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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2026 Geography Spring Awards Lunch

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:42:17 +0000

2026 Geography Spring Awards Lunch Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 10:42

On Friday, April 24th, the Geography Department celebrated the 2026 Spring Awards Lunch in the British and Irish Studies Room on the 5th Floor of the Norlin Library. This has been our 4th annual awards lunch. We celebrated the following awards:

Gilbert F. White Doctoral Summer Writing Award
John Pitlick Field Research Award
James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award
Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award
Adam Kolff Memorial Research Award
Excellence in Graduate Teaching – Graduate Part-time Instructor Award
Arctic Studies Certificate
GIS and Computational Science Certificate
Hydrology Certificate
A. David Hill Scholarship Award
DigitalGlobe Foundation Scott Smith Memorial Undergraduate Award
Mable B. Duncan Scholarship Award
Theodore C Myers Memorial Scholarship Award
2026 Mapathon winners

Our recipients were:

Emma Loizeaux (Gilbert F. White Doctoral Summer Writing Award)
Ethan Carr (The John Pitlick Field Research Award)
Hayes Hart-Thompson (The John Pitlick Field Research Award)
Emily Nagamoto (The John Pitlick Field Research Award)
Laine Sullivan (The John Pitlick Field Research Award)
Lauren Thomas (The John Pitlick Field Research Award)
Emma Tyrrell (The John Pitlick Field Research Award)
Josie Welsh (The John Pitlick Field Research Award)
Alek Berg (James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award)
Naomi Hazarika (James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award)
Lauren Herwehe (James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award)
Tsering Lhamo (James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award)
Danielle Losos (James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award)
Michela Savignano (James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award)
Nic Tarasewicz (James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Graduate Research Award, the Excellence in Graduate Teaching – Graduate Part-time Instructor Award)
Annika Hirmke (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Taylor Johaneman (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award, the Excellence in Graduate Teaching – Graduate Part-time Instructor Award)
Guiye Li (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Zhe Lin (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Sherrie Liu (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Esmee Mulder (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Yuying Ren (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Mallory Sagehorn (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Neda Shaban (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Anshul Rai Sharma (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Em Wright (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Rahila Yilangai (Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award)
Saad Hakim (Adam Kolff Memorial Research Award)
Lauren Palermo (Adam Kolff Memorial Research Award)
Anthony Pirolli (Adam Kolff Memorial Research Award)
Emelina Catterson (Arctic Studies Certificate)
Parker Jacobik (Arctic Studies Certificate)
Lucy Sutcliffe (Arctic Studies Certificate)
Matthew Akin (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
William Beach (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Benjamin Booker (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Bell Braitberg (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Emily Brown (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Clementine Clyker (GIS and Computational Science Certificate, Hydrology Certificate)
Alex Davis (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Tessa Dempster (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Stefan Ferla (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Sammy Fitterman (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Alex Frechetti (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Eric Gosnell (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Tahn Jandai (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Reidar Johnston (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Addison Klocker (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Ian Messa (GIS and Computational Science Certificate, Theodore C Myers Memorial Scholarship Award)
Ruth Mills (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Kalpana Murugan (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Asa Paonaskar (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Jordan Sanders (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Larry Scherer (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Carly Schwab (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Ash Tribble (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Rachel Underhill (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Abby Verneuille (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Stefan Wagner (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Erik Weniger (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Charlie Wrede (GIS and Computational Science Certificate)
Kian Oaklief (Hydrology Certificate)
Congyuan Zheng (A. David Hill Endowed Scholarship in Geography, DigitalGlobe Foundation Scott Smith Memorial Undergraduate Award)
Kale Potter (Mable B. Duncan Scholarship Award)
Ellie Shandro (Mable B. Duncan Scholarship Award)
Lyndsay Veerkamp (Mable B. Duncan Scholarship Award)
Syd Stevens (2026 Mapathon Winner, Life Affirming Geographies Category)
Benedict McCullough (2026 Mapathon Winner, Geographies of Care Category)
Zosia Kirkland (2026 Mapathon Winner, Geographies of Resistance & Repair Category)
Samara Lo (2026 Mapathon Winner, Geographies of Sustainability & Environmental Justice Category)
Zach Steiner (2026 Mapathon Winner, Best Overall Map, People's Choice Map)
Darian Chavez-Matsunaga (2026 Mapathon Winner, Honorable Mention)

See Pictures of the Event Here

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2026 Mapathon Success

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:11:46 +0000

2026 Mapathon Success Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 10:11

Spring at CU-Geography means Mapathon Time! The CU-Geography Mapathon successfully launched its 2nd annual Mapathon campaign centered on cartographies of hope. For organizer Prof. Isaac Rivera, cartographies of hope are doorways for rehearsing a liberatory world in the here and now. Undergraduate and graduate students from across CU-Boulder and the Front Range participated, submitting maps across several themes including Life Affirming Geographies; Geographies of Care and Repair; and Geographies of Sustainability and Environmental Justice. The Mapathon Committee aspires to continue on with the Mapathon in the coming years, uniting Geography across Colorado to elevate the life affirming ways in which Geographers map our world.

See the Mapathon winners and entries here.

Winner of the Life Affirming Geographies Category

Syd Stevens for the map: Resisting Displacement on the Streets of Boulder, CO

Winner of the Geographies of Care Category

Benedict McCullough for the map: Boulder’s Libraries: Not Just for Books

Winner of the Geographies of Resistance & Repair Category

Zosia Kirkland for the map: Teenage Revolution: Mapping Resistance and Repair conducted by the youth of Denver East High School

Winner of the Geographies of Sustainability & Environmental Justice Category

Samara Lo for the map: Networks of Conservation

Grand Prize Winner of the Best Overall Map

Zach Steiner for the map: Tufting the Jordan Valley: Emotional Spatiality of Zionist Settler Colonialism and Palestinian Resistance

Winner of the People's Choice Map

Zach Steiner for the map: Tufting the Jordan Valley: Emotional Spatiality of Zionist Settler Colonialism and Palestinian Resistance

Honorable Mention

Darian Chavez-Matsunaga, Student at Regis University, for the map: Living Nations, Living Land: Indigenous Steward Ship in Colorado

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Jessica DiCarlo (PhD Geography, 2021): Spirited Collaboration, Epistemic Generosity

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:07:11 +0000

Jessica DiCarlo (PhD Geography, 2021): Spirited Collaboration, Epistemic Generosity Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 10:07

The Geography Department at the University of Colorado Boulder cultivates an intellectual community that lasts well beyond graduation. For Jessica DiCarlo, now an assistant professor at the University of Utah, CU geography continues to shape her work through ongoing collaborations with alumni who share commitments to critical thinking and engaged scholarship. Across her research and teaching, these relationships exemplify how CU trains geographers as thinkers attuned to power, possibility, and a spirit of epistemic generosity (Chadwick 2024).

In Autumn 2025, Jessica delivered the keynote lecture for the National Council for Geographic Education and the American Association of Geographers, Great Plains/Rocky Mountain region division. In it, she reflected on the reciprocal relationship between research and teaching, and advocated for cultivating curiosity, critical thinking, and care as central pedagogical commitments. In the audience was fellow CU alum Rebecca Theobald (PhD Geography, 2007), who is editing The Oxford Handbook of Geography for Educators. Their encounter sparked a shared commitment to student-centered pedagogy. Jessica is now adapting her keynote into the opening chapter of the human geography section of Dr. Theobald’s book. The chapter situates human geography as a tool for understanding global transformations and challenges through lived experience, kinesthetic methods, and a pedagogical practice of curiosity, attention, and ethical engagement. Aspects of this work build on Jessica’s CU-based doctoral research in “The World from a Bicycle: Cycling as Kinesthetic Methodology” (Progress in Human Geography), which theorizeskinesthetic methodologies.

CU geography is especially evident in Jessica’s global China research. With longtime collaborator and CU alum Meredith DeBoom (PhD Geography, 2018), she wrote an anchor article and Dialogues in Human Geography. “Six Paths of Global China: A Genealogy of a Contested Geographical Imaginary” traces how “Global China” has been constructed, mobilized, and debated across various scholarly and political contexts. The journal’s anchor-response format also generated intellectual exchange within the CU community itself, including a formal response (read: a spirited provocation!) from faculty member and mentor Tim Oakes (this and other responses can be found here). Meredith and Jessica continue to scheme on questions of resource politics, “green” transitions, and Global China.

Jessica also put her head together with recent CU graduate and railway aficionado David Fernando Bachrach (PhD Geography, 2026) to compare their research on railway corridors in Laos and Indonesia. In an Antipode article, they theorize the process of “corridorization” and how large-scale railway projects transform space into governable and investable corridors, producing new forms of enclosure and uneven development. Their work reflects a shared intellectual lineage grounded in CU’s training in political ecology and political geography, as well as their longstanding conversations that began during David’s very first year of his PhD.

Finally, as her research has expanded to focus on critical minerals and energy transitions, so have collaborations in these areas. In a commentary in Nature Energy co-authored with CU alums Aaron Malone (PhD Geography, 2019) and Nicole Smith (PhD Anthropology, 2012), they advance the concept of just-shoring, arguing that emerging strategies such as onshoring, friendshoring, and reshoring, while aimed at securing supply chains, risk reproducing environmental harms and social inequalities associated with fossil fuel extraction. Instead, the authors call for frameworks that center community rights, accountability, and co-governance across the entire mineral life cycle (a longer article on the just-shoring frameworks is under review). By reframing supply chain security through questions of justice rather than geography, they ask who benefits, who bears the risks, and how much extraction is necessary.

From CU to the present, an ethos of connection and collaboration has threaded together Jessica’s research and teaching. She endeavors to grow similar spirits of rigor, intellectual openness, and curiosity among her graduate and undergraduate students within her Political Ecology Lab at the University of Utah. Together, they engage questions that span agricultural labor, Global China, mining in Utah, and green infrastructure in Asia with an eye toward uneven power relations and how they are lived. Jessica’s commitments to students and research are reflected in her 2026 receipt of the Margaret FitzSimmons Early Career Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology group of the American Association of Geographers. Drawing inspiration from FitzSimmons’ legacy as a devoted mentor and inspiring educator, Jessica approaches teaching as central to scholarly life and hopes to bring these ideas and much of what her students teach her to life in Dr. Theobald’s book.

For more or to connect, visit jessicadicarlo.phd.

References

Bennett, Mia, Jessica DiCarlo, and Sarah Elwood. 2025. The world from a bicycle: Cycling as kinesthetic methodology. Progress in Human Geography.

Chadwick, Rachelle. 2024. The question of feminist critique. Feminist Theory, 25(3), 376-395.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Raphael Deberdt, Nicole Smith, Scott Odell, Aaron Malone, Lydia Jennings. A just energy transition requires just-shoring critical materials. Nature Energy.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Meredith DeBoom. 2025. Six paths of Global China: A genealogy of a contested geographical imaginary. Dialogues in Human Geography.

DiCarlo, Jessica and David Fernando Bachrach. 2025. The corridor as commodity: Enclosure, legibility, and uneven development in Southeast Asian railway projects. Antipode.

Oakes, Tim. (2025). The lingering exceptionalism of global China. Dialogues in Human Geography.

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Sophia Emmanouilides Linn (M.A. 1996): A Clear Path…Only in Retrospect

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:02:15 +0000

Sophia Emmanouilides Linn (M.A. 1996): A Clear Path…Only in Retrospect Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 10:02

The career path was not necessarily well-lit when I graduated from the geography department at CU-Boulder in the mid-1990s. Yet in retrospect, it’s curious to notice that the journey seems remarkably coherent. As a geographer who maintained an interest in all the things, I leaned towards the sub-disciplines that maintained that wide breadth—cartography/GIS and geography education. My thesis focused on the effectiveness of interactive maps in the classroom and was the first to include a floppy disk as part of the submission! While in the department, I worked for both the Colorado Geographic Alliance (COGA) and the cartography lab. Remarkably, my current position as Head of the Geospatial Centroid at Colorado State University (CSU) bridges those same areas—with a healthy dose of project and program management included.

Despite the semblance of a relatively straight line, the path was in no way laid out in advance—in fact, it needed a fair bit of blazing. An ongoing effort to improve geography education at that time justified establishing a new role of Program Manager for COGA and tangentially, a Program Manager for the CO Geography Education Fund (COGEF), an endowed fund from National Geographic to support geography education in the state. Both positions were new, and I filled both. While raising three daughters, I also taught geography at the community college. (Note to young professionals: It wasn’t easy, nor recommended!) After a much-needed sanity pause to keep the family intact, I was approached by a former CU colleague (Dave Theobald, Ph.D., 1995) to assist with some GIS work at CSU in Fort Collins (where we both live). That was 18 years ago.

In 2008, CSU did not have a GIS program per se, though many people on campus were using these technologies for research and teaching. A modest, grant-funded effort to establish a “geospatial data development center" morphed early on to become the Geospatial Centroid, a resource and service center that provides support for all things geospatial to the on- and off-campus community. Now well established within Morgan Library, the Centroid provides training, project support, internships, and a welcoming space for students and researchers alike.

Having been with the Centroid since its inception, I have been able to use my geography, cartography, GIS, education, and program/project management skills to establish and support this organization. I am grateful and, frankly, somewhat surprised that after 30 years my geography career path somehow has made sense.

Couldn’t have seen that coming, back when there were floppy disks…

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Ian Messa receives Theodore C. Myers Memorial Award for Best Honors Thesis in Geography

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:55:23 +0000

Ian Messa receives Theodore C. Myers Memorial Award for Best Honors Thesis in Geography Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:55

My name is Ian Messa. I'll be graduating from CU in less than a month with a BA in geography; a certificate in GIS; and minors in civil engineering, applied math, and pure math. I've been working at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Geologic Hazards Science Center (GHSC) in Golden for the past two years, where I've been researching model optimization and uncertainty quantification for probabilistic seismic hazard analyses (PSHAs). I actually just defended my honors thesis, which I wrote under the advisory of Dr. Morteza Karimzadeh, entitled Accelerated Epistemic Uncertainty Propagation for Seismic Hazard Models Using a Differentiable KL-PCE Framework (it should be available in the 91��ý honors thesis repository soon). The title is long, but the idea is as follows: We have a huge ensemble of predictive models, and we can aggregate these models to quickly calculate the mean prediction of the ensemble; what can we do to estimate the spread of ensemble predictions from this ensemble without evaluating every single model belonging to it?

It's been a long, sort of winding road to get to where I am now. Here are some highlights: Freshman year, I took Natural Hazards with Dr. Bill Travis, and I enjoyed it a lot, but didn't think much of that; now, for the past two years, I have worked at the USGS, where we model natural (earthquake!) hazards. While I was taking Natural Hazards, Bill recommended a book called Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow, and Dr. Tim Oakes recommended another called The Promise of Infrastructure, edited by Anand, Gupta, and Appel; these two books made me realize that I wouldn't be content with my college education unless I studied civil engineering in some capacity, so I enrolled in the geography department's hydrology certificate (Normal Accidents has also influenced how I think about engineered systems to this day). That summer, I got a job with Denver Water as a recreation intern during the expansion of Gross Dam, and the role made me realize that I had to drop the hydrology certificate and pursue a proper minor in civil engineering; I learned about that opportunity from the GEOG newsletter. A year later, Machine Learning in GIS with Morteza totally changed my relationship with math: I was pursuing the minor pretty dispassionately because I was good at math in high school and thought it was kind of fun, but that course made me realize that I actually had a passion and interest for mathematics when I was applying it to solve problems. After this realization, I signed up for the applied math minor in the middle of the semester.

Our faculty is very bright and just as diverse; the same can be said for our grad students. Our staff is also incredible, and I think we'd all be much worse off without their support and organization (and bagels...). The geography department has afforded me the opportunity to really poke around and learn about my interests in a way that I don't think any other department could. Much like the discipline of geography itself, the people in our department exemplify how diversity can be a strength, especially in frightful and uncertain times. I'm thankful to have spent four years in the geography department and think of my time here whenever I hear someone characterizing diversity as an evil or a weakness.

After I graduate, I'm considering a PhD, but I'm not quite sure what for. It seems like it'll be between civil engineering, earthquake engineering, and statistical mechanics; the last one might sound like it's out of left field, but I promise it's not as far from the other two as it sounds. In the meantime, I hope to continue my work at the GHSC. At the beginning of the semester, I was talking to my friend, and I told him how, after three and a half years up here, I finally feel like I'm not a freshman anymore. It's funny how fast life moves.

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Abigail Verneuille Selected Outstanding Undergraduate of the College of Arts and Science

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:52:49 +0000

Abigail Verneuille Selected Outstanding Undergraduate of the College of Arts and Science Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:52

Abby Verneuille, an Anthropology Major and GIS Certificate student, completed an honors thesis with Sarah Schlosser, the Department’s GIS Certificate Coordinator, serving as the committee's outside reader. Her thesis shed new light on the Pre-Hispanic History of Northern New Mexico and on human adaptation to climate change more generally, evaluating the relationship between the environment, agricultural techniques, and migration in the Velarde Valley of northern New Mexico. The thesis was highly technical, containing a variety of GIS, general linear modeling, and statistical analyses. Her significant contribution to the field along with an exceptional academic record led to her earn recognition as an Outstanding Undergraduate of the College of A&S for Spring 2026.

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Graduate Students from Water Seminar (Geography 5100) “The politics of water” present together at CU WASH Symposium 2026

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:48:51 +0000

Graduate Students from Water Seminar (Geography 5100) “The politics of water” present together at CU WASH Symposium 2026 Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:48

In Professor Truelove’s Fall 2025 graduate water seminar, GEOG 5100: The Politics of Water, students (Em Wright, Laine Sullivan, Anshul Sharma, Marc Sailer, Zach Schaad), spanning social, physical, and engineering sciences engaged with hydrosocial approaches to understand some of the world’s most pressing water challenges. During the course of the seminar, students from differing disciplines began reflecting on their own lived experiences of water as not simply being something tied to only the physical, infrastructural, or technical, but also the social, cultural, political, and economic – what social scientists often refer to as “socio-natural.” Further, students critically considered how one’s own disciplinary silo could often limit the ways we see, approach, know, and seek to address global water challenges. For example, dominant approaches to pervasive water problems often focus on improving water access and security through technocratic and engineering fixes that are widely viewed as apolitical. At the same time, academic analyses often view water problems through a singular disciplinary lens with limited success, which also simultaneously curbs the scope of how we approach water’s complex challenges. At the conclusion of the course, students had offered such a high degree of personal, professional, and disciplinary reflection on the need to adopt a transdisciplinary approach that recognizes water’s hydro-social nature that the entire class joined together with the aim to continue to work together despite the semester ending. On the last day of the semester, the class agreed to put transdisciplinary thinking into practice by working across students’ own disciplinary orientations and drawing on the collective learning from the semester to co-author and co-present a think piece on the possibilities and imperatives of interdisciplinary approaches to global water challenges.

As a result, the following semester the entire class met again regularly. This time it was not for credit, but to collaborate and be mentored by Professor Truelove in thinking through a framework for transdisciplinary approaches to water challenges and justice, presenting at the CU 2026 Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Symposium, as well as working on a co-authored article for publication. In the collective work of graduate students from Geography, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and the Mortensen Center for Global Engineering, the CU WASH Symposium presentation (pictured below) entailed the students and Professor Truelove sharing the stage to engage a predominately engineering audience on how transdisciplinary approaches could advance water justice. The group presented and answered audience questions for a total of 30 minutes. The presentation advocated for an approach that attends to 1) the “humanness” of water systems, 2) differing ways of knowing and valuing water, 3) expanding how we understand and engage the right to water, and 4) centering communities’ and indigenous experiences’ of water in pursuing climate justice in order to achieve greater water equity and justice globally.

The team is eagerly continuing the work into the summer through their co-authored think piece around similar themes.

From left to right: Em Wright, Anshul Sharma, Yaffa Truelove, Marc Sailer, Laine Sullivan, Zach Schaad

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Hayes Hart-Thompson Awarded Student Employee of the Year

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:42:04 +0000

Hayes Hart-Thompson Awarded Student Employee of the Year Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:42

Hayes Hart-Thompson is a master’s student studying Geography. Dr. Jessica Finlay (Assistant Professor in Geography) nominated Hayes for their roles as a teaching and research assistant. Across both positions, Hayes consistently exceeds expectations, through exceptional initiative, intellectual leadership and a deep commitment to equity, inclusion and collective success.

In the classroom, Hayes builds an inclusive environment where students feel seen, heard and intellectually challenged, especially in a course centered on power, privilege and urban inequality. During stressful or uncertain moments, Hayes proactively checked in with students and adjusted instructional approaches to keep the class grounded in trust and mutual respect. Hayes also made a lasting instructional contribution by designing and leading a three-week interactive capstone project that asked students to apply course concepts to a realistic urban planning scenario, setting a new standard for experiential, justice-oriented learning in the department.

Hayes strengthens departmental research by contributing novel ideas that improve project design, collaborative workflows and advance equity-centered research practices. As a leader, Hayes supports and mentors other students and elevates their peers through encouragement, constructive guidance, and deep collaboration.

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Do you ever join point data to census polygons or other spatial units containing contextual information? Alek Berg and colleagues have new insight.

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:37:16 +0000

Do you ever join point data to census polygons or other spatial units containing contextual information? Alek Berg and colleagues have new insight. Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:37

Aleksander Berg is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography advised by Stefan Leyk. He has been a graduate research assistant since 2023 on a National Institute on Aging grant studying the midlife (aged 25-64) mortality crisis in the United States. A core question of this project is: does place matter? To answer this, Berg has, over the past three years helped develop a dataset of death records at scales as fine as the residence address for fifteen U.S. states, from 1990 to 2022, accounting for over 7 million decedents. These records are then connected to Census spatial units such as blocks containing important contextual information about populations, the economy, and neighborhoods.

A key problem emerged during the development of these data: a substantial number of these death records were implausibly or impossibly joined to census blocks that, for example, are unpopulated, a type of error termed overlay uncertainty. This discovery led to an analysis and recent publication in the peer reviewed journal Transactions in GIS.

The paper, entitled: “Why It's So Hard to Match Residence Addresses to Census Blocks—And How to Fix It” leverages a subset of the larger midlife mortality dataset across the six states of California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Jersey. Berg and co-authors Myron Gutmann (CU Institute of Behavioral Science), Stefan Leyk (CU Department of Geography), and Hoeyun Kwon (Lehman College, City University of New York): (1) test how often records are joined to the implausible blocks, (2) reveal the systematic problems that may generate these mismatches, and (3) offer ways to fix this problem.

Figure 3 (from the cited manuscript). Chart of the percentage of midlife deaths in zero population blocks in each state per five-year time period from 1990-2022.

The study reveals that up to 4% of records are placed into blocks with no population (see Figure 3). Of those erroneously placed death records, around half of them end up in census blocks that make up interstitial spaces such as railroad rights-of-way and boulevards. Berg et al. finds that many of these misplacements are due to very slight errors in the geocoding process (that is matching address text to a point on Earth) that place these death records only a few meters outside of a populated census block. The authors end the manuscript by suggesting a series of corrective measures such as aggregating up to a coarser spatial unit such as a census tract or reallocating records into the nearest populated census block (see Figure 7).

Figure 7 (from the manuscript). Visualizing potential automated corrections for overlay uncertainty.

Overall, the results and discussion from this paper have important implications beyond the field of health geography due to the vast use of point data derived from addresses (e.g. crime and environmental hazards data) that need to be connected to population data from censuses. As geographers’ datasets become larger and more place specific, paying attention to how small errors are amplified at scale becomes ever more important.

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Newsletter

Waleed Abdalati Selected as Sesquicentennial Faculty Scholar

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2026 Geography Spring Awards Lunch

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2026 Mapathon Success

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Jessica DiCarlo (PhD Geography, 2021): Spirited Collaboration, Epistemic Generosity

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Sophia Emmanouilides Linn (M.A. 1996): A Clear Path…Only in Retrospect

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Ian Messa receives Theodore C. Myers Memorial Award for Best Honors Thesis in Geography

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Abigail Verneuille Selected Outstanding Undergraduate of the College of Arts and Science

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Graduate Students from Water Seminar (Geography 5100) “The politics of water” present together at CU WASH Symposium 2026

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Hayes Hart-Thompson Awarded Student Employee of the Year

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Do you ever join point data to census polygons or other spatial units containing contextual information? Alek Berg and colleagues have new insight.

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