Colloquium Archive

Dr. David Rachal Real Scoop: The Truth About Lake Balls Ruppia seeds have been used to constrain the age of footprints along the shoreline at White Sands, New Mexico to around 21,000-23,000 calibrated years before the present. However, evidence suggests that these balls and seed layers were introduced to the site by high wind seiche events during Late Pleistocene. In a proposed site formation model, the seeds orignated in deeper water outside the site, thus it is very likely that the hard-water effect has impacted the accuracy of the radiocarbon dates and the prehistoric footprints along Paleolake Otero could be thousands of years too old.
Dr. Jonathan London Professor Department of Human Ecology University of California - Davis Informality and the Struggle for Water Justice in Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities The UC Davis Water Justice Study analyzed the current and historical social, economic, political, and environmental conditions in DUCs (Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities) in the San Joaquin Valley and prospects for policy changes to ensure that the state meets its self-proclaimed Human Right to Water. The study found that patterns of racialized land use and water management policies have produced disparities in access to a clean and affordable drinking water. The conditions of informality place DUCs at a structural disadvantage in seeking funding to improve water infrastructure, representing their governance interests, and contending with capital's exploitative and extractive relations. The drinking water in many of these areas is contaminated by the operations of agriculture, oil and gas industry, as well as naturally occurring toxins such as arsenic and uranium. We show that it is often political will and institutional racism, more than financial or physical barriers, that deprive DUCs of safe drinking water. This is demonstrated by the study's funding that 66% of DUC residents live within 1 mile of a source of a water system that is compliant with drinking water standards. Thus, there is a racial as much as a spatial logic to who gets and who is deprived of access to water. We close with a series of policy recommendations focused on changes to land use regulations, mandates on consolidations of small water systems, annexations by nearby larger and often municipally-owned water systems, and improvements in data infrastructure to track water inequities.
Dr. Emily Jones Associate Professor Department of Anthropology The University of New Mexico Horses and humans in the early historic North American West In the centuries following Spanish colonization of the Americas, domestic horses revolutionized the world of the North American West, giving rise to the great horse cultures of the plains and deserts and forming the backbone of economically, politically, and militarily dominant Indigenous empires during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. However, how this process unfolded remains contested, with academics and Indigenous researchers often holding very different perspectives. In this webinar, I will discuss new results from the Horses and Human Societies in the North American West project, an initiative to integrate data from archaeological horse remains (radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA, stable isotopes, and ZooMS) with historical narratives and Indigenous knowledge to develop an interpretative framework for the dispersal of domestic horses across North America.
LAURA-ANNE MINKOFF-ZERN SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY Department of Food Studies THE NEW AMERICAN FARMER IMMIGRATION, RACE, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SUSTAINABILITY Although the majority of farms in the United States have US-born owners who identify as white, a growing number of new farmers are immigrants, many of them from Mexico, who originally came to the United States looking for work in agriculture. In The New American Farmer, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern explores the experiences of Latino/a immigrant farmers as they transition from farmworkers to farm owners, offering a new perspective on racial inequity and sustainable farming. She finds that many of these new farmers rely on farming practices from their home countries—including growing multiple crops simultaneously, using integrated pest management, maintaining small-scale production, and employing family labor—most of which are considered alternative farming techniques in the United States.
Eric Perramond Colorado College Environmental Studies Program, Southwest Studies “Climate, Law, and New Mexico’s Water in the 21st Century” Eric Perramond, a geographer, is a professor of Environmental Science and Southwest Studies at Colorado College and recently published “Unsettled Waters: Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West.” “Unsettled Waters” is the first book on water adjudications in the American West. New Mexico envisioned adjudication as a straightforward accounting of water rights as private property. However, adjudication resurfaced tensions and created conflicts among water sovereigns at multiple scales.
GERNOT PAULUS CARINTHIA UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Department of Geoinformation and Environmental Technologies GISCIENCE MEETS ART IN THE FOREST AT THE WÖRTHERSEE SOCCER STADIUM IN KLAGENFURT, AUSTRIA An interdisciplinary research cooperation created a "Digital 3D Twin" of the temporary art installation "FOR FOREST in the Wörthersee Football Stadium" in Klagenfurt, Austria in September 2019. The aim of this applied research project was the complete, centimeter-precise digital 3D surveying of this art intervention through an innovative combination of various state-of-the-art geodata acquisition technologies. The technologies used included terrestrial laser scanning, precision reference measurement with mobile DGPS (Differential Global Positioning System) and a Total Station, high-resolution drone based airborne images and photogrammetric analyses. With the temporary installation of a species-rich mixed Central European forest in the Wörthersee football stadium, the art intervention FOR FOREST by Klaus Littmann not only created the largest art intervention in public space in Austria, but also a unique controlled experimental laboratory for the following exciting and challenging scientific research questions in the context of forestry & surveying and 3D visualization.
Dr. Emile Elias - Director, USDA Southwest Climate Hub “Challenges and Opportunities: Responding to the Impacts of Climate Change in the Southwestern U.S.” Dr. Emile Elias is the director of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub – an organization covering 5 states in the Southwest. She has worked for more than two decades at the interface of water scarcity, water quality, agricultural production and natural resources with the goal of supporting resilient landscapes and communities. Emile leads a Southwest Hub team that is engaged in research and science synthesis efforts, tool development to support informed decision-making, and stakeholder outreach. She will lead and interactive discussion titled “Challenges and opportunities: Responding to the impacts of climate change in the Southwestern U.S.”
University of British Columbia Professor Leila M. Harris Infrastructures of Inequality: justice and democracy at the margins This talk analyzes a decade of work on everyday processes and politics related to water (and sanitation) infrastructure, conditions and access in underserved communities of Accra, Ghana and Cape dynamics. Town, South Africa. The work traces conditions and everyday meanings of uneven access to basic service infrastructures, particularly by infrastructural conditions and politics. The work fits within the broader highlighting narratives of belonging, exclusion, and inequity as key to the ways that community members navigate and respond to literature on critical infrastructural studies, and recent work that seeks to understand water access and insecurity not only in relation to public health, but broader notions of well-being, as well as emotional-affective and socio-political considerations—from senses of citizenship, to trust in government, and other key socio-political dynamics.
Dr. Michael DeMers - NMSU Department of Geography “Innovations and Adaptations in Online Geography Education” Dr. DeMers is Professor of Geography at New Mexico State University, specializing in Geographic Information Science, Geographic Education, and Landscape Ecology. He has also served as Past President of the National Council for Geographic Education. He is the 2018 winner of the New Mexico Geographic Information Council’s Wheeler Peak Lifetime Achievement Award, a 2010 winner of the AAG Anderson Medal of Honor in Applied Geography, an Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Honoree, and the 2011 New Mexico State University Teaching Academy Teaching Innovation Award. In his talk, Dr. DeMers will give us the “inside scoop” on “Innovations and Adaptations in Online Geography Education,” many of which he made happen.
Michael Pease, Central Washington University Active Water Resource Management: Pariah or Blueprint for Western Water Management? Abstract: The western United States is plagued with chronic water shortages, frequent drought, and unclear water rights. Attempts to deal with shortages are a complicated web of federal, state, and local management. Many river basins suffer from imperfect data about water ownership and priority, constraining water managers during periods of water scarcity. The fallout from inadequate water planning is conflated by attributes of water rights being undefined. Considerable research has focused on watershed-level planning. Additional focus is needed on intergenerational planning. Daly referred to such long-range planning as "moral growth," and it could be considered a cornerstone of sustainable water use. It could also be considered a "third rail" of multi-scalar resource management.

Jeremy Slack, University of Texas, El Paso

Deported to Death: Asylum, Drug Violence & Immigration Enforment on the US-Mexican Border

Abstract: To examine the increasingly draconian policies preventing asylum seekers from entering the United States, this talk explores the dangerous dynamics for migrants in border towns. Through ethnographic research with deportees, “Deported to Death” explores how the “war and drugs” and the “war on immigrants” have collided to create a volatile situation where kidnapping, extortion, and forced recruitment are rampant. With current policies blockading over 60,000 asylum seekers in border cities, U.S. policies are directly fomenting widespread violence and human rights abuses.

Lynn Moorman, Mount Royal Univerisity

The Use of GIS/Remote Sensing and Citizen Science to Advance Geography Education

Abstract: Geospatial technologies, mobile devices, and visualization innovations are the power tools of geography. Geospatial learning has subsequently moved from rocket science to pocket science, allowing geographers and the general public to collect and represent data. This presentation will explore how learner requirements for Digital Earth are being determined through eye-tracking research and analogue GIS and reveal how new data collection tools are engaging the public in geography education and citizen science, from mapping rogue turkeys in Calgary's urban core to critical ice hazard mapping with Inuit communities in the Arctic.

Carolynne Hultquist, Columbia University

From the Sky to the Crowd: Intergrating Geospatial Big Data for Decision-Making

Abstract: Novel geospatial big data sources can be integrated to serve as eyes in the sky and on the ground to improve situational awareness for decision-makers. Technological advances enable ways to improve our understanding of human activity and environmental risk during disasters. Remote sensing platforms have increased in number, expanded in function, and developed in promising new directions. At the same time, real-time social data is abundant as citizens unintentionally and intentionally contribute large volumes of data through social media and citizen science applications. These novel data streams can be harnessed to improve situational awareness by extracting useful information. Data from “the crowd” can be used in conjunction with satellite, airborne, and UAV remote sensing from the sky. The integration of geospatial big data from heterogeneous sources involves an assessment of uncertainty with the goal of providing accurate information for decision-making.

Hugo Rojas Villalobos, La Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez

The Use of a Semiautonomous Vehicle to Model the Bathymetry of La Laguna Bustillos

Abstract: Dr. Hugo Rojas Villalobos is a professor of Geoinformatics at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, Mexico. He studied computer engineering at the Technological Institute of Durango in Mexico, and he earned a masters in Environmental Engineering from the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez. Most recently. Dr. Rojas Villalobos completed his doctoral research and studies in Water Science and Management at NMSU and graduated in fall of 2019. Twenty years of experience in geographic information systems support Dr. Rojas' career; he is currently the coordinator of the Geoinformatics program and is a member of the Board of Directors of Water and Sanitation in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc.
In his talk, Dr. Rojas Villalobos discusses accumulated knowledge in different areas of science as a powerful tool that builds bridges of understanding and creativity to solve applied research problems. Geoinformatics is a discipline that amalgamates a wide variety of skills and knowledge that Dr Rojas VillaLobos deployed to answer some interesting questions about the hydrological processes of la Laguna de Bustillos.

Laura Harjo, University of Oklahoma

Spiral to the Stars: Tools of Mvskoke Futurity

Abstract: In this presentation, geographer Laura Harjo will discuss her 2019 book Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity. All communities are teeming with energy, spirit, and knowledge, and Spiral to the Stars taps into and activates this dynamism to discuss
Indigenous community planning from an Indigenous perspective. This book poses questions about what community is, how to reclaim community, and how to embark on the process of envisioning what and where the community can be. Harjo demonstrates that Mvskoke communities have what they need to dream, imagine, speculate, and activate the wishes of ancestors, contemporary kin, and future relatives—all in a present temporality—which is Indigenous futurity.