Alumni

Areas of interest: forest ecology; ecohydrology Faculty Advisor: Holly R. Barnard Thesis 2014 - Linking Topography, Hydrology, Climate, and Ecology in Semi-arid Forest: Within Catchment Annual Tree Growth and Water Use Efficiency

Areas of interest: Remote Sensing, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Airborne Lidar and Spectrometry Faculty Advisor: Konrad Steffen Thesis 2010 - Assessing Supraglacial Water Volume and the Changing Dynamics of the Surface Topography Near the Jakobshavn Glacier, Greenland

Areas of interest: Political and economic geography; energy resources and geopolitics; Ukraine & Russia; volunteerism Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Dunn Thesis 2013 - Scale, Funding and the Law in Ukraine: Delocalizing Organizations and Impoverishing Movements Research Interests My MA research investigates the relatively low rates of volunteerism, especially within civil society organizations, in Ukraine. One aspect of this research focuses on the disconnection between A) registered organizations reliant upon international grant...

Areas of interest: forest ecology on tree line Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2013 - Influence of climate variability on radial growth of Nothofagus pumilio near altitudinal treeline in the Andes of northern Patagonia, Chile

Areas of interest: Sea ice, glacier melt, climate change. Faculty Advisor: Waleed Abdalati Thesis 2018 - Consideration of Elevation Uncertainty in Coastal Flood Models

Areas of interest: Geomorphology; fluvial systems Faculty Advisor: John Pitlick Thesis 2013 - Sediment Fluxes in a Changing Climate: Tahoma Creek Over Daily to Centennial Time-Scales

Areas of interest: GIS and uncertainty Faculty Advisor: Barbara Buttenfield Thesis 2010 - Generalizing a Swamp-Marsh Databaase Using Texture 2015 - Crisis Mapping the 2010 Earthquake in OpenStreetMap Haiti

Areas of interest: biogeography, forest ecology and restoration, population genetics, political ecology Faculty Advisor: Susan Beatty Thesis 2013 - Demography and Genetic Diversity of the Endemic Tree Fern Cibotium chamissoi on O’ahu Island, Hawai’i: A Multi-Method Analysis of Population Dynamics, with Implications For Conservation Research Interests I am interested in tropical forest dynamics and restoration ecology at multiple scales, with an emphasis on applied conservation research. My dissertation focuses on...

Areas of interest: Native American Culture; Symbolic Land Use Faculty Advisor: Joe Bryan Thesis 2015 - Boundless, Wild and Free: An Exploration of human-wildlife ecologies in Greater Yellowstone.

Areas of interest: Mountain climate and surface fluxes Faculty Advisor: Roger Barry Thesis 2010 - Attribution of Wintertime Inversion Frequencies to Synoptic Circulation in the U.S. Southwest

Areas of interest: snow hydrology; forest disturbance Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch Thesis 2015 - Quantifying forest mortality with the remote sensing of snow

Area of interest: Terrestrial Hydrology Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch Thesis 2018 - The Response of Streamflow and Evapotranspiration to Changes in Snowmelt Across the Western United States

Areas of interest: Terrorism, Migration and the Middle East Faculty Advisor: John O'Loughlin Thesis 2012 - Securitization in Yemen, 2000-2010: Shifting Geographies of Political Contention

Faculty Advisor: Waleed Abdalati

Areas of interest: hydrologic modelng, limnology, GIS/spatial analysis Faculty Advisor: Stefan Leyk Thesis 2011 - Multiscale landform characterization for land use evaluation using fuzzy sets

Areas of interest: Maasai;environment, religion Faculty Advisor: Mara Goldman Thesis 2009 - Correctly and Consistently Christian: Medical Missionaries and Lutheran HIV Prevention in Arusha, Tanzania

Areas of interest: Forest ecosystems; climate change; invasive species; human impact Faculty Advisor: Susan Beatty Thesis 2013 - Mountain Pine Beetle Impacts on Tree Resources and Growth Release in Lodgepole Pine Dominated Subalpine Forest

Areas of interest: Spatial analysis, human environment Faculty Advisor: Seth Spielman Thesis 2017 - Racial, Socioeconomic Status and Age Distribution over time in the U.S.: Trajectories of Neighborhood Segregation in 1970-2010

Areas of interest: carbon cycling; soils; hydrology Faculty Advisor: Holly R. Barnard Thesis 2014 - Hillslope Dissolved Organic Matter Transport and Transformation in a Semi-arid Headwater Catchment

Areas of interest: Subalpine Forest Carbon and Water Cycling Faculty Advisor: Peter Blanken Research Interests My research goal is to improve our understanding of the meteorological factors and conditions that control the exchange of energy and gases between the surface and atmosphere in complex, forested terrain. This research is carried out at the University of Colorado Niwot Ridge Subalpine Forest AmeriFlux site where a 26-m tall tower is used to...

Areas of interest: climatology Faculty Advisor: Peter Blanken Thesis 2011 - A climatological study of the relationship between alpine treeline and thermally-driven upslope winds on Niwot Ridge, Colorado

Areas of interest: China; development, human-environment interactions Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2012 - From The Heavens to the Markets: Development, Nation, and the Mediation of Water in Northwest China

Faculty Advisor: Joe Bryan Research Interests I draw from political ecology, legal geography, cultural geography, and development studies literatures to investigate questions related to indigenous rights, land and cultural politics, representation and subjectivity, agrarian change, and development in Latin America. My dissertation research investigates how international indigenous rights law intersects with domestic politics to create new territorial orders and governable spaces, while shaping indigenous rights "on the ground", influencing cultural...

Areas of interest: hydrology; water resources Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2010 - The Hydrology of Headwater Catchments from the Plains to the Continental Divide, Boulder Creek Watershed, Colorado 2014 - Surface Water and Groundwater Interactions in Natural and Mining Impacted Mountain Catchments

Areas of interest: Forced Migration in the South Caucasus Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Dunn Thesis 2014 - Losing Value: the Problem of Humanitarian Order in a Georgian IDP Camp

Areas of interest: climate change; polar research; snow and ice Faculty Advisor: Mark Serreze Thesis 2014 - A New Look at the Summer Arctic Frontal Zone

Areas of interest: Vegetation Dynamics, Invasive Species, Biogeography, and Soils Faculty Advisor: Susan Beatty Thesis 2013 - Fine scale climatic and soil variability and its effect on plant species establishment and abundance along the Front Range of Colorado, USA Research Interests My research interests lie in the vegetation dynamics of post fire sites along the ecotone of the Front Range of Colorado, USA. I want to see how the natural...

Areas of Interest: GIS, remote sensing Faculty Advisor: Jennifer K. Balch Thesis 2018 - What is a Fire? Identifying Individual Fire Events Using the MODIS Burned Area Product

Faculty Advisor: Seth Spielman

Areas of interest: political geography, natural resources Faculty advisor: John O'Loughlin Research Interests: African Studies, BRICS and Emerging Economies, Critical Geopolitics, Development Studies, Extractive Industries and Society, Inequality, Mixed Methods, Resource Governance and Policy, Political Ecology, Political Geography, State-Building and Nationalism, Southern Africa Skills and Expertise: ArcGIS, Dedoose, NVivo, R, SPSS Thesis PhD 2018 - Developmental Fusion: Chinese Investment, Resource Nationalism, and the Distributive Politics of Uranium Mining in Namibia...

Areas of interest: Pastoral development Faculty Advisor: Emily Yeh Thesis 2012 - Alternative Development on the Tibetan Plateau: The Case of the Slaughter Renunciation Movement

Areas of interest: Western Land Use; Ranchland Dynamics; Drought Faculty Advisor: William Travis Thesis 2011 - Dryness and Desperate Measures: The Implications of Land Tenure on Rocky Mountain Ranchers' Drought Experiences and Behaviors

Areas of interest: Fire/Beetle Interaction Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2015 - The occurrence, severity and interaction of mountain pine beetle and wildfire in the Colorado Front Range

Areas of Interest: Global climate policy, justice, land use, Latin America Faculty Advisor: William R. Travis Thesis 2018 - See the Carbon through the Trees: Market-Based Climate Change Mitigation, Forest Carbon Offsets, and the Power of Carbon Accounting

Faculty Advisor: Emily Yeh

Areas of interest: Geographic Information Science Faculty Advisor: Barbara Buttenfield Thesis 2012 - Modeling Pixel Level Error in Fine-Resolution Digital Elevation Models: A Regression-Based Approach

Areas of interest: Polar climate change Faculty Advisor: Mark Serreze Thesis 2012 - An analysis of Greenland ice sheet albedo variability using 25 years of AVHRR polar pathfinder data

Areas of interest: alpine hydrology, climate change, snowmelt timing Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2014 - Of Microbes and Men: Determining Sources of Nitrate in a High Alpine Catchment in the Front Range of Colorado and Science Outreach on Alpine Hydrology

Areas of interest: geographic information science, decision support systems, resource planning and management Faculty Advisor: Barbara Buttenfield Thesis 2011 - Planning Support System Implementation in Rural Local Government

Areas of interest: Biogeography, Dendrochronology Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2014 - Climate variability and the susceptibility of Engelmann spruce to spruce beetle outbreak in northwestern Colorado Research Interests My research interests are broadly focused on the impacts of past and future climate variability on environmental systems. I am currently researching relationships between climate and bark beetle disturbance in subalpine forests. Selected Publications Hart, S.J. . (2011). A Review of...

Areas of interest: Cultural Geography, Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, Race Faculty Advisor: Emily Yeh Thesis 2012 - Open Space? Environmentalism and the Politics of Belonging in Boulder, Colorado Research Interests Ph.D. Dissertation title: Open Space? Environmentalism and the Politics of Belonging in Boulder, Colorado My dissertation uses an environmental justice framework to investigate how environmental discourses intersect with racial discourses in Boulder, Colorado by examining the politics of belonging constructed...

Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch Thesis 2017 - Clarifying Hydrologic Controls of Remote Mountain Water Resources Across Varying Scales Through Development of a Rapid Hydrologic Assessment Methodology

Faculty Advisor: Jennifer Fluri

Areas of interest: Political Geography; Nationalism; Former Soviet Union Faculty Advisor: John O'Loughlin Thesis 2012 - Buddhism in Post-Soviet Russia: The Geographic Contexts of 'Revival' Research Interests My research interests are wide-ranging, but generally situated in the post-Soviet space. My dissertation project is on Buddhism in Russia. Religion, like nationalism, has been primarily considered through the lens of elites, either religious or political (or both). As such, social scientists know...

Areas of interest: cartography; landscape ecology; geographic education/imagination Faculty Advisor: Kenneth Foote Thesis 2010 - Mapping climate change: Six U.S. case studies

Areas of interest: Forest dynamics; ecology and disturbance; biogeography, southern Andes. Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2009 - Climatic and Human Influences on Fire Regimes and Forest Dynamics in Temperate Rain Forests in Southern Chile

Areas of interest: Visualization; GIS Faculty Advisor: Kenneth Foote Thesis 2012 - Web-Based GIS for Middle School Teachers: Using Online Mapping Applications to Promote Teacher Adoption More Info 4/2/12 - Jessie has accepted an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Geosciences at the University of West Georgia.

Areas of interest: Neighborhoods & Health; Contextual effects on child & adolescent health; Longitudinal health effects Faculty Advisor: Elisabeth Root Thesis 2015 - Neighborhood Effects on Behavioral and Educational Trajectories of U.S. Children and Adolescents Selected Publications E.D. Root and J.L. Humphrey. (2014). The impact of childhood mobility on exposure to neighborhood socioeconomic context over time. American Journal of Public Health 104(1). F. Riosmena, J.L. Humphrey, E.D. Root, E. Steiner,...

Areas of interest: Cyrosphere science; soils; spatial analysis Faculty Advisor: Mark Serreze Thesis 2014 - Comparison and Validation of Arctic Precipitation Fields from three Atmospheric Reanalyses: CFSR, MERRA, ERA-INTERIM

Areas of interest: GIS; disease ecology & spatial epidemiology Faculty Advisor: Elisabeth Root Thesis 2012 - Child Mortality from Lower Respiratory Infections and the Effect of Arsenic-contaminated Drinking Water in Rural Bangladesh 2016 - Social and spatio-temporal patterns of arsenic exposure and the impacts on respiratory health in rural Bangladesh

Areas of interest: Human Migration, Rural Development, Health Faculty Advisor: Fernando Riosmena Thesis 2012 - A Model for Producing Large-Scale Spatially Explicit Future Population Scenarios

Areas of interest: Conflict; Political Ecology; Politics of Development Faculty Advisor: Joe Bryan Thesis 2011 - Rebuilding Haiti? Discourses of Development and Security in Post-Earthquake Haiti

Areas of interest: Island Biogeography, Ecosystem Ecology, Invasive Species, Birds Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Research Interests My research interests lie in the field of Biogeography including forest ecology, conservation biology, and island biogeography. I enjoy studying a wide variety of topics concerning species distributions. As an undergraduate at UCLA, I studied an endangered Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus anthonyi) found on Santa Cruz Island, California. I hiked the island's rugged terrain...

Areas of interest: Geomorphology; hydrology Faculty Advisor: Suzanne Anderson Thesis 2012 - Subsurface Evolution: Characterizing the physical and geochemical changes in weathered bedrock of Lower Gordon Gulch, Boulder Creek Critical Zone Observatory

Areas of interest: cultural geography, China, critical tourism studies Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2014 - Exploring place: how independent tourism is changing the politics of geographic knowledge in China

Areas of interest: Snow hydrology; Carbon budget, Niwot LTER Faculty Advisor: Peter Blanken Thesis 2009 - Meteorological Controls on the Seasonal Exchange of Water and Carbon Dioxide from High-Elevation Alpine Tundra at Niwot Ridge, Colorado 2015 - Spacio-temporal patterns of soil respiration and the age of respired carbon from high-elevataion alpine tundra. Research Interests My principal research aims to constrain the water and carbon cycle of alpine tundra at Niwot...

Areas of interest: Political Geography; Geopolitics; Eastern Europe; Central Asia Faculty Advisor: John O'Loughlin Thesis 2009 - Nation-Building, Geopolitics, and the Andijon Uprising: Securitizing Discourses in Uzbekistan 2012 - The City and the Steppe: Territory, Technologies of Government, and Kazakhstan's New Capital Research Interests My dissertation is entitled "The city and the steppe: Territory, technologies of government, and Kazakhstan's new capital." Through a mixed-methods, critical regional studies approach, it explores...

Areas of interest: Climate change; glaciology in mountain regions Faculty Advisor: Roger Barry Thesis 2010 - Glacier and Climate Fluctuations in South-Central Alaska as Observed through the PTAA Model

Areas of interest: Alpine Environments; Hydrology Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2011 - Environmental Conflict at the Energy-Water Nexus

Areas of interest: Water Faculty Advisor: John Pitlick Thesis 2010 - Fine Grain Sediment Transport over a Course Grain Gravel Bed

Areas of interest: land-use change, migration Faculty Advisor: Fernando Riosmena Thesis 2014 - Reconceptualizing Environmental Migration: Empirical Findings from Downscaled Estimates of Drought in Rural Mexico

Areas of interest: Globalization; Social change; Migration Faculty Advisor: John O'Loughlin Thesis 2012 - Territory and Sovereignty in a Borderland: The Case of Moldova

Areas of Interest: Remote Sensing, Arctic Environment Faculty Advisor: Mark Serreze Thesis 2018 - Emerging Use of Single-Channel Short Wave Infrared Imaging for Sea Ice Detection

Areas of interest: Political Geography; Political Violence Faculty Advisor: John O'Loughlin Thesis 2013 - Post-Election Violence in Kenya: Place-Based Explanations of Conflict

Areas of Interest: Political Ecology; (Non)Human Mobilities; GIScience; Critical Conservation Studies Faculty Advisor: Mara Goldman Recent courses taught - Spring 2017 GEOG 3053 (4) Cartographic Design Thesis 2018 - Range of Lines: Exploring the Mobilities, Maps and Technologies that Shape Tanzania’s Northern Rangelands

Areas of Interest: Cryosphere-sea, earth, ice interactions; remote sensing; GIS Faculty Advisor: Waleed Abdalati Thesis 2018 - Rapid Expansion of Greenland’s Low-Permeability Ice Slabs in a Warming Climate

Areas of interest: Interactive cartography; Animated visualizations Faculty Advisor: Stefan Leyk Thesis 2011 - Mapping perceptions of safety and danger in Medellin, Columbia: A study in the perceptual geography of urban crime 2015 - Reverse engineering the National Land Cover Database: a machine learning algorithm for extending land cover data in the spatial and temporal domains. Research Interests My research interests are in modeling Spatial and temporal processes by intersecting...

Areas of interest: Disturbance regimes Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2009 - Temperature Influences on Phenology and Population Growth of Mountain Pine Beetle Populations in Northern Colorado

Areas of interest: Human Biometeorology Faculty Advisor: Peter Blanken Thesis 2014 - Social, Demographic and Environmental Influences on Perceptions and Memories of Weather, Climate and Climate Change

Areas of interest: Remote sensing, glacial dynamics and velocities Faculty Advisor: Waleed Abdalati Thesis 2012 - Investigation of Multi-Decadal Outlet Glacier Surface Ice Velocities in Greenland

Areas of interest: Climate change adaptation Faculty Advisor: William Travis Thesis 2016 - Simulated climate adaptation in stormwater conveyance structures.

Areas of interest: Glaciology; ice sheet hydrology; ice shelf stability Faculty Advisor: Konrad Steffen Thesis 2009 - Sediment Plumes in Sondre Stromfjord, Greenland as a proxy for runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet 2013 - Basal crevasses and suture zones in the Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctica: Implications for ice shelf stability in a warming climate Research Interests My current research focuses on assessing the stability of the Larsen C...

Areas of Interest: South Asia, Indigenous knowledge of building, Architecture Faculty Advisor: Mara Goldman Thesis 2018 -

Areas of interest: Climate change; impacts on snowpack and glaciers Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch Thesis 2012 - Subalpine Snowpack-Climate Manipulation and Modeling Experiment at Niwot Ridge, CO and Valles Caldera National Preserve, NM

Faculty Advisor: Suzanne Anderson

Areas of Interest: Climatology; Arctic Meteorology Faculty Advisor: Mark Serreze Thesis 2018 - Variability of Ground Heat Flux at the Tiksi Station

Faculty Advisor: Carson Farmer Thesis MA 2018 - Modeling Cycling Counts using Crowd-sourced Data

Areas of interest: Remote sensing; Ocean-land-atmosphere interaction Faculty Advisor: Peter Blanken Thesis 2015 - The estimation of the surface energy balance of the North American Laurentian Great Lakes using satellite remote sensing and Merra reanalysis

Areas of interest: Remote sensing; earth ice cover Faculty Advisor: Waleed Abdalati Thesis 2015 - Quantifying supraglacial lake volumes on the Greenland ice sheet from spaceborne optical sensors

Areas of interest: Fluvial geomorphology Faculty Advisor: John Pitlick Thesis 2012 - Landscape Controls on Sediment Supply and Stream Channel Morpho-Dynamics in the Northern Rocky Mountains

Faculty Advisor: Emily Yeh Alumnus, 2017 Courses taught Fall 2016 GEOG 2053 (4) Mapping a Changing World

Areas of interest: Glaciology; Climate Change; Antarctica Faculty Advisor: Konrad Steffen Thesis 2010 - Multi-Decadal Surface Temperature Trends in East Antarctica Inferred from Borehold Firn Temperature Measurements and Geophysical Inverse Methods

Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Research Interests My research interests are in disturbance ecology, climate variability, forest mortality processes, tree ecophysiology, ecological restoration, and biogeography of temperate forests and montane grasslands. I employ dendrochronology, spatial analysis involving remote sensing and GIS, and physiological evaluation of tree water relations, gas exchange and internal carbon dynamics to address questions related to: 1) the role that natural and human disturbances play in shaping long-term...

Areas of interest: Development studies in Tibet Faculty Advisor: Emily Yeh Thesis 2012 - From 'Retire Livestock, Restore Rangeland' to the Compensation for Ecological Services: State Interventions into Rangeland Ecosystems and Pastoralism in Tibet

Areas of interest: Env-society relations; landscape changes and social implications to water quality/supply Faculty Advisor: William Travis Thesis 2012 - Exceedance of Colorado Stream Temperature Standards: The Effects of Effluent and a Warming Climate

Areas of interest: Public art, creative economies, post industrial city, post war suburbs, visual representation Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2012 - The Politics of "the Public": Public Art, Urban Regeneration and the Postindustrial City - the Case of Downtown Denver

Areas of interest: Hydrology; Water Resources Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2010 - Climatological and Elevational Controls on Organic and Inorganic Nutrients in Stream Waters, Boulder Creek Watershed, Colorado Front Range

Areas of interest: Data Visualization Faculty Advisor: Barbara Buttenfield Thesis 2010 - Data for Modelers - Helping Understand the Climate System

Areas of interest: forest ecology; insect outbreaks; Andean forests Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2009 - Insect Defoliator Outbreaks and Environmental Heterogeneity in Nothofagus Forests in the Patagonian Andes

Areas of interest: Alpine processes; snow hydrology; remote sensing; modeling Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch Thesis 2012 - Nitrate Export Response to Spatially Distributed Snowmelt in Alpine Catchments

Areas of interest: Remote Sensing & Surface Energy Balance Faculty Advisor: Peter Blanken Thesis 2015 - Analysis of Climate Change Impacts on the Surface Energy Balance of Lake Huron. (Estimation of Surface Energy Balance Components: Remote Sensing Approach for Water - Atmosphere Parameterizations)

Areas of interest: hydrology; geomorphology Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2011 - The Effects of a Climate Manipulation Experiment on Snow Properties, Snow Surface Energy Balance, and Soil Temperature and Moisture Along an Elevation Gradient on NIwot Ridge, Colorado

Areas of interest: Climatology; Climate Change; Cryosphere Faculty Advisor: Konrad Steffen Thesis 2010 - The impact of advancing surface melt on the ice temperature of the Sermeq Avannarleq Glacier - a model approach

Areas of interest: Plant-soil-water relationships; tropical forests; multi-scale modeling; GIS; camping Faculty Advisor: Susan Beatty Thesis 2008 - Soil properties and hydrologic processes in tropical forest dynamics plots of Panama, Ecuador and Malaysia

Areas of interest: Mountain geography; GIS modeling for glaciology; geoarchaeology, sacred mountains and rituals Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2011 - Himalayan Glaciers and "voodoo science": Combining remote sensing, field techniques and indigenous knowledge to understand spatio-temporal patterns of glacier changes and their impact on water resources

Faculty Advisor: Mara Goldman Research Interests Generally my research is concerned with the power relations and processes through which pure or "natural" categories are constructed, bounded, concretized and then violated through intentionally subversive acts. My current research focuses on the Denver metropolitan area in which nearly every community is reimagining traditional understandings of the urban backyard and through it the categories of nature-society and rural-urban. This research is ultimately interested...

Areas of interest: Terrestrial Weathering Faculty Advisor: Suzanne Anderson Thesis 2010 - The production and evolution of mobile regolith: Modeled soil production and measured chemical weathering

Faculty Advisor: Elisabeth Root

Areas of interest: Biogeography; wildfire; climate; dendrochronology Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2015 - Conifer regeneration after wildfire in low-elevation forests of the Colorado Front Range: Implications of a warmer, drier climate Research Interests I am a forest ecologist with expertise in biogeography, disturbance ecology, global change ecology, and fire history. As a member of the Biogeography Lab, directed by Thomas T. Veblen, my dissertation work addresses spatial and temporal...

Areas of interest: China, Taiwan, cultural politics, geopolitics, social media, tourism Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2012 - Chinese Tourists in Taiwan: Tourism and State Territoriality 2016 - The Geopolitics of Tourism: mobilities, territory and protest in Taiwan and China. Research Interests My research has largely focused on the cultural and political geography of travel and tourism between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. Treating tourism as a political...

Areas of interest: power and control; human rights; social justice; institutionalized violence Faculty Advisor: Najeeb Jan Thesis 2014 - Law, Space, and Gendered Vulnerability: A Critique of VAWA's Jurisdictional Fix in Indian Country

Areas of interest: Climatology Faculty Advisor: Konrad Steffen Thesis 2009 - Shallow Firn Layer Climatology Derived from Greenland Climate Network Automatic Weather Station Data

Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch

Areas of interest: Cultural geography of northeast Asia; China, Korea, migration Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2011 - Contesting Koreanness: Migration as a challenge to the ethnic identity of the Korean Chinese 2016 - Impacts of Female Out-migration on ethnic Korean communities in China Research Interests I research how the process of migration affects ethnic identity, especially within the Korean minority in China. My master's thesis discusses the experiences of...

Areas of interest: Eco-tourism; Human-wildlife conflict; Conservation management in Kenya Faculty Advisor: Mara Goldman Thesis 2009 - Travelling off the Beaten Path? A Look at the Burgeoning Community-Based Ecotourism Industry in Tanzania

Areas of interest: Meteorology; Climatology Faculty Advisor: William Travis Thesis 2009 - The Influence of Landfall Variation on Tropical Cyclone Losses in the United States as Simulated by Hazus

Areas of interest: Migration; Informal Economics; Development Faculty Advisor: Fernando Riosmena Thesis 2011 - Migration and Informal versus Formal Business Creation in Mexico Research Interests My Master’s thesis explores the often endogenous relationship between migration and informality in Mexico. More specifically, I am studying whether migrant households are more likely to start informal businesses compared to non-migrant households. Additionally, I am interested in how economic and social community level factors...

Areas of interest: Development, Africa; Microfinance Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2011 - Disjunctures and Contradictions: the Role of Measurement in Poverty Representation, Policy, and Development Practice

Areas of interest: Global Agriculture Systems; Poverty Alleviation Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Dunn Thesis 2010 - The fractured politics of food security: maize, power, and hunger on a Zambian frontier

Areas of interest: Environmental conservation, critical development, indigenous politics, and difference Faculty Advisor: Emily Yeh Thesis 2015 - The Beyul Campaign: Spatial articulations of territory and religion in Khumbu, Nepal

Areas of interest: Forest Ecology, Biogeography, GIS Faculty Advisor: Tom Veblen Thesis 2012 - An Examination of Background Tree Mortality and Mountain Pine Beetle Disturbance in Subalpine Forests of the Front Range of Colorado, USA

Faculty Advisor: Kenneth Foote Recent courses taught Spring 2016 GEOG 1982 (3) World Regional Geography

Areas of interest: cartograhic generalization; GIS Faculty Advisor: Barbara Buttenfield Thesis 2013 - Matching Attribute Resolution to Scale: The Effects of Filtering on DEM Resolution

Areas of interest: Environmental Conservation and Economic Development in China; Sustainable Management Faculty Advisor: Emily Yeh Thesis 2013 - The Rise and Governance of 'Himalayan Gold': Transformations in the Caterpillar Fungus Commons of Tibetan Yunnan, China Research Interests Contemporary Tibetan livelihoods across the Tibetan Plateau depend extensively on profits earned through Ophiocordyceps sinensis harvesting. O. sinensis is a rare fungus endemic to the Tibetan Plateau that is highly valued in...

Faculty Advisor: John O'Loughlin

Areas of interest: GIS; Modelling Faculty Advisor: Barbara Buttenfield Thesis 2011 - Comparison of Explicit and Implicit Keywords to Characterize Geographic Information Systems Procedures

Areas of interest: Envir/Society Relations, ecotourism, research and policy development, DART Faculty Advisor: Mara Goldman Thesis 2010 - Performance as a Means of Participatory Development for Kenyan Community Based Organizations

Areas of interest: Integrated Resource Management, indigenous knowledge, political ecology, Latin America, Q-method Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Dunn Thesis 2010 - The Bureaucracy of Nature: How Integrated Resource Management Excludes the Poor

Faculty Advisor: Peter Blanken

Areas of interest: GIS, Cartography, Self-Organizing Maps, Multimedia Visualization Faculty Advisor: Barbara Buttenfield Thesis 2014 - An Evaluation of Organization Methods for Data Types Commonly Used in the Geographic Domain Research Interests My research interests include Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and Data Mining. SOMs are an artificial neural network classification technique for very large data sets. The SOM algorithm organizes data based on similarity where similarity is analogous to distance. In...

Areas of interest: China; Scrap Recycling; Migration; GIS Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2010 - The Informal Recycler in Shanghai: Mobility, Migration and Citizenship 2014 - Excess and Access: Informal Recycling Networks and Participants in Shanghai, China Research Interests My research is currently based in Shanghai, where I lived for four years prior to enrolling at CU-Boulder. I study informal waste recyclers, who work as itinerant buyers and sorters of...

Areas of Interest: Human and Environmental Relationships Faculty Advisor: William R. Travis Thesis 2018 - Drought Index-Based Insurance for the US Cattle Ranching Industry

Areas of interest: climate change, water resources,and the cryosphere Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch Thesis 2015 - Hydrograph Separation Using Hydrochemistry Mixing Models: An Assessment of the Langtang River Basin, Nepal Dissertation 2017 - High Asia's Glaciers: Water Resources, Water Security and Scientific Capacity Building

Areas of interest: Landsat Imagery; Geospatial Technologies; Spatial Statistics; Political Geography; Bosnia Faculty Advisor: John O'Loughlin Thesis 2007 - The Effects of War on Land-Use/Land-Cover Change: An Analysis of Landsat Imagery for Northeast Bosnia

Faculty Advisor: Fernando Riosmena Research Interests My dissertation research explores how Senegalese migrants living in the United States take part in development activities in Senegal and the United States. In particular, I am investigating how migrants’ translocal identities shape and direct their development efforts. To better understand this process, I focus on the interplay between the contexts of reception, migrants’ interactions with religious organizations, international development organizations, and the Senegalese...

Areas of interest: internet based research on social relations, human mobility Faculty Advisor: Kenneth Foote Thesis 2013 - Improving Spatial Accuracy of Mobile Positioning Data in Human Mobility Studies: A Dasymetric Mapping Approach

Areas of interest: watershed management; avalanche control Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2016 - Application of GIS-based fuzzy logic and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to snow avalanche susceptibility mapping, North San Juan, Colorado.

Areas of interest: Food Systems and Agriculture in China Faculty Advisor: Timothy Oakes Thesis 2011 - Grain as Commodity: The Making of Chinese Consumer-Citizens through the Northeast Rice Network

Areas of interest: Hydrology of alpine watersheds; groundwater-surface water interaction; isotopes; water resources Faculty Advisor: Mark Williams Thesis 2013 - Hydrochemistry, Residence Time and Nutrient Cycling of Groundwater in Two, Climate-Sensitive, High-Elevation Catchments, Colorado Front Range

Areas of Interest: Hydrology and Water Resources Faculty Advisor: Noah Molotch Thesis 2018 - Modeling the hydrology and hydrochemistry of the Boulder Creek Watershed

Faculty Advisor: Stefan Leyk