The Conversation

Is drought the new normal?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:56:36 +0000

Is drought the new normal? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 11:56

Pedro DiNezio and Timothy Shanahan

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought

A new wave of climate research is sounding a stark warning: Human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The southwestern United States has been in a historic megadrought for much of the past two decades, with its reservoirs including lakes Mead and Powell dipping to record lows and legal disputes erupting over rights to use water from the Colorado River.

This drought has been linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate pattern that swings between wet and dry phases every few decades. Since a phase change in the early 2000s, the region has endured a dry spell of epic proportions.

CU Boulder scientist Pedro DiNezio, along with climate researchers around the world, assert that human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The PDO was thought to be a natural phenomenon, governed by unpredictable natural ocean and atmosphere fluctuations. But new research published in the journal Nature suggests that’s no longer the case.

Working with hundreds of climate model simulations, our team of atmosphere, earth and ocean scientists found that the PDO is now being strongly influenced by human factors and has been since the 1950s. It should have oscillated to a wetter phase by now, but instead it has been stuck. Our results suggest that drought could become the new normal for the region unless human-driven warming is halted.

The science of a drying world

For decades, scientists have relied on a basic physical principle to predict rainfall trends: Warmer air holds more moisture. In a warming world, this means wet areas are likely to get wetter, while dry regions become drier. In dry areas, as temperatures rise, more moisture is pulled from soils and transported away from these arid regions, intensifying droughts.

While most climate models simulate this general pattern, they often underestimate its full extent, particularly over land areas.

Yet countries are already experiencing drought emerging as one of the most immediate and severe consequences of climate change. Understanding what’s ahead is essential, to know how long these droughts will last and because severe droughts can have sweeping affects on ecosystems, economies and global food security.

Human fingerprints on megadroughts

Simulating rainfall is one of the greatest challenges in climate science. It depends on a complex interplay between large-scale wind patterns and small-scale processes such as cloud formation.

Until recently, climate models have not offered a clear picture of how rainfall patterns are likely to change in the near future as greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and industries continue to heat up the planet. The models can diverge sharply in where, when and how precipitation will change. Even forecasts that average the results of several models differ when it comes to changes in rainfall patterns.

The techniques we deployed are helping to sharpen that picture for North America and across the tropics.

We looked back at the pattern of PDO phase changes over the past century using an exceptionally large ensemble of climate simulations. The massive number of simulations, more than 500, allowed us to isolate the human influences. This showed that the shifts in the PDO were driven by an interplay of increasing warming from greenhouse gas emissions and cooling from sun-blocking particles called aerosols that are associated with industrial pollution.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, we found that increasing aerosol emissions from rapid industrialization following World War II drove a positive trend in the PDO, making the Southwest rainier and less parched.

After the 1980s, we found that the combination of a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions from industries, power plants and vehicles and a reduction in aerosols as countries cleaned up their air pollution shifted the PDO into the negative, drought-generating trend that continues today.

This finding represents a paradigm shift in our scientific understanding of the PDO and a warning for the future. The current negative phase can no longer be seen as just a roll of the climate dice—it has been loaded by humans.

Our conclusion that global warming can drive the PDO into its negative, drought-inducing phase is also supported by geological records of past megadroughts. Around 6,000 years ago, during a period of high temperatures, evidence shows the emergence of a similar temperature pattern in the North Pacific and widespread drought across the Southwest.

Tropical drought risks underestimated

The past is also providing clues to future rainfall changes in the tropics and the risk of droughts in locations such as the Amazon.

One particularly instructive example comes from approximately 17,000 years ago. Geological evidence shows that there was a period of widespread rainfall shifts across the tropics coinciding with a major slowdown of ocean currents in the Atlantic.

These ocean currents, which play a crucial role in regulating global climate, naturally weakened or partially collapsed then, and they are expected to slow further this century at the current pace of global warming.

A recent study of that period, using computer models to analyze geologic evidence of earth’s climate history, found much stronger drying in the Amazon basin than previously understood. It also shows similar patterns of aridification in Central America, West Africa and Indonesia.

The results suggest that rainfall could decline precipitously again. Even a modest slowdown of a major Atlantic Ocean current could dry out rainforests, threaten vulnerable ecosystems and upend livelihoods across the tropics.

What comes next

Drought is a growing problem, increasingly driven by human influence. Confronting it will require rethinking water management, agricultural policy and adaptation strategies. Doing that well depends on predicting drought with far greater confidence.

Climate research shows that better predictions are possible by using computer models in new ways and rigorously validating their performance against evidence from past climate shifts. The picture that emerges is sobering, revealing a much higher risk of drought across the world.

Pedro DiNezio is an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the ��. Timothy Shanahan is an associate professor of geological science at the University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought.

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Moose are on the loose

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:43:40 +0000

Moose are on the loose Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 16:43

William Taylor , John Wendt and Joshua Miller

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions

Moose are on the loose in the southern Rockies.

In July 2025, a young wandering bull was captured roaming a city park in Greeley, Colorado. A spate of similar urban sightings alongside some aggressive moose encounters has elevated moose management and conservation into a matter of public debate, especially across metro Denver and the Colorado Front Range.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, a recent study found that moose and elk might be to blame for far-reaching changes to valley ecosystems, as their browsing reduces important plants like willows, depriving beavers of habitat and materials for their wetland engineering. Park wildlife are generally not managed through hunting, but the park has tried techniques like fencing moose away from wetland zones. Publicly, discussion has swirled around further mitigation measures to slow or eliminate moose populations.

CU Boulder archaeologist William Taylor is partnering with paleoecology and conservation paleobiology colleagues to study the ancient animals of the Rockies.

At the heart of this debate is a basic question – do moose belong in the southern Rockies at all?

During much of the last century, moose were apparently rare in Colorado. The animals are absent from some early 20th century official wildlife tallies. Then, in 1978, the Colorado Division of Wildlife – now Colorado Parks and Wildlife – released a group of moose into North Park in north-central Colorado. At the time, biologists understood their efforts to be a reintroduction, but in the years since, wildlife managers have shifted their thinking about the place of moose in local ecosystems.

In the decades that followed, the moose expanded their range and numbers. Today, informal estimates by Colorado Parks and Wildlife put the moose population at around 3,500 animals. Under increased moose browsing pressure and a shifting climate, some mountain wetland environments are changing.

Should these changes be thought of as human-made ecological wounds caused by releasing moose? The National Park Service seems to think so.

Statements from 2025 on the park service website, and other public messaging from wildlife officials, assert that Colorado has never supported a breeding population of moose – only the occasional transient visitor. The factual basis for this idea seems to hinge heavily on an unpublished internal report from 2015, which identified only a few archaeological or historical records of moose near the park.

We are a team of archaeologists, paleoecologists and conservation paleobiologists studying the ancient animals of the Rockies.

Understanding moose and their interactions with people centuries ago means carefully analyzing different traces that survive the passage of time. These can range from the bones of animals themselves to indirect clues preserved in everything from lake sediments to historical records.

Are moose actually native to Colorado?

As scientists studying the past, we know that reconstructing the ancient geographic ranges of animals is difficult. Archaeological sites with animal bones can be a great tool to understand the past, especially for tracing the food choices of ancient humans. But such sites can be rare, and even when they are well preserved and well studied, it can take lots of care and scientific research to identify the species of each bone.

Harder still is determining the intimate details of ancient animals’ lives, including how and where they lived, died or reproduced. Such key details can be especially opaque for moose, who are solitary and elusive. Because of this, moose may not end up in human diets, even where both species have established populations. A comprehensive review of archaeological sites from across Alaska and some areas of the Canadian Yukon, where moose are common today and have likely been present since the end of the last Ice Age, found that moose were nearly absent until the past few centuries. In fact, moose often comprised less than 0.1% of the total number of bones in very large collections, if they appeared at all. In some areas, cultural reasons like taboos against moose hunting can also prevent them from ending up in archaeological bone tallies.

In new research published as a preprint in advance of peer review, we took a closer look at the idea that moose were absent from Colorado before 1978. We combed through newspaper records, photo archives and early travel diaries and identified dozens of references to moose sightings in Colorado spanning the first records in 1860 through the decade of moose reintroduction in the 1970s.

Moose sightings appear in the very earliest written records of the area that would become Rocky Mountain National Park. In his 1863 diary, Milton Estes described happening upon a large moose alongside a band of elk while on a hunting trip.

“Since elk were common I picked out Mr. Moose for my game,” he wrote.

Milton thought he had bagged “the first and only moose that had ever been killed so far south.” He was wrong.

Our archival research turned up even earlier sightings of moose in the area, along with many more across the region in the decades that followed. Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bulls, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

These sightings recorded in diaries and newspapers don’t have to stand on their own. Moose appear in older placenames around the state, like the area once known as Moose Park along the road from Lyons to Estes Park. Written accounts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries among Ute, Shoshone and Arapaho peoples describe moose stories, hunts and songs. And though historical records don’t go too much further back than the mid-19th century in Colorado, archaeological records do.

Our survey of Colorado sites turned up ancient moose at Jurgens, near Greeley, dated to more than 9,000 years ago, and even moose bone tools among the ruins of Mesa Verde, only a few centuries ago.

Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bull moose, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

This question of whether moose are native to the southern Rockies is not just a philosophical one – its answer will shape management decisions by the National Park Service and others.

Official narrative minimizes moose presence

The contemporary idea of moose as non-native animals reflects a different understanding than was common only a few decades ago. In the 1940s, some biologists described moose as a native species that had been “extirpated except for stragglers.” As recently as the early 1970s, Rocky Mountain National Park officials understood their moose work as a reintroduction of “wild animals once native to the park.” Our findings suggest that the valid knowledge of earlier scientists has since faded or been replaced, repositioning moose as ecological outsiders.

As moose-human conflicts and shifting wetland ecologies prompt hard conversations over how to manage moose, a range of options have been discussed in public discourse. These include courses of action such as the reintroduction of carnivores like wolves, or targeted hunting access for tribes or the public.

If moose are ‘invasive,’ they can be removed

For federal agencies, labels like “invasive” or “non-native” carry legal connotations and can be used to enable other measures, like eradication.

In Olympic National Park, where mountain goats were deemed invasive and ecologically impactful, biologists undertook an extermination campaign that involved shooting the animals from helicopters, despite warnings from archaeologists as long ago as the late 1990s that the data behind their argument was flawed.

As the animal and plant communities of our Rockies change rapidly in a warming world, this kind of policy would not only be unsupported by scientific evidence, but also likely to impede the ability of our animal communities to survive, adapt and thrive.

The historical evidence indicates that moose are not foreign intruders. Archival, archaeological and anthropological data shows that moose have been in the southern Rockies for centuries, if not millennia. Rather than treat moose as a threat, we urge Rocky Mountain National Park and other agencies to work in partnership with tribes, paleoecologists and the public to carefully develop historically grounded management plans for this Colorado native.

William Taylor is an assistant professor of anthropology at the ��. John Wendt is a postdoctoral fellow in natural resources ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. Joshua Miller is an associate professor of geosciences and the University of Cincinnati.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions.

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Telling the stories of loss and healing

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:52:08 +0000

Telling the stories of loss and healing Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 15:52

Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Lucas Rozell

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project

The Colorado Marshall Fire killed two people and destroyed over 1,000 structures on Dec. 30, 2021.

The news cycle has long since moved on, but people impacted by the fire are still recovering. Part of that process is through storytelling.

The Louisville Historical Museum, which is located 10 miles east of Boulder, later joined by collaborators from the �� Anthropology Department, initiated the Marshall Fire Story Project to preserve the stories of people affected.

CU Boulder researcher Kathryn Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology.

“This is the first time we’ve actually sat down and taken this long to talk about it,” said Lisa Clark, one contributor to the project. “’Cause we’re always like, ‘(people) have better things to do. You don’t wanna hear our pain. You don’t wanna hear our stories,’ you know. But yeah, it’s been nice to do it.”

All project contributors are quoted using their real names.

We are a cultural anthropologist and qualitative researcher who are collaborating with the Louisville Historical Museum on the Marshall Fire Story Project. Broadly, we are each involved with research that explores the importance of personal and community narratives for well-being.

However, the Marshall Fire Story Project is not a research project. We have no research questions. Contributors are simply invited to share what they would like about the fire.

While this project embraces the specificity of individual experiences, recent destructive fires in Maui, Hawaii, and Southern California show that the work we are doing is needed in many other locations.

Why oral history?

Recounting personal experiences is critical to the historical record.

Oral history has also become recognized as a powerful method for healing after trauma, both for individuals and larger community groups. Talking about traumatic events may be painful. However, narrative also facilitates meaning-making, strengthens ties within communities, and contributes to social justice efforts.

By telling their own stories in their own words, participants in the Marshall Fire Story Project shape what is remembered and how it is remembered.

Contributors to the project had diverse objectives in sharing their stories. Many welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the historical record, which Jessica Rossi-Katz described as “a record of experience.” Another contributor wanted to share their perspective as a lower-income person. Others mentioned the relevance of local stories as they apply to a global context of climate change.

As wildfires become ever more common, the themes that came up in the oral histories are increasingly relevant to community members, policymakers and scholars alike.

Stories of loss

Two people lost their lives in the fire, along with over 1,000 pets.

“I’d take losing my stuff over losing them,” said Anna Kramer, when describing the loss of her neighbor’s dogs. Kramer, an artist, did lose her stuff, including the majority of her artistic works.

Remediation workers clean the garage of Gigi Yang, a collaborator for the Marshall Fire Story Project. Due to concerns about toxins from smoke and ash residue in their homes, many residents opted for smoke remediation and deep cleaning of their homes. (Photo: Gigi Yang)

Abby McClelland’s family was away from their house when it burned.

“For a while I was really upset that we weren’t there and didn’t get a chance to take anything,” McClelland said. “And the more I think about what we would’ve taken, the more I’m like, that stuff is dumb.”

The family was able to replace their vital records and passports within weeks.

“But things like, you know, my grandmother’s rings or the Champagne cork from our wedding reception. Like things that I would’ve thought, oh, that’s so silly to evacuate that, those are the truly irreplaceable things.”

Mary Barry said the “fire was the ultimate downsizer.” She reflected on the objects she had lost – her daughter’s baby pictures, her sewing machines, a collection of books bound in blue and gold.

The fire also took Barry’s pet turtles, one of whom her husband had kept for over twenty years.

“Losing (a) house is like losing a person, where you mourn the loss of your comfort,” Barry said. This was particularly true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where people’s homes were their entire environment during quarantine.

Many of those whose homes did not burn suffered a different kind of ambiguous loss. Their homes were damaged by smoke, which carried with it heavy metals, hazardous chemicals and volatile organic compounds.

Shana Sutton’s family stayed in a hotel for six months while their home was being remediated. Like many others, much of the family’s belongings were deemed nonsalvageable.

“In my head,” Sutton recounted, “I was like, okay, I’m just going to pretend that they all burned.”

Concern with health impacts

As she watched the smoke from a distance, Brittany Petrelli told her brother on the phone, “I can smell how devastating this fire is.” Petrelli, a project contributor involved with the recovery effort, recounted that the fire smelled “like things that shouldn’t be burning. Rubber, plastic building materials.”

Residents with concerns about outdoor and indoor air quality as well as soil and water contamination contacted scientists at the ��, who, along with scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, conducted air quality sampling. Ultimately, the publicized data for outdoor air quality showed little difference from other urban areas.

Residents whose homes survived but were affected by smoke continued to note symptoms such as sore throats, coughs and stinging eyes for six months and then one year after the fire.

Like others whose homes were damaged by smoke, Beth Eldridge had difficulty obtaining insurance coverage for mitigation. After she attempted to clean char and ash on her own, she experienced persistent health impacts.

After the Marshall Fire, area residents created notes of support for friends and neighbors at the Louisville Public Library; the notes were displayed in the library windows. (Photo: Louisville Historical Museum)

“Being part of an HOA (Home Owner’s Association) should give you two buckets of insurance,” Eldridge explained, “but in reality, everyone is divided and the system makes individuals fend for themselves. My insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. The HOA insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. … I was sick and I couldn’t get better and I needed help.”

Accounts from the project highlight uncertainty that remediated personal items were “really clean” – as Shana Sutton shared, it “makes you crazy.” Many people spoke of dissatisfaction with a lack of standards for remediation. Current standards, not specific to wildfires, do not engage the epidemiological and toxicological effects of fire byproducts, although experts in the field recognize these dangers.

Precarity and community solidarity

Being underinsured was a persistent theme in project stories, and some people recounted how negotiating with their insurance companies literally became a full-time job. After the fire, lower-income community members found themselves in an even more acute state of financial uncertainty.

A number of mutual aid groups sprung up in the aftermath of the fire, and several of those groups shared their stories with the project. Meryl Suissa started the Marshall Fire Community group on Facebook, which worked to help families replace items lost in the fire.

“I think what we’ve learned is like, yes, people are okay and they’re strong and they’re resilient and they’re gonna continue fighting,” Suissa said. “But we still have a long way to go to help them heal.”

Kate Coslett, who ran Operation Hotel Sanity, also highlighted how the community came together to contribute to organizations like hers, which delivered home-cooked meals to displaced residents.

“So many volunteers, hundreds of volunteers,” she said. “It’s September (2022), and there are still people making meals. It’s incredible … their empathy and their love, this community is just, I have goose bumps.”

Yet recovery means different things to different people. As Abby McClelland noted, there is a difference between “trauma on the individual level and trauma on the collective level.”

“I can rebuild the house,” McClelland said, “but I can’t rebuild all the houses in the neighborhood, and I can’t plant all the trees, and I can’t, you know, reopen all the businesses. I can’t reverse the trauma in the area. I can only control what’s inside my house. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen on that larger level, and how long that’s going to resonate.”

Like others who shared their accounts with the project, McClelland highlighted a necessity for policy change and governmental actions to prevent further climate-related disasters.

“Individuals can’t solve systemic problems,” she said.

Future of the project

For a community historical museum whose motto is “Be a part of the story,” first-person records constitute valuable resources for both the present and the future.

Our team is currently preparing written and oral project contributor submissions for archiving in a publicly accessible platform. In partnership with Marshall Together and the Community Foundation Boulder County, we are documenting recovery and rebuilding experiences as residents return to their homes.

The first storytellers in our project spoke of trauma and despair, but also gratitude for community. What will future stories tell us as neighbors continue to reunite and adjust to how the community has changed after the Marshall Fire?

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Imperioli, museum associate – Public History & Oral History, and Gigi Yang, museum services supervisor of the Louisville Historical Museum.

Kathryn E. Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology at the ��. Lucas Rozell (MAnth'24) is a research assistant on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project.

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Top photo courtesy the Louisville Historical Museum

It takes a village of mothers

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:56:42 +0000

It takes a village of mothers Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 14:56

Sona Dimidjian and Anahi Collado

How mothers supporting mothers can help fill the health care worker shortage gap and other barriers to care

For generations, women have relied on informal networks of friends, family and neighbors to navigate the complexities of birth and motherhood. Today, research is finally catching up to what generations of women have known: Peer support can be a lifeline.

Despite growing evidence, the unique wisdom and strength that arise when mothers help mothers has been surprisingly under‑explored in the scientific literature, but that’s beginning to change. Peer-delivered programs are beginning to bring together long-standing community traditions and structured, evidence-based approaches to support the mental health of new and expectant moms.

We are clinical psychologists at the �� Renée Crown Wellness Institute. Our work and research weaves together psychological science and the wisdom of mothers supporting mothers. Our program, Alma, supports women in restoring well-being in ways that are community-rooted, evidence-based and scalable.

Through the Alma program, researchers Sona Dimidjian (left) and Anahi Collado (right) aim to support women in restoring well-being in ways that are community-rooted, evidence-based and scalable.

Pressure on parents

Nearly 50% of parents report feeling overwhelmed by stress on most days. An even larger share, about 65%, experience feelings of loneliness, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These feelings hit mothers especially hard, the report says.

In 2025, mothers in the United States continue to shoulder most of the caregiving of children while also managing work, personal health and household responsibilities. The transition to motherhood is often marked by emotional and psychological strain. In fact, 10% to 20% of women experience depression during pregnancy, the postpartum period or both. Depression is one of the most common complications of childbirth. A similar number of women also face significant anxiety.

In many communities, mental health resources are scarce and stigma around mental health issues persists; therefore, many mothers are left to navigate such challenges alone and in silence. Antidepressants are widely prescribed, but research suggests that many women stop using antidepressants during pregnancy – yet they don’t start therapy or an alternative treatment instead.

Psychotherapy is the most preferred care option among new and expectant mothers, but it is often inaccessible or nonexistent. This is due in part to a workforce shortage of mental health providers.

The shortage has contributed to long wait times, geographic disparities and cultural and language barriers between providers and patients. This is especially true for underserved populations. In fact, more than 75% of depressed mothers do not receive the care they need.

Science of peer support

The science of peer support is part of a larger field exploring community health workers as one way to address the shortage of mental health providers. Peer mentors are trusted individuals from the community who share common experiences or challenges with those they serve. Through specialized training, they are equipped to deliver education, offer mental health support and connect people with needed resources.

A study that analyzed 30 randomized clinical trials involving individuals with serious mental illness found that peer support was associated with significant improvements in clinical outcomes and personal recovery. Researchers have proposed that peer support creates space for learning and healing, especially when peers share lived experience, culture and language.

In 2025, mothers in the United States continue to shoulder most of the caregiving of children while also managing work, personal health and household responsibilities. (Photo: Shutterstock)

As clinical psychologists, we heard from mothers in our work and communities that wanted to help other moms recover from depression, navigate the challenges of motherhood and avoid feeling alone. This insight led us to co-create Alma, a peer-led mental health program based on behavioral activation.

Behavioral activation is a proven method for treating depression based on decades of randomized clinical trials, including in new and expectant mothers. It helps new and expectant mothers reengage in meaningful activities to improve mood and functioning.

The Alma program

Alma is based on the principle that depression must be understood in context and that changing what you do can change how you feel. One strategy we use is to help a mother identify an activity that brings a sense of accomplishment, connection or enjoyment – and then take small steps to schedule that activity. Mothers might also be guided on ways to ask for help and strengthen their support networks. Alma is offered in English and Spanish.

Peer mentors typically meet with moms once a week for six to eight sessions. Sessions can take place in person or virtually, allowing flexibility that honors each family’s needs. Traditionally, peer mentors have been recruited through long-standing relationships with trusted community organizations and word-of-mouth referrals. This approach has helped ensure that mentors are deeply rooted in the communities they serve. Alma peer mentors are compensated for their time, which recognizes the value of their lived expertise, their training and the work involved in providing peer mentoring and support.

“This was the first time I felt like someone understood me, without me having to explain everything,” shared one mother during a post-program interview that all participants complete after finishing Alma.

To date, more than 700 mothers in Colorado have participated in Alma. In one of our studies, we focused on 126 Spanish-speaking Latina mothers who often face significant barriers to care, such as language differences, cost and stigma. For nearly 2 out of 3 mothers, symptoms of depression decreased enough to be considered a true, measurable recovery — not just a small change.

Notably, most of the depression improvement occurred within the first three Alma meetings. We also observed that peer mentors delivered the Alma program consistently and as intended. This suggests the program could be reliably expanded and replicated in other settings with similar positive outcomes.

A second study, conducted through a national survey of Spanish-speaking Latina new and expectant mothers, found that peer-led mental health support was not only perceived as effective, but also highly acceptable and deeply valued. Mothers noted that they were interested in peer-led support because it met them where they were: with language, trust and cultural understanding.

Supporting mothers works

Supporting mothers’ mental health is essential because it directly benefits both mothers and their children. Those improvements foster healthier emotional, cognitive and social development in their children. This interconnected impact highlights why investing in maternal mental health yields lasting benefits for the entire family.

It also makes strong economic sense to address mood and anxiety disorders among new and expectant mothers, which cost an estimated US$32,000 for each mother and child from conception through five years postpartum. More than half of those costs occur within the first year, driven primarily by productivity losses, preterm births and increased maternal health care needs.

Beyond the impact on individual families, the broader economic toll of untreated mood and anxiety disorders among new and expectant mothers is substantial. For example, it’s estimated that $4.7 billion a year are lost to mothers who have to miss work or reduce their job performance because of symptoms like fatigue, anxiety and depression.

Together – as individuals, families, communities and institutions – we can cultivate a world where the challenges of parenting are met with comprehensive support, allowing the joy of parenting to be fully realized. Because no one should have to do this alone.

Sona Dimidjian is director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the ��. Anahi Collado is a CU Boulder assistant research professor of psychology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How mothers supporting mothers can help fill the health care worker shortage gap and other barriers to care.

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Couples reimagining Jewish wedding ceremony

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 17:40:41 +0000

Couples reimagining Jewish wedding ceremony Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/02/2025 - 11:40

Samira Mehta

From the marriage contract to breaking the glass under the chuppah, many Jewish couples adapt their weddings to celebrate gender equality

Traditional Jewish weddings share one key aspect with traditional Christian weddings. Historically, the ceremony was essentially a transfer of property: A woman went from being the responsibility of her father to being the responsibility of her husband.

That may not be the first thing Americans associate with weddings today, but it lives on in rituals and vows. Think, in a traditional Christian wedding, of a bride promising “to obey” her husband, or being “given away” by her father after he walks her down the aisle.

Samira Mehta is director of the CU Boulder Program in Jewish Studies and an associate professor of women and gender studies.

Feminism has changed some aspects of the Christian wedding. More egalitarian or feminist couples, for example, might have the bride be “given away” by both her parents, or have both the bride and groom escorted in by parents. Others skip the “giving” altogether. Queer couples, too, have reimagined the wedding ceremony.

During research for my book “Beyond Chrismukkah,” about Christian-Jewish interfaith families, many interviewees wound up talking about their weddings and the rituals that they selected or innovated for the day to reflect their cultural background. Some of them had also designed their ceremonies to reflect feminism and marriage equality—something that the interfaith weddings had in common with many weddings where both members of the couple were Jewish.

These values have transformed many Jewish couples’ weddings, just as they have transformed the Christian wedding. Some Jewish couples make many changes, while some make none. And like every faith, Judaism has lots of internal diversity—not all traditional Jewish weddings look the same.

Contracts and covenants

Perhaps one of the most important places where feminism and marriage equality have reshaped traditions is in the “ketubah,” or Jewish marriage contract.

A traditional ketubah is a simple legal document in Hebrew or Aramaic, a related ancient language. Two witnesses sign the agreement, which states that the groom has acquired the bride. However, the ketubah is also sometimes framed as a tool to protect women. The document stipulates the husband’s responsibility to provide for his wife and confirms what he should pay her in case of divorce. Traditional ketubot—the plural of ketubah—did not discuss love, God or intentions for the marriage.

Contemporary ketubot in more liberal branches of Judaism, whether between opposite- or same-sex couples, are usually much more egalitarian documents that reflect the home and the marriage that the couple want to create. Sometimes the couple adapt the Aramaic text; others keep the Aramaic and pair it with a text in the language they speak every day, describing their intentions for their marriage.

Rather than being simple, printed documents, contemporary ketubot are often beautiful pieces of art, made to hang in a place of prominence in the newlyweds’ home. Sometimes the art makes references to traditional Jewish symbols, such as a pomegranate for fertility and love. Other times, the artist works with the couple to personalize their decorations with images and symbols that are meaningful to them.

Contemporary couples will often also use their ketubah to address an inherent tension in Jewish marriage. Jewish law gives men much more freedom to divorce than it gives women. Because women cannot generally initiate divorce, they can end up as “agunot,” which literally means “chained”: women whose husbands have refused to grant them a religious divorce. Even if the couple have been divorced in secular court, an “agunah” cannot, according to Jewish law, remarry in a religious ceremony.

Contemporary ketubot will sometimes make a note that, while the couple hope to remain married until death, if the marriage deteriorates, the husband agrees to grant a divorce if certain conditions are met. This prevents women from being held hostage in unhappy marriages.

Key changes in Jewish weddings represent how the wedding ceremony itself has become more egalitarian in response to both feminism and marriage equality, notes CU Boulder scholar Samira Mehta.

Other couples eschew the ketubah altogether in favor of a new type of document called a “brit ahuvim,” or covenant of lovers. These documents are egalitarian agreements between couples. The brit ahuvim was developed by Rachel Adler, a feminist rabbi with a deep knowledge of Jewish law, and is grounded in ancient Jewish laws for business partnerships between equals. That said, many Jews, including some feminists, do not see the brit ahuvim as equal in status to a ketubah.

Building together

Beyond the ketubah, there are any number of other changes that couples make to symbolize their hopes for an egalitarian marriage.

Jewish ceremonies often take place under a canopy called the chuppah, which symbolizes the home that the couple create together. In a traditional Jewish wedding, the bride circles the groom three or seven times before entering the chuppah. This represents both her protection of their home and that the groom is now her priority.

Many couples today omit this custom, because they feel it makes the bride subservient to the groom. Others keep the circling but reinterpret it: In circling the groom, the bride actively creates their home, an act of empowerment. Other egalitarian couples, regardless of their genders, share the act of circling: Each spouse circles three times, and then the pair circle once together.

In traditional Jewish weddings, like in traditional Christian weddings, the groom gives his bride a ring to symbolize his commitment to her—and perhaps to mark her as a married woman. Many contemporary Jewish couples exchange two rings: both partners offering a gift to mark their marriage and presenting a symbol of their union to the world. While some see this shift as an adaptation to American culture, realistically, the dual-ring ceremony is a relatively new development in both American Christian and American Jewish marriage ceremonies.

Finally, Jewish weddings traditionally end when the groom stomps on and breaks a glass, and the entire crowd yells “Mazel tov” to congratulate them. People debate the symbolism of the broken glass. Some say that it reminds us that life contains both joy and sorrow, or that it is a reminder of a foundational crisis in Jewish history: the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Others say that it is a reminder that life is fragile, or that marriage, unlike the glass, is an unbreakable covenant.

Regardless of what it means, some contemporary couples both step on glasses, or have one partner place their foot on top of the other’s so that the newlyweds can break the glass together. The couple symbolize their commitment to equality – and both get to do a fun wedding custom.

There are many other innovations in contemporary Jewish weddings that have much less to do with feminism and egalitarianism, such as personalized wedding canopies or wedding programs. But these key changes represent how the wedding ceremony itself has become more egalitarian in response to both feminism and marriage equality.

Samira Mehta is director of the Program in Jewish Studies and an associate professor of women and gender studies at the ��.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From the marriage contract to breaking the glass under the chuppah, many Jewish couples adapt their weddings to celebrate gender equality.

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Harnessing the abundant resource of sunlight

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 17:55:24 +0000

Harnessing the abundant resource of sunlight Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/24/2025 - 11:55

Arindam Sau , Amreen Bains and Anna Wolff

Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient

Manufactured chemicals and materials are necessary for practically every aspect of daily life, from life-saving pharmaceuticals to plastics, fuels and fertilizers. Yet manufacturing these important chemicals comes at a steep energy cost.

Many of these industrial chemicals are derived primarily from fossil fuel-based materials. These compounds are typically very stable, making it difficult to transform them into useful products without applying harsh and energy-demanding reaction conditions.

Arindam Sau, a Ph.D. candidate in the CU Boulder Department of Chemistry, along with Colorado State University research colleagues Amreen Bains and Anna Wolff, have been working on a system that uses light to power reactions commonly used in the chemical manufacturing industry.

As a result, transforming these stubborn materials contributes significantly to the world’s overall energy use. In 2022, the industrial sector consumed 37% of the world’s total energy, with the chemical industry responsible for approximately 12% of that demand.

Conventional chemical manufacturing processes use heat to generate the energy needed for reactions that take place at high temperatures and pressures. An approach that uses light instead of heat could lower energy demands and allow reactions to be run under gentler conditions — like at room temperature instead of extreme heat.

Sunlight represents one of the most abundant yet underutilized energy sources on Earth. In nature, this energy is captured through photosynthesis, where plants convert light into chemical energy. Inspired by this process, our team of chemists at the Center for Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis, a research center funded by the National Science Foundation, has been working on a system that uses light to power reactions commonly used in the chemical manufacturing industry. We published our results in the journal Science in June 2025.

We hope that this method could provide a more economical route for creating industrial chemicals out of fossil fuels. At the same time, since it doesn’t rely on super-high temperatures or pressures, the process is safer, with fewer chances for accidents.

How does our system work?

The photoredox catalyst system that our team has developed is powered by simple LEDs, and it operates efficiently at room temperature.

At the core of our system is an organic photoredox catalyst: a specialized molecule that we know accelerates chemical reactions when exposed to light, without being consumed in the process.

Much like how plants rely on pigments to harvest sunlight for photosynthesis, our photoredox catalyst absorbs multiple particles of light, called photons, in a sequence.

These photons provide bursts of energy, which the catalyst stores and then uses to kick-start reactions. This “multi-photon” harvesting builds up enough energy to force very stubborn molecules into undergoing reactions that would otherwise need highly reactive metals. Once the reaction is complete, the photocatalyst resets itself, ready to harvest more light and keep the process going without creating extra waste.

Designing molecules that can absorb multiple photons and react with stubborn molecules is tough. One big challenge is that after a molecule absorbs a photon, it only has a tiny window of time before that energy fades away or gets lost. Plus, making sure the molecule uses that energy the right way is not easy. The good news is we’ve found that our catalyst can do this efficiently at room temperature.

Enabling greener chemical manufacturing

CSU chemistry researcher Amreen Bains performs a light-driven photoredox catalyzed reaction. (Photo: John Cline/Colorado State University Photography)

Our work points toward a future where chemicals are made using light instead of heat. For example, our catalyst can turn benzene — a simple component of crude oil — into a form called cyclohexadienes. This is a key step in making the building blocks for nylon. Improving this part of the process could reduce the carbon footprint of nylon production.

Imagine manufacturers using LED reactors or even sunlight to power the production of essential chemicals. LEDs still use electricity, but they need far less energy compared with the traditional heating methods used in chemical manufacturing. As we scale things up, we’re also figuring out ways to harness sunlight directly, making the entire process even more sustainable and energy-efficient.

Right now, we’re using our photoredox catalysts successfully in small lab experiments — producing just milligrams at a time. But to move into commercial manufacturing, we’ll need to show that these catalysts can also work efficiently at a much larger scale, making kilograms or even tons of product. Testing them in these bigger reactions will ensure that they’re reliable and cost-effective enough for real-world chemical manufacturing.

Similarly, scaling up this process would require large-scale reactors that use light efficiently. Building those will first require designing new types of reactors that let light reach deeper inside. They’ll need to be more transparent or built differently so the light can easily get to all parts of the reaction.

Our team plans to keep developing new light-driven techniques inspired by nature’s efficiency. Sunlight is a plentiful resource, and by finding better ways to tap into it, we hope to make it easier and cleaner to produce the chemicals and materials that modern life depends on.

Arindam Sau is a Ph.D. candidate in the �� Department of Chemistry; Amreen Bains is a postdoctoral scholar in chemistry at Colorado State University; Anna Wolff is a PhD student in chemistry at Colorado State University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient.

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You said a moth-ful

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 16:09:34 +0000

You said a moth-ful Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/04/2025 - 10:09

Ryan St Laurent

It’s miller moth season in Colorado—an entomologist explains why they’re important and where they’re headed

It is spring on the Front Range of Colorado, which means before long the region will receive an influx of many, many moths.

Colorado is home to thousands of species of moths, many of which are hatching out from a winter of hibernation, known as diapause.

At night, porch lights, stadium lights and street lamps are regularly visited by moths, a collective term for most of the nocturnal members of the insect order called Lepidoptera. Butterflies are also part of this order, but they are mostly diurnal, or active during the day. Butterflies are actually just a subset of moths, so all butterflies are moths, but not all moths are butterflies.

Ryan St Laurent is a CU Boulder assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and CU Museum curator of entomology.

The Front Range lies on the path of a springtime migration of a particularly familiar species of moth, usually referred to in this part of the country, including Colorado and neighboring states, as “miller moths.” Miller moth caterpillars are often called the “army cutworm,” a whimsical name referring to the caterpillars’ tendency to reach large numbers that march across fields and roads to find food. Both the moths and their caterpillars are rather drab and brown in color, though the moths are variable in patterning.

Many people find miller moths to be a nuisance, and the caterpillars can be a pest. But miller moths are a native species to Colorado and play important roles across the plains and up into the high country.

I am an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology as well as the curator of the entomology collection at the University of Colorado’s Natural History Museum in Boulder. I study moths from around the world. I have a particular fascination for the large moth group known as Noctuoidea, the superfamily to which miller moths and their relatives belong.

As an entomologist, I crisscross the state looking for moths for my ongoing evolutionary, classification and life history studies. During miller moth migrations, they may swarm my moth traps, which are made up of a bright light in front of a white sheet. The crush of miller moths makes finding the less common species that I am looking for all the more challenging in a sea of dusty brown.

What makes miller moths so unique?

In temperate regions like most of North America, most moth species hibernate in the cold winter months. During this time, they are in a dormant pupal stage. Some species spin cocoons. They then hatch into adult moths, mate, lay eggs, and those caterpillars grow during the spring and summer. Come fall, the cycle starts over.

While miller moths also have a hibernation period, it is not like that of most moths. Miller moths instead spend their winters on the plains of eastern Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and nearby states as partially grown caterpillars, rather than a pupa, having gotten a head start on feeding in the late summer. This puts the caterpillars at an advantage. As soon as the weather warms and low-lying crops like wheat and alfalfa produce new, nutrient-rich foliage during the early spring, the caterpillars are right there ready to feast and may cause serious damage to the crops in outbreak years.

Pupation then occurs later in the spring, and unlike in most Lepidoptera, the adult moths hatch without an extended pupal diapause, and instead begin to migrate west. They travel more than 100 miles (roughly 160 kilometers) toward higher elevations to seek out flowering plants, feeding on nectar and pollinating as they go.

To spot and trap moths, entomologists set up bright lights in front of a white background. (Photo: Ryan St Laurent)

This migration is where folks on the Front Range become all too familiar with these weary travelers, who seek out narrow spaces to rest, often crawling into gaps in cars and homes. Inside a home, miller moths don’t feed, reproduce or lay eggs. Sudden agitation of the resting moths may cause them to fly about to seek out a new spot to hide – that is, if your house cat doesn’t see them first. If they do make their way inside, they can be easily swept into a cup or jar and let outside.

People on the Front Range experience a second run-in with these moths after they finish their summer of feeding in the mountains and head back to the plains to lay their eggs in the fields from August to September.

The call of the night

The importance of pollinators is familiar to many Coloradans. The state offers many resources and groups to help create spaces to attract butterflies and bees, including an initiative that designated Interstate Highway 76 as the “Colorado Pollinator Highway.”

But pollination does not stop when the sun goes down. In fact, moths make up the largest percentage of pollinators in terms of number of species globally – more than bees and butterflies combined. But scientists have yet to figure out which plants miller moths pollinate.

Despite the importance of moths as pollinators to agriculture and ecology, by comparison to bees, for example, we know exceedingly little about nocturnal pollinators. Of the thousands of moth species in Colorado, many hundreds remain unknown to science. One of the reasons scientists study moths is to literally shed a light on these insects in the environment to see what they are doing.

My work aims to understand what certain moths eat in their caterpillar stage, but other researchers, and my colleague Dr. Julian Resasco, at the ��, study what plants the adults are feeding on as they pollinate.

Colorado moths

Moths are among the primary airborne insects at night, playing a significant, and perhaps leading, role in insect-feeding bat diets. During their migration to the mountains, there are so many miller moths that they are a substantial protein- and fat-rich meal for animals as large as bears.

Considering that we still know so little about moths, it’s important to realize that light pollution, habitat loss and agricultural chemicals are all impacting moth numbers, resulting in annual declines in these insects globally.

So, the next time you see a miller moth in Colorado, or any moth at a light anywhere on Earth, remember that it’s working the night shift. Turn out that light so it can go about its way.

Ryan St Laurent is an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and CU Museum curator of entomology the at the ��.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s miller moth season in Colorado—an entomologist explains why they’re important and where they’re headed.

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How Asian American became a racial grouping

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 20 May 2025 23:21:45 +0000

How Asian American became a racial grouping Rachel Sauer Tue, 05/20/2025 - 17:21

Jennifer Ho

And why many with Asian roots don’t identify with the term these days

For the first time, in 1990, May was officially designated as a month honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage. Though the current U.S. administration recently withdrew federal recognition, the month continues to be celebrated by a wide array of people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

People from the Pacific Islands have their own distinct histories and issues, delineated in part by a specific geography. Yet when we refer to the even broader category of Asian Americans, a concept with a deep yet often unknown history, who exactly are we referring to?

There are nearly 25 million people of Asian descent who live in the United States, but the term Asian American remains shrouded by cultural misunderstanding and contested as a term among Asians themselves.

Jennifer Ho is a professor of Asian American studies in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies and director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

As a professor of Asian American studies, I believe it is important to understand how the label came into being.

A long history of Asian people in America

The arrival of people from Asia to the U.S. long predates the country’s founding in 1776.

After visits to modern-day America that began in the late 16th century, Filipino sailors formed – as early as 1763 – what is believed to be the first Asian settlement in St. Malo, Louisiana.

But it wasn’t until the 1849 California Gold Rush that Asian immigration to the U.S.—from China—began on a mass scale. That was bolstered in the 1860s by Chinese laborers recruited to build the western portion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Starting toward the end of the 19th century, Japanese immigration steadily picked up, so that by 1910 the U.S. Census records a similar number for both communities – just over 70,000. Likewise, a small number of South Asian immigrants began arriving in the early 1900s.

An exclusionary backlash

Yet after coming to the U.S. in search of economic and political opportunities, Asian laborers in America were met by a surge of white nativist hostility and violence. That reaction was codified in civil society groups and government laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

By 1924, federal law had expanded into a virtual ban on all Asian immigration, and through the first half of the 20th century, a multitude of anti-Asian laws targeted areas including naturalization, marriage and housing, among others.

From the start, people from Asian countries in the U.S. were generally identified broadly with identifiers such as “Oriental,” a common term at the time mostly for those from China, Japan and Korea.

As more Asians came to the U.S, other terms were used to denigrate and demean these new immigrants, whose physical appearance, language and cultural norms were distinctly different from their Euro-American neighbors.

‘Asian American’ and the birth of a movement

Chinese railroad workers (left to right) Wong Fook, Lee Chao and Ging Cui with a parade float in Ogden, Utah, during a 1919 parade celebrating the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. (Photo: San Francisco Public Library)

The desire to claim America was one of the drivers for activists in the 1960s to create the concept of Asian American that we know today.

The movement began in the charged political context of anti-Vietnam War protests and the Civil Rights Movement for Black equality. Students of Asian heritage at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley were organizing for the establishment of ethnic studies classes, specifically those that centered on the histories of Asians in the U.S.

Rejecting the term “oriental” as too limiting and exotic, since oriental literally means “from the East,” the student activists wanted a term of empowerment that would include the Filipino, Chinese, Korean and Japanese students at the heart of this organizing. Graduate students Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka came up with “Asian American” as a way to bring activists under one radical organizing umbrella, forming the Asian American Political Alliance in 1968.

A contested term

Today, the Asian American label has moved beyond its activist roots. The term might literally refer to anyone who traces their lineage from the whole of the Asian continent. This could include people from South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka to parts of West Asia like Syria, Lebanon or Iran.

Yet not all people who identify as Asian actually use the words Asian American, since it is a term that flattens ethnic specificity and lumps together people with as disparate of backgrounds as Hmong or Bangladeshi, for example.

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of self-identified Asian adults living in the U.S. revealed that only 16% of people polled said they identified as “Asian American,” with a majority—52%—preferring ethnic Asian labels, either alone or in tandem with “American.”

Moreover, unlike the student activists who worked together through their shared Asian American identity, the majority of people of Asian descent living in the U.S. came after the 1965 Immigration Act was passed, which ended all prior anti-Asian immigration laws. This, combined with a subsequent wave of Asian immigration from parts of Asia not represented in the past—including Vietnam, Taiwan and Pakistan—means that most Asian Americans alive today are either immigrants or one generation removed from immigrants.

As a largely immigrant and recently Americanized group, many Asians therefore may not relate to the struggles of an earlier history of Asians in the U.S. That may contribute to why many don’t connect with the term “Asian American.” Korean immigrants, for instance, may not see their history connected with third-generation Japanese Americans, particularly when considering their homelands have been in conflict for decades.

For some, Asian American is too broad a term to capture the complexity of Asian-heritage Americans.

Indeed, Asian Americans come from over 30 countries with different languages, diverse cultures, and histories that have often been in conflict with other Asian nations. Within such a broad grouping as “Asian American,” a wide range of political, socioeconomic, religious and other differences emerge that greatly complicate this racial label.

Even though the term remains contested, many Asians still see value in the concept. Much like the activists who first created the label in the 1960s, many believe it signifies a sense of solidarity and community among people who—despite their many differences—have been treated like outsiders to the American experience, regardless of how American their roots are.

Jennifer Ho is a professor of Asian American studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the ��.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

And why many with Asian roots don’t identify with the term these days.

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Top image: Children performing a traditional Korean dance to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. (Photo: Viorel Florescu/AP)

This summer, where there's smoke there's probably fire

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 21:01:58 +0000

This summer, where there's smoke there's probably fire Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/23/2025 - 15:01

Laura Dee

Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding—this could be a rough year

Red skies in August, longer fire seasons and checking air quality before taking my toddler to the park. This has become the new norm in the western United States as wildfires become more frequent, larger and more catastrophic.

As an ecologist at the ��, I know that fires are part of the natural processes that forests need to stay healthy. But the combined effects of a warmer and drier climate, more people living in fire-prone areas and vegetation and debris built up over years of fire suppression are leading to more severe fires that spread faster. And that’s putting humans, ecosystems and economies at risk.

To help prevent catastrophic fires, the U.S. Forest Service issued a 10-year strategy in 2022 that includes scaling up the use of controlled burns and other techniques to remove excess plant growth and dry, dead materials that fuel wildfires.

CU Boulder researcher Laura Dee is an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

However, the Forest Service’s wildfire management activities have been thrown into turmoil in 2025 with funding cuts and disruptions and uncertainty from the federal government.

The planet just saw its hottest year on record. If spring and summer 2025 are also dry and hot, conditions could be prime for severe fires again.

More severe fires harm forest recovery and people

Today’s severe wildfires have been pushing societies, emergency response systems and forests beyond what they have evolved to handle.

Extreme fires have burned into cities, including destroying thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area in 2025 and near Boulder, Colorado, in 2021. They threaten downstream public drinking water by increasing sediments and contaminants in water supplies, as well as infrastructure, air quality and rural economies. They also increase the risk of flooding and mudslides from soil erosion. And they undermine efforts to mitigate climate change by releasing carbon stored in these ecosystems.

In some cases, fires burned so hot and deep into the soil that the forests are not growing back.

While many species are adapted to survive low-level fires, severe blazes can damage the seeds and cones needed for forests to regrow. My team has seen this trend outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, where four years after the Cameron Peak fire, forests have still not come back the way ecologists would expect them to under past, less severe fires. Returning to a strategy of fire suppression − or trying to “go toe-to-toe with every fire” − will make these cases more common.

Proactive wildfire management can help reduce the risk to forests and property.

Measures such as prescribed burns have proven to be effective for maintaining healthy forests and reducing the severity of subsequent wildfires. A recent review found that selective thinning followed by prescribed fire reduced subsequent fire severity by 72% on average, and prescribed fire on its own reduced severity by 62%.

But managing forests well requires knowing how forests are changing, where trees are dying and where undergrowth has built up and increased fire hazards. And, for federal lands, these are some of the jobs that are being targeted by the Trump administration.

Parts of Cameron Peak in north-central Colorado that burned in a severe fire in 2020 showed scant evidence of recovery four years later, when this photo was taken. (Photo: Bella Olesky/CU Boulder)

Some of the Forest Service staff who were fired or put in limbo by the Trump administration are those who do research or collect and communicate critical data about forests and fire risk. Other fired staff provided support so crews could clear flammable debris and carry out fuel treatments such as prescribed burns, thinning forests and building fire breaks.

Losing people in these roles is like firing all primary care doctors and leaving only EMTs. Both are clearly needed. As many people know from emergency room bills, preventing emergencies is less costly than dealing with the damage later.

Logging is not a long-term fire solution

The Trump administration cited “wildfire risk reduction” when it issued an emergency order to increase logging in national forests by 25%.

But private − unregulated − forest management looks a lot different than managing forests to prevent destructive fires.

Logging, depending on the practice, can involve clear-cutting trees and other techniques that compromise soils. Exposing a forest’s soils and dead vegetation to more sunlight also dries them out, which can increase fire risk in the near term.

In general, logging that focuses on extracting the highest-value trees leaves thinner trees that are more vulnerable to fires. A study in the Pacific Northwest found that replanting logged land with the same age and size of trees can lead to more severe fires in the future.

Research and data are essential

For many people in the western U.S., these risks hit close to home.

I’ve seen neighborhoods burn and friends and family displaced, and I have contended with regular air quality warnings and red flag days signaling a high fire risk. I’ve also seen beloved landscapes, such as those on Cameron Peak, transform when conifers that once made up the forest have not regrown.

My scientific research group and collaborations with other scientists have been helping to identify cost-effective solutions. That includes which fuel-treatment methods are most effective, which types of forests and conditions they work best in and how often they are needed. We’re also planning research projects to better understand which forests are at greatest risk of not recovering after fires.

This sort of research is what robust, cost-effective land management is based on.

When careful, evidence-based forest management is replaced with a heavy emphasis on suppressing every fire or clear-cutting forests, I worry that human lives, property and economies, as well as the natural legacy of public lands left to every American, are at risk.

Laura Dee is an associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding—this could be a rough year.

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Top image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Communities working together for better air

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 19:32:50 +0000

Communities working together for better air Rachel Sauer Thu, 03/06/2025 - 12:32

Jenni Shearston

Colorado is tackling air pollution in vulnerable neighborhoods by regulating five air toxics

The Globeville, Elyria-Swansea and Commerce City communities in metro Denver are choked by air pollution from nearby highways, an oil refinery and a Superfund site.

While these neighborhoods have long suffered from air pollution, they’re not the only ones in Colorado.

Now, Colorado is taking a major step to protect people from air pollutants that cause cancer or other major health problems, called “air toxics.” For the first time, the state is developing its own state-level air toxic health standards.

CU Boulder researcher Jenni Shearston studies chemical exposure and health, measuring and evaluating the impact of air pollution on people’s well-being.

In January 2025 Colorado identified five air toxics as “priority” chemicals: benzene, ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, hexavalent chromium compounds and hydrogen sulfide.

The state is in the process of setting health-based standards that will limit the amount of each chemical allowed in the air. Importantly, the standards will be designed to protect people exposed to the chemicals long term, such as those living near emission sources. Exposure to even low amounts of some chemicals, such as benzene, may lead to cancer.

As a researcher studying chemical exposure and health, I measure and evaluate the impact of air pollution on people’s well-being.

Colorado’s new regulations will draw on expert knowledge and community input to protect people’s health.

Communities know what needs regulation

In your own community, is there a highway that runs near your house or a factory with a bad odor? Maybe a gas station right around the corner? You likely already know many of the places that release air pollution near you.

When state or local regulators work with community members to find out what air pollution sources communities are worried about, the partnership can lead to a system that better serves the public and reduces injustice.

For example, partnerships between community advocates, scientists and regulators in heavily polluted and marginalized neighborhoods in New York and Boston have had big benefits. These partnerships resulted in both better scientific knowledge about how air pollution is connected to asthma and the placement of air monitors in neighborhoods impacted the most.

In Colorado, the process to choose the five priority air toxics included consulting with multiple stakeholders. A technical working group provided input on which five chemicals should be prioritized from the larger list of 477 toxic air contaminants.

The working group includes academics, members of nongovernmental organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund – local government and regulated industries, such as the American Petroleum Institute.

There were also opportunities for community participation during public meetings.

At public hearings, community groups like GreenLatinos argued that formaldehyde, instead of acrolein, should be one of the prioritized air toxics because it can cause cancer.

Additionally, formaldehyde is emitted in some Colorado communities that are predominantly people of color, according to advocates for those communities. These communities are already disproportionately impacted by high rates of respiratory disease and cancer.

Other members of the community also weighed in.

“One of my patients is a 16-year-old boy who tried to get a summer job working outside, but had to quit because air pollution made his asthma so bad that he could barely breathe,” wrote Logan Harper, a Denver-area family physician and advocate for Healthy Air and Water Colorado.

How is air quality protected?

At the national level, the Clean Air Act requires that six common air pollutants, such as ozone and carbon monoxide, are kept below specific levels. The act also regulates 188 hazardous air pollutants.

Individual states are free to develop their own regulations, and several, including California and Minnesota, already have. States can set standards that are more health-protective than those in place nationally.

Four of the five chemicals prioritized by Colorado are regulated federally. The fifth chemical, hydrogen sulfide, is not included on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s hazardous air pollutant list, but Colorado has decided to regulate it as an air toxic.

State-level regulation is important because states can focus on air toxics specific to their state to make sure that the communities most exposed to air pollution are protected. One way to do this is to place air pollution monitors in the communities experiencing the worst air pollution.

For example, Colorado is placing six new air quality monitors in locations around the state to measure concentrations of the five priority air toxics. It will also use an existing monitor in Grand Junction to measure air toxics. Two of the new monitors, located in Commerce City and La Salle, began operating in January 2024. The remainder will start monitoring the air by July 2025.

When Colorado chose the sites, it prioritized communities that are overly impacted by social and environmental hazards. To do this, officials used indexes like the Colorado EnviroScreen, which combines information about pollution, health and economic factors to identify communities that are overly burdened by hazards.

The Commerce City monitor is located in Adams City, a neighborhood that has some of the worst pollution in the state. The site has air toxics emissions that are worse than 95% of communities in Colorado.

Air toxics and health

The five air toxics that Colorado selected all have negative impacts on health. Four are known to cause cancer.

When state or local regulators work with community members to find out what air pollution sources communities are worried about, the partnership can lead to a system that better serves the public and reduces injustice.

Benzene, perhaps the most well known because of its ability to cause blood cancer, is one. But it also has a number of other health impacts, including dampening the ability of the immune system and impacting the reproductive system by decreasing sperm count. Benzene is in combustion-powered vehicle exhaust and is emitted during oil and gas production and refinement.

Ethylene oxide can cause cancer and irritates the nervous and respiratory systems. Symptoms of long-term exposure can include headaches, sore throat, shortness of breath and others. Ethylene oxide is used to sterilize medical equipment, and as of 2024, it was used by four facilities in Colorado.

Formaldehyde is also a cancer-causing agent, and exposure is associated with asthma in children. This air toxic is used in the manufacture of a number of products like household cleaners and building materials. It is also emitted by oil and gas sources, including during fracking.

Hexavalent chromium compounds can cause several types of cancer, as well as skin and lung diseases such as asthma and rhinitis. A major source of hexavalent chromium is coal-fired power plants, of which Colorado currently has six in operation, though these plants are scheduled to close in the next five years. Other sources of hexavalent chromium include chemical and other manufacturing.

Finally, long-term exposure to hydrogen sulfide can cause low blood pressure, headaches and a range of other symptoms, and has been associated with neurological impacts such as psychological disorders. Some sources of hydrogen sulfide include oil refineries and wastewater treatment plants.

Jenni Shearston is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Colorado is tackling air pollution in vulnerable neighborhoods by regulating five air toxics.

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