Katherine Clifford

Katie Clifford: CU Boulder geographer among inaugural group of public scholars

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 22:38:16 +0000

Katie Clifford: CU Boulder geographer among inaugural group of public scholars Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/08/2023 - 16:38

Katherine Clifford, a recent PhD and scientist at the Western Water Assessment, named to American Association of Geographers ‘Elevate the Discipline’ cohort

Katherine (Katie) Clifford, a researcher at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder, is among 15 geographers to be designated as “public scholars” in the realm of climate and society.

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) this month announced the first cohort in its new “Elevate the Discipline” program, which will train and showcase geographers in action—in the media, as voices for public policies and in advocating for change—on this year’s theme of climate and society.

The newly selected participants in 11 states and the West Indies “represent the rich and diverse range of practice within the discipline, including hydroclimatology, political ecology, climate and health, disaster geography, geoinformatics, soil science and more,” the AAG stated.

At the top of the page: Katie Clifford leads a discussion in a climate-adaptation workshop in Wyoming recently. Photo courtesy of Katie Clifford. Above: Katie Clifford

Clifford, who earned her PhD in geography at CU Boulder in 2019, is lead social scientist at Western Water Assessment, a research program funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that is under the auspices of the university. It supports “engaged science” to tackle real-world climate adaptation issues across babyֱ��app, Wyoming and Utah.

With a strong background in environment-society geography, Clifford is known for her research illuminating the regulatory challenges and uneven consequences of climate hazards and effects.

Clifford’s work focuses on how frontline communities are uniquely affected by climate hazards, and her findings help diagnose policy loopholes and develop equitable and just adaptation strategies in partnership with communities, the AAG stated.

Her research has explored how the U.S. Clean Air Act has in many ways failed to adapt to increasing dust storms, which often leave Western communities with unsafe air quality. She also is currently working with rural, low income, Latinx and tribal communities on issues of extreme heat, flooding, wildfire and drought.

Clifford said she is honored to be selected “alongside so many talented geographers and know this will make me a better engaged researcher. This fellowship shows that the field of geography invests in and values scholars who are doing work that is actionable and impactful for pressing societal and environmental issues—something that not all disciplines have embraced.”

She added, “This is why I chose to be a geographer: We tackle real-world issues, with a holistic approach that embraces complexity, engage with multiple scales and center questions of equity and justice. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues we face today, and this fellowship harnesses geography’s strengths to make important contributions to policy and practice.”

Fifteen geographers were selected through a competitive process. The program will train them over the next several months in leadership, media skills and policy strategies, and thereafter will promote their work in public discourse.

This is why I chose to be a geographer: We tackle real-world issues, with a holistic approach that embraces complexity, engage with multiple scales and center questions of equity and justice."

“It’s exciting to support the work of these scientists as they engage in community-oriented, justice-based work on climate change,” said Rebecca Lave, AAG’s 2023-24 president and a professor of geography at Indiana University Bloomington, where her specialties include critical physical geography and the political economy of stream restoration.

“We want to open up avenues to value and protect geographers’ opportunity to do public and engaged scholarship.”

The program will be launched this month, with frequent virtual meetings culminating in a week-long intensive training onsite at AAG headquarters in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, AAG will work with the participants and their institutions to continue promoting their public scholarship.

“Geography is essential to understanding and solving the world’s most pressing issues,” said Gary Langham, AAG executive director. “We created Elevate the Discipline to help geographers raise the profile of their work, showing how instrumental our discipline is to addressing climate change and critical social issues.”

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Fugitive Dust: data manage, everyday exceptionality, and the politics of inscrutability

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 17:17:17 +0000

Fugitive Dust: data manage, everyday exceptionality, and the politics of inscrutability Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/11/2022 - 10:17

Katie Clifford
Social Sciences Lead
Western Water Assessment

In Person:
GUGG 205
Nov 11, 2022, 3:35 PM

Or Join Zoom Meeting:
Zoom login required (free account available at zoom.us)

Abstract

Exploring the politics of environmental knowledge has been a longstanding project of geographers. Equally important work is understanding the politics of environmental unknowns: how, why, and by whom certain spaces and environments remain inscrutable. My research asks questions about the politics of how we measure, monitor, and manage environmental systems and explores the consequences of uncertainty and data gaps. This becomes even more of an issue in the Anthropocene, an era of environmental change that complicates our ability to see emerging environmental issues and understand anticipated future conditions. Current data collection and management practices can mislead efforts to better adapt to new environmental conditions and create issues of environmental injustice.

I ground my analysis in a case study of dust in the southwestern United States which largely remains under monitored and unregulated despite many social and environmental consequences. I focus specifically on a case study of the Exceptional Events Rule (EER) of the Clean Air Act that excludes data, resulting in air quality events—and dust storms in particular—going unregulated. Using a mixed-methods approach including interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and spatial analysis, I trace the data exclusions and their consequences for air quality knowledge and regulation. This research identifies recursive process of distortion at play where constructing categories of abnormal–normal allows for the exclusion of “outliers” from data sets, which ultimately produces a false rarity and hides environmental changes. The talk concludes with a focus on my work at Western Water Assessment, a CU Boulder engaged research program, that brings this attention to environmental unknowns to issues of climate adaptation and justice.

Bio

Katie is human geographer who studies human-environment relationships in the context of environmental change. Her research blends a mix of methods, approaches, and theoretical frameworks to integrate theory and practice, aiming to engage with big questions within social science while also supporting adaptation, policy change, and real-world impact. She has expertise in

risk and hazards, climate adaptation, political ecology, critical physical geography, science and technology studies, co-production, and policy analysis. Broadly, Katie’s research explores the politics of environmental knowledge (and environmental unknowns) and the uneven patterns of environmental impact, especially from climate change. She is interested in how environmental monitoring and regulatory science is adaptive or maladaptive to socio-environmental change. Katie currently is the Social Science Lead for Western Water Assessment, a research program at the University of babyֱ��app whose mission is to produce usable information to support regional climate adaptation in babyֱ��app, Wyoming, and Utah. Her work focuses on supporting adaptation and resilience to climate hazards, particularly in frontline communities. Previously she worked at the USGS’s Social and Economic Analysis Branch as a Research Social Scientist working closely with the NPS Climate Change Response Program to better understand the human dimensions of responding to climate change on public lands. Katie received her B.A. at Macalester College and her master's and doctorate degrees in Geography from the University of babyֱ��app at Boulder.

Download Printable Poster

View Presentation

[video:https://vimeo.com/771369912]

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Katie Clifford, PhD 2019

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 20:03:20 +0000

Katie Clifford, PhD 2019 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/25/2022 - 14:03

Katie Clifford

I graduated from CU with a PhD in Geography in December 2019. My dissertation research combined approaches from natural hazards, climate adaptation, political ecology, and science and technology studies (STS) to understand why emerging environmental and climatic hazards remain invisible and unmanaged. Specifically, I explored how and why western dust storms go undetected by regulatory monitoring despite carrying many social and environmental consequences. This research led me to follow scientists in the field as they collected (or didn’t collect) dust data, strapping on skis with avalanche forecasters, traversing field sites in the red rock desert, hiking up ridgelines to high elevation dust monitors, analyzing particles in the lab, and shadowing regulators as they updated air quality monitors. In the end, I was left with just as many questions as I started with, but the work also led to publications about the politics of environmental knowledge in Geoforum, Society and Natural Resources, and the Annals of American Geographers.

After my graduate work, and right before the global pandemic turned the world upside down, I started a postdoctoral fellowship at the USGS Social and Economic Analysis Branch, where I served as one of two social science leads on a federal taskforce developing the new Resist-Assist-Direct (RAD) framework to help land managers respond to ecological transformation. In this role, I helped guide federal land and resource management policy for National Parks, National Refuges and other federal lands and coproduced research projects to improve resource management policy. Increasingly, public land managers are confronting difficult decisions about ecological transformation, when a system shifts in state or function. For example, my research explored manager decision making on the Kenai Peninsula where wildfires and beetle outbreaks lead a boreal forest to convert to a grassland, complicating resource management. What should a manager do when their landscape doesn’t match their management plans? How much and in which ways should they intervene in landscape level changes? What are the consequences of these management decisions for the people who use and rely on public lands?

Recently I accepted a new position as the social scientist at Western Water Assessment, an applied research program at CU Boulder, where I will focus on building resilience and supporting climate adaptation efforts in frontline communities across babyֱ��app, Wyoming, and Utah. Western Water Assessment is a Regional Integrated Science Assessment (RISA) program funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Eleven RISAs are spread across the US and hosted at universities (like CU) with the goal of connecting stakeholders and decision makers with actionable science to build

resilience and support climate adaptation. Core to their work and approach to research is building partnerships with stakeholders to co-produce projects in ways to prioritize reciprocity and give partners a seat at the table to shape and direct research about their community. In this position, I get to flex my geography muscles by bringing together physical geography (to understand the influence of climate change on natural hazards and resources), spatial data and mapping (to track patterns of impacts), and critical theories from human geography (to understand power, structural drivers, and inequality). As in my position at USGS, I get to keep a foot in both the academic research sphere, asking big questions about human-environment interactions, as well as the applied sphere, contributing to tangible outcomes for communities experiencing climate impacts.

I am also developing a few new projects at WWA at the intersection of climate impacts and equity. One explores intersection between housing affordability and climate adaptation, engaging these tensions in the aftermath of the recent Marshall Fire in Boulder County, and partnering with Resident-Owned Manufactured Housing Communities who are often exposed to greater climate risk than other housing types. Another builds off my graduate work, examining a broader suite of air quality issues (like wildfire smoke) and further investigating the politics of environmental monitoring. To support and guide the work of WWA, I am developing resilience indicators and metrics to track the impact of our science and better connect resilience theory with practice. With such a large list of important work, and very geographic work, I am always looking for more collaboration, especially from current geography students interested in engaged work on climate impacts.

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Katie Clifford awarded Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 20:35:07 +0000

Katie Clifford awarded Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/09/2016 - 13:35

Katie was awarded a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council

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Katie Clifford awarded Community Based Research Graduate Fellowship

Anonymous — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 02:24:24 +0000

Katie Clifford awarded Community Based Research Graduate Fellowship Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 08/01/2015 - 20:24

Katie was awarded a 2015-16 Community Based Research Graduate Fellowship through CU Engage. This fellowship is designed for a cohort of 3-5 PhD students.The purpose is to train a generation of scholars in the practices and principles of community-based research (CBR).

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