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Michela Savigano (Geography PhD Student): Greenland ice shelf weakened by estuary ahead of recent calving event

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 19:22:57 +0000

Michela Savigano (Geography PhD Student): Greenland ice shelf weakened by estuary ahead of recent calving event Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 09/21/2026 - 13:22

Article text copied for archival purposes.

Greenland ice shelf weakened by estuary ahead of recent calving event

by Stephanie Maltarich

Published Monday, September 21st, 2026

CIRES scientists use satellites to uncover how and when the first known ice shelf estuary formed on the Greenland Ice Sheet

In August 2026, an iceberg the size of Manhattan broke away from the Petermann Ice Shelf in northern Greenland. It was the glacier's largest calving event since 2020.

Long before the breakup, CIRES scientists were developing a new method to understand the planet's first known ice shelf estuary on the Petermann Ice Shelf. The estuary — where salt water from the ocean and fresh water from a surface meltwater river mix — was discovered in 2021. New CIRES-led research, published today in The Cryosphere, explains how and when the estuary formed — something no one has studied until now.

“For the first time, we were able to measure how quickly the river cut into the ice shelf to form the estuary, which revealed more complex estuary behavior than was previously suggested,” said Michela Savignano, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Geography and CIRES PhD student and lead author of the study. “We did this using a new method for calculating the elevation of the river channel above sea level during the melt season from satellite imagery”

The novel research may help explain the August calving event.

“We think the process of estuary forming and reforming over multiple melt seasons weakened the ice shelf due to the loading and unloading of ocean water, and potentially contributed to the calving event that happened in August of this year,” said Alison Banwell, research scientist in CIRES’ Earth Science and Observation Center and co-author of the study.

The NASA-funded research builds on the 2021 study led by one of the study’s co-authors, Alexandra Boghosian, which confirmed the first ice shelf estuary using high-resolution satellite images. The photos revealed chunks of sea ice floating up the river channel onto the Petermann Ice Shelf. Understanding the estuary requires understanding supraglacial rivers — rivers that flow on the surface of ice shelves and empty into the ocean.

During summer months, when air temperatures are above freezing, glaciers and surface snow melt and water pools on the surface, creating instability and making them more susceptible to collapse, like the famous Larsen B ice shelf breakup in 2002. Yet rivers that flow from these pools can reduce pressure and weight by carrying water from the ice shelf into the ocean.

“We’ve known for a couple of decades that lakes can be harmful to the overall health of an ice shelf, whereas rivers can actually be beneficial,” Banwell said. “Our new research suggests that estuaries can also be harmful.”

The supraglacial river on Petermann began like any other, but over time it cut deep into the ice, eventually dropping below sea level at its mouth. The authors measured the river’s incision rate from the surface of the river all the way down to the bottom of the channel. It formed because the river incised below sea level, enabling warmer, salty ocean water and river water to mix and flow backwards into the river.

“We’re using satellite data not to just look at where the water is and how deep it is, but also to look at elevation change over time, and how quickly the river is cutting into the ice surface,” Savignano said.

The researchers looked at satellite images of the estuary from 2013 to 2018 and concluded it formed, disappeared, and reformed repeatedly during subsequent summers. It first formed in 2014, but then it disappeared when all of the surface water on the ice shelf drained or froze. It formed again late in the 2016 melt season; this cyclical pattern continued through 2018, when a crack in the ice perpendicular to the ice flow cut off the river upstream of the estuary.

Instability caused by estuaries could lead to more calving events, an increasing challenge in the polar regions as the planet warms. Specifically in Antarctica, where about 75 percent of the continent is surrounded by ice shelves.

“We think estuaries may become more common on other ice shelves as they melt and thin, which they’re going to do at increasing rates in the future,” Banwell said. “It will be easier for a surface river to incise down to sea level.”

The research will help scientists monitor and predict when and where estuaries may show up in the future.

“Only five ice shelves remain in Greenland, including Petermann, and estuaries could make them more prone to break-up,” Savignano said. “In Antarctica, estuaries could begin forming within 30 years, weakening ice shelves that currently play a substantial role in mitigating future sea level rise. Our research will help us to understand when and where that is most likely to happen.”

The research was supported by NASA and the prestigious National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.

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Jessica Finlay Quoted in USA Today: The surprising new way to find friends and true love? Your Costco card

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:55:01 +0000

Jessica Finlay Quoted in USA Today: The surprising new way to find friends and true love? Your Costco card Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 09/21/2026 - 08:55

Article text copied for archival purposes.

The surprising new way to find friends and true love? Your Costco card

by Jessica Guynn

Updated September 16th, 2026

With their busy schedules, Los Angeles besties and social media influencers Analyse Talavera and Carmen Rene Smith don’t always spend as much time together as they’d like. Their solution? Tag-teaming their Costco errands.

The outings double as catch-up sessions while they load their carts with everything from tins of spicy albacore and protein bowls to Neutrogena makeup wipes and paper towels.

"Especially in this economy, instead of going out and dropping $200 on dinner – which Analyse and I are good for – we go to Costco and stock up on meal prep for the week and then top it off with a $3 fro yo," Smith said. "You really can't beat that."

Arizona couple Lisa Bayless and Jeff Stitt share the aisles of Costco, too. For their 18 years of marriage, they rarely shop alone.

Stitt pushes and unloads the heavy cart while Bayless guides the way with their list, checking off household staples like bottled water, sugar and toilet paper.

"It's sort of like date night, but it’s an afternoon date with a purpose," Bayless said.

On the surface, Costco is a popular spot for Americans to stretch their grocery dollar, but it also feeds a deeply human need. As physical community spaces disappear and social bonds fray, the warehouse giant has emerged as an unexpected anchor for connection.

Take San Jose, California, mother of four Alyssa Munoz swaps the local park for a different kind of playground on Sunday mornings. She meets up with other parents at Costco to push side-by-side carts − one for the kids, one for the groceries − before wrapping up the playdate at the food court.

"They get samples, lunch and ice cream and we get our groceries done," Munoz said.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, says socializing is a "very overlooked, but also very important" reason why people shop at Costco.

"While Costco’s primary purpose is as a place to stock up on products, it has also become something of a social destination," Saunders said.

Searching for connection at Costco

Sociologists call it a "third place" – Ray Oldenburg's term for the parks, barbershops and libraries where people build community outside home and work. Increasingly, that gathering spot is Costco.

But these communal destinations are slowly vanishing from American life. Sprawling suburbs leave little room for walkable hubs while endless screen time – from TikTok scrolling to Netflix binges – has replaced real-world connection. As attendance at churches and civic clubs declines, Americans are left feeling isolated.

The fallout is a national loneliness crisis. Federal data shows face-to-face socializing has plummeted since tracking began in 2003, with Americans spending just 35 minutes a day connecting in person, down 15% from a decade ago.

So Americans are searching for new places to reclaim that sense of belonging.

For decades, the cultural ideal was "Cheers" – the neighborhood bar where "everybody knows your name." Today, that coveted "third place" is just as likely to be a climbing gym or yoga studio, an independent bookstore, a pickleball court, or, yes, Costco warehouses.

"They're typically physically accessible, relatively low-cost, low-pressure hub/hangouts, socially welcoming to a diversity of folks, and multigenerational – all key 'third place' attributes,' said Jessica Finlay, an assistant professor of geography at the �鶹��Ѱ��.

Take Wil Cid, a card-carrying member since 1988 – back when Costco was Price Club. For Cid, Costco isn't just a wholesale warehouse; it's his happy place.

Visiting three to four times a week, he is such a fixture at local stores that Costco employees know him by name. Once, upon returning from a vacation, staffers stopped him every few feet, asking where he had been. Friends routinely text his wife, Vivian, to report sightings.

"I tell them I’m not surprised," Vivian said. "He’s there all the time."

That devotion led Vivian to organize a surprise party at the food court for Wil’s 68th birthday, leaning into an obsession that she doesn’t really share or entirely understand.

"I like Costco in an average, normal, healthy way," she said.

From malls to McDonald's, America's meetups

Of course, Costco is not the first commercial space to function as a town square. According to Richard Kyte, a professor of ethics at Viterbo University and author of "Finding Your Third Place," corporate America has a long history of engineering social hubs.

In the 1950s and 1960s, suburban malls were explicitly designed as community cornerstones, complete with bustling food courts, movie theaters, arcades, and a smorgasbord of shops.

Fast-food staples like McDonald’s became a low-cost refuge where seniors lingered over morning coffee, students gathered after school and young kids frolicked in play areas.

Eventually, Starbucks revolutionized the concept, pairing comfy seating with free Wi-Fi to market itself as the definitive destination between home and work.

After an aggressive, pandemic-era pivot to drive-thrus, mobile pickups, and delivery app orders, the coffee giant is trying to recapture its roots under its "Back to Starbucks" strategy, actively renovating cafes with inviting couches and extra power outlets and even returning to ceramic mugs, softer lighting, and wood paneling to convince Americans to sit down and stay a while.

How Costco became a 'third place'

With its fluorescent lighting, concrete floors, and industrial shelving, Costco might seem like an unlikely setting for leisurely socializing. But the retail powerhouse is uniquely positioned to serve as a third place, according to Kyte.

For one thing, it is woven into the very fabric of American life. As a ubiquitous fixture across the country, the chain provides a familiar, predictable environment that makes millions of members feel instantly at home.

According to consumer analytics firm Numerator, roughly 72.3 million households shopped at Costco over the past year. Even more striking, over a quarter of all U.S. households are dedicated regulars, visiting at least 12 times a year.

On average, a Costco shopper makes 31 trips annually, spending $99 per visit for a total annual outlay of $3,043 – figures that comfortably eclipse competitors like Sam’s Club and BJ’s, Numerator said.

Once inside the warehouse, shoppers tend to linger, enticed by a potent cocktail of comforting routine, retail adrenaline and cheap eats.

Numerator estimates that members made 144 million trips for food-court fare last year, effectively putting Costco on the same scale as major regional fast-food chains like In-N-Out and Zaxbys.

And, according to foot traffic analytics firm Placer.ai, the average Costco visit lasts 15 minutes longer than a trip to a traditional grocery store and outpaces other big-box superstores by roughly seven minutes.

"For many shoppers, a trip to Costco is an experience to savor and enjoy," Elizabeth Lafontaine, director of research at Placer.ai, said.

Building community one hot dog at a time

Once or twice a quarter, University of California, Davis students Sharon Hwang, Katrina Le and Steven Zhang pile dozens of classmates into a caravan of cars and head to the nearest Costco about 15 minutes away.

Their college club, which unites students over a shared childhood love for all things Costco, has become an unexpected antidote to campus isolation. By organizing these massive shopping adventures and food court lunches, the group has fostered tight-knit friendships on a campus of tens of thousands.

"If something small like a Costco trip can help someone meet new friends or feel a little bit connected, then I feel like we accomplished something," Hwang said.

What began as a casual weekly lunch for Jaxon Smith and his friends quickly evolved into a lifeline for local men.

Gathering at the food court once or twice a week, Smith’s group frequently crossed paths with other acquaintances. But it was the sight of so many men eating alone that sparked an idea: What if a trip to Costco could be an intentional way to combat male isolation?

Last November, Smith posted a video on Instagram, officially launching the Men’s Mental Health Costco Club. The weekly meetup became an instant success, drawing crowds so large it has since expanded well beyond the warehouse walls.

"Mental health is often portrayed in a negative light,” said Smith, who grew up going to Costco with his father and siblings. Through the club, he aims to flip that script and "just help men feel less lonely."

How 'Camp Costco' brings people together

The ultimate testament to Costco's power to bring people together began more than a quarter-century ago in Brentwood, Tennessee. Two friends – a World War II B-24 pilot and an Army veteran from the Cold War era – started meeting every Friday in the food court over hot dogs. Before long, veterans from the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf Wars joined their ranks at "Camp Costco."

Officially known as the Middle Tennessee Veterans Support Group, the weekly assembly provides local service members with the vital camaraderie they first forged in uniform.

Paul Napoli, who served in the Marines before the Vietnam War, says he started going in 2010 when the group had just 10 regulars. Today, the roster has expanded to a couple hundred members, with 40 to 60 veterans gathering each week.

"Nobody cares what rank you were or what service you were in. Everybody mixes together," he said. "It’s just a wonderful group of people."

That makes Costco something exceedingly unusual: a gathering place where Americans of all backgrounds feel at home in a deeply polarized country.

Costco has a vested interest in preserving that sense of belonging. With membership fees driving nearly two-thirds of Costco’s profits in 2025, belonging fuels its business model. Tellingly, its in-house magazine is called "Costco Connection."

'Clubbing for married folks'

Going to Costco has become one of America's collective rituals, according to sociologist Randall Collins. For many, this shared time roaming the aisles is deeply personal. Collins’s wife regularly catches up with friends over food-court hot dogs, and he knows couples who first met in the wine aisle.

In fact, Costco has emerged as an unlikely romantic spot. Couples call it "clubbing for married folks." They graze on free samples, browse jewelry or big-screen TVs and top it off with chicken bakes or pizza slices. The "Kirkland Signature date night" is so popular that some couples now spend engagements, anniversaries, and Valentine's Day at the warehouse.

The allure crosses over to celebrities, too. Meta cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have been spotted browsing electronics in Mountain View, California, while Michelin-starred chef José Andrés routinely tags along on his wife’s Costco trips to scout their impressive French Bordeaux selection. Country star Russell Dickerson and his wife, Kailey, even leave their boys with grandma for warehouse dates, with Kailey joking that any kid-free excursion – especially a Costco run – feels romantic.

Perhaps no couple can claim more miles logged in the name of warehouse devotion than New York residents David and Susan Schwartz.

Bonded by a mutual obsession with the brand, the pair traveled over 300,000 miles to visit more than 350 warehouses in 14 countries to write their book, “The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z.” Today, they still relish dates at their local store. Today, they still relish dates at their local store.

Pick up in the frozen food aisle

When it comes to romance, "Love Island" has nothing on Costco.

Margot Schein, a self-described "Costco nerd," was browsing a dating app when she spotted the profile of Jules Parris, who listed Costco as a favorite.

Intrigued, Schein reached out, and the two met at a San Diego warehouse. They spent hours strolling the aisles, grazing on free samples and dining in the food court. Parris admits she forgot almost everything on her grocery list that day because she couldn’t take her eyes off Schein.

After a cross-country move for graduate school, the couple returned to that exact San Diego store on the third anniversary of their meet-cute to get hitched. With the warehouse manager's blessing, they exchanged vows under an archway by the checkout stands.

Today, they still preserve their Sunday morning shopping ritual. "Costco literally brought us together," Schein said. "People are like, 'You must really love capitalism,' and I’m like, 'That’s not it. I love this one store.'"

Robert Bonilla’s Costco love story began with a similar twist of fate.

Days before Christmas in 2013, Bonilla was navigating a crowded frozen food aisle when he locked eyes with a woman wearing cowboy boots.

Years later, he proposed in that very same aisle, attaching a marriage proposal note to a package of frozen shrimp. The couple eventually wed after-hours inside the store, saying "I do" as employees drove forklifts and restocked shelves in the background.

Though the marriage didn’t last, Bonilla’s relationship with Costco did.

Now single and a still familiar regular at his local Santa Maria, California, warehouse, he hasn't ruled out a sequel.

"You never know," Bonilla laughed. "I shop there all the time. In fact, I’m going there today."

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Geography Postdoc and Research Scientist Showcase Colloquium

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:32:00 +0000

Geography Postdoc and Research Scientist Showcase Colloquium Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 09/21/2026 - 08:32

Speakers:

Dr. Sean Burns (Geography)

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 measure wind, temperature, water vapor, and carbon dioxide.

Dr. Yu Peng (ESIIL)

Yu Peng is an agroecologist dedicated to evaluating and scaling nature-based solutions in managed terrestrial ecosystems to foster ecosystem resilience and services. His research combines field measurements with global synthesis to quantify soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration, greenhouse gas (GHG) dynamics, and nitrogen leaching across diverse agricultural landscapes.

Prior to joining �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Yu earned his Ph.D. in Applied Earth and Environmental Sciences from Indiana University, where he evaluated the climate mitigation potential of cover crops in close collaboration with local farmers, regional conservation agencies, and the USGS. He also holds the joint dual M.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Copenhagen and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a B.S. in GIS from Central China Normal University.

At ESIIL, Yu focuses on leveraging AI-powered frameworks to harmonize multi-source datasets spanning lab assays, field observations, literature syntheses, and satellites images. His research aims to scale agricultural nature-based solutions from regional to continental levels and translate global syntheses into mechanistic insights, delivering scalable, science-backed strategies for sustainable agroecosystem functioning.

Dr. Kai Kopecky (ESIIL)

Kai is a community and marine ecologist and earned his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was involved with the NSF Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research (MCR LTER) site. He is interested in how new disturbance regimes, brought on by global change, affect the capacity for ecosystems to recover after a disturbance occurs (i.e., ecosystem resilience). In particular, he studies how the dead, remnant structures of foundation species (a type of material legacy; e.g., dead trees, coral skeletons, bivalve shells, etc.) affect ecological processes that drive ecosystem recovery. He combines remote sensing techniques (photogrammetry, structure from motion) with AI-assisted image analysis, as well as time series analysis and mathematical modeling to understand how material legacies of foundation species are being altered under global change, and the impacts this will have on the resilience of contemporary ecosystems.

Dr. Karl Andraczek (ESIIL)

Karl is an ecologist who uses trait-based approaches and causal inference techniques to study the relationship between plant diversity and ecosystem functioning. His interests span both the above- and belowground world of plants, and he is driven by the motivation to find nature-based solutions to extreme climatic events like drought. Before coming to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, he received his PhD in Ecology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and worked as a postdoc at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), where he was PI of an independent research project using belowground plant traits to understand the climate resilience of grasslands. He is excited to collaborate around climate resilience, biodiversity–ecosystem functioning and their feedbacks, and trait ecology.

Dr. Wyatt Million (ESIIL)

Wyatt is a marine ecologist focusing on tropical coral reefs, acclimatization and adaptation to climate change, and environmental variability's impact on species physiology and distribution. Wyatt received his doctorate at the University of Southern California studying phenotypic plasticity of coral in the Florida Keys. Most recently as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Technology Sydney, he explored the consequences of marine deoxygenation for tropical coral on the Great Barrier Reef.

At ESIIL, Wyatt will focus on characterizing dissolved oxygen dynamics on coral reefs around the world to find patterns associated with coral bleaching, reef health, and species distributions. This work will combine a patchwork of dissolved oxygen, temperature, and coral ecological datasets to create tools for assessing deoxygenation on reefs.

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Jessica Finlay received $3.7 million grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA)

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:31:20 +0000

Jessica Finlay received $3.7 million grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA) Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 09/21/2026 - 08:31

Congratulations to Assistant Professor of Geography and Institute of Behavioral Science Faculty Fellow, Dr. Jessica Finlay for receiving $3.7 million grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA) for her project!

The project is titled “Life Course Cognability: A Mixed Methods Study of Neighborhoods and Cognitive Health.” The five-year project will examine how neighborhood services, amenities and hazards influence cognitive health and dementia risk across adulthood.

In addition to this grant, Jessica Finlay has also received the Gateway Exposome Coordinating Center pilot grant and the Center to Accelerate Population Research in Aging pilot grant.

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Jennifer Balch in Boise State Public Radio - NPR: Researchers, other experts join forces to tackle the problem of fast, destructive blazes

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:24:29 +0000

Jennifer Balch in Boise State Public Radio - NPR: Researchers, other experts join forces to tackle the problem of fast, destructive blazes Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 09/08/2026 - 10:24

Article text copied for archival purposes.

Researchers, other experts join forces to tackle the problem of fast, destructive blazes

Boise State Public Radio News

by Murphy Woodhouse

Published September 3, 2026 at 5:07 PM MDT

From Spokane, Wash. to Pueblo County, Colo., fast-moving fires have again wreaked havoc in neighborhoods this summer. Now, a network of scientists, fire professionals and other experts have joined forces to seek research-based solutions to the problem.

�鶹��Ѱ�� fire scientist Jennifer Balch argues that widespread thinking about the wildfire crisis is wrong in some basic ways. In a 2024 paper, she and co-authors argued that it isn’t the increasing size of fires that’s threatening homes and lives: it’s their speed.

In a recent two-decade period, wildfires that grew more than 4,000 acres in a day were less than 3% of the roughly 60,000 fires they analyzed. But that small portion accounted for nearly 90% of structures damaged or destroyed.

“We need to shift away from thinking that ‘big’ is the problem because it's not. It's actually the small, fast-moving fires that are the ones that are destroying most of our homes,” she told the Mountain West News Bureau this week. “They're also mostly in grassland systems, they're not in the middle of the woods.”

A paradigmatic example is Colorado’s 2021 Marshall Fire, a wind-driven but relatively small blaze that destroyed more than 1,000 suburban homes in an afternoon just before New Year’s.

“Fires are also getting faster, which is really compromising firefighting abilities and suppression teams,” she added.

On average, the maximum fire growth rate jumped by just shy of 250% across the West, with even sharper accelerations seen in parts of California, Idaho, Washington and Oregon, according to the 2024 paper.

To help inform policy responses, Balch and her colleagues recently launched the National Science Foundation-funded Fast Fire Network. The inaugural meeting was held this week.

“We really want to build a larger collaborative community because this is an all-hands-on-deck moment when we need everybody across sectors to be thinking about how we solve the fast fire problem,” she said.

Some 175 people representing academia, industry, nonprofits and government joined the virtual event, a level of interest Balch called “exciting.”

Moving forward, participants will work in smaller teams to develop new tools and data-driven policy responses, Balch said. At the end of the five-year effort, they’ll present the solutions they develop.

Because fast-moving blazes so often overwhelm the ability of structure and wildland firefighters to respond, Balch said that many of the most impactful solutions will focus on resilience, not emergency response.

“We need to be thinking about building and hardening homes, making communities more fire resilient, coming up with evacuation plans well in advance of any fires starting,” she said. “And, we also need to use fire to fight fire.”

“We need to deal with it before a fire even starts,” she added. “Because once you have a fast-moving fire, it's too late.”

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.

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Sara Meerow in Forbes: How To Improve Heat Action Plans

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:08:50 +0000

Sara Meerow in Forbes: How To Improve Heat Action Plans Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 09/08/2026 - 09:08

Article text copied for archival purposes.

How To Improve Heat Action Plans

By Christine Ro, Contributor.

Published: Sep 05, 2026, 07:10am EDT

Even now, after the 11 hottest years on record due to climate change, most cities and regions don’t have formal plans for extreme heat. This may be due to a lack of resources or political will, or because extreme heat is bundled into other health planning (if it’s addressed at all).

“Heat action plans are still really geographically uneven,” notes Sara Meerow, a geographer at the �鶹��Ѱ��. “There are whole regions of the world that essentially don’t have any heat action plans that we’re aware of.”

That’s a major omission. Heat action plans are linked to fewer deaths during extreme heat in India and more changes in behavior in Nepal, for example.

But despite their power to save lives, these plans are far from perfect. Here are a few broad ways to strengthen them.

Figure Out Organization

Meerow coauthored a recent analysis of 34 heat action plans, published by the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Disaster Preparedness Center (GDPC). One key finding may seem dull, but it’s critical: all too often, weaknesses in heat response planning come down to bureaucratic divisions. For instance, an urban development department responsible for maintaining trees might not be talking to a public health department responsible for monitoring hospital admissions during heatwaves. They might not be considering (or even reading) each other’s heat-related plans.

“If you’re not referencing the goals or information in another plan, there’s a chance that the actions that you’re proposing may not be in line with them, or might even potentially conflict,” Meerow points out. “Better integration and connections between plans is something that we really emphasize.” It’s a finding that came up again and again in the research.

Some places have appointed chief heat officers. Others have formed committees with representatives of different government agencies that are all relevant to heat. There’s not yet enough research on what works best, Meerow says. But what is clear is that someone needs to be coordinating activity.

Plug The Gaps

There are some persistent holes in heat action plans. One is mental health. Like heat, mental health issues can be hard to visualize. The two can aggravate each other in ways that often go unacknowledged in policy. One study of 143 heat action plans found that while 57% mentioned mental health, this was mostly in a superficial way. Only 14% had specific activities related to the mental health effects of heat.

There’s another way. Community mental health programs in Pakistan have stepped up their monitoring and support during heatwaves, including helping with home ventilation and hydration. This has led, for instance, to early intervention to avoid hospitalization with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is associated with especially magnified risks of death during heatwaves. Scaling up this kind of community support into formal heat planning could help protect many more vulnerable people.

Connect Goals To Actions

Meerow stresses the importance of communities first deciding on their goals, then matching the information they collect and the strategies they plan to those goals. “That sounds really basic, but actually it’s not always how plans are developed.”

For instance, if a city’s goal is to reduce heat deaths, it would need to figure out who’s most at risk and why, and then how to most effectively cut mortality. If its goal is to improve liveability for everyone, the planning could look quite different.

This action planning is best informed by the experiences of the people the plans are seeking to support. In Delhi, according to an independent investigation of the 2026 heat action plan, “The State’s picture of what a worker needs was assembled without asking a worker.”

Actually Track Them

Remarkably, most places with heat action strategies aren’t actually evaluating whether they work. Essentially, they’re hoping for the best; relying on anecdotal reports; or simply counting up how many activities they run, not whether they’re actually making people safer.

“One of the key findings from this study is that it’s really challenging to actually measure effectiveness,” Meerow summarizes. “We do not have sufficient evidence of the comparative benefit of these different strategies.”

Richer governments may not be tracking heat-health deaths. Poorer governments may not be tracking all deaths, from any cause. In all cases, unmeasured results don’t make for the best use of scarce funds.

Vienna’s approach was one of the better ones she and her colleagues studied, Meerow says. The city evaluates which measures were implemented and how well they were perceived to work, using a simple traffic-light system. Then the city revises the plan annually based on the evaluation. It’s a time-consuming and imperfect process; perceptions of effectiveness are not the same as actual effectiveness. Still, this is an improvement on most heat action plans.

Plan For The Longer Term

The GDPC report found that most of the heat response plans focused on immediate response. This might take the form of relatively inexpensive measures like warnings or cooling centers, for instance. These measures have limitations, though. Heat warnings often go ignored, for instance by people who think others are vulnerable, but not them. Cooling centers can sit nearly empty when they’re poorly publicized, far from the people who most need them, or just, well, boring.

Meerow understands the impulse to reach for the simple tools first. “As a first step, I think this makes a lot of sense, but of course, as we look to a hotter future, it’s also important to think about long-term heat mitigation.”

One possibility is to turn an emergency measure into a continuous offering. Abu Md. Zubair, a project officer with the anticipatory action team of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS), reports that Khulna, Bangladesh is considering building some permanent cooling stations in heat hotspots, such as near bus stops. This comes in the wake of feedback from users who found temporary cooling centers useful, but wanted many more; and for these to be activated at 39°C, not just 41°C. BDRCS cooling stations are simple, but 2–4°C cooler than the outside exposed area, Zubair says. This can make a big difference.

Even more enduring changes would be to housing, public infrastructure, education and preparedness systems.

Consider Cash

Even the best infrastructure and health-system plans in the world can’t get around the fact that often, people on limited incomes can’t afford to stop working or seek out medical care, even in dangerous conditions. One solution could be simply to strengthen those incomes ahead of heatwaves. Small cash transfers could be especially helpful for instance to gig workers in Indian cities, who might otherwise need to endure punishing temperatures to meet their daily needs.

Zubair has a long history with the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement. He started volunteering as a teenager, after he saw some older students volunteering in flooded parts of north Bengal. It stoked his curiosity, seeing how competent they seemed. He realized that volunteering could be a win-win: “I can develop my organizational skills, and I can also help the people.”

Twenty years later and now working for BDRCS, floods aren’t the only disaster concerning Zubair. Heat is increasingly a concern in Bangladesh, which is facing an extra 37.5 days per year of heat stress due to climate change. Even in the last five years, Zubair has noticed the weather getting more extreme. From power outages to melting roads, the summer is getting harder to endure.

Starting in 2024, following heat-action planning that Zubair was involved in, BDRCS trialled cash distribution during extreme heat. In 2024 they made transfers to outdoor workers in Dhaka, and in 2025 in Rajshahi, they topped up the government’s usual small transfers to elderly people by 2,400 taka (approx. US$ 20). This work depended on volunteers fanning out to identify vulnerable people, inform them of the forthcoming payments, and address any issues like mobile payments.

After receiving the money, it was most common for the elderly recipients to spend it on medical needs, which can be intensified during extreme heat. Others used it to buy food or adjust homes, for instance to limit scorching sunlight.

“I believe that cash is the best action compared to any other type of support, because for heatwaves households are having different types of problems,” Zubair says. “If you can deliver cash to the people, they can decide their own problems and solve their own problems.”

It’s not a perfect solution, of course. It can be time-consuming to identify vulnerable people, and there’s a risk of creating resentment when some people receive extra help while their neighbors are left out.

But for BDRCS, “cash is always a priority,” Zubair says. “There are people who are very much suffering from the heatwaves, and they need assistance because they don’t have any other options. If they don’t earn today, they have to be starving today.”

Fund Them Properly

This is the hardest needle to thread. In Bangladesh, cash support during heatwaves has depended on international funding.

In the U.S., political shifts have meant a loss of momentum and money for heat response in the last couple of years. Scottsdale, Arizona has reported being unable to track the implementation of its heat actions because of limited federal funding.

Meerow has seen firsthand the impacts of cut-off funds. In 2024, she and colleagues established a center that planned to work with communities over a couple of years to develop strategies for heat resilience. The following year, the assigned federal funding for that was cancelled. The team was able to publish a toolkit, but not to work with the communities fully. Other cancellations of federal funding have meant an end to programs planting trees in cities, addressing heat-related illness in outdoor workers, and reducing the summer energy bills of low-income families.

But some strategies don’t require a lot of resources. The installation of water ATMs in Nepalgunj, Nepal has been a cheap and apparently successful action.

Meerow and her colleagues recognized that a universal list of heat-action indicators just wouldn’t work across diverse contexts. For instance, it might be important in a rural area to track deaths of livestock during extreme heat. In contrast, in Cape Town’s very unequal geography, ambulance teams don’t go into informal settlements with poor roads. So counting emergency calls would miss a huge proportion of city residents, who are already spatially and economically excluded.

“The data infrastructure, the resources, the capacity are just so different in these different communities,” Meerow comments. Instead, she and colleagues have created a spreadsheet with a variety of options, piloted with cities in Austria, Nepal, South Africa and the U.S. The tool will be communicated to Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, in the hope that cities will take up this general tool and develop and track their own indicators.

Meanwhile, governments continue to develop their heat action plans. For example, the national heat action plan for Bangladesh “is currently at a very early stage of development,” Zubair reports. Around the world, now is the time to be learning and planning for the next heat season.

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Jessica Finlay in the Washington Post: What’s fueling loneliness—and polarization—in America today?

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:32:31 +0000

Jessica Finlay in the Washington Post: What’s fueling loneliness—and polarization—in America today? Gabriela Rocha Sales Fri, 09/04/2026 - 10:32

Text of article copied for archival purposes.

What’s fueling loneliness—and polarization—in America today?

The loss of third places is one reason.

September 2, 2026

By Juhie Bhatia, The Nation

Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice.

In 2011, Richard Kyte, an ethics professor at Viterbo University, noticed that two of his colleagues were growing increasingly isolated. So he suggested they meet every Wednesday at 6:30 am for breakfast at a café five blocks from their university in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Fifteen years later, the meetups have continued and expanded, now happening at a tavern after the café closed. Some of the most reluctant participants are now the most engaged. Even as the group has changed, the opportunity for connection has remained.

“A couple colleagues that started with me years ago, our friendship has really deepened,” said Kyte, noting that he’s also become good friends with those who joined later. “When you’re talking about adding a close friend, that’s a huge change in the quality of your life.”

Places like Kyte’s local tavern have long offered more than food and drink. Known as “third places,” these informal gathering spaces outside home and work—from cafés and barber shops to local parks and libraries—can serve as hubs for social interaction, community ties, and civic engagement. But across the United States, many of these places are disappearing, transforming, or giving way to large corporate chains, some of which may prioritize efficiency and turnover over giving people a space to linger. That shift comes as Americans are feeling increasingly lonely, divided, and distrustful.

Kyte, author of Finding Your Third Place, said third places are not only declining overall but also changing. “They’re changing their character. The old places that were common third places are dying pretty rapidly,” he said. “Where do I find a third place? That’s a question I get a lot.”

First coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, third places are a crucial form of social infrastructure. Research shows that they can foster belonging and social cohesion, as they offer opportunities for casual, low-stakes interactions. Regular engagement in these spaces has also been linked to lower loneliness and stress and better physical, mental, social, and cognitive health.

“Covid brought a greater awareness to third places, to how vital they are for everyday health and well-being,” said Jessica Finlay, an assistant professor of geography at the �鶹��Ѱ��. ”They can be a social glue that connects us, and it’s really important for not just individual health but collective health.”

Yet fewer people are visiting these spaces, particularly since the pandemic. A national survey found that 54 percent of Americans now regularly spend time in such places, down from 67 percent in 2019.

Rising costs, remote work, busy schedules, and growing e-commerce are some of the reasons these places have become harder to sustain and fit into daily life. People are also socializing and communicating less. In 2025, 30 percent of Americans did so on an average day, down from 38 percent a decade earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Part of that may be because there are more ways to connect and be entertained without leaving home. Social media, gaming communities, group chats, and other digital spaces have moved more social interaction online. Finlay said these digital third places can bring both promise and peril.

“Even though you might be able to find folks who share the same passions or interests, there historically is value in productively encountering difference. When we’re in third places in person, we might be right next to someone who doesn’t think like we do or navigate the world in the same way,” she said. “We can lose a lot of that online.”

As third places become scarcer, their loss isn’t felt equally. A 2025 study found that the overall decline in third place availability may disproportionately affect majority-Black, lower-educated, and rural communities. Some of these groups already report higher rates of loneliness or less social support.

“We wanted to dig a little bit deeper into where are these closures concentrated? And we did find that underserved communities typically saw a greater concentration of closures,” said Finlay, one of the study’s authors.

But the pattern isn’t uniform, Finlay added, as some kinds of third places are holding steady or increasing. For instance, the majority-Black communities in the study had more access to civic and social organizations, beauty and barber shops, and restaurants. Libraries, meanwhile, were more concentrated in less-educated and rural areas. Some of these communities may also be more adept at finding other places to gather. “The story is complicated.”

The Trust for Public Land has also found that neighborhoods where most residents are people of color have access to an average of 44 percent less park acreage than predominantly white neighborhoods. Similar park space inequities exist in low-income neighborhoods.

Without accessible third places, experts warn, people may become more isolated and social networks can shrink. Their loss may also deepen political division and mistrust. In a 2025 Pew survey, just 44 percent of Americans said they trusted all or most of the people in their neighborhood.

“When you have a decline in the amount of time that people are actually spending getting to know others in their community, you have a decline in trust, because…most trust is built through person-to-person relationships,” said Kyte. “And so we’re going to continue to see less trust, and that leads to more polarization.”

Still, creating more opportunities to gather starts with supporting places where it can happen. That means helping existing third places stay open while making it easier to create new ones, from investing more in public spaces and lowering barriers for small businesses to rethinking policies and regulations that make such spaces harder to build.

“The main thing that needs to be done is to revise zoning codes in towns and cities to allow for small business in residential areas, usually called mixed-use zoning,” Kyte said. “There is a growing movement among urban planners to do this, but it’s a long, slow process. My own city of La Crosse is in the middle of this process right now.” Other cities such as Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Seattle have also been rethinking such zoning rules.

Through its Local Conversations initiative, Strong Towns is supporting more than 290 locally led groups across the country to take small steps to build community and improve their neighborhoods. The changes can be simple, said John T. Reuter, the organization’s executive director, such as adding benches at bus stops and dog parks, making intersections and crosswalks safer, or turning front yards into gathering spaces.

“People were reaching out to their neighbors, finding ways to connect, and starting to figure out how to heal their places,” Reuter said. “The very core problem that we have is our built environment is what’s driven us to this space of disconnection. And the solution is to start with reconnecting public space.”

But creating more third places isn’t enough; they also need to encourage connection. Comfortable seating, for example, can give people a reason to linger, while programming can draw people into the space. Finlay said that can require getting meaningful input from the communities the spaces are meant to serve.

“It is both quantity and quality,” she said. “Folks have mentioned wanting to just feel welcome in places, so little things like having ‘all are welcome’ signs or doing programming like game nights and trivia.”

Ultimately though, people have to show up.

“Each of us individually can have third places reappear for us, whether that’s a church or a coffee shop or a bowling alley or a game store, right? Whatever it might be, I would just encourage people to go out into the world,” said Reuter. “All of these things are happening today, and you just have to go out and find them and join them. You might not be able to end the loneliness epidemic for everyone, but you can end it for yourself.”

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Alton Byers (Ph.D. 1987) in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Today: How warming might have caused Nepal's deadly floods

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:46:28 +0000

Alton Byers (Ph.D. 1987) in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Today: How warming might have caused Nepal's deadly floods Gabriela Rocha Sales Thu, 09/03/2026 - 13:46

Copied text for archival purposes.

How warming might have caused Nepal's deadly floods

Published 9/3/2026 by Yvaine Ye

One week after catastrophic floods swept through towns along the Nepal-China border, more than 1,000 people are dead and 4,500 remain missing.

Satellite and drone images suggest that softening permafrost, or perennially frozen rock, ice and soil, on Langtang Lirung peak likely caused a massive bedrock failure and glacier collapse. An estimated 50 million metric tons of ice, rock and water—roughly 13 billion gallons, or about three times the capacity of Boulder Reservoir—fell 6,500 feet into the valley below, unleashing a slurry of mud and water that inundated bridges, hydropower facilities and villages along the way. According to the United States Geological Survey, the force of the initial debris flow hitting the ground was equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.

“This is by far the most horrific flood I have ever seen,” said Alton Byers, a faculty research scientist and an associate of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. For the past 50 years, Byers has been studying changes in glaciers around the world, including the Himalayas, and the hazards associated with those shifts. He has lived in rural regions of Nepal for a total of eight years in addition to dozens of shorter visits since the 1970s, trekking in the mountains to study glacial lakes and help local people become more prepared for mountain hazards.

“The size of this slide totally dwarfed anything I’ve seen before. Mountains have clearly become more dangerous places to live, work and play in as Earth becomes warmer.”

As rescue teams continue searching for those still missing, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Today spoke with Byers about what may have triggered the disaster, how climate change is reshaping glaciers and mountain hazards around the world, and whether similar events could occur in the United States.

Has melting permafrost led to similar disasters before?

Since the 1850s, changes in high-altitude permafrost have contributed to dozens of these cascading disasters in Nepal and parts of India, in which bedrock and glaciers break off, and trigger massive flash floods and debris flows. For example, in 2012 a slurry flood in central Nepal, similar to what happened in Nepal last week, killed 79 people along the Seti River. In 1970, an earthquake triggered the collapse of a glacier in Peru, creating a massive debris flow that buried more than 20,000 people in minutes in the village of Yungay.

Did climate change play a role in what happened in Nepal last week?

Warming trends certainly played a major role, destabilizing and softening permafrost, often referred to as the “cryospheric glue,” since the 1860s. Permafrost has been holding the mountains together for millennia. But as it melts, masses of rock and glacier are no longer as resistant to gravity as they once were. So the likelihood of breakage is greater.

Are unstable glaciers and permafrost a risk in the United States?

In Colorado, we’ve been losing glaciers for a long time due to warming, so they are generally small and not as dangerous in terms of permafrost-related slope failures. But mountains are just in general less stable now compared to how they used to be.

In places like Alaska, people have expressed concerns about the increase in landslides related to changes in permafrost. Last year, a landslide in Alaska’s Tracy Arm Fjord triggered a massive tsunami with a wave rising some 1,580 feet above sea level.

What other glacier-related hazards are scientists watching?

Scientists have been studying glacial lake outburst floods for decades.

Glacial lakes form when glaciers recede and water fills the area left behind. An avalanche, landslide or flood from an upstream lake can trigger a surge wave that breaches the unstable lake barrier, unleashing a huge amount of water and causing catastrophic downstream flooding.

Could last week’s disaster have been predicted?

Not really. You can’t predict things of that nature. It’s also hard to predict a glacial lake outburst flood. But what we can do is identify areas of high risk ahead of time, such as overhanging ice on a mountain slope with an urban area downstream. We need to monitor them regularly for any obvious changes.

What can we do to reduce the damage from future, similar events?

Besides monitoring, I think we need to discourage this trend of the last 20 years of building in floodplains, because hazards are bound to happen. There are dozens of similar urban areas along other rivers throughout the Himalayas that have glacial landscapes upstream. All of them need an effective and accessible early warning system and evacuation plans.

We live in a changing world and a changing mountain world. So we’ll need to continue to find ways to adapt.

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In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Andrei Rogers

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:39:47 +0000

In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Andrei Rogers Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 08/31/2026 - 15:39

On August 18, 2026 Professor Emeritus Andrei Rogers passed away at the age of 88. Andrei taught at the �鶹��Ѱ�� Geography Department from 1983 to 2007, he was the Director of the Population Program at the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) from 1983 to 2003.

Notable Awards:

Awarded the Walter Isard Award for Distinguished Lifetime Scholarly Achievement from the North American Regional Science Association (2000).
Invited to the International Geographical Union Regional Congress (2006) for his contributions to the quantitative revolution in human geography in the 1960s.
Awarded the Mindel C. Sheps Award for his outstanding contributions to mathematical demography, demographic methodology, and the modeling and analysis of population data (2018).

In 2018, Andrei wrote a memoir, But in my case. An immigrant’s life story (iUniverse, 2018).

See Andrei Rogers' obituary from the Daily Camera.

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Noah Molotch in Grist: Scientists define a new category of heat wave: ‘Snow eaters’

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:08:01 +0000

Noah Molotch in Grist: Scientists define a new category of heat wave: ‘Snow eaters’ Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 08/18/2026 - 10:08

Article copied for archival purposes.

Kate Yoder Senior Staff Writer

Published Aug 12, 2026

Scientists define a new category of heat wave: ‘Snow eaters’

Unseasonably warm weather that rapidly melts snowpack is becoming more widespread in the U.S. West and happening earlier in the year.

Matthew LaPlante doesn’t have to go to a lab to see his research in action. On some mornings, he can just look out his own window in the mountains high above Salt Lake City. After a warm night when the temperature stays above freezing, he’ll wake up and see that the snow level has dropped by inches, revealing more of the aspens he taps for syrup.

“It feels like a monster came and just in the middle of the night, took a bite out of a snowpack,” said LaPlante, a journalist and climate scientist at Utah State University.

So it’s fitting that scientists have started calling these kinds of heat waves, marked by unusually high temperatures in the spring and early summer, “snow eaters.”

LaPlante was part of a recent study, published in the journal Science Advances, that attempted, for the first time, to identify what conditions exactly make for a “snow eater.” Compared to normal warm spells or heat waves, the researchers determined that these events happen when temperatures stay above freezing through both day and night for multiple days, typically three to five. These events can roughly double the rate at which snow melts, causing flooding and making it challenging to manage water resources.

“Snow eaters” appear to be occurring earlier in the year and becoming more widespread in the Western United States as the climate warms. Since the 1850s, the study found, the area affected by snow eaters has increased by an average of about 40,000 square miles per century, and the first snow eater of the season has been arriving about one month earlier per century.

The term “snow eater” has a murky history. By at least the 1880s, people in the West were talking about “snow-eating” chinooks, warm mountain winds that make snow disappear quickly. More recently, the phrase “snow-eater heat wave” first made headlines in March, when an early heat wave enveloped much of the West, quickly wiping away snowpack in the Colorado Rockies and California’s Sierra Nevada. The scientists hope the catchy, evocative term can help draw more attention to this type of heat wave, since there’s still a lot to learn. The study only looked at the Western U.S., but snow eater heat waves almost assuredly occur elsewhere, LaPlante said.

Solar radiation is a major, but sometimes overlooked, driver of snowmelt, said Noah Molotch, a professor of geography at the �鶹��Ѱ�� who was not involved in the new study. When it interacts with heat waves, those impacts are amplified. As snow crystals warm up, they lose some of their structure and light-reflecting abilities, causing snowpacks to absorb more sunlight and melt faster. “It’s a little bit of a — no pun intended — a snowball effect,” he said.

Much of the Western U.S. saw record-low snowpack this spring. What was really unusual about it, Molotch said, was how widespread it was. Colorado received less precipitation than normal this winter, while California got lots of precipitation, but in the form of rain instead of snow. But across the region, “the one thing in common was above-average air temperatures,” Molotch said.

These conditions have likely helped fuel exceptionally severe wildfires in the West, from Utah to Spokane, Washington, where hundreds of homes burned earlier this month. “Drought stress for mountain forests around the Western U.S. is heavily dictated by the snow that accumulates each winter and then melts through the spring and summer,” Molotch said. “There is a direct connection there in terms of the water availability and drought stress that can provide one of the important ingredients for increases in wildfire intensity and frequency.”

If scientists are able to better predict what will happen to snowpack, it could help water managers plan for what’s coming. Early or rapid snowmelt poses problems for managing water resources in the West, where snowpack serves as a key source of fresh water in the drier summer months. “Water that would otherwise be stored as snow comes out early, and then we have to deal with it as a hazard instead of a resource at our reservoirs and along the rivers and streams,” said Ben Hatchett, a co-author on the study and a scientist at Colorado State University’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.

Snow-eater heat waves also may pose risks to skiers, hikers, and anyone else on or near mountains. They could be linked to hazards such as avalanches, glacial collapses, and permafrost melt, Hatchett said, though scientists are still investigating those connections. He lives in the Sierra Nevada, and he’s noticed one tangible change over his lifetime: The soundscape has changed.

“At night, it used to be quiet,” he said. “And now it’s not quiet, because everything’s melting all the time.”

“Drought stress for mountain forests around the Western U.S. is heavily dictated by the snow that accumulates each winter and then melts through the spring and summer,” Molotch said. “There is a direct connection there in terms of the water availability and drought stress that can provide one of the important ingredients for increases in wildfire intensity and frequency.”

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News

Michela Savigano (Geography PhD Student): Greenland ice shelf weakened by estuary ahead of recent calving event

Greenland ice shelf weakened by estuary ahead of recent calving event

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Jessica Finlay Quoted in USA Today: The surprising new way to find friends and true love? Your Costco card

The surprising new way to find friends and true love? Your Costco card

Searching for connection at Costco

From malls to McDonald's, America's meetups

How Costco became a 'third place'

Building community one hot dog at a time

How 'Camp Costco' brings people together

'Clubbing for married folks'

Pick up in the frozen food aisle

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Geography Postdoc and Research Scientist Showcase Colloquium

Speakers:

Dr. Sean Burns (Geography)

Dr. Yu Peng (ESIIL)

Dr. Kai Kopecky (ESIIL)

Dr. Karl Andraczek (ESIIL)

Dr. Wyatt Million (ESIIL)

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Jessica Finlay received $3.7 million grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA)

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Jennifer Balch in Boise State Public Radio - NPR: Researchers, other experts join forces to tackle the problem of fast, destructive blazes

Researchers, other experts join forces to tackle the problem of fast, destructive blazes

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Sara Meerow in Forbes: How To Improve Heat Action Plans

How To Improve Heat Action Plans

Figure Out Organization

Plug The Gaps

Connect Goals To Actions

Actually Track Them

Plan For The Longer Term

Consider Cash

Fund Them Properly

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Jessica Finlay in the Washington Post: What’s fueling loneliness—and polarization—in America today?

What’s fueling loneliness—and polarization—in America today?

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Alton Byers (Ph.D. 1987) in �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder Today: How warming might have caused Nepal's deadly floods

How warming might have caused Nepal's deadly floods

Has melting permafrost led to similar disasters before?

Did climate change play a role in what happened in Nepal last week?

Are unstable glaciers and permafrost a risk in the United States?

What other glacier-related hazards are scientists watching?

Could last week’s disaster have been predicted?

What can we do to reduce the damage from future, similar events?

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In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Andrei Rogers

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Noah Molotch in Grist: Scientists define a new category of heat wave: ‘Snow eaters’

Scientists define a new category of heat wave: ‘Snow eaters’

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Alton Byers (Ph.D. 1987) in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Today: How warming might have caused Nepal's deadly floods