I am a climate change researcher, providing information and communication products for other scientists, authors, decision-makers, and anyone else interested in making progress on climate change.
Formerly, I was the Cave Resource Manager at Kartchner Caverns State Park in Arizona, and I spent a number of years in higher education working with faculty to develop service-learning classes focused on environmental sustainability. I earned my PhD from the University of Arizona where my major research interests included paleoclimate, monsoons, fire, drought, human-environment interaction, caves/speleology, lakes, climate variability, hydrology, using climate/paleoclimate information to inform policy and management decisions, and science & society. My dissertation focused on various aspects of cave and climate science. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where I learned a lot about observing the world around me from my parents, Henry Truebe, a geologist, and Laura Kosakowsky, a Maya archaeologist (I also have a brother, and from him I learned how to torment baby brothers...though he’s now 6’7” which makes that a much harder endeavor!). Growing up with saguaros and prickly pear, I also learned to love the Sonoran Desert and the North American monsoon. Every summer, I remember watching cumulonimbus clouds form, rain, and decay. Pursuing this interest, I ended up at Stanford University, California, where I majored in Earth Systems, or interdisciplinary environmental/earth science and policy. I took a fifth year to get a Master’s in Earth Systems, focused on Terrestrial Biogeochemistry, Climate Change, and Human-Environment Interaction. For the year after that, I worked in a Paleobiology Lab, which gave me vital perspective on more recent (Holocene) environmental change and the deep time history of our planet. It also taught me that gastropods are cool, and the end-Permian extinction was kind of a big deal. After my graduate work, I worked again at Stanford as the Director of Community Engaged Learning in Environmental Sustainability, where I connected campus and community on mutually beneficial sustainability projects in service-learning classes. While in graduate school I discovered an interest in emergency management, including wilderness search and rescue and cave rescue. The bulk of my "free" time is now spent volunteering with the Southern Arizona Rescue Association and training with the National Cave Rescue Commission. Whatever time I don't spend on these endeavors I spend chatting with my cat, playing flute and piccolo, and exploring the fine mountains of the American West! |