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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

A little bit of good news today. Our paper “Who gets left behind by left behind places?” Just won the Annual Editors’ Choice Award at the CJRES!

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

I had the privilege of teaching an impressive group of early career scholars at @mpidr.bsky.social this week. What an amazing time to be in Rostock! Happy I could open up the big-tent of geography to a few more researchers

Image of the MPIDR building at sunset. The harbor in the foreground and a part of the cityscape in the background.

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Rachel Franklin 🦚 @rsfrankl.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

🎙️ New #GLaDpodcast episode! @darribas.bsky.social, @levijohnwolf.bsky.social and I are joined by the amazing @geoffboeing.com (@priceschool.usc.edu) to talk streets, disasters, urban form & open source software. It's a pretty good one, if I do say so myself. #geosky open.spotify.com/episode/4H6K...

open.spotify.com

Episode 20: Street Smart — A Conversation with Geoff Boeing

The GLaD Podcast · Episode

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Dr. Crystal A. Kolden @pyrogeog.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

I often use Watch Duty as an example of truly needed tech solutions for wildfire. Drones and AI are never going to prevent wildfires or put them out. But communications before, during, and after fire is a massive gap that tech can absolutely help solve.

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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 10/01/2025

A disaster is a function of three things: the hazard itself, people's vulnerability to the hazard, and their exposure. @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social explains eloquently how the LA fires are a perfect storm of all three. Read more:

theguardian.com

The chronicle of a fire foretold | Rebecca Solnit

The current fires in Los Angeles are reminders of the costs of forgetting

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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Is there a link between #ClimateChange & increasing risk/severity of #wildfire in California--including the still-unfolding disaster? Yes. Is climate change the only factor at play? No, of course not. So what's really going on? [Thread] #CAfire #CAwx #LAfires iopscience.iop.org/a...

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Los Angeles magazine @lamag.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Devastating photos of Pacific Palisades today. #PalisadesFire

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Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com · 09/01/2025

Harrowing scenes from across Los Angeles as multiple fires ravage the county and displace over 100,000 people. 📷 Ethan Swope/AP Photo & Josh Edelson/Getty Images

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Prof Richard Betts @richardabetts.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Southern California now sees longer fire weather seasons, like many other places worldwide Human-caused climate change means hot, dry, windy conditions happen more often, priming landscapes to burn more easily if ignition occurs Matt Jones et al 2022 agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Map of global land showing gridded data of changes in Fire Weather Season Length, with increases of over 40 days per year in south-western North America, much of South America, eastern and southern Africa, south-eastern Europe and central and eastern Australia. Hardly anywhere has a decreased fire season length.

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Dr. Crystal A. Kolden @pyrogeog.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Here's the reality about the #LAFires this week: this isn't the first time ANY of these places have burned. Not even close. In 2018, we mapped CA fire history to look at fire frequency across SoCal. Santa Monica Mtns area burns more than anywhere else -- up to once per decade in a given spot. 🧵

Map showing the number of times a location has burned in SoCal and which kind of fire it was: one burning under Santa Ana winds, or one that was a summer, fuel-driven fire without Santa Ana winds. Malibu area had burned at least 8 times from 1900-2017, and has burned twice now since. Image from Kolden and Abatzoglou (2018): https://www.mdpi.com/2571-6255/1/2/19

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

While Zillow has wrapped up their ZTRAX program we are grateful to have had access to their data. Disclaimer: The results and opinions are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the position of Zillow Group. Support by Zillow Group Inc. is acknowledged. 8/8

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

Explore the maps and data yourself at felt.com/map/Californ... I appreciate the support of everyone @ASU, @ASU_SGSUP, and @cugeography who helped to make this paper possible. 7/8

felt.com

California's Wildland Urban Interface – Felt

The best way to make maps on the internet.

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

Now, with a rapidly changing environment, one that is more fire prone, we hope that the TSMW framework can provide a methodology for leveraging #BigData (e.g. property records) to provide a more nuanced understanding of how people become exposed to wildfire. 6/8

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

In addition to utilizing rich property level data, our results show that our WUI maps better represent the WUI through time. For example, the TSMW maps capture 94.6% of burn exposed structures from 2010 to 2020 compared to 87.2% when using a census block based WUI map. 5/8

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

While growth has slowed, California's 4 million WUI properties make up 1.34 trillion or 40% of the state's improved residential property value. These homes tend to be newer, more expensive, and single family - over 9,000 of which are worth over $5 million. 4/8

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

The time stepped maps give us a building level profile of how CA's WUI has changed through time. We, like others, find that CA's WUI grew from 2000-2010 (441,531 (12.6%) more structures). Notably, WUI growth slowed in the following decade (58,725 (1.5%) more structures) 3/8

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

We build upon moving window based WUI mapping methods using a new data integration scheme we term the Time Step Moving Window (TSMW) framework which leverages Zillow's Transaction and Assessment Data (ZTRAX) to enrich FEMA building footprints to map the WUI through time. 2/8

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

New paper! How much development has occurred in California’s #wildfire prone areas over the past 20yrs? With ~10 million @zillow property records @Dylligent, @pjkedron, @amyefrazier, & I remap California's wildland urban interface (WUI) 2000-2020 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧵 1/8

sciencedirect.com

Remapping California's wildland urban interface: A property-level time-space framework, 2000–2020

Wildland fire poses a significant risk to property and people, and these risks tend to be highest in places where flammable, wildland vegetation abuts…

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Aleksander Berg @alekberg.bsky.social · 05/10/2023

Hot off the press! Our paper "Who gets left behind by left behind places?" (Connor, Berg, Kemeny, & Kedron) from a forthcoming special issue on left behind places. We examine the economic trajectory of left behind places and the children who grow up in them. #geo academic.oup.com/cjres/advanc...

academic.oup.com

Who gets left behind by left behind places?

Abstract. We document that children growing up in places left behind by today’s economy experience lower levels of social mobility as adults. Using a longitudin

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