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�鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder PhD candidate Chilton Tippin assesses how a warming climate is affecting not just humans, but also our archaeological record

In southwestern Colorado, just north of Mesa Verde National Park, sits the scenic—and historic—, or CANM. The sprawling monument spans more than 175,000 acres of pinyon-juniper woodlands, salt-desert scrub, big sagebrush plantations and riparian zones.��

CANM also happens to be home to critical pieces of Southwest history, including an estimated 30,000 habitation sites, field houses, kivas, shrines, artifact scatters, sacred springs and masonry towers that date as far back as the Paleo-Indian period (10,000–14,500 years ago).��

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�鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder PhD candidate Chilton Tippin (left) spent months with farmers whose livelihoods depend on the Rio Conchos, a tributary of the Rio Grande in Chihuahua, Mexico. (Photo: Eduardo "Lalo" Talamantes)

But the monument’s location in the high desert makes the landscape, and these historical sites, especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In the summer of 2025,��Chilton Tippin, a �鶹��Ѱ�������anthropology PhD candidate, helped map out exactly how warmer weather and heavy rainstorms could impact these culturally significant structures.��

The resulting , which was done with Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) colleagues�� and��, was published in January 2026. The project was funded through the Rapid Climate Assessment Program from �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder’s��.��

The assessment laid out projections for CANM’s climate future—including many more days with temperatures above 90°F, more days of drought that could lead to increased wildfire risk and more intense and frequent extreme-rainfall events that can cause flooding and erosion.

“This is kind of the initial stepping stone that will hopefully catalyze discussions between the Bureau of Land Management and tribal partners to begin the long planning process for how they're going to adapt the landscape to absorb shocks from climate change,” says Tippin.�� ��

Projections and partnerships��

To create the projections in the report, Tippin worked from information provided by archaeologists at CANM that pinpointed the exact location of known historical sites. He then used�� to produce climate projections from 20 different models. He compared those projections to literature covering similar projections to come up with general metrics such as how much daily temperatures might increase and how many days the area might go without rain (thus increasing wildfire potential).�� ��

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At CANM, climate projections show that heat indices will register above 90°F an average of 35 days per year in the 2050s (up from 6 days in the 1990s). (Graphic: climatetoolbox.org)��

“We found that most of the stone towers are embedded in pinyon-juniper habitats,” says Tippin. If the climate models and the literature are all saying that the pinyon-juniper forests will be more vulnerable to fire, he says, then they have a better idea of the threats those towers are likely to be facing over the next 50 to 100 years.��

“Then CANM can make climate adaptation and forest management decisions so that they can fulfill their mission of protecting not just stone towers, but the kivas, and wiki-ups, and room blocks, too.”��

Those decisions would not be made, however, without meaningful input from CANM’s 26 tribal partners whose ancestral presence is reflected in thousands of habitation sites across the landscape.��

In cases like these, that knowledge is imperative to take into account. “These are places where their ancestors dwell,” says Tippin. “These heritage sites are part of this living cultural landscape.”��

In fact, in the Pueblo worldview, these structures are also deeply spiritual places. “For many Pueblo people, the towers themselves, as well as the materials and rocks within them, are imbued with sentience,” says Tippin. “They're alive, and they themselves have spirit. And the natural course of things is for them to go through processes of decay and reintegration into the ecology.” As a result, a Pueblo person whom Tippin consulted suggested that adapting the habitats in which structures are embedded would be a more culturally appropriate approach than directly shoring up the structures themselves.

Exploring climate-caused conflict

Tippin was tapped to lead the CANM assessment not just for his social science research skills but also for his previous work with indigenous people in the Southwest—much of which he did for his dissertation (completed Spring 2026).��

While Tippin’s PhD research is not directly focused on the climate change impacts of historical sites, it still very much explores its impacts on humans, especially in relation to water insecurity. His interest in water interactions stemmed from his childhood in El Paso, Texas, where he spent a lot of time playing in the Rio Grande. Tippin’s experiences with the river and other natural landscapes inspired a lifelong desire to examine, and tell stories, about human interactions with nature.��

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Chilton Tippin spent several days touring��Canyons of the Ancients National Monument’s significant historical sites, including Moose Tower, which was built by Ancestral Puebloans in the late 1200s. In 2020, an extreme rainfall event caused the tower’s west wall (not pictured) to collapse.��The storm’s timing and intensity are characteristic of convective rainfall, a type of extreme weather event increasingly linked to climate change in the Southwest. (Photo: Chilton Tippin)

Tippin spent his first few post-college years doing just that, working as a reporter in Wyoming after earning his undergraduate degree in journalism. “For the longest time, I've wanted to tell stories about people and how they interact with the environment, with a specific lens on environmental disputes and conflict,” he says.��

So, for his doctoral research, Tippin returned to the Rio Grande and its watershed. The river now sees markedly less flow—thanks in part to a warming climate and diminishing snowpack in the Rocky Mountains—and he wanted to explore the ways those low flows are affecting people who rely on it in one way or another.��

To do so Tippin spent a year at three field sites that are all hydrologically connected to the Rio Grande. He first spent several months in Taos, NM, where he teamed up with Puebloans working to protect their traditional uses of water.��

Next was El Paso and Juárez, Mexico, where the Rio Grande has become completely militarized. He spent time with the people of the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo who have a ceremonial relationship with the river, as well as first responders helping deliver water to migrants. “That piece of the dissertation looked at the juxtaposition of this river, which is the bringer of hope and life to the desert and a ceremonial site for the Tigua people,” Tippin says. “How is this same river also the site of widespread, racialized migrant death and violence?”

The final months he spent with farmers along the Rio Conchos in Chihuahua, Mexico, where the river sustains farmers’ agricultural output. In this final site, specifically, Tippin saw how drought and climate change are already causing civil unrest.��

In 2020 a rebellion arose among farmers there who were protesting�� that requires Mexico to deliver a certain amount of water from the Rio Conchos to Texas.��

“I was in Chihuahua amid that backdrop and came to understand how this megadrought is insinuating itself into people's day-to-day lives,” he says. It was amazing to see how these farmers could mobilize themselves to protect their agricultural water, he says.�� ��

Continuing the work��

Tippin’s next steps will be to pursue his interest in the human dimensions of climate change�� through a postdoctoral appointment with the U.S. Geological Survey. He’ll work closely again with the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center on applied climate-adaptation social science projects.��

Part of this postdoctoral work will be to assess how past research projects have been executed in the field; another part is to help ensure agencies like the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife have access to the latest climate science when they’re making decisions about land and water management.��

In the meantime, he hopes that the climate assessment he performed at CANM can be used to help evaluate similar natural and historic sites.��

“It's a niche area within the world of climate change adaptation research,” he says. “But it's just another indication of how climate change is this all-encompassing threat multiplier that affects a lot of things that people find to be valuable.” 


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