Sustainability Questioned:
Appraising the Viability of Land Use Systems in the American West

by Dr. William R. Travis
Department of Geography, University of Colorado-Boulder

Thursday, June 19th at 12:00 p.m. at the CSTPR Conference Room
Directions

Dr. William Travis is a candidate for Director of the Policy Center.

Abstract: Some questions about sustainability and ecosystem health can be analyzed as land use problems, and studies of land use and cover change at local to regional scales have emerged as a critical part of global change research and sustainability science. In this presentation I take up abiding doubts about the ecological and social viability of selected land use systems in the American West----farming, ranching, and urbanization----with the goal of testing them against the data and of illuminating persistent policy problems. Great Plains farming, for example, has been subject to the longest-running debate about regional sustainability in American history, but the data show dryland and irrigated production persisting, even expanding, in the face of repeated predictions of imminent collapse. Debates over livestock grazing and urban development are propelled by similar elements: tragic narrative and negative prognosis nurtured by documented flaws but also by ambiguity in indicators like soil erosion and range condition, intuitive notions of natural limits and “correct” land use, disregard for data, and calls for big policy fixes. I end with a brief look at some human dimensions of the on-going, landscape-changing outbreak of Rocky Mountain pine bark beetles.

Biography: Dr. William Travis is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado-Boulder. His teaching and research focus on human behavior in the environment, including studies of the human dimensions of climate change, land use and the interaction of people and ecosystems. He was general editor (as William Riebsame) of the Atlas of the New West (W.W. Norton). His latest book, New Geographies of the American West, released in spring 2007, examines the driving forces and patterns of land use and development in the American West. His current projects examine social response to extreme climate change, and persistent fallacies in how humans understand nature and react to natural processes. Dr. Travis is the author of "New Geographies of the American West: Land Use And the Changing Patterns of Place" published by Island Press in 2007.

Pizza and refreshments will be served at this talk! Please rsvp by Monday, June 16 to Ami Nacu-Schmidt, ami@cires.colorado.edu. This talk will be held in the CSTPR Conference Room (1333 Grandview Avenue).