Geography Newsletter - Fall 2021

We returned to campus this fall for in-person classes. Mask and vaccine requirements helped to ensure more in-person interactions, while our faculty, staff, and students continue to face challenges associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, I would like to extend my gratitude to the entire Geography Department for their ongoing perseverance. We are excited to be able to have our first in person commencement on December 16, 2021 since the start of the pandemic.

We welcomed a new instructor, John Adler, to the department this fall. Dr. Adler will teach courses in remote sensing and he is developing a new course on drones. Our faculty and students, continue to be recognized in various ways for their research, teaching, or service accomplishments. Assistant Professor, Colleen Reid, was awarded the Provost’s Faculty Achievement Award. Dr. Reid’s research focuses on health and climate change, and social epidemiology and her course on Global Public Health continues to draw students from across the campus. Additional accolades were awarded to Assistant Professor, Yaffa Truelove, who won best paper from the Urban Studies Journal, and Professor Emily Yeh received the Outstanding Faculty Mentoring Award from the CU-Boulder’s Graduate School.

This newsletter features articles from faculty and students outlining their accomplishments and unique experiences. Professor Waleed Abdalati, had the opportunity this fall to take a canoe trip with Colorado Senator Michael Bennett and Utah Senator Mitt Romney to share his scientific expertise and perspectives on climate change. Assistant Professor, Katherine Lininger, discusses her recent National Science Foundation Grant to examine floodplain ecogeomorphic processes. Professor Emily Yeh, currently president of the American Association of Geographers, offers an overview of her role within this organization. Graduate students Katie Tyler and Katarena Matos discuss their research and recent awards. Katarena Matos was awarded a scholarship from the ARCS Foundation. The ARCS Foundation advances science and technology in the United States by providing financial awards to academically outstanding US citizens studying to complete degrees in science, engineering and medical research. Katie Tyler won the GIS in the Rockies competition for the most promising graduate student enrolled in a university or college in the Rocky Mountain region. We also feature the outstanding work of undergraduate student Ally Fitts.

Just before the start of the this semester, the fall of the Afghanistan government and resurgence of the Taliban filled our news feeds. As a researcher who has been examining different aspects of conflict, development, gender, and women’s rights activism in Afghanistan for two decades, this semester has brought additional challenges. I have included a brief overview of opportunities gained, missed, and lost in Afghanistan in this newsletter. I also want to take this opportunity to extend my deepest and sincerest gratitude to many of my colleagues in the Geography Department and larger CU-Boulder community for their concern, encouragement, and assistance. Their generous support and understanding has and continues to be nothing short of inspiring. I continue to work with my research collaborators to assist our Afghan colleagues and friends in and outside of Afghanistan.

Our work has included building networks with other individuals, groups, and organizations. For example, there are several academics throughout the US who have also worked in Afghanistan on various US funded programs. Several leaders within the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) have developed a consortium of academics with ties to Afghanistan. This group shares information and works with the US government in an effort to provide more funding and assistance for Afghan schoars and students seeking refuge in the US. Human Rights First, is another organization focused on helping Afghans through a variety of projects including pushing for more congressional assistance. For example, I was part of several advocacy days that included meetings with staffers from Colorado Senators Bennett and Hickenlooper and Congressperson Joe Neguse’s office. I have also given several presentations at various Universities throughout the fall semester about this issue, and presented at the TEDx Mile High Rethink event in Denver on October 23, 2021.

I would like to extend special thanks to Rachel Rinaldo, Associate Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Asian Studies for organizing a panel on Afghanistan at CU-Boulder and spearheading CU-Boulder’s first fundraising effort for an International Scholars-at-Risk Rescue Fund. This effort seeks to provide direct financial support to at-risk academic scholars impacted by disasters, civil unrest and other crises to allow them to continue their academic endeavors as visiting fellows at CU Boulder. I truly appreciate these and other efforts towards assisting many Afghan allies, and my Afghan colleagues and friends as the difficult and life altering process of leaving Afghanistan and hopefully immigrating to the US will undoubtedly be an arduous and multiyear endeavor.

I was recently invited to take a river rafting trip on the Colorado River with Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Mitt Romney (R-UT), among others, and to provide a scientific perspective on climate change and its impacts on the western United States. The purpose of the trip was to draw attention, in a bipartisan way, to some of the challenges that climate change is bringing to the way we live, and to discuss approaches to meeting those challenges.  One of the most impactful ways climate change is affecting the western U.S. is in the form of drought and water stress – a sense that was made clear by the very low and slow-moving Colorado River. On the bank of the river, before we put into the water, each of the senators made statements about the challenges we face with diminishing water availability, which affects livelihoods, economic interests, human health, ecosystems, recreation, and so much more. Both spoke eloquently about the importance of understanding and effectively managing climate change. After they spoke, I provided a summary of what the science and data are telling us about the changes we are seeing, what the future is projected to look like, and the challenges that we in the west, as well as our fellow citizens across the nation and world, are likely to face.  

As I spoke, I was struck by the way in which these two men, as well as the other members of the trip — with a range of backgrounds and political perspectives — nodded in affirmation at what I was telling them.  While I was the scientist, summarizing findings and providing the latest scientific information, some, such as the ranchers, were actually living with these climate stresses. Some, like the senators, have the responsibility to try to enact policies that seek to limit and manage those stresses. One, a tribal chairman, lamented the change to the lands that were sacred to his people, that they had found harmony with and that nourished them for many generations. A water manager described the unenviable task of trying to ensure optimal use and distribution — within political, moral, and legal constraints — of this dwindling resource that so many of us take for granted. Each was nodding with a shared, yet distinct, familiarity borne from their own experiences and perspectives. 

The senators spoke of the need to understand these changes and the implications for water resources in their states. They spoke of the need for research and the need to adopt effective practices to manage not just what is certainly coming, but in many ways is already here.  And as was the intent of the trip, and is often the case when we speak face-to-face, partisan lines were absent. Our attention was focused on the beauty of our surroundings and the imperative to meet the challenges that lie ahead. 

We shared a gentle raft-ride down the beautiful Colorado River; we shared stories of how we experience the land and water and how climate change threatens those ways. And most of all, we shared time and purpose – different people from different backgrounds brought together for one beautiful and meaningful day. And on that day, we weren’t different; we were the same.

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is the national scholarly association to which the most geographers – including professors, undergraduate and graduate students, and professionals - in the US belong. Founded in 1904, it has members from over 100 countries and its total membership has fluctuated over the past two decades between about 8000 and 12,000.  In addition to publishing several journals and a monthly newsletter, the AAG hosts annual meetings, promotes discussion through more than sixty specialty groups, offers workshops and career information, provides support for its nine regional divisions, and advocates for geography in the public and policy realms.  AAG is governed by a Council, which consists of elected regional and national Councilors, elected officers, the most recent past-president, and the executive director (ex officio).  Day to day operations are run by Washington DC-based professional staff.

As of July 2021, I am serving a one-year term as President of the American Association of Geographers. This follows one year as Vice President and will be followed by an additional year on Council as the immediate Past President.  I’m the third faculty member from the CU Boulder Geography Department to serve in this capacity (Ken Foote, now at the University of the Connecticut, was at CU while he was AAG president from 2010-11; and Risa Palm of Georgia State was AAG president from 1984-85, also while at CU).  Due to the COVID19 pandemic, just about everything I’ve participated in to date has taken place virtually – two virtual national conferences, virtual regional conferences, and many, many other meetings!  I have yet to meet AAG staff or Council Members in person.  The one exception was in October this year,  when I traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska to attend the meeting of the Great Plains Rocky Mountain region. Fortunately, with COVID19 vaccines widely available, including finally for younger kids, the annual meeting in February 2022 will be a hybrid virtual and in-person event in New York City.

Department Chair Jennifer Fluri asked me to write about what it’s like to be AAG president. In addition to attending Council Meetings to vote on numerous matters such as accepting slates of nominees and awardees and discussing broader strategic directions, the role entails writing monthly columns for AAG newsletter;  participating in Regional meetings to give keynote addresses, attend business meetings, and in some cases, participating in Geography bowls; selecting a conference theme and organizing a presidential plenary (I’ve chosen climate justice as both my theme and topic of the plenary); and serving as a member of the Healthy Departments Task Force to provide assistance for departments facing institutional threats. Recently, for example, the executive director and I submitted a successful letter to oppose the carving out of GIS from Geography as a discipline to create a separate major in California Community Colleges. The role also includes answering emails from members on a wide variety of issues, and getting involved in specific targeted initiatives.  

One initiative I’ve been deeply involved with is co-leading the AAG Climate Action Task Force to respond to a member petition to reduce the travel-related emissions of the association’s annual national meetings by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. This has turned out to be a very complicated issue involving everything from contracts for large hotels that must be signed many years in advance, to finding alternative ways for students to gain opportunities for professional networking and mentoring, at a time when everyone is experiencing Zoom fatigue. I’ve also been closely involved in one of a number of pandemic rapid-response projects that AAG Council decided to implement, an initiative to help “Bridge the Digital Divide” by providing funding for wifi hotspots, chromebooks and laptops for underserved students in Geography classes at Tribal Colleges and Universities and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Furthermore, I’m looking forward to working with Executive Director Gary Langham in his upcoming Membership initiative, to expand AAG membership, particularly for physical geographers, geographers at community colleges, and professional geographers. If you have ideas about how AAG can better serve you, particularly beyond the scope of an in-person annual meeting, please don’t hesitate to email me. 

Dr. Katherine Lininger, Assistant Professor, is a fluvial geomorphologist who studies the interactions between geomorphic (physical) and ecological processes in rivers and floodplains. She is particularly interested in the influence of river and floodplain processes on the flux and storage of organic carbon in floodplain soil and dead, downed large wood. Dr. Lininger also focuses on the interactions between downed large wood, vegetation, and geomorphic processes. She recently received a $407,205 grant from the National Science Foundation titled, "Floodplain ecogeomorphic processes: interactions between floodplain forest characteristics, wood accumulations, and hydrogeomorphology”. Dr. Lininger’s collaborators on the project include Dr. Virginia Ruiz-Villanueva at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Jeff Marr at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. 

Downed, dead wood on the floodplain and in river channels influences physical processes and provides ecological benefits. For example, wood influences how water flows and where sediment is deposited, creates habitat for biota, and is a source of carbon and nutrients to floodplain soil. Previous work has focused on wood in river channels, but understanding wood dynamics on floodplains is a new frontier in geomorphic research. In addition, numerical modeling of wood transport and deposition has only recently been developed. 

Dr. Lininger and collaborators plan to use scaled physical models of rivers and floodplains (flumes), numerical modelling, and field observations to determine how flooding, floodplain forest stand characteristics, and physical characteristics of rivers and floodplains cause the deposition of wood onto floodplains. Their work will also assess how wood is transported from floodplains back to the river channel. They plan to disseminate their results to management agencies and restoration groups in the US and Europe that are incorporating floodplain wood into efforts to enhance floodplain ecosystem functioning and habitat creation. Dr. Lininger will also develop K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level laboratory assignments and lessons on floodplain dynamics. The grant is supporting the purchase of a stream table, which is a flume that can be used for teaching. Dr. Lininger will use this stream table in physical geography courses, expanding the types of laboratory activities offered in departmental courses. She will also work with CU Science Discovery, an educational outreach organization at CU Boulder, to attend outreach events and develop interactive activities demonstrating river and floodplain dynamics and the important role of wood in creating habitat for biota.

Kathryn (Katie) Tyler is a second year master’s student whose research focuses on addressing gaps in public transit service. More specifically, she is examining bus networks in four US cities using GIS multi-criteria suitability modelling. Her research is largely motivated by the positive climate and social benefits of public transit. Public transportation has the potential to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and alleviate negative public health outcomes associated with current transportation systems which are dominated by passenger cars and highway driving. Additionally, with increasing competition from ridesharing, inadequate infrastructure investments, and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19’s effects on public transit, it is critical to study how public transportation services can be improved. 

The four cities that Katie’s research focuses on - Denver, Austin, Las Vegas, and Sacramento - are all experiencing high rates of population growth and were selected because of their similar population size and demographic characteristics, with differing levels of bus service. These places are experiencing patterns of growth similar to many other American cities such as Orlando, Charlotte, Portland, and Columbus where this research may also be applicable. In the face of nationwide bus ridership decline, cities that have redesigned their bus networks have been able to retain or increase ridership as a result of improved service.

Katie’s research uses GIS to perform multi-criteria modelling, making it easy to establish the relative importance of multiple criteria such as population density, job density, business locations, and transport-vulnerable populations. This research will provide a comprehensive comparison between two specific multi-criteria modelling methods: Boolean overlay and Analytical Hierarchy Processing (AHP). Few research articles compare different suitability modeling methods side by side. The ultimate goal of these models is to identify high priority areas for expanded bus service and to identify bus stops that may have a mismatch between their service frequency and the need for service at that location. 

Katie recently received the GIS in the Rockies (GISITR) scholarship award for her research. This award is given to a student in the Rocky Mountain region (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico) for original and promising geospatial research. She accepted the award and presented her research at the virtual GIS in the Rockies conference this past September. 

I entered college as an undeclared major in hopes a general elective would spark interest for my future studies. I was quick to find inspiration within an introductory geography course where the professor presented his research pertaining to his work in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. As a snow hydrologist, his fieldwork included backcountry skiing, and I was instantly intrigued. Driven by the desire to get involved, I reached out to the professor and his graduate students to learn more about their discipline and ways to get involved as an undergraduate student. Over the past three years since meeting with this professor, I have been fortunate enough to deepen my understanding of mountain hydrology and remote sensing through various courses and experiences. I am a senior in the Geography and Environmental Studies departments pursuing a concentration in Geographic Information Sciences, as well as a certificate in hydrology.

During my sophomore year at CU, I participated in the undergraduate snow internship program at the CU Mountain Research Station on Niwot Ridge. I engaged in weekly snow pit profiles and collected data for the NASA SnowEx campaign and Long-Term Ecological Research(LTER) Program. Through this position, I developed an attentiveness for both fieldwork and snow hydrology. After expressing curiosity, I was invited to attend weekly meetings with the CU Mountain Hydrology Group. In addition to advancing my knowledge pertaining to hydrology and research techniques, joining this group exposed me to the collaborative workspace that lies within the research process. Interested in merging my skills with community-based research, I sought out guidance from Dr. Keith Musselman, a member of the group and INSTAAR Research Associate. Our discussion led me to hold an outreach internship position with Arctic Rivers Project during the summer of 2021.

The Arctic Rivers Project is a five-year project funded by the NSF, with the objective of converging western science and Indigenous knowledge to improve understanding of the changing Arctic. My participation in the project involved working collaboratively with other undergraduate students to develop a multimedia presentation in ESRI’s StoryMap as a way to outline the project’s goals and objectives. Furthermore, I look forward to attending the project’s conference, the Arctic Rivers Summit, which will take place in Anchorage, Alaska in March of 2022. My participation in the conference will be supported by funding I received through the Undergraduate Community-Engaged Scholar Grant, awarded by the CU Office for Outreach and Engagement. This opportunity will allow me to communicate and connect with Indigenous and First National leaders. Learning through new perspectives, I look forward to further broadening my scope of challenges that communities are facing due to climate change.

In addition to fieldwork and community outreach, I harbor an interest in data science. Through multiple statistics and GIS courses, I developed statistical and spatial analysis skills in R Studio, ENVI, ArcMap, and Google Earth Engine. Led by my desire to broaden my programming skill set, I held a remote sensing and data science internship position in collaboration with Earth Lab at CU and the U.S. Geological Survey from March through August of 2021. Over the course of this position, I participated in multiple workshops to mature my programming skills in Python. Additionally, I assisted faculty at Earth Lab to improve documentation of open source packages used to retrieve USGS hydrological data.

My coursework and experiences at CU have cultivated my passion for both science and community. After graduation, I look forward to continuing my education through a graduate degree program in the Fall of 2022.

Relevant Links:

Arctic Rivers Project
Niwot Ridge LTER-University of Colorado Boulder
Earth Lab-University of Colorado Boulder
Undergraduate Internship Opportunities
Office for Outreach and Engagement
Mountain Hydrology Group at CU

Katarena’s PhD research project is housed within the NSF-funded Critical Zone Project led by Dr. Barnard, with Assistant Professor of Geography Katherine Lininger, and Assistant Professor of Ennvironmental Studies Eve-Lyn Hinckley. During her PhD project, she plans to investigate how changes in precipitation (rain and snowfall) in the Western United States will affect the magnitude and timing of evaporation, transpiration, streamflow, and subsurface water storage; and how these changes will, in turn, affect forest productivity and susceptibility to disturbances such as drought, fire, and insect outbreaks. Mountains of the Western United States are a critical source of water for society and ecosystems in the region, with snowmelt being responsible for more than 50% of the total water in Western rivers. Climate change is expected to reduce snowpack accumulation and snowmelt in mountain regions, yet there is still much to be learned about how these changes will alter the hydrologic cycle as well as the ecosystems that rely on spring snowmelt.

If you see Katarena in the hallways of Guggenheim please feel free to ask her about her PhD project, she would be more than happy to chat with you.

Photo 1: Snake River, Photo 2: Stream Gaging at Snake River, Photo 3: Daughter and Mother Fieldwork:

I have lived in New Mexico for 38 years. It has been my privilege to work with government officials in 20 of the 33 counties projects such as land use plans, rural addressing, and parcel mapping. I have traveled to six of the seven continents. I lived in Moldova for six months as a Fulbright Scholar teaching at the Technical University of Moldova. I also spent time in Malaysia as a Fulbright-Hayes researcher. I worked and lived in Washington, D.C. at the Federal Highway Administration as an Intergovermental Personnel Researcher on transportation modeling. Geography has been everything Dr. Nick Helburn told me it could be and more. 

I would also like to note that Dr. William J. Gribb (CU Masters 1978) passed away in July 2020. Bill was a full professor and department head at the University of Wyoming. He also led the National Geographic Society Geography Education Program in Wyoming for ore than 10 years. He was also the director of their Urban Planning Master's program. He is survived by his wife Anne Gribb and their three sons Nikolaus, Jessie, and Karl.

Afghanistan garnered a significant share of media attention when the Taliban took control of the capital city, Kabul. This attention continued during the subsequent chaotic and disorganized US-led evacuation of American citizens and some but not all Afghan allies. As someone who has been researching gender, economic development, conflict, and security in Afghanistan for two decades, I was also struck by the way the “saving Afghan women” narrative, established by the Bush Administration in 2001, resurfaced. While women suffered physically, economically, and emotionally under the Taliban, the prescriptions for improving women’s lives in Afghanistan through economic development and humanitarian aid programs regularly imposed values incongruent with those held by many Afghan communities. The unrelentingly narrow representation of Afghan women as a single category, simplified and curtailed a robust understanding of women’s diverse experiences and articulations of their own needs and desires.

While much of the public criticism of the US evacuation focuses on what women will lose now that the Taliban is back in power, precious little critique has been placed on the failings and falling short associated with US-led interventions over the past 20 years. First, let’s identify the successes. Many Afghan women have benefited from internationally funded projects and programs focused on education, job skills training, and health care. Also, Afghan women’s participation in politics since 2002 was partially due to quotas that included positions for women in both the upper and lower houses of parliament. Women also held political office as provincial governors and district/city mayors, along with being chosen by different presidents as ministers or holding cabinet positions. With the fall of the US-backed Afghanistan government, these positions along with those held by Afghan men are gone or radically altered. Therefore, focusing on women and the changes to their lives during the Taliban regime remains an important discussion, but should include extensive criticism of US-led international military, humanitarian aid, and economic development assistance.

During the successive waves of increasing women’s participation in politics, education, and economic opportunities, along with improving women’s health; the reach and sustainability of these programs and projects remained in question. This was evident from my own research on international aid and development interventions, which included surveys and extensive interviews with individuals (both Afghans and internationals) working within various governmental and non-governmental organizations. Additionally, the US government’s own reports by the office of the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko identified similar failings and criticisms of US government agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Stated Department of State (DOS).

The reach of programs targeting women’s lives has been limited geographically and by existing socioeconomic hierarchies. Women with English language competency and connections to US and other internationals donors countries and organizations were undoubtedly more successful in garnering financial and political support from these organizations. However, the reach and effectiveness of Afghan women’s organizations was limited by a number of factors. I will review a few here to provide both context and critique of US-led international assistance. It is important to remember that the October 7, 2001 US invasion included a “coalition of the willing”, mostly NATO countries and other US allies. Similarly, while the US was the largest donor country operating projects and programs in Afghanistan, over fifty countries have been involved in Afghanistan in various capacities from military to humanitarian aid and economic development assistance. In what follows I highlight five factors that stymied an effective and successful implementation of programs.

Factor 1: Subcontracting: Most of the economic development projects and programs funded by USAID were subcontracted to implementing partners, which are pejoratively known as the “beltway bandits”. These are mostly for profit companies geographically located in the beltway around Washington D.C., who compete for USAID and DOS contracts to implement projects and programs in various countries including Afghanistan. Once in Afghanistan, these companies used US government allocated funds to pay international staff six figure salaries, rent office and housing space for exorbitant prices, pay private security firms and logistic companies for protection and assistance (also at exorbitant prices). After funds are spent on these expenses, the “implementing partners” use the leftover funds to higher local Afghan run NGOs. These organizations are then tasked with the difficult and dangerous work of fulfilling the project or program mandate, which has generally been conceptualized by individuals living outside Afghanistan with little to know cultural knowledge or understanding of the complexities of daily life for Afghans. The Afghan-run NGOs operate on much less funding than there international counterparts, which led to extensive and rampant turnover within both international and Afghan organizations.

Factor 2: Internal Brain-Drain: Many Afghan run organizations experienced a form of internal brain drain from their organizations. Due to the massive pay disparities between international and local organizations. Many Afghan organizations had difficulty maintaining staff and institutional knowledge within their own organizations. The majority of organizational leaders—my research team and I interviewed—complained about investing time and energy into training young Afghan women to work within their organizations, only to have them leave, once they had enough skills to work for an international organization. While they did not blame these individuals for wanting to increase their salaries and provide for their families, this situation calls attention to income disparities, which made the process of creating sustainable and long lasting programs difficult if not impossible.

Factor 3: Not listening: Many programs funded by USAID and their implementing partners, were as mentioned, conceptualized by internationals rather than Afghan partners. This donor-driven approach has been critiqued by the vast majority of development scholars as a flawed system due to the lack of community support and therefore inability of the projects to continue over the long-term. For example, when interviewing international workers for the UN and USAID, I asked why they were not designing projects based on Afghan women’s ideas or needs, and the regular response was “because I don’t think they have good ideas.” While these international workers may have not agreed with Afghan women, their criticism was from the perspective of their own social, economic and political context. Additionally, their experiences were from the geographic location of their own “home-country”, not Afghanistan. They did not consider the complexities, complications, and at times contradictions that Afghan women endure within the diverse social, cultural, economic, and political contexts of Afghanistan.

Factor 4: Diversity of women’s experiences: Afghanistan is a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic country that is predominantly Muslim but with diverse belief systems based on different sects, teaching and interpretations of Islam. It is also stratified based on socioeconomic class, education levels, along with cultural diversity, and differential access to resources based on a number of factors. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach to assistance programs or advocating for women’s rights was a flawed endeavor from the start. Afghan women are not a singularly minded group, they have different ideologies and beliefs. This diversity should be celebrated and attended to with all of its complexities rather than attempting to push projects and programs that reflected the values and beliefs of US-based (and other international) organizations. In addition to these issues many international workers had limited access to Afghan communities due to strict security protocols, which prevented them from engaging with Afghans in their homes and with their families and communities.

Factor 5: Security: For women-led and women’s rights organization, security was regularly identified (followed by lack of funding) as the main barrier to starting a project or disrupting the flow or continuation of programs in many communities. Security concerns in Afghanistan over the past twenty years were regularly mitigated by the US and other international forces known as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). However, ISAF officially closed its operations in Afghanistan in 2014, and security operations were transferred to Afghan forces, with US special forces and other US military support remaining until the withdrawal in August 2021. The Afghan forces were stymied by corruption and mismanagement including not paying soldiers or providing effective ground support. This was further buttressed by the Trump administration’s legitimization of the Taliban by way of its so-called “peace talks” in Doha, Qatar. These talks sidelined the Afghanistan government and included women leaders, as part of a performance of women’s participation. Several women we interviewed after their participation in the “peace talks” in 2019 discussed their distrust of the Taliban and the lack of effective listening or engagement with women leaders. Additionally, while the “peace talks” were occurring in Qatar, many places in Afghanistan were besieged by Taliban violence such as suicide bombings and extra-judicial murders.

Interestingly, despite these flaws and failures, many Afghan women, especially in the capital city Kabul, and other major urban areas were able to gain access to education, economic opportunities and public and political participation. However, this participation was contingent and often dependent on international assistance. Due to various failures as briefly discussed here, this assistance was neither sustainable nor self-supporting. It would be easy to place the blame on Afghans. Certainty there were entrenched and extensive problems across various branches of government throughout the country, such as corruption and cronyism. Yet, is absolutely necessary to also critique the US’ role in ongoing and unrelenting conflict and uncertainty in Afghanistan. Without a robust and continued critical reflection on the failures and successes of US-led interventions in Afghanistan, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. I say this with confidence because we made these mistakes before. The US did not begin intervening in Afghanistan in 2001, that began in the 1980s during the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan, when the US funded and supplied radical religious groups to fight the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden was one of many foreign fighters allied with the US at that time, and later one of the many who turned against the US. In the 1980s it was the Soviets that were “saving” Afghan women. Fighting wars and providing assistance under the banner of “saving women” is a false and flawed narrative that is used to garner political support and far too quickly and easily abandoned for geopolitical expediency. Afghanistan is both a tragedy and a lesson for us all. Because the US continues to make the same policy and political errors, while expecting a positive result that never truly materializes.

The study, published in February in the Journal of Ecology, also found that this trend is increasing. In fact, tree mortality in subalpine Colorado forests not affected by fire or bark beetle outbreaks in the last decade has more than tripled since the 1980s. 

“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,” said Robert Andrus, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at Washington State University. “It’s an early warning sign of climate change.”

These deaths are not only affecting larger trees, thus reducing forests’ carbon storage, but hotter and drier conditions are making it difficult for new trees to take root across the southern Rockies in Colorado, southern Wyoming and northern parts of New Mexico.

It’s well known that rising temperatures and increasing drought are causing tree deaths in forests around the globe. But here in Colorado, researchers found that heat and drought alone are responsible for over 70% of tree deaths in the 13 areas of subalpine forest they measured over the past 37 years. That’s compared with about 23% of tree deaths due to bark beetles and about 5% due to wind damage. 

“It was really surprising to see how strong the relationship is between climate and tree mortality, to see that there was a very obvious effect of recent warmer and drier conditions on our subalpine forests,” said Andrus, who conducted this research while completing his graduate degree in physical geography at CU Boulder. “The rate of increasing mortality is alarming.”  

With temperatures in Colorado having risen by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1980s and increasing more quickly at higher elevations, estimates of another possible 2.5 or more degrees of warming in the next few decades due to climate change indicate that the rate of tree deaths will only increase. 

Seeing the forest for the trees 

Subalpine forests cover over 10,000 square miles in Colorado and are best known by those who ski or recreate in the mountains. Subalpine fir and Engelmann spruce dominate the area above the Peak to Peak Highway in the Front Range, and if you go over any mountain pass in Colorado, you're going into the subalpine zone, according to Andrus. 

Previous research at CU Boulder has shown how wildfire, beetle kill and the two combined can affect the mortality and health of Rocky Mountain subalpine forests. This new research isolated the effects of those two common stressors from those of heat and moisture to find out how much of an effect climate change is having on these tree populations. 

Launched by Veblen when he arrived on campus in 1982, this is the longest running study of tree mortality in Colorado with measurements made frequently enough to identify the factors causing tree death. Every three years since, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and undergraduate field assistants have diligently returned to the more than 5,000 marked trees on Niwot Ridge just west of Boulder. In these 13 subalpine forest plots, they recorded that more trees died during summers with higher maximum temperatures and greater moisture deficits. 

They found that tree mortality increased from .26% per year during 1982 to 1993, to .82% per year during 2008 to 2019—more than tripling within 40 years. 

“It is really challenging because it's not very visually obvious to the casual observer,” said Andrus. “But the thing to keep in mind is that while warmer, drier conditions are also causing more fire and bark beetle outbreaks, these slow and gradual changes are also important.” 

Additional authors on this publication include Rachel Chai of the Veblen Lab at CU Boulder; Brian Harvey, previously a postdoctoral researcher in geography at CU Boulder and now an assistant professor at the University of Washington; and Kyle Rodman, previously a graduate student in the Veblen Lab at CU Boulder and now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison. 

The Dor Bahadur Bista Prize honors the life, career, and service of Dor Bahadur Bista, Nepal’s first anthropologist and former Honorary President of the ANHS predecessor organization, the Nepal Studies Association (NSA). The purpose of the prize is to recognize outstanding scholarship by students whose research focuses on the areas of Himalayas. Submissions from all academic disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and arts will be accepted.

The winner of 2020 Dor Bahadur Bista Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper is Phurwa Dhondup Gurung. Phurwa is a PhD Student in the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. The title of his paper is: "Dispossessing while Decentralizing: Participatory Conservation as an Emergent Structure of Dispossession in the Himalayas". More info >>

Abstract:

Protected areas account for nearly a quarter of the total land area of Nepal and over a third of its entire Himalayan region. Despite the rhetoric of participatory conservation often used to justify fortress conservation, National Parks in Nepal remain firmly under the control of the central state and are governed by strict conservation policies implemented through a heavily militarized structures. Using a political ecology approach, this paper examines how and to what extent centralized conservation policies and the institutions of participatory conservation affect local socioecological lives in Dolpo, Nepal. I first provide a brief sketch of Shey Phoksundo National Park (SPNP) followed by an analysis of its role in monopolizing the governance of yartsa gunbu in Dho Tarap valley, Dolpo. Drawing from three-months of ethnographic field research at multiple field sites in the summer of 2019, as well as from my own engagements with Dolpo communities for over a decade, I argue that participatory conservation materializes on the ground as an emergent structure of dispossession— not only in terms of the extraction of resources like yartsa gunbu but also because of its role in displacing community-led resource governance. This paper contributes to the literature on conservation as government, the politics of decentralization in resource management, as well as the growing literature on the management of yartsa gunbu in the Himalayas.

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