Kathy Kelsey (GES) and Brian Buma (Int Bio) are Principal Investigators on a 5-yr, $3.6M grant titled: Collaborative Research: Co-defining climate refugia to inform effective management of mountain headwater systems. This project is focused on “climate-change refugia,” or units of the landscape that maintain valued characteristics, such as carbon storage or shade on a hot day, despite the pressures of climate change. The project will use both understanding of sociocultural values and scientific advances to co-define, map, and project areas of future climate change refugia in the Colorado Front Range. The work is a collaborative effort with social and physical scientists from CU Boulder, NCAR, U of Wyoming and Cornell University, along with a coalition of land managers at local, regional and state levels, and will involve undergraduate and graduate students, and a postdoctoral researcher, at CU Denver.
