreats, the fellows will spend the year building community, practicing future-oriented thinking, and forming transdisciplinary teams capable of shaping the next generation of sustainability scholarship and solutions.

“This new fellowship is emblematic of 91��ý’s strong campuswide commitment to sustainability, and it demonstrates how SRI is elevating and connecting CU’s sustainability researchers in creative and unexpected ways for greater impact,” said 91��ý Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock.

SRI conducted a series of focus groups in the fall of 2025 and a resounding theme emerged: researchers are eager to collaborate across disciplines, but institutional structures make that collaboration challenging.

“Comments like ‘Where can we think together?’ and ‘Can we buy faculty time for creative thinking?’ underscored the urgency,” said SRI Director Jane Zelikova. “The SRI research fellowship directly responds to these needs by carving out time and space for intentional community building across intellectual and departmental silos and for creative, non-proposal driven conversations. We aim to foster a space where serendipity can seed new ideas and collaborations and where researchers feel supported to explore bold, unconventional approaches.”

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Mark Serreze: Arctic Amplification and Changing Precipitation

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:31:39 +0000

Mark Serreze: Arctic Amplification and Changing Precipitation Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 15:31

Geography Distinguished Professor Mark Serreze and colleagues published a study in the journal “The Cryosphere” on Arctic Amplification (AA) - the much stronger observed warming of the Arctic compared to the globe as a whole. Serreze concludes that one of the most important processes driving Arctic Amplification is summertime loss of the Arctic’s sea ice cover. More melt of the sea ice cover in summer exposes ever larger dark open water areas which pick up the sun’s energy. As summer fades into winter and the sun sets in the Arctic, the extra heat gained by the ocean is released upward to the atmosphere. This is why Arctic Amplification is most strongly expressed in autumn, and along the Russian coast that has seen the largest summer ice losses. These areas have warmed by more than 2K per year, or 8-10 degrees Kelvin over the period 1980-2024 (Figure xx). An important contributor to Arctic Amplification is that the Arctic atmosphere is characterized by a strong temperature inversion, which inhibits mixing, focusing the heating near the surfaces. However, Arctic Amplification is also changing the Arctic atmosphere to make it less stable. Research on Arctic Amplification ties in with research led by former graduate student Zaria Cast in another paper published in “The Cryosphere” on how warming is starting to change the Arctic from a snowfall to a rainfall dominated region. As Arctic temperatures continue to rise, precipitation increases, and more and more of that precipitation falls as snow will fall as rain. It is well known that rain on snow events in the Arctic, which are increasing in frequency, have severe consequences for traditional reindeer herding when hard icy crusts form that inhibit grazing. There are well recorded cases where tens of thousands of reindeer have died following a rain on sow event.

Figure: The change in Arctic temperatures in degrees (Kelvin) per year during autumn over the period 1980 through 2024.

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Geography Professor Isaac Rivera Launches The Rita Martinez Spatial Justice Lab

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:28:38 +0000

Geography Professor Isaac Rivera Launches The Rita Martinez Spatial Justice Lab Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 15:28

Dr. Isaac Rivera launched the Rita Martinez Spatial Justice Lab on April 10, 2026. The lab aspires to foreground creative and accountable digital geographies, such as cartography and geomedia to animate the everyday ways in which Colorado communities and beyond seek to affirm life in the broadest sense. Our motto, For Life Affirming Geographies, is not a metaphor, but a call to action to direct geographical knowledge to honor the self-determination of Native nations everywhere; to serve as a vessel that co-creates the conditions of possibility for the repair of the Earth and our communities; and for assembling the geoimaginaries necessary in which to envision a future where all life may thrive. For Life!

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Jessica Finlay: GOALie Geographer

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:22:44 +0000

Jessica Finlay: GOALie Geographer Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 15:22

Assistant Professor Jessica Finlay co-founded GOAL (Geographies of Aging and the Life Course), an interdisciplinary working group that has grown to include more than 150 researchers worldwide. GOAL brings together scholars engaged in spatial and place-based studies of aging and the life course across a wide range of disciplines, including geography, gerontology, epidemiology, sociology, transportation, and urban planning. The group’s mission is to foster connection, collaboration, and innovation in research on the dynamic relationships among space, place, environment, and health across the life course.

Dr. Jessica Finlay and GOAL co-founders Dr. Amber DeJohn and Dr. Michael Desjardins.

Dr. Jessica Finlay led a qualitative methods workshop during a GOAL 2026 scientific workshop in Tallahassee, Florida, helping participants build interview skills with volunteers from local senior centers.

GOAL members gathered for an ice cream social after the GOAL symposium sessions at the 2026 American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, where they shared updates on their latest research and explored new opportunities for collaboration.

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Federico Andrade Rivas: Do you live in a playable neighbourhood? A new national level metric aims to answer this question

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:56:54 +0000

Federico Andrade Rivas: Do you live in a playable neighbourhood? A new national level metric aims to answer this question Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 14:56

Beyond the established benefits of physical activity on human health, there is increasing evidence showing the importance of outdoor free play for young children’s current and long-term physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Geography Assistant Professor Federico Andrade Rivas joined a research collaboration led by Dr. Emily Gemmell (University of British Columbia) to develop Canada’s first nationwide “playability index” to assess how urban environments support young children’s outdoor free play.

Children are increasingly growing up in car-centric cities with limited access to spaces that promote free play. This is concerning, as most of their physical activity is a by-product of play. Moreover, research and policy often focus on adults’ behaviours and mobility patterns when assessing how built environments influence human health. Thus, current solutions to improve physical activity and well-being through urban interventions often assume that children will benefit from designs and metrics tailored to adults’ mobility and behaviour. Adults often assume that outdoor playtime is limited to playgrounds and parks, whereas children view almost any space as potentially playable. In order to contribute to filling up these gaps in research and policy, the team developed Playscore. This effort led to a publication in the journal Cities and Canada national level media coverage.

The playability index was built from an evidence-based framework for neighbourhood playability among children developed by the team. This framework identified five major domains influencing outdoor free play: spaces for play, social, traffic/pedestrian and natural environments, and child-relevant destinations. The team approach to build the index consisted of four steps: selection of indicators to operationalize distinct concepts within these domains, a survey of experts to inform the weighting of metric components and obtain feedback on indicator selection and finally, weighting and aggregation of indicators and domains into a composite metric.

Importantly, the analysis of the playscore results showed that average scores did not vary much across the 35 Canadian cities included in the study. However, there is wide variation in neighbourhood playability within the same city, which ranges from 52-77%. The team also found that 39% of children lived in areas where at least one key factor, like safe streets or access to nature, scored in the bottom 10% for all neighbourhoods in the city. Moreover, for a majority of cities, materially disadvantaged neighbourhoods had lower playability scores, leading to health equity and environmental justice issues. Even within the same city, children experience vast difference in access to environments that support outdoor play and physical, cognitive, and social-emotional well-being.

The potential application of the playability index operates at multiple scales. It enables small area-level assessment of supportiveness, barriers and facilitators to young children's outdoor play, while proposes a theoretical framework and methodological approach that may be adapted to develop indices of playability across diverse urban contexts. This work highlights the importance of research that can inform interventions at the local and regional level, while promoting the creation of similar tools in other urban contexts like the US. In addition, it contributes to shape the public discourse on who and what matters when we evaluate and design our cities.

Figure from the published article (Gemmell et al. 2026; Cities). Distribution of playability and domain score deciles for postal codes within the Toronto metropolitan area. Playability score with alternate measure of social environment.

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Ellen Considine selected as a 2026 GeoCAFE Scholar

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:51:41 +0000

Ellen Considine selected as a 2026 GeoCAFE Scholar Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 14:51

Over the next year, Assistant Professor of Geography and CIRES Fellow Ellen Considine will join a national cohort of scholars working to bridge the gap between the geosciences and health sciences. The GeoCAFE Scholars program aligns closely with Considine’s role at CIRES, where she serves as a long-term scientific ambassador to the geosciences from the field of environmental health biostatistics. She is excited to engage with peers approaching this challenge from across disciplines. Considine will connect with the cohort in person at the annual conferences of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) North American Chapter and the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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