Margaret Redsteer publishes “Sand Dunes, Modern and Ancient, on the Southern Colorado Plateau Tribal Lands, Southwestern USA”

IAS faculty member Margaret Redsteer published “Sand Dunes, Modern and Ancient, on the Southern Colorado Plateau Tribal Lands, Southwestern USA” in Inland Dunes of North America. In her chapter, Redsteer describes how understanding the past, and documenting the current and future potential for sand dune mobility, provides important insights about climate variability and change, particularly in regions prone to drought. Changes to sand dune mobility lead to broad scale threshold changes to grassland ecosystems as a climate becomes more arid. The southwestern US is currently undergoing a climate change-induced megadrought. This dune study examines drought-induced processes that lead to rangeland deterioration that may impact a third of the region, and the traditional pastoral livelihoods of southwestern Indigenous people.