William Riebsame Travis

Research

Questions about human behavior in the environment in three main areas guide my current research and teaching:

• Extremes, Risk, and Disasters: What differentiates extreme events from routine, and can we improve our handling of low probability/high consequence risks? How can we usefully apply theory in disaster science? Are better warning systems the answer to increasing hazardousness?
• Forecast informed decision-making: Weather and climate forecasts at all scales (from minutes to decades) include uncertainty, but can better decision tools increase their value at current skill levels? I study weather- and climate-sensitive decisions and develop quantitative decision models ingesting probabilistic forecasts to improve outcomes while respecting the skills and logistics of activities like ranching and highway snowplowing.
• Climate Adaptation Science: How and when should managers of climate-sensitive resources change what they're doing in the face of climate change? How do we analyze and model this process in a risk and decision framework?

This research is conducted with support of grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to CU's Western Water Assessment; the National Science Foundation (NSF) program on Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems, the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Centers, the National Drought Mitigation Center, and CU's Grand Challenge/Earth Lab in the Cooperative Institute for Research on Environmental Science (CIRES).

Here are some results:

Extremes, Risk, and Disasters: 

(Working Paper) W.R. Travis and E. Bannister "Eighty-Four Disasters and Four Theories: Teaching Disaster Risk Analysis with Cases and Rubrics." Four Theories of Disaster as Rubrics for Teaching DisasterScience.pdf

• Disaster theory spreadsheet: Disaster Theory Spreadsheet.xlsx

(Working Paper) W.R. Travis, K. Shrank and E. Ramirez "Warning System Failures: Cases, Diagnostics, and a Propositional Inventory of Failure Modes." Warning systems failures_WP.pdf

(In Review) Virginia Iglesias, W.R. Travis, E. Natasha Stavros, Jilmarie Stephens, Stefan Leyk, John Wardman, Lise Ann St. Denis, Jennifer K. Balch. “Fire risk to U.S. structures nearly triples by mid-century.” Science Advances.

Travis, W.R. (2025) “Climate Whiplash: Close Calls in Managing Water in the American West.” In Cutter, S., M. Gall and C.B. Rubin, eds., Chapter 9, U.S. Emergency Management in the 21st century: from Disaster to Catastrophe. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003591900

Iglesias, V., W.R. Travis, and J.K. Balch (2022) “Recent droughts in the United States are among the fastest-developing of the last century.” Weather and Climate Extremes. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2022.100491

Iglesias, V., Balch, J. K., and Travis, W. R. (2022). “U.S. fires became larger, more frequent, and more widespread in the 2000s.” Science Advances 8 (11). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc0020

Iglesias, Virginia, Anna E. Braswell, Maxwell B. Joseph, Caitlin McShane, Matthew W. Rossi, Megan Cattau, Michael J. Koontz, Joe McGlinchy, R. Chelsea Nagy, Jennifer Balch, Stefan Leyk, and W.R. Travis (2021): “Risky development: increasing exposure to natural hazards in the United States.” Earth’s Future. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001795 

Balch, J. K., Iglesias, V., Braswell, A. E., Rossi, M. W., Joseph, M. B., Mahood, A. L., Mahood, A.L., Shrum, T., White, C., Scholl, V., McGuire, B., Karban, C., Buckland, M. & Travis, W.R. (2020). Social‐environmental extremes: Rethinking extraordinary events as outcomes of interacting biophysical and social systems. Earth's Future 8: e2019EF001319. DOI: 10.1029/2019EF001319

Clifford, K and W.R. Travis (2021): "The New (ab)Normal: Outliers, everyday exceptionality and the politics of data management in the Anthropocene." Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111:3, 932-943, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1785836

Travis, W.R. (2013) "Design of a Severe Climate Change Early Warning System" Weather and Climate Extremes 2: 31-38. DOI: 10.1016/j.wace.2013.10.006

Forecast informed decision-making: 

(Working Paper) L. Palasti and W.R. Travis “Forecast Informed Decision Making: The Case of Drought Response on the Ranch" Forecast Informed Decision Making_The Case of Drought Response on the Ranch.pdf

Shrum, T. and W.R. Travis (2022) “Experiments in ranching: Rain-index insurance and investment in production and drought risk management.” Applied Economics Perspectives & Policy. https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13304

Williams, T.M. and W.R. Travis (2019): “Evaluating alternative drought indicators in a weather index insurance instrument.” Weather, Climate and Society 11: 629-649. DOI: 10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0107.1

Shrum, T., W.R. Travis, T. Williams, and E. Lih (2018): “Managing climate risks on the ranch with limited drought information.” Climate Risk Management 20: 11-26. DOI: 10.1016/j.crm.2018.01.002

Climate Adaptation Science:

(In Review) Iglesias, V., M.W. Rossi, and W.R. Travis. “Measuring the Strength of Coupling between Climate and Natural Resource Production: Dose-Response Functions for Crop Yields.” Climate Big Earth Data.

Cravens, A., K. Clifford, Katherine; C. Knapp, Corinne; W.R. Travis (2024) "The dynamic feasibility of resisting (R), accepting (A) or directing (D) ecological change" Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14331

Miller, Brian W., Mitchell J. Eaton, Amy J. Symstad, Gregor W. Schuurman, Imtiaz Rangwala, and W. R. Travis. 2023. “Scenario-Based Decision Analysis: Integrated Scenario Planning and Structured Decision Making for Resource Management under Climate Change.” Biological Conservation 286: 110275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110275.

Dilling, L., M. Daly, W. R. Travis, A. Ray, O. Wilhelmi (2023) “The role of adaptive capacity in incremental and transformative adaptation in three large U.S. urban water systems.” Global Environmental Change 79: 102649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102649

Rangwala, I.; Moss, W.; Wolken, J.; Rondeau, R.; Newlon, K.; Guinotte, J.; Travis, W.R. (2021) “Uncertainty, Complexity and Constraints: How Do We Robustly Assess Biological Responses under a Rapidly Changing Climate?” Climate 9, 177. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli9120177

Travis, W.R. (2021) “Impacts and adaptation at the climate risk frontier.” Chapter 11 in C. Rosenzweig, M. Parry and M. De Mel, eds., Our Warming Planet: Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, pp. 276-293. Singapore: World Scientific.

Clifford, K., L. Yung, W.R. Travis, R. Rondeau, I. Rangwala, C. Wyborn, N. Burkhardt, and E. Neeley (2020): "Navigating climate adaptation on public lands: how views on ecosystem change and scale interact with management approaches.” Environmental Management 66: 614–628 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01336-y

Clifford, K., W.R. Travis, and L.T. Nordgren (2020): “A climate knowledges approach to climate services.” Climate Services. 10.1016/j.cliser.2020.100155

Dilling, L., M.E. Daly, W.R. Travis, O.V. Wilhelmi, and R.A. Klein (2015) “The dynamics of vulnerability: why adapting to climate variability will not always prepare us for climate change.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 6, 413-425. DOI 10.1002/wcc.341

Blogs/Websites:

Risky Development

https://earthlab.colorado.edu/blog/development-patterns-increase-hazard-risk-us

High-Impact Weather and Climate Events in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, 1862–2022” Database developed by: J. Lukas, A. McCurdy, K. Wolter, and W. Travis. Up-dated in 2022 by E. Knight, L. Woelders, and L. Peyton. 

http://wwa.colorado.edu/climate/extremes/database/

The Work of Robert W. Kates

I maintain a website celebrating and archiving the scholarship of geographer Robert W. Kates. It offers a perspective on the evolution of environment and society theory and research via one scholar's lifetime effort on hazards, climate change, population & resources, and sustainability: http://www.rwkates.org/index.html

see also: Travis, W.R. (2018) “Robert W. Kates (1929–2018): Grappled with problems of the human environment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (31) 7844-7845. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810131115 

Teaching

I teach undergraduate and graduate classes in environmental hazards and risk analysis, natural resources planning, water resources management. You can find the class syllabus for these recent offerings here: Syllabi

• Spring 2025  GEOG 3402  Natural Hazards and Risk Analysis
• Fall 2024  GEOG 3412  Conservation Practice and Resource Management
• Fall 2024  GEOG 4501/5501  Water Resources Management in the American West
• Spring 2024  GEOG 1962  Geographies of Global Change