Colloquium Series Archive

In the Brazilian Amazon, the long-distance river trading system known as aviamento has linked commodity producers in remote areas to markets in urban centers since the colonial period. Based on a case study from the rural municipality of Lábrea, this article explores continuities and changes in river trading from the...

High-frequency climate variability is one of the most common features associated with climatic zones and yet, one of the least understood aspects of climate sciences, and unsurprisingly, one of the least implemented aspects of climate sciences in the realm of climate adaptation and policy. Semi-arid belts of the world, characterized...

For four decades, Colorado’s Rocky Flats plant served as the core facility producing plutonium triggers for the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Military production halted in 1992 and fifteen years later the site was designated a national wildlife refuge. Despite a $7 billion dollar cleanup, Rocky Flats remains controversial both for...

Over the past 30 years Chile has implemented neoliberal policies on the promise that open and free access to global markets through commodity exports will lead the country to its development. These policies have had tremendous territorial and economic effects, materially altering the country’s environment. Along with its historical role...

The US has seen a recent resurgence in interest in alternative birth, and a slow but steady increase in out-of-hospital labor and delivery. Although most out-of-hospital births occur at home, there is a growing movement towards birth centers and other places that fall somewhere between home and hospital. Such places,...

Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian and historical geographer at Binghamton University, where he is professor of sociology. He is author or editor, most recently, of Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015), Capitalocene o Antropocene? (Ombre Corte, 2017), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of...

Author: Sean F. Gallen Affiliation: Department of Geosciences, Colorado State University Abstract: The Critical Zone is the thin layer of terrestrial Earth where interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere occur. Through these interactions, the Critical Zone sustains most terrestrial life and is a part of the various feedbacks...

Hattie Houser (advised by Joe Bryan) Documenting Femicide In Mexico: Connecting the Disappeared to a Larger Body Politic Abstract : Femicide, the disappearance and death of women due to their gender, is occurring throughout Latin America and increasingly within Mexico. In Mexico, this issue has been connected to a myriad...

While internal climate variability is known to affect climate projections, its influence is often underappreciated and confused with model error. Why? In general, modeling centers contribute a small number of realizations to international climate model assessments [e.g., phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5)]. As a result, model...

How is Geographic Information Systems (GIS) taught in formal and informal educational institutions? How should it be taught? Due to the advent of web GIS, the open data movement, citizen science, mobile field apps, maps as a storytelling medium, and other forces, spatial thinking through geotechnologies is being increasingly valued...