Maxwell School News and Faculty Media, Opinion and Analysis

Koch Talks to KTVK About Arizona’s Outdated Water Law

Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment, argues that state lawmakers need to update the state’s 43 year old water law and create more active management areas to regulate water use across Arizona. “There needs to be some way of monitoring and regulating who is drawing what from the aquifers,” says Koch.

February 21, 2023

See related: Agriculture, United States, Water

Koch Article on Arizona Depleting its Groundwater Supply Published in New York Times

“Pumping groundwater in Arizona remains largely unregulated,” writes Natalie Koch, professor of geography. “It’s this legal failing that, in part, allows the Saudi company to draw unlimited amounts of water to grow an alfalfa crop that feeds dairy cows 8,000 miles away.”

January 10, 2023

Comparing Happiness Associated With Household and Community Gardening

Graham Ambrose, Kirti Das, Yingling Fan, Anu Ramaswami

"Comparing Happiness Associated With Household and Community Gardening: Implications for Food Action Planning," co-authored by Ph.D. student Graham Ambrose, was published in Landscape and Urban Planning.

November 23, 2022

See related: Agriculture, Mental Health, Social Justice

Koch Quoted in BBC Article on Dubai, Desertification

Desertification, the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation or inappropriate agriculture, has become rampant in the United Arab Emirates. Natalie Koch, associate professor of geography and the environment, talks more about it in the BBC article, "How Dubai is pushing back its encroaching deserts."

January 27, 2022

Ethan Coffel awarded three-year NSF grant to study climate-crop cycle

Coffel, professor of geography and the environment, hopes to use crop-climate cycles as a way to assess the future risk of climate-driven food insecurity.

April 22, 2021

See related: Agriculture, Climate Change, Grant Awards

Dickey weighs in on USDA union disagreement in Bloomberg Law article

July 21, 2020

See related: Agriculture, Federal, Labor, United States

Lovely speaks with Axios about US agriculture sector, tariffs

"Most observers believed that the agriculture sector was hurt and would need an extraordinary year to make up for that. I don’t think they’re going to see it," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

March 12, 2020

Lovely talks to Marketplace about weaknesses in US manufacturing

"We’re seeing the slowdown hit the Midwest, the farm belt," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics. "And a big slowdown in business investment, capital equipment purchases, is hitting states like Pennsylvania and Illinois."

November 7, 2019

See related: Agriculture, Trade, United States

Philip Curtis '10 BA (Geo) article on forest loss published in Science

"Classifying drivers of global forest loss," co-authored by Philip Curtis '10 BA (Geog), was published in Science magazine. Curtis et al. used high-resolution Google Earth imagery to map and classify global forest loss since 2001 and found that 27 percent of global forest loss is due to deforestation through permanent land use change for the production of commodities, including beef, soy, palm oil, and wood fiber.

September 17, 2018

See related: Agriculture

PhD student Fabiola Ortiz discusses harassment on NY farms with NPR

Fabiola Ortiz '16 MA (Anth) and PhD student in anthropology was interviewed for the segment "A Sexual Harassment Nightmare in Rural New York" on NPR's Latino USA. "When you are an undocumented farmworker, you have very little resources," says Ortiz, who studies New York dairy farmworkers. "Maybe you don’t know the language well. Maybe you’re new to New York and you don’t know where you are." 02/15/18

February 15, 2018