News

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."

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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.

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Black Environmental Science: Nanny, Obeah, and the Mysterious Ecologies of Marronage

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:37:19 +0000

Black Environmental Science: Nanny, Obeah, and the Mysterious Ecologies of Marronage Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 02/23/2026 - 10:37

Dr. Alex A. Moulton
Assistant Professor
Geography and Environmental Science
Hunter College, CUNY
Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies

Abstract:

Within Afro-Jamaica religions, “science” is used as descriptor for traditional medicinal knowledge, ritual practices, and spirituality. Practitioners of Obeah, Myal, and other Afrocentric spiritual traditions, often identify themselves as “scientists”. We can read this as a challenge to the negation and denigration of Marron practices as evil or satanic. Through the analytical framework of Black Ecologies, this paper leans into a reading of the maroon claim to science not so much an appeal for Western science or the translation of Maroon practices into Western scientific rationality, but an assertion of a counter-science, an alternative Black science that is not less valid than Western science. Centering the famed Grande Nanny, chieftainess of the Windward Maroons, I consider how the mythic stories of marronage and maroon obeah disclose a Black ecological science concerned with the advancement of Black communal flourish. While Nanny is denounced by colonial historians as a practitioner of witchcraft, and unmoored from reality, I argue for attention to the concrete Black ecologies, messiness of social reproduction, and gendered geographies of mobility that placemaking evince. Taking seriously the British fears of the maroons, narrated as a ghostly foe haunting the project of conquest, the paper considers the present imperative of marronage in struggles for socioecological justice and agrarian sovereignty.

Zoom Option: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/92617865791

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2026 Geography Mapathon

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:39:36 +0000

2026 Geography Mapathon Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 02/10/2026 - 09:39

The Colorado Geographic Alliance (COGA) and CU Geography are calling for maps that capture life affirming geographies. This year's theme is Cartographies of Hope.

"Cartographies of hope are doorways to rehearsing a liberatory world in the here and now." - Dr. Isaac Rivera

Submit Your Map

91��ý Affiliate Submission

Colorado College and University Affiliate Submission

Colorado High School Affiliate Submission

Email coga@colorado.edu with questions and technical difficulties.

Mapathon Events on Friday, April 10th:

Open House
- Food and refreshments.
- Gallery walk of map submissions and category winner.
- People's choice voting.
Grand Opening of Dr. Isaac Rivera's Rita Martinez Spatial Justice lab for Life Affirming Geographies.
Professor Sarah Elwood's Lecture 4:00-5:00pm.
People’s Choice Award Winner announced at 5:30pm.

Frequently Asked Questions

What maps are accepted?

Conventional, creative, drawn, digital, and abstract representations of geographic spaces or places are all acceptable. See this link for examples. Both digital and analog maps are accepted. For analog or drawn maps, please take a picture of your map and submit the picture to the online submission portal.

What will happen after I submit my map?

At the Open House map gallery before the Professor Sarah Elwood's Lecture on April 10th, attendees can vote on their favorite Map (People’s Choice Award). Two winners (Best Overall Map and People's Choice Map).

Categories:

Grand Prize: Best Overall Map
People’s Choice: Voted on by attendees
Thematic Awards:
- Life Affirming Geographies
- Geographies of Resistance and Repair
- Geographies of Care
- Geographies of Sustainability and Environmental Justice

How will my map be judged?

Once you submit your map it will be reviewed by a panel of CU Geography Faculty and Graduate Students based on the following criteria:

Content
- Evident engagement with the larger "Cartographies of Hope” theme.
- Evident engagement with the theme the map is submitted under (i.e. life affirming, resistance & repair, care, sustainability & Environmental Justice).
- Readability/educational value (i.e. can the content of the map be followed and does it provide an interesting or important lens of the topic it addresses?).
Design and Style
- Title (i.e. is the title engaging and clearly connected with the content of the map?).
- Color balance (i.e., are the colors engaging but not overbearing? Do they work well with each other?).
- Layout (i.e., is the layout balanced, easy to follow, and engaging?).
- Images/visuals (i.e., are they engaging? Are they balanced? Do they match the content?).
Symbology
- (i.e. does the content match the representation?).

I'm not a 91��ý Student, can I still submit?

Yes! Those outside of 91��ý are welcome to submit to the Mapathon and will be evaluated with their academic background in mind. For example, if you are a K-12 Educator, we encourage you to submit your students' maps and they will not be judged against PhD-level submissions.

What did last year's maps look like?

See our winners and other submissions here.

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Colorado Geographies Panel

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:19:22 +0000

Colorado Geographies Panel Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 02/09/2026 - 07:19

Sid Whiting Jr (Sicinagu Lakota)
Indigenous Youth Educator
Cultural Engagement Coordinator

Jeanette Vizguerra
Community Organizer
Founder of Sanctuary For All

Kalyn Rose Heffernan
Education Freedom Fighter
Lead Singer of Wheelchair Sports Camp

In the geographic tradition of Clyde Woods, this panel underscores the knowledge holders of Colorado, making visible the everyday ways in which our speakers transform places, landscapes, and futures into spaces of life affirming possibility. This panel will discuss Native ways of knowing Colorado, accountable relations with Native nations and peoples; immigrant dignity and practices of relational liberation; disability justice and the transformation of the built environment to affirm all life. The seeds for a liberatory world are already here.

This panel will be held in the Map Libraries at CU-Boulder. This is located in the basement level of the Earth and Sciences building.

Panelist Bios:

Sid Whiting Jr

Mr. Sid Whiting is Sicangu Lakota from the Rosebud Sioux reservation in south central South Dakota. He has lived in Denver most of his life as a part of the Native American community. He began working in his community at a young age. Being the president of the metro Indian youth group at 16 years of age, his family has been a part of creating many Native American organizations in the Denver area. Sid has been a part of the Denver March Pow wow and TallBull Memorial Grounds since their inception in the mid 70's. His involvement in community has been with youth primarily. Such as a Board member for Casa Milagro Youth Services. Sid's involvement with youth has seen him as a teacher for the now defunct American Indian Academy of Denver. But currently he is a Cultural Academics Presenter for multiple school districts in the metro area. Doing presentations such as, Indigenous Drum Math, Tipi Calculus, Eagle Feather Physics, and Bison Science using Native objects. He also works for Create ayA, which is a Cultural arts promotional organization for Native Artists that puts on Denver's only Native American Comic Con and Futurism's event. As a Cultural Engagement Coordinator, Sid sits on the Denver Art Museum's Indigenous Council and the Native American Council at the University of Denver. He currently has objects at The Denver Art Museum Native American Gallery and a Gallery of objects at the Creative Nations Gallery in the Dairy Arts Complex in Boulder. Sid is currently working on the Living Land Project at Denver's City Park, transforming a portion of the park into a Native American inspired vision. This vision includes a Short Grass Prairie, a Medicinal Medicine Garden, and an Amphitheater meeting place for large events. Sid's work with the city of Denver has him working with others to build a Native American Cultural Embassy, a 20 million dollar project that was passed in the Vibrant Denver Bond last November. Sid has many other projects he is working on, including the Breathing Healing Bus, and the Sundance Film Festival in Boulder just to mention a few.

Jeanette Vizguerra

Jeanette Vizguerra originally from Mexico City came to the USA in 1997 for safety, as her husband suffered three express kidnappings in Mexico City. Like many immigrants, even though she has a degree in Psychology was unable to practice her profession here. Her first job was as a janitor. There she immediately began her activism for labor rights, which led the SIEU Local 105 union to invite her to work directly with them just three months after arriving in the USA. They saw her potential to organize, and from then on, her life has been dedicated to serving Colorado's most vulnerable communities. She is a champion of labor, civil, and human rights, and founder of immigrant rights in Colorado, her work is not only local but also national. She is the founder of the sanctuary movement in Colorado and independent organizations such as Sanctuary for All and Abolish ICE Denver. She supports and participates in all movements that affect her community. As someone impacted by the immigration system, she has been detained four times in ICE detention centers and twice sought sanctuary refuge. Her resilience led Time magazine to name her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2017. She sought sanctuary to resist deportation proceedings during the Trump administration, as her case became known worldwide. She has not stopped working for her community. For 30 years even while detained, she helped organize to liberate others within the detention center. She is the recipient of many civil rights awards and continues her work in the community.

Kalyn Rose Heffernan

Kalyn is the wheelchair-using, rap heavy, many arts, educating freedom fighter. Kalyn, who fronts the internationally acclaimed band Wheelchair Sports Camp has more recently stretched into theatre, performance art, politics, permanent installations, museum takeovers, prison tours, film and who knows what’s next. She infamously led Denver's first disabled, queer, artist campaign for the mayor seat 2019. Well known for fighting for access, human rights, and calling out those in power who protect capital interests over the future - Kalyn is well known for raising hell in a very loud and distinct high pitched sense of humor.

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Bodies as Infrastructure: Gender, Water, and situated infrastructural violence in North Indian Cities

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:14:38 +0000

Bodies as Infrastructure: Gender, Water, and situated infrastructural violence in North Indian Cities Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 02/02/2026 - 07:14

Yaffa Truelove
Associate Professor
Department of Geography
University of Colorado at Boulder
truelove@colorado.edu

Abstract

Over the last decade, a growing number of North Indian cities have been declared “waterless,” referring to the temporary stoppage of piped water delivery for days or weeks on end. While receiving widespread media attention for these moments of water crisis – with newspapers often showing images of middle-class residents queuing in long lines at off-grid water sources – urban “waterlessness” is an everyday reality for working class residents who altogether lack access to the centralized network. These residents piece together fragmented and off-grid infrastructures as a normative practice, enabling water to flow to homes and across neighborhoods, maintaining city life. Through conceptualizing bodies as part of infrastructure, this research traces the ways the social and material work of the body helps to build, develop, and maintain cities and their water networks in North India. Bringing a feminist political ecology lens to infrastructure studies, I specifically show how gendered/casted/classed bodies act as part of urban infrastructure through the quotidian practices and labor of finding and circulating water to households in Delhi, Mohali, and Shimla. By examining when and how bodies become “internalized” as part of infrastructural networks, this research aims to render visible often overlooked dimensions of infrastructure and our analytic view of it. I argue that conceptualizing the body as infrastructure helps make visible 1) the embodied labor, maintenance and care work that subsidizes and enables infrastructural assemblages and networks, 2) the socio-political processes and forces that produce the necessity for particular gendered /casted/racialized/classed bodies to act as infrastructure in the first place, and 3) situated forms of infrastructural violence that emerge from everyday practices that enable water’s circulation in cities.

Over the last decade, a growing number of North Indian cities have been declared “waterless,” referring to the temporary stoppage of piped water delivery for days or weeks on end...

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Pictures of the Colorado Geographic Alliance Relaunch Party

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 22:34:51 +0000

Pictures of the Colorado Geographic Alliance Relaunch Party Gabriela Rocha Sales Thu, 11/20/2025 - 15:34

See pictures taken from the Colorado Geographic Alliance Relaunch Party that took place on November 17th, 2025.

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Graduate Students Demonstrate Drone at MRS to Science Bound Students

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:56:16 +0000

Graduate Students Demonstrate Drone at MRS to Science Bound Students Gabriela Rocha Sales Wed, 09/24/2025 - 07:56

Thank you to our graduate students, Nic Tarasewicz, Holly Roth, and Bella Kamplain for helping out the Science Bound Research Retreat students at the Mountain Research Station. See pictures below of Nic demonstrating how a drone gathers infrared data.

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Why Be a Star When You Could Make a Constellation

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:04:30 +0000

Why Be a Star When You Could Make a Constellation Gabriela Rocha Sales Fri, 09/12/2025 - 14:04

Dr. Megan Ybarra

Associate Professor
Department of Communication
University of California San Diego

Abstract:

“Why Be a Star When You Could Make a Constellation?” traces solidarities of radical placemaking across Black, Indigenous, Asian and Latine communities in Tacoma and beyond. I intervene in movement histories to decenter traditional hubs of radical action (New York, the Bay Area) and predominantly male charismatic leaders. Instead, I trace direct action urban planning across Coast Salish territory from the 1960s-1980s, leading to the creation of community-owned cultural centers and settler-state recognition of Indigenous fishing rights. When the Puyallup Tribe reclaimed their treaty rights to the waters, they engaged in “fish ins” named after civil rights “sit ins”. When the settler state took a hospital and turned it into a youth jail, Puyallups engaged in direct action to free the youth and claim the land, then demanding that the federal government recognize the de facto rights they materially claimed. In tracing these powerful instances of radical placemaking and their long-term effects, I show how the Puyallup refusal to accept their land as stolen, toxic, or disposable fueled movement constellations that reshaped the politics of the possible. Taken together, these instances of radical placemaking point to the possibility of movement constellations that center non-human relations and communities of color in building up life-affirming institutions. At the turn of the twenty-first century, most of the direct-action gains remain, but the toxic fate of detention center constructed on the Tacoma Tar Pits reveals tradeoffs.

Why Be a Star When You Could Make a Constellation?” traces solidarities of radical placemaking across Black, Indigenous, Asian and Latine communities in Tacoma and beyond. I intervene in movement histories to decenter traditional hubs of radical action (New York, the Bay Area) and predominantly male charismatic leaders...

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Waleed Abdalati: Voices in the Field - Sounds and Senses of the Polar Regions

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 14:49:10 +0000

Waleed Abdalati: Voices in the Field - Sounds and Senses of the Polar Regions Gabriela Rocha Sales Wed, 07/16/2025 - 08:49

Copied from NASA's ICESat-2 website.

Transcript

My name is Waleed Abdalati. I study ice from space, in particular the Greenland ice sheet and its contributions to sea level by using satellites to observe gains and losses in the mass of the ice. I have been deeply involved with NASA satellites, especially the ICESat satellites, which help us measure and investigate how Earth's ice sheets and glaciers are changing and what those changes mean for our planet and our communities. And as part of that work, I've had the good fortune of going to Greenland, among other ice covered places in the world. But I've spent most of my boots on the ground.

Time in Greenland.

Greenland is a beautiful place. The coast is rocky and rugged, and it's where the glaciers meet the water and the sounds of iceberg calving are simultaneously beautiful and deafening. The feel of the cold air on your face while the other covered parts of your body are warm, are just really difficult to describe. I was lucky that before heading from the coastal village on to the ice, I was able to hike along the coast to one of the world's fastest glaciers, the Jakobshavn ice stream, which moves at about seven kilometers a year, but sometimes as much as twice the speed.

So, standing on the shore of Greenland, on one of those hikes and just looking at this immense river of ice, you can see enormous cracks and crevasses throughout the ice as the face of the ice front rises above the water to a height that's really the equivalent to the length of a football field about 100 yards. But what's especially remarkable is that it's about nine times as deep into the water as it is above the water. The enormity of it all is difficult to imagine. It makes you feel very small.

So we're looking at the face of this huge flowing ice river being about a thousand yards in height and depth combined, flowing down from the main ice of the ice sheet above. And one thing that has really stuck with me, particularly from those hikes, has been the sound of the ice moving,

settling and cracking as it flows. But most impressive has been the sound of an iceberg calving. It's enormously loud. It starts low and soft and you know something is going to happen, and there's an explosion of noise as the ice breaks off. The sound of the separation, and then a tremendous splash as it falls into the surrounding seas. There's nothing like it in the world. And I've had the privilege of experiencing this, particularly the first time I went into the ice before I even got onto the ice, before I got to do my work.

We had a few days in a village on the coast, and I took the hike through the low lying moss on the coast of Greenland and the very rocky shores, and just took it all in. But eventually I went onto the ice to do the work I came to do. I've done most of my on-ice work on the ice sheet itself, and it begins by climbing into a helicopter. You get in the helicopter, the blades are spinning, tilts just a little bit in order to fly forward, and you know you're going someplace adventurous. And as we would fly over the ice to our field destination, the team and I would take in its beauty and eventually we'd land. And the first time we landed, I didn't know what to expect as the helicopter lowered itself onto the ice. I didn't know what to think. Would it be soft and would we sink, or would it be firm and would do we sit on top? How deep did the landing skis beneath the helicopter go?

Well, I quickly got my question answered as we settled on to the firm ice snow surface. It held up the helicopter just fine. It was much harder packed than I imagined it would be from the strong winds and within what seemed like a minute, we threw our gear onto the snow and the helicopter blades roared into motion again, and it took off, and we listened to the sound of the helicopter gradually give way to the sound of the steady stream of wind that frequently occurs on the ice sheet. As the helicopter got further and further away. And eventually it was gone. There was a strange sound of silence and loneliness at this point, knowing that we were farther from civilization than nearly everyone else in the world. And the steady sound of the wind blowing across the snow. You get used to the sound of the wind, and then you notice other sounds like when we call out to each other, it seems softer and a little more muffled than we're used to. Because cold air doesn't transmit the sound waves in the same way as warm air, and the snow that spreads out beneath our feet absorbs those sounds.

The sounds are very different on the ice. They're duller, just not quite as sharp. But given that there's no real background noise except the wind, they can still be clear. But there's one sound that sticks with me as much as anything. That's the sound of walking on snow surfaces. The snow is hard and wind packed, so it supports your weight well. The crunch under your feet is very distinct as the crust breaks. It's a significant cracking sound that's quickly silenced by the snow underneath. And each step has a certain rhythm cracking under your boots. And even though it's muffled, the fact that this is the only sound apart from the wind and your own breathing makes it stand out.

Another remarkable thing about camping on the Greenland ice sheet is the fact that the sun, this is in summer rather than rise and said, simply goes around you in circles 360 degrees. It's higher at noon, but still well above the horizon at midnight. It takes some getting used to. Obviously, the sun doesn't move in an arc from darkness to light and back to darkness like it does at low latitudes, but rather it moves in a complete, albeit tilted, circle around you. It's really quite beautiful. The light on the snow. It's just remarkable. And this leads to another beautiful aspect of the Arctic in general. And that's the fact that the long distance the sunlight has to travel through the atmosphere at high latitudes scatters away or strips off some of the blues and greens and yellows of sunlight, leaving an orangish red hue. When the sun is low on the horizon, the reddish light illuminates the ocean before you, with distinct colors, revealing in detail its undulating texture that extends endlessly into the horizon. These waves of snow and ice on the surface are created and shaped by a steady stream of wind that seems to grow louder at night as the other sounds grow quieter. I remember just falling asleep to it in that tent.

The relentless drone of the wind against the tent along the snow. And I knew I was in a harsh but beautiful and natural place. And even though the sun is out for 24 hours during the day, there's a clear difference in how the sun feels during the day when it's high up above the horizon than when it's night and the sun is low on the horizon and that's because the snow and ice are so reflective that direct sunlight coming from above is almost 100% reflected back at you from the surface. So it's an effective doubling of the sunlight because of the snow. So what this means is that despite these low temperatures, on those occasions when the wind isn't blowing, it actually feels warm on the ice and the day when the sun is high because you're effectively getting the heat from two suns, one from above and one reflected from below, from the snow at night. However, this effect goes away because the sun is low on the horizon and the coldness of the Arctic can really chill your bones.

But the Greenland ice sheet is beautiful, it's peaceful, it's pristine, and it offers a view of part of the earth that so few ever get to experience. And I feel very, very lucky. Finally, after a few weeks or months, the sounds with which one has become so familiar give way to the sound of a helicopter on the horizon, blades whirring softly at first, getting louder and louder as our ride home approaches. And as we roll our equipment in, we hear a number of thuds slamming down on the floor of the helicopter, and we climb on board, and it takes off as quickly as it arrives. Each of us, and that moment of departure looks back on the place we called home. And we carry with us not just the visuals, but the sounds, the feel of cold on our exposed skin and that very, very clean smell of what was untouched by the ice.

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