Wildfire smoke’s health risks can linger in homes that escape burning—as Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors discovered

On Dec. 30, 2021, a raced through two communities just outside Boulder, Colorado. In the span of about eight hours, and businesses burned.

The fire left entire blocks in ash, but among them, , seemingly untouched. The owners of these homes may have felt relief at first. But fire damage can be deceiving, as many soon discovered.

When wildfires like the Marshall Fire reach the , they are burning both vegetation and human-made materials. Vehicles and buildings burn, along with all of the things inside them—electronics, paint, plastics, furniture.

Research shows that when human-made materials like these burn, from what is emitted when just vegetation burns. The smoke and ash can blow under doors and around windows in nearby homes, bringing in chemicals that stick to walls and other indoor surfaces and continue off-gassing for weeks to months, particularly in warmer temperatures.

In a , my colleagues and I looked at the health effects people experienced when they returned to still-standing homes. We also created a in the future to help them protect their health and reduce their risks when they return to smoke-damaged homes.

Tests in homes found elevated metals and VOCs

In the days after the Marshall Fire, residents quickly reached out to nearby scientists who study wildfire smoke and health risks at the University of Colorado Boulder and area labs. People wanted to know what was in the ash and .

In homes we were able to test, my colleagues found . We also found elevated VOCs – volatile organic compounds – in airborne samples. Some VOCs, such as , , and , can be toxic to humans. Benzene is a .

People wanted to know whether the chemicals that got into their homes that day could harm their health.

At the time, we could find no information about physical health implications for people who have returned to smoke-damaged homes after a wildfire. To look for patterns, we affected by the fire six months, one year and two years afterward.

Symptoms six months after the fire

Even six months after the fire, we found that that aligned with health risks related to smoke and ash from fires.

More than half (55%) of the people who responded to our survey reported that they were experiencing at least one symptom six months after the blaze that they attributed to the Marshall Fire. The most common symptoms reported were itchy or watery eyes (33%), headache (30%), dry cough (27%), sneezing (26%) and sore throat (23%).

All of these symptoms, as well as having a strange taste in one’s mouth, were associated with people reporting that their home smelled differently when they returned to it one week after the fire.

Many survey respondents said that the smells decreased over time. Most attributed the improvement in smell to the passage of time, cleaning surfaces and air ducts, replacing furnace filters, and removing carpet, textiles and furniture from the home. Despite this, many still had symptoms.

We found that living near a large number of burned structures was associated with these health symptoms. For every 10 additional destroyed buildings within 820 feet (250 meters) of a person’s home, there was a 21% increase in headaches and a 26% increase in having a strange taste in their mouth.

These symptoms align with what could be expected from exposure to the chemicals that we found in the ash and measured in the air inside the few in depth.

Lingering symptoms and questions

There are a still a lot of unanswered questions about the health risks from smoke- and ash-damaged homes.

For example, we don’t yet know what long-term health implications might look like for people living with lingering gases from wildfire smoke and ash in a home.

We found a significant reporting symptoms one year after the fire. However, 33% percent of the people whose homes were affected still reported at least one symptom that they attributed to the fire. About the same percentage also reported at least one symptom two years after the fire.

We also could not measure the level of VOCs or metals that each person was exposed to. But we do think that reports of a change in the smell of a person’s home one week after the fire demonstrates the likely presence of VOCs in the home. That has health implications for people whose homes are exposed to smoke or ash from a wildfire.

Tips to protect yourself after future wildfires

Wildfires are as the wildland-urban interface, and fire seasons lengthen.

It can be confusing to know what to do if your home is one that survives a wildfire nearby. To help, my colleagues and I put together a if your home is ever infiltrated by smoke or ash from a wildfire.

Here are a few of those steps:

• When you’re ready to clean your home, start by protecting yourself. Wear at least an N95 (or KN95) mask and gloves, goggles and clothing that covers your skin.
• Vacuum floors, drapes and furniture. But avoid harsh chemical cleaners because they can react with the chemicals in the ash.
• Clean your HVAC filter and ducts to avoid spreading ash further. Portable air cleaners with carbon filters can help remove VOCs.

documents how within a home can reduce reservoirs of VOCs and lower indoor air concentrations of VOCs.

Given that we don’t know much yet about the health harms of smoke- and ash-damaged homes, it is important to take care in how you clean so you can do the most to protect your health.

Colleen E. Reid is an associate professor in the  Department of Geography.

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Professor Jennifer Fluri, a feminist political geographer, notes that the growing restrictions on women and girls are echoing strictness not seen since the 1990s

Speaking at U.N. Headquarters in New York City Monday, Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep observed that household pets and rodents in Afghanistan have more rights than women under draconian new Taliban laws rolled out at the end of August.

“Today in Kabul, a female cat has more freedoms than a woman,” Streep said. “A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today, because the public parks have been closed to women and girls.”

Among other restrictions, the new laws ban women from reciting the Quran in public, raising their voices or looking at men other than their husbands or relatives, and they require all women to cover the lower halves of their faces in addition to covering their heads.

Jennifer Fluri, a professor and chair of the Department of Geography, notes that the newest Taliban restrictions are a huge blow to Afghan women, especially those in urban areas.

For Jennifer Fluri, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of geography and chair of the Department of Geography, these newest laws—the latest in a steadily growing number of restrictions on women enacted since the Taliban regained power in 2021—are further evidence that for the Taliban, women are easy targets.

Fluri’s doctoral research focused on the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a clandestine feminist-nationalist organization. From that, her research interests evolved to studying the differentiated methods used by Afghans and internationals in Afghanistan to provide for their own security in spaces increasingly beset by political violence and a general state of insecurity.

From 2012 to 2021, she worked on two projects focusing on women's social and political activism, influence and power in Afghanistan: One examined women's roles in the peace process in Afghanistan, and the second focused on women's leadership and influence at different scales, from home and family to national political participation and governance—a project funded by the National Science Foundation.

However, despite her deep experience in the country, she hasn’t been able to travel there since 2019—first because of COVID restrictions and then because of those enacted by the Taliban—and has pivoted her research focus to Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in the United States and Canada, along with the status of women's rights and their social, political and economic participation in Afghanistan.

Fluri recently spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about the newest laws further restricting Afghan girls and women in education, movement and presence in public spaces.

Question: Since 2021, restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan have gotten steadily stricter. How much worse are these new laws going to make their lives?

Fluri: It’s a huge blow to women, particularly women in urban areas, who had become more used to traveling with just a head scarf, not having to wear a burqa, not having a male escort. As we get further and further from August 2021, the leaders are being more and more emboldened to go back to the ‘90s version of the Taliban. At first it seemed like they were going to be more moderate, a sort of Taliban 2.0—I even thought that was the case, and so did a lot of women’s organizations and feminist activists—but now it’s looking pretty clear they’re going to keep cracking down more and more.

I’m also very critical of what the U.S.  has done. I don’t think U.S. officials really took the full time and energy they should have to really do right by Afghan women and girls. It’s such a diverse population—educated urban women have a totally different experience than women in rural areas or women who are more conservative. Some women see Islamic feminism as a path, but even Islamic feminists can’t work with the Taliban. (The Taliban’s) reading of Islam is so narrow, even though the Quran says women and men are equal before God.

Question: These new laws seem really petty, for lack of a better word; why are the Taliban doing this?

Women in Kabul, Afghanistan, wait to receive food rations distributed by an international aid group in April 2023. (Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)

Fluri: To me, it’s such a silly law. It’s culturally expected that men and women don’t make eye contact—it's a sign of respect—that putting it into law seems unnecessary. It’s just another way of controlling women. I think this is the Taliban wanting all women to follow their very strict interpretations of the Quran and to gather control and power, because this law undercuts family-based or community-based ways of thinking about how people want to express religious beliefs or cultural beliefs, and how to dress or be in public. I hate to say it, but for the Taliban, women are easy targets.

Question: Do you worry that this will further stoke anti-Muslim rhetoric that seems to be getting louder around the world?

Fluri: My biggest frustration with the international aid and development community has been this tendency to blame Islam. Islam isn’t the problem. Women have more rights in Islam than they do in Afghan cultural practice. If the Taliban were following Islam, women would have many more rights, especially around education. Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah, who he had his only surviving children with, worked outside the home. She was his (Muhammad’s) employer. There are so many examples of women, if you go back to the early days of Islam, who were involved in shaping the faith. Khadijah was the first convert to Islam, and Muhammad’s wife Aisha led men in battle and was the author of many hadiths (words and deeds attributed to the prophet Muhammad written by his closest interlocutors). Women were involved in the early formations of Islam.

Question: Do the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and other feminist groups like it still exist, or have they had to flee the country?

Fluri: They’re still in operation, but it’s always been a mostly underground movement—they believe in secularism and women’s rights—and now it’s even deeper underground. They’re doing work similar to work they were doing in the ‘90s: documenting, trying to get more international attention to the plight of women and running secret schools. In Afghanistan, their names have been dragged through the mud 100 times over, so they really do have to be incredibly careful. I would argue that’s why they have started other organizations in other names, because it allows them to continue to do the work without having such intense surveillance and them constantly being in danger of arrest.

Girls attend school in an outdoor classroom in Bamozai, Paktya Province, Afghanistan, in 2007. The Taliban now bans girls 12 and older from attending state-run schools and has banned young women from receiving higher education. (Photo: Capt. John Severns/U.S. Air Force)

I never published on this, because it’s not something they would be happy with, but I would argue RAWA has lot more influence in society than we even know about. Women have been educated in RAWA schools; they’ve started their own NGOs and different activist groups with RAWA support. The feminist philosophies of RAWA have kind of grown legs and created additional organizations. A lot of women who were very high-profile activists in Afghanistan have fled or sought asylum, but some have gone back. They’re working with colleagues or family members to continue to do that work, even though it’s incredibly difficult now.

A man I worked with for years, who worked as a driver for me and research assistant, I’m still trying to help his family and him seek asylum. He’s saying, ‘My daughters have no future here.’ It’s interesting how a number of men are also starting to be like, ‘This isn’t a good place for my daughters.’

Question: Is there anything people in, say, Colorado can do to help Afghan women and girls?

Fluri: Honestly, what I would say is reach out in your community to find out where Afghans who are refugees, who are trying to figure out how to make America work for them, are living. Help them make their way, which is incredibly difficult. It’s such a different culture from the U.S. and people sometimes have an idealistic vision of the U.S. The reality of trying to make ends meet can be so hard for them. So, I would say reach out to your nearest refugee center. I know does a lot of work with refugees, and so does  and . Even just the local housing and human services does a lot of work to help resettle refugees.

Reaching out to volunteer, such as taking people to appointments, little things like that make such a huge difference. A lot of women who came don’t speak English, don’t drive, so their lives are more isolated here than they were in Afghanistan. When you don’t speak the language or know how to ride a bus in a new place, it can be really daunting just to figure out how to make it work for you and your family. The important thing is to look for organizations that are working with Afghans on their own terms and are not trying to tell people what’s best for them. Afghans know what’s best for them.

Top image: Women in traditional burqas walk past Hazrat Ali Mazar Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. (Photo: )

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Growing number of war-weary Ukrainians would reluctantly give up territory to save lives, suggests recent survey

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is trying his best to shake up the dynamics of the Russia-Ukraine war. He recently  in which he replaced no fewer than nine ministers, including his foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. Announcing the changes, Zelensky said he wanted his government to be “more active” in pressing for aid from its western allies.

These cabinet changes came as Ukraine pressed ahead with its  in Russia. Zelensky has said that holding some Russian territory will give Kyiv leverage for future territorial exchange negotiations with Russia.

And, while criticism of Zelensky’s gamble  as Ukraine’s position in the Donbas in the east of the country has deteriorated, seeing Ukrainian soldiers turn the table on Russia has undeniably given Ukrainians a morale boost.

John O'Loughlin, a CU Boulder professor of geography, is a political geographer especially interested in the spatial and territorial aspects of conflict. He and co-researchers Kristin M. Bakke and Gerard recently conducted telephone surveys of 2,200 adults in government-controlled areas of Ukraine.

Ukrainians needed this. As the war has endured and its costs mounted, .

We have tracked Ukrainian sentiment for years. In June and July 2024, in cooperation with the Kyiv International Institute for Sociology (), we conducted a telephone public opinion survey of 2,200 respondents representative of the adult population of government-controlled areas of Ukraine. This was to follow up on a survey from Oct. 2022.

We should treat . But our survey findings suggest people are worried about war weariness among their fellow Ukrainians. It also suggests that there is growing, if reluctant, support for negotiations and territorial concessions.

Open to compromise

Attitudes among Ukrainians toward territorial concessions have also started to shift—but only slightly. Most people have opposed giving up land since 2014, but  provides evidence of growing recognition, now shared by one-third of Ukrainians, that territorial concessions may be necessary.

In June-July 2024 we repeated a question we asked in Oct. 2022 on territorial concessions, shown in the figure below. “All choices about what to do during this current Russian aggression have significant, but different, costs. Knowing this, which of the following four choices should the Ukraine government take at this time?”

The biggest change was this: in 2022, 71% of respondents supported the proposition to “continue opposing Russian aggression until all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, is liberated," but in 2024 the support for that option had dropped to 51%.

In 2022, just 11% agreed with “trying to reach an immediate ceasefire by both sides with conditions and starting intensive negotiations." In 2024, that share had increased to 31%.

But there are differences in how people look at these choices. Much depends on whether they have been displaced (though whether they lost family members or friends does not seem to make a difference), whether they worry about war fatigue among their fellow Ukrainians, and whether they are optimistic or pessimistic about western support.

There is more at stake in this war than territory—not least, saving lives, ensuring Ukraine’s sovereignty, and protecting the country’s future security. KIIS’s own recent research has shown that in a , people’s views on the importance of preserving territorial integrity might depend on how any possible deal might safeguard other things they care about.

For two and a half years, the brutal war has affected everyday , and many (43%) believe that the war will last at least another year. Most of the respondents in our survey had not been physically injured in Russian violence (12% had), but about half had witnessed Russian violence, and most had lost a close family member or friend (62%). About one-third had been displaced from their homes.

Consistent with an increasing number of reports, the survey shows growing recognition of war fatigue. Rather than asking directly about whether respondents felt this themselves, we asked whether they worried about it among fellow Ukrainians. The results were revealing: 58% worry “a lot” and 28% worry “a little," whereas only 10% report that they do not worry about war fatigue.

People in Ukraine mark the second anniversary of the beginning of the war in February. (Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

While there are signs of war weariness among Ukraine’s western allies, our surveys show that Ukrainians are still broadly optimistic about continued western support, though less so than in October 2022. About 19% believe western support will grow (down from 29% in 2022), while 35% believe it will stay the same (41% in 2022). Almost a quarter (24%) believe it will continue but at a lower level than now (up from 16% in 2022), and 13% believe it is unlikely to continue (up from 3% in 2022).

Life or death

Research from early on in the war showed that Ukrainians strongly preferred strategies that preserved the country’s political autonomy and restored the entirety . This would hold, “even if making concessions would reduce projected civilian and military deaths, or the risk of a nuclear strike over the next three months."

As the authors of the study pointed out: “Russian control of the government in Kyiv or of territories in the east would put the lives of many Ukrainians at risk, as it is well documented that Russia has committed widespread human rights violations in temporarily occupied territories.”

Given the war’s accumulating death toll, in our 2024 survey we designed a simple framing experiment that can give us an indication of whether considerations about loss of life may shape people’s views on negotiations. We asked half of the respondents, randomly selected, if they would accept that “Ukraine concede some of its territories to end the war”. About 24% said yes.

For the other half, we asked if they would accept that “Ukraine concede some of its territories to save lives and end the war." In that case, 34% said yes. So, if—rightly or wrongly—territorial concessions are associated with saving lives, it increases support for them.

But when asked directly in the 2024 survey if they agreed with the statement “Russia should be allowed to control the territory it has occupied since 2022," 90% disagreed. So, while there is still majority—if diminished—support for fighting to restore full territorial integrity, there is growing support for negotiations.

What we also know from our surveys is that there is very little evidence that Russia’s territorial annexations will ever have any legitimacy among Ukrainians.

John O'Loughlin is a professor in the Department of Geography at the . His co-authors are , a professor of political science and international relations at University College London, and , a professor of government and international affairs at Virginia Tech.

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Recent research by CU Boulder geographer Emily Yeh studies the difference between consent and coercion in ‘voluntary’ resettlement of pastoralists in Tibet’s Nagchu region

The difference between voluntary and involuntary participation may seem clear, but a study from the Tibet Autonomous Region shows the distinction between the two can, in fact, be murky.

In recent years, the Tibet Autonomous Region government has been relocating residents from high-altitude areas to distant, lower-altitude settlements. Officials characterize this resettlement program as “voluntary.” However, they also report that 100 percent of targeted residents have agreed to move. So, how voluntary is it, really?

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder explore this and other questions in a published in The China Quarterly. Using official documents and interviews, co-authors Yonten Nyima and Emily Yeh offer a rare look inside this politically sensitive area.

CU Boulder researcher Emily Yeh found complex distinctions between "consent" and "coercion" when studying the resettlement of Tibetan pastoralists.

Yeh is a CU Boulder professor of geography and Nyima, now an independent scholar, earned a doctorate in geography at CU Boulder.

“In this case, it’s not like thugs show up and chase people away—it’s a much more subtle process,” says Yeh. “We wanted to explore: Does the division between coercion and consent even make sense in such complicated and power-laden situations? What is consent, actually? What is coercion, actually? And when you start to dig into it, it gets blurry and complicated.”

The resettlement program

The Tibet Autonomous Region is a 471,700-square-mile area of Central Asia governed by the People’s Republic of China. For the study, the researchers focused on a specific region called Nagchu, which has an average elevation of more than 14,000 feet above sea level. Nearly 80 percent of Nagchu’s residents are pastoralists, or nomads who herd yaks, sheep and goats as their primary livelihood.

In 2017, the government launched the “extremely high-altitude ecological resettlement” program to relocate many of Nagchu’s pastoralists to lower elevations. The government gave many reasons for the resettlement, such as protecting the environment, alleviating poverty and strengthening national unity, among others. Their stated reasons, however, do not tell the full story and are in some ways misleading, according to the researchers.

“It’s part of a broad trend toward resettlement because of a very entrenched idea in policymaker circles that rural is backwards and Tibetan areas are backwards and underdeveloped,” says Yeh. “And the fastest way to get them developed is to move them to the city.”

Many of the targeted pastoralists in Nagchu did not want to move, for a variety of reasons. They felt heartbroken at the prospect of leaving their homeland, where their ancestors had lived and to which they have a strong spiritual connection, Yeh says. They didn’t want to part ways with their livestock or their herding livelihoods, which was a major part of their identities. They also worried about finding new jobs and making ends meet in their new homes.

Thought work

But, eventually, they all signed documents agreeing to do so anyway. How and why did they change their minds?

Officials used a three-step process, known as “thought work,” to convince all of the targeted Nagchu pastoralists to move, the researchers find. This process started with incentives before progressing to warnings and intense pressure. In this way, officials manufactured consent, the researchers write.

First, government officials determined the pastoralists’ willingness to move, typically via surveys or meetings. At this stage of the thought work, they presented resettlement as an attractive and voluntary option. Officials also tried to glean the herders’ reasons for not wanting to move so they could figure out how best to persuade them.

From here, they moved onto the second step of the thought work, which involved educating and guiding the pastoralists toward resettlement, per the researchers. During this phase, officials tried to alleviate the pastoralists’ concerns and elaborated on the benefits of resettlement, such as better access to medical facilities, schools and other social services.

They also took some of the poorest pastoralists on in-person tours of the resettlement locations and arranged meetings with earlier resettlers to hear stories of their “happy life” after resettlement, as one government official told the researchers. Officials also held multiple public meetings to pressure pastoralists into agreeing to move.

If all of this were still not enough to convince the herders to resettle, officials moved on to the third and final stage of the thought work. They visited individual households for multiple one-on-one meetings that involved incentives and warnings. One overarching theme of these conversations was that the government knows best and that pastoralists do not understand what is in their best interests, the researchers write.

‘It’s never that simple’

Over time, all of the targeted pastoralists agreed to move. But many acknowledged they felt they had no choice.

 

The assumption that voluntary means you are a free subject who can do whatever you like with no constraints on your choices…it’s never that simple​."

 

“I would have preferred not to sign if I could refuse … [but] it was really a matter of whether [I] wanted to go against the state, a matter of those with power and those without power,” one pastoralist told the researchers. “Officials would not leave me alone until I signed.”

Under such conditions, the researchers write, there is no clear distinction between voluntary and involuntary or coercion and consent.

“The assumption that voluntary means you are a free subject who can do whatever you like with no constraints on your choices … it’s never that simple,” Yeh adds. “You can’t really disentangle consent and coercion, especially not in contexts of highly uneven power relations such as this one. We’re trying to show that labelling something as voluntary or involuntary hides a lot of things that are actually happening.”

More broadly, the project—and its nuanced findings—is a reflection of geography’s interdisciplinary nature. The field encompasses far more than making maps or memorizing place names, says Yeh.

“Fundamentally, geography is not about where places are, but how those places become what they are physically, culturally, socially and politically,” she adds. “In geography, we look at the relationship between the social and the spatial and between humans and the environment.”

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An online beginning Tibetan language course offered at CU Boulder allows learners worldwide to access contemporary resources for a less-frequently taught language

A new University of Colorado Boulder online language class is aiming to preserve an endangered language and create access to an important aspect of culture and identity.

is the result of a collaboration between the Anderson Language and Technology Center (ALTEC) and the Center for Asian Studies (CAS), and the work of Tenzin Tsepak, a teaching professor of Tibetan in the CAS, and Maggie Rosenau, an ALTEC lecturer of German and learning design expert.

Drawing on Rosenau’s experience creating open educational resources and Tsepak’s expertise in Tibetan and Himalayan studies, the collaborators began designing the free online course in 2021. A significant goal was to create a Tibetan language course highlighting the language’s rich history and cultural significance, as well as addressing issues of accessibility and quality educational resources.

“Most of the resources out there and pedagogical tools for Tibetan that we have now are very traditional, like old-school textbooks and audio recordings that have not been updated for decades,” Tsepak says. “There is certainly nothing really digitally interactive out there for Tibetan language learners.

Tenzin Tsepak contributed expertise in Tibetan and Himalayan studies to developing the online Beginning Tibetan language class.

“And these traditional materials focus mostly on reading and producing one-to-one written translation, not other skills like conversational listening and personal, verbal expression. So now, with this course, we have really interactive materials for students. Learners now have an online tool to better engage with the language. This is very new for Tibetan.” 

Contemporary resources for language learning

Studying endangered and less-commonly taught languages is important for both understanding how languages grow and develop and for preserving the native languages of those who speak them. Since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959, enabling access to the Tibetan language has been an important way to protect and preserve Tibetan culture and identity. 

“There are wonderful organizations, institutions and individual educators out there offering important cultural history and language resources,” Rosenau says. “We have included and credited some of these in the course build—like the Tibetan and Himalayan Library, which is a collection hosted by the University of Virginia Library; the Tibet Film Festival in Switzerland; and the Tibetan Equality Project out of the New York/New Jersey area.

“But during my initial research to understand what is available for learners, what really stood out was a gap in contemporary multi-modality we could fill. So, this became a priority within the scaffolding, and I asked a lot of Tsepak for this project. His family even generously contributed to many of our listening dialogue activities. And I have to give a big shout-out and thank you to Tsepak’s spring 2023 first- and second-year students, who contributed blog posts to the unit dedicated to traditional holidays and festivals.”

Creating the Beginning Tibetan course was one of the goals supported by a 2020-2023 Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant was awarded to Tim Oakes, a professor in the Department of Geography, and Danielle Rocheleau Salaz, executive director of CAS, in partnership with ALTEC and Director Susanna Pàmies, as well as the departments of anthropology, geography and religious studies.

The grant provides funds to plan, develop and carry out programs to strengthen and improve undergraduate instruction in international studies and foreign languages. It also supports the Tibet Himalaya Initiative, an interdisciplinary hub for research, teaching and public engagement on Tibet and the Himalayas. The center also offers scholarship opportunities for Tibetan and Nepali summer language study and supports Directed Independent Language Study in Tibetan and Nepali through ALTEC.

A worldwide resource

The Beginning Tibetan course is self-paced and includes modules on Tibetan sounds and basic grammar, greetings and introductions, communities, weather, clothing, foods, hospitality, travel, directions, festivals, holidays and customs. It also includes a broad collection of resources including dictionaries, archives, maps, short films, a podcast, social justice organizations and music.

Maggie Rosenau is a learning design expert who will give an online faculty workshop Nov. 7 about the H5P learning platform.

“Traditional textbooks focus just on grammar and maybe a few cultural elements that logically connect to vocabulary,” Tsepak says. “But now, I feel like this new course is like a mandala, you know? We have basically everything circling around this package—interactive learning that is really modern and engaging. And there are amazing, authentic images, contemporary culture, representations of the Tibetan diaspora, music, local Tibetan restaurants in Boulder, trans and queer representation and non-binary language elements. Our goal is to better engage our students and make the process of language learning much more fun and inclusive.”

One of the course’s innovative technological features is H5P, integrated on the Canvas learning platform, which helps make the content interactive by providing instant and automatic feedback to users, an essential aspect of effective language learning. Also, as an open-source tool, the H5P content can easily be shared, reused and adapted by others, making it a cost-free resource for interactive online learning.

“Building in Canvas and (open educational resources) for language learning is my love language,” Rosenau says. “I’m especially excited about all the H5P elements built into this resource. My hope is that instructors of Tibetan around the globe will use these materials by integrating the vocab cards, audio recordings and interactive grammar activities into their own educational platforms.”

ALTEC will host an with Rosenau on H5P at 1 p.m. Nov. 7, as well as a roundtable discussion focusing on less commonly taught languages and language acquisition next spring.

Rosenau and Tsepak’s collaborative project offers learners worldwide the opportunity to delve into the Tibetan language and culture and underscores the importance of making less commonly taught languages accessible and available. The is free and can serve as a supplement to other Tibetan courses or as a stand-alone course.  

While the course is not comprehensive, it is a valuable first step in providing more contemporary resources for Tibetan language learning. “It is just a start,” says Tsepak, “and if we have the opportunity to expand the project, then we would love that.”

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Christopher Picard of CU Boulder is one of 21 students nationwide to win support from United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation

Christopher Picard, a graduate student in geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of 21 students nationwide to win scholarships this year from the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), the foundation announced recently. 

The USGIF’s , who are studying geospatial intelligence and related fields, will receive a total of $125,000, raised from donations.

Ronda Schrenk, USGIF CEO, expressed her gratitude for the funding: “The support our community has shown for the scholarship program this year has been truly inspiring for us at the Foundation. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all the organizational and individual donors who have enabled USGIF to maintain and expand this crucial program.”

Picard, who is pursuing a master's degree in geography from CU Boulder, is a recent graduate of Dartmouth College, where he received a BA in environmental Earth sciences. 

Chris Picard

While an undergraduate, Picard had an internship at the U.S. National Ice Center, where he was introduced to remote sensing of the cryosphere and learned about the importance of geospatial research to national security. 

That experience led Picard to apply remote sensing and other computational techniques to the study of current and future changes in Earth's high-latitude regions.

Picard said he was honored to win a 2023 graduate scholarship. “I want to thank the USGIF for supporting young geospatial researchers, as this financial assistance and connection to a broader community is massively impactful for students entering the field,” he said, adding: 

“Financially, this scholarship is significant to me because it will provide important funding that will help support me during my graduate studies. In addition to financial assistance, I am looking forward to engaging with this new community in graduate school and during my career.”

The 21 awardees were selected by USGIF’s scholarship committee, a group of volunteers from the geospatial intelligence community who are dedicated to supporting the next generation of researchers. The recipients represent diverse academic backgrounds and personal experiences that are crucial to advancing the field, the foundation said. 

The 2023 cohort’s expertise covers a broad range of geospatial intelligence enterprises, including:

• Developing a deep-learning model to detect building damage after a natural disaster
• Mapping sentiments and understanding bias in armed-conflict data
• Monitoring sea ice in the Arctic region for national security purposes
• Advancing landmine detection with remote-sensing and machine-learning techniques

While the awardees are studying at universities across the country, representing 20 different schools, they all share a driving desire to use geospatial intelligence to address critical national security concerns, solve complex global issues and serve their communities, the foundation said.

USGIF has awarded more than $1.7 million to students dedicated to advancing the geospatial intelligence tradecraft since the program started in 2004. Past awardees have gone on to serve as leaders at geospatial intelligence government agencies and companies, innovate at startups and small businesses and become professors.

“The impact of past USGIF scholarship awardees … never ceases to amaze me,” said USGIF Director of Education and Professional Development Christine Devine. “Watching them grow into leaders in the field and start to impact the world as they initially described in their applications is what the whole scholarship program is about.”

In addition to sponsorship from organizations, USGIF receives donations from individual geospatial intelligence community members committed to growing the future of the field.

Schrenk highlighted the significance of the scholarship program, stating: “By means of the scholarship program, USGIF can provide support to the most exceptional students aspiring to enter the geospatial intelligence field. This year, we received an unprecedented number of applications, and I am confident that the recipients will bring immeasurable value to our community.”

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Katherine Clifford, a recent PhD and scientist at the Western Water Assessment, named to American Association of Geographers ‘Elevate the Discipline’ cohort

Katherine (Katie) Clifford, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, is among 15 geographers to be designated as “public scholars” in the realm of climate and society.

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) this month announced the first cohort in its new “Elevate the Discipline” program, which will train and showcase geographers in action—in the media, as voices for public policies and in advocating for change—on this year’s theme of climate and society. 

The newly selected participants in 11 states and the West Indies “represent the rich and diverse range of practice within the discipline, including hydroclimatology, political ecology, climate and health, disaster geography, geoinformatics, soil science and more,” the AAG stated.

At the top of the page: Katie Clifford leads a discussion in a climate-adaptation workshop in Wyoming recently. Photo courtesy of Katie Clifford. Above: Katie Clifford

Clifford, who earned her PhD in geography at CU Boulder in 2019, is lead social scientist at Western Water Assessment, a research program funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that is under the auspices of the university. It supports “engaged science” to tackle real-world climate adaptation issues across Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. 

With a strong background in environment-society geography, Clifford is known for her research illuminating the regulatory challenges and uneven consequences of climate hazards and effects.

Clifford’s work focuses on how frontline communities are uniquely affected by climate hazards, and her findings help diagnose policy loopholes and develop equitable and just adaptation strategies in partnership with communities, the AAG stated.

Her research has explored how the U.S. Clean Air Act has in many ways failed to adapt to increasing dust storms, which often leave Western communities with unsafe air quality. She also is currently working with rural, low income, Latinx and tribal communities on issues of extreme heat, flooding, wildfire and drought.

Clifford said she is honored to be selected “alongside so many talented geographers and know this will make me a better engaged researcher. This fellowship shows that the field of geography invests in and values scholars who are doing work that is actionable and impactful for pressing societal and environmental issues—something that not all disciplines have embraced.” 

She added, “This is why I chose to be a geographer: We tackle real-world issues, with a holistic approach that embraces complexity, engage with multiple scales and center questions of equity and justice. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues we face today, and this fellowship harnesses geography’s strengths to make important contributions to policy and practice.”

Fifteen geographers were selected through a competitive process. The program will train them over the next several months in leadership, media skills and policy strategies, and thereafter will promote their work in public discourse.

 

This is why I chose to be a geographer: We tackle real-world issues, with a holistic approach that embraces complexity, engage with multiple scales and center questions of equity and justice."

 

“It’s exciting to support the work of these scientists as they engage in community-oriented, justice-based work on climate change,” said Rebecca Lave, AAG’s 2023-24 president and a professor of geography at Indiana University Bloomington, where her specialties include critical physical geography and the political economy of stream restoration. 

“We want to open up avenues to value and protect geographers’ opportunity to do public and engaged scholarship.”

The program will be launched this month, with frequent virtual meetings culminating in a week-long intensive training onsite at AAG headquarters in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, AAG will work with the participants and their institutions to continue promoting their public scholarship.

“Geography is essential to understanding and solving the world’s most pressing issues,” said Gary Langham, AAG executive director. “We created Elevate the Discipline to help geographers raise the profile of their work, showing how instrumental our discipline is to addressing climate change and critical social issues.”

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Fulbright Global Scholar Awards will enable Tim Oakes of geography and Brian Valente-Quinn of French to spend up to a year in travel, study, research and teaching

Tim Oakes and Brian Valente-Quinn have won Fulbright Global Scholar Awards for 2023-24, allowing them to spend up to a year abroad to pursue their studies, develop ongoing research projects and teach courses at other institutions.

The Fulbright Global Scholar Award allows U.S. academics and professionals to engage in multi-country, trans-regional projects. The Fulbright Scholar Program, funded by the U.S. State Department, is designed to “expand and strengthen the relationships between the people of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world.” 

Brian Valente-Quinn is a specialist of Francophone African theater and literature. His research focuses on the interplay of theatrical performance with contemporary societal issues such as decoloniality, immigration, diversity, and the various threats of extremism found across a range of national contexts.

Oakes, a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Geography Department, will be developing his research project: “The hinterlands of global China: infrastructures of life beyond the urban.” He describes the project as a continuation and extension of his previous project, “,” which has been ongoing since 2018. 

China Made focuses on Chinese investments in infrastructure development, both in China and Southeast Asia. Oakes is project lead but works with researchers all over the globe throughout Canada, Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Oakes’ research centers around “urbanization, most recently new towns and new cities in areas that were most recently rural farmland in China.” Since 2020, Oakes has been unable to continue his research in China because of that country’s COVID-19 restrictions, so he will expand to surrounding countries for his Fulbright research.

Tim Oakes is an expert in his field. He focuses on social and cultural transformation in contemporary China and, in particular, the uses and reinventions of local culture as a resource for economic development and governance objectives.

Oakes will travel to Oslo, Norway, to work with fellow researchers, then go to Singapore to continue “laying the foundations of the project and getting it started,” Oakes said. He is particularly interested in “digital infrastructures that China has been building in recent years, and how those projects impact the surrounding areas where they are made,” Oakes said.

Valente-Quinn, a professor in CU’s French and Italian Department, will pursue his research in Francophone African literature and culture to address “questions of immigration and decoloniality in contemporary France and West Africa,” Valente-Quinn said. His research focus is Francophone theater and performance in West Africa.

“After spending years researching in Senegal, my proposal to Fulbright was that I want to take a more transnational perspective and broaden my research to countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire.” 

“I am interested in the question of extremism, and how these theater makers define extremism and bring the public together to address the threat of extremism in their own countries and in a global context. This is a current topic in Francophone Africa—not only because of terrorist threats in France—but because of extremist movements and rulership in some West African countries,” Valente-Quinn said.

He will teach a graduate seminar in Francophone African theater and performance, and another on theories of performance in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, at the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny. 

Both professors said they are excited and honored to be awarded the Fulbright, and hope to use the next academic year to broaden the scope of their research, teach in new universities and collaborate with fellow researchers to continue building their projects.

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CU Boulder scientist’s 40-year census research finds that climate change has tripled tree mortality and forestalled regeneration

Criticizing the Biden administration’s $3.5 trillion Inflation Reduction Act, a U.S. Senate candidate in Georgia singled out funding to plant and protect trees.

“They continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out. But they’re not. Because a lot of money, it’s going to trees,” GOP candidate Herschel Walker said while stumping at a fundraiser. “We got enough trees—don’t we have enough trees around here?”

A 2015 study in Nature estimated there are 3 trillion trees on the planet. Whether or not that’s “enough,” the survey also found that “the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.”

Top of page: 1875 City of Boulder Reservoir, photographer J.B. Sturtevant (“Rocky Mountain Joe”), courtesy of the Carnegie Library for Local History, Boulder Public Library. Above: Tom Veblen, distinguished professor emeritus of geography, in approximately the same spot as the 1875 photo. Photo By Glenn Asakawa.

And according to a University of Colorado Boulder scientist who has been monitoring the health and number of trees in the Colorado high country for more than four decades, climate-driven changes in temperature and drought have not only tripled tree mortality rates in the past two decades, but also significantly undermined tree regeneration rates. 

And that matters.

“If we are losing forest cover, we are going to lose a variety of ecosystem services,” says Tom Veblen, Distinguished Professor emeritus of geography, who has been tracking changes in thousands of trees on Niwot Ridge west of Boulder since 1982. 

Declining tree cover results in damage to watersheds as debris flow and flooding increase, and in the loss of habitat for certain species. Perhaps most destructive, the loss of “above-ground biomass” removes a vital source of carbon storage, which further fuels climate change. 

“In most simulation models of ecosystem impacts of climate change . . . the trees grow back after fire. But we’re not seeing that as documented for montane forests in Colorado,” Veblen says. That results in “one of those nasty, somewhat unexpected positive-feedback loops that speeds up climate change because there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even a politician in Georgia will potentially be affected by that.”

Veblen came to CU Boulder in 1981 after six years of research in Chile and New Zealand, which taught him the value of establishing plots where trees could be observed long-term. 

“I knew from my research experience in the Southern Hemisphere that I wanted to put in permanent forest plots, which are essential for understanding long-term changes in tree populations,” he says. “There is no substitute for that.”

With money from a short-lived program funded by the state of Colorado, he and his students established 40 “long-term monitoring plots,” marked 8,000 trees on Niwot Ridge and have been monitoring them ever since. 

“The proposal . . . was to assess the influence of climate variability on tree demography and population changes, mortality, and the establishment of new seedling recruitment (new trees),” Veblen says. A second goal was to study the effects of 19th-century fires on lower elevation ponderosa pine and Douglas fir forests.

One of the key findings from Veblen’s research: While tree mortality rates remained low and stable until 1994, they have tripled since then, even in higher elevation Englemann spruce and lodgepole pine forests. 

“That’s not at all surprising . . . given increasing temperatures and increasing drought,” Veblen says, noting that researchers have reached the same conclusions at locations across the western United States.

Meanwhile, new trees are not filling in the gaps.

Former CU Boulder graduate student Robert Andrus, now a postdoctoral researcher at Washington State University, harvested about 1,000 juvenile trees to determine their establishment dates and found that new trees grew in “pulses of single years, cooler, moister years, based on late spring and summer weather conditions,” Veblen says. 

But the occurrence of such years has plummeted by two-thirds in the latter half of the seven-decade record Andrus examined. 

“Without cool, moist years, we’re not getting establishment” of new seedlings, including after fires, Veblen says. “That’s an indicator of what is likely to continue with warming temperatures.”

Even lodgepole pines, famous for colonizing burned areas—the tree’s cones open after exposure to fire—are failing to regenerate in some places. In areas torched by severe fires in 2002 in the Routt and White River national forests that have been repeatedly sampled over a 15-year period, there are only sparse and patchy seedlings of this fire-adapted species, which usually take root within a year or two. 

 

If we want to have forests after fires, we need to not rely on natural regeneration. We need to invest heavily in artificial regeneration."

Those trends have convinced Veblen and other researchers and forest managers that Western forests need a helping hand from humanity, particularly after destructive wildfires. 

“If we want to have forests after fires, we need to not rely on natural regeneration. We need to invest heavily in artificial regeneration,” the cultivation and planting of seedlings in strategic areas, Veblen says.

Andrus agrees. “We have bark beetle outbreaks and wildfires that cause very obvious mortality of trees in Colorado. But we’re showing that even in the areas that people go hiking in and where the forest looks healthy, mortality is increasing due to heat and dry conditions alone,” adding:

“It’s an early warning sign of climate change.”

Veblen and the fire management community broadly agree that “living with fire” is increasingly challenging, as shown by modeling projections that say, “Exceptional fire seasons like 2020 will become more likely, and wildfire activity under future extremes is predicted to exceed anything yet witnessed.”  

In Wildland Urban Interface areas, so-called “red zones” that are abundant throughout the West, Veblen has recommendations: Property owners must still establish “defensible spaces.” Building codes should be used to require less-flammable building materials. “Fuels reduction” through a combination of tree cutting and prescribed fires should be prioritized near settled areas to give firefighters a foothold. 

However, Veblen says, in more remote areas, mechanical thinning alone is not effective and not practical. Instead, he says, managers are increasingly emphasizing the value of letting wildfires do the work of reducing fuels and buffering against future fire potential.  

“Agencies previously tended to strongly emphasize mechanical thinning to reduce fuels, but under the kind of extreme weather conditions that promoted the 2020 East Troublesome fire, no practical amount of fuel management can fully protect homes and communities,” he says.

Instead, he’d like to see resources currently dedicated to remote-area fuels reduction be redirected into seedling cultivation and planting in selected, suitable areas.

“We are not going to be able to prevent large, severe fires, so we need to be much more strategic in investing our resources to avoid or delay some of the worst outcomes of climate change,” he says. 

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Another round of powerful atmospheric rivers is hitting California, following storms in January and February 2023 that dumped record amounts of snow. This time, the storms are warmer, and they are triggering flood warnings as they bring rain higher into the mountains – on top of the snowpack.

Professor Keith Musselman, who studies water and climate change at the University of Colorado’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, explained the complex risks rain on snow creates and how they might change in a warming climate.

What happens when rain falls on snowpack?

For much of the United States, storms with heavy rainfall can coincide with seasonal snow cover. When that happens, the resulting runoff of water can be much greater than what is produced from rain or snowmelt alone. The combination has resulted in most destructive and costly floods, including the and the 2017 flood that .

Contrary to common belief, rainfall itself has limited energy to melt snow. Rather, it is the warm temperatures, strong winds and high humidity, which can transport substantial energy in the form of and , during rain-on-snow events.

 

When the soil isn’t yet saturated, it can dampen or delay a flood response by soaking up rain and melting snow. But when the ground is saturated, snowmelt combined with rain can lead to fast and devastating flooding."

Snowpack has air spaces that water can move through. As the rain falls, the water can travel relatively rapidly through the snowpack’s layers to reach the underlying soil. How streams respond to that runoff depends on how much water is already flowing and how saturated the soil is.

When the soil isn’t yet saturated, it can dampen or delay a flood response by soaking up rain and melting snow. But when the ground is saturated, snowmelt combined with rain can lead to fast and devastating flooding.

National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center tweets weather prediction on March 13, 2023.

One of the challenges for dealing with these rain-on-snow events is that the flood risk is hard to forecast.

To predict whether a flood will occur requires knowledge of weather and hydrological conditions. It requires knowing the soil moisture and snowpack conditions before the storm, the elevation at which rain transitions to snow, the rainfall rate, the wind speed, air temperature and humidity, and estimates of how those factors contribute to snowmelt. Additionally, each factor varies in time during a storm and varies in complex ways, especially across a mountainous landscape.

This is why rain-on-snow floods are characterized as . Despite the extensive damage they can cause, it may be surprising how little is known about how they vary in time, spatial extent and intensity.

California is getting another atmospheric river, with more rain on snow expected. How does the rain-on-snow effect differ by elevation in the mountains there?

In the California mountains right now, it’s the middle elevations that people need to pay attention to.

The lower elevations have primarily seen rainfall rather than snow, so there is less snowpack to melt. And in the highest elevations, colder temperatures promote the continued accumulation of deep snowpack and rainfall is less likely.

In – where either substantial rainfall or snowfall can occur – rain-on-snow events are most common, causing both melting and risk of roof collapses.

 

If all storms were created equal, there would be well-defined rain zones and snow zones, and the rain-on-snow flood risk would be low. But that isn’t what happens. Instead, not only does the snow zone elevation vary during an event, but it also varies substantially from one storm to the next."

If all storms were created equal, there would be well-defined rain zones and snow zones, and the rain-on-snow flood risk would be low. But that isn’t what happens. Instead, not only does the snow zone elevation vary during an event, but it also varies substantially from one storm to the next.

The most destructive rain-on-snow events occur when rivers are already running high and soils are saturated, which can occur in response to a series of warm atmospheric rivers interacting with a deep snowpack – like California’s mountains have right now. The order in which these storms occur – or the storm sequencing – is especially important for assessing flood risk because these events are, in part, caused by rapid shifts between cold periods of snow accumulation followed by warm rainfall events.

What does research show about the future risk of rain-on-snow events in a warming climate?

Even less is known about how rain-on-snow flood risk may respond as the planet warms.

In a warmer climate, there will be less risk of rain falling on snow in the lower elevations , particularly in warmer regions such as the Pacific Northwest.

Arctic Rivers principle investigator Keith Musselman is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Colorado’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research who has worked in cold regions for 18 years.

But at higher elevations, events are expected. While are expected to increase rainfall intensity, research shows that’s not the most important driver of this risk. Much of the expected increase in rain-on-snow flood risk is a result of the in elevation to include alpine areas that historically received predominantly snowfall.

Flood control and reservoir management systems in these mountainous regions will have to consider these future changes in rain-on-snow events – in addition to changes in rainfall intensity and storm sequencing – to the local flood risk as the planet warms.

So, will projected increases in precipitation extremes and winter rainfall increase rain-on-snow occurrence and the associated flood risk? Or will less snow cover and larger soil moisture deficits reduce rain-on-snow flood risk in a warmer climate?

In a future climate, the response of rain-on-snow flood risk is expected to change in complex and often contradictory ways. The projected changes are by region, season, climate model, emissions scenario and future time horizon. It’s a that requires more research.

, Assistant Professor in Geography, Mountain Hydrology, and Climate Change,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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