Katherine (Katie) Clifford

  • Ph.D. University of Colorado Boulder, 2019
  • MA University of Colorado Boulder, 2014
  • American West; decision making and uncertainty; climate change; land and water resources; environmental justice; environmental knowledge
  • ENVIRONMENT-SOCIETY

Areas of interest: American West; decision making and uncertainty; climate change; land and water resources; environmental justice, environmental knowledge
Faculty Advisor: William Travis

Katie is a human-environment geographer who focuses on climate, hazards, governance, justice, and environmental knowledge in the American West. Broadly, she asks how maladaptive environmental policies may hinder adaptation, exacerbate inequalities, and compromise socioecological sustainability. Specifically, her research explores the consequences of how we measure, monitor, and manage cross-border, multi-scalar, spatiotemporally complex environmental issues in an era of climate change.  Combining spatial analysis and qualitative methods, she analyzes how EPA regulations shaped monitoring systems to inadvertently miss signals and emerging hazards that would alert agencies to a changing environment, undermining environmental governance. Further, through a number of interdisciplinary collaborations, Katie has developed a second, active area of community-engaged research working with a broad range of stakeholders to develop local climate adaptation strategies and envision a broad range of future conditions. Katie received a bachelors in Environmental Studies at Macalester College and her masters and doctorate in Geography at CU Boulder

PhD Dissertation

2019 - Fugitive Dust:  How Dust Escapes Regulation and Remains Inscrutable 

MA Thesis

2014 - Knowing Climate: Examining Climate Knowledges in the Gunnison Basin