Ashley Coles

M.A. Student, Geography & Regional Development

BS 2005 Atmospheric Science, Cornell University

Phone: (520) 331-0704
FAX: (520) 621-2889
E-mail: coles@email.arizona.edu

105 West Stadium
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
USA

Personal Home Page

Research

For my master's thesis I am attempting to identify how culture affects people's risk perception and behavior during hazard events, particularly flash floods. I intend to take this information and work with emergency managers, floodplain managers, and the National Weather Service to determine if and how taking cultural factors into account may lead to the development of new products that present hazard information that emphasizes various value systems and inspires "appropriate" responses.

New research directions that I am considering for my Ph.D. include how risk is perceived in relation to the body, and how this manifests itself in grassroots activism. I am particularly interested in how gender differences in beliefs of who/what is to blame, who/what is at risk, and what counts as acceptable risk shape the goals and trajectories of social movements.

Other interests include the broad fields of meteorology, climatology, and hydrology.

Project Involvement

• Currently updating a flood hydroclimatology of Arizona
• Climate analysis for the second phase of A Tree-Ring Based Assessment of Synchronous Extreme Streamflow Episodes in the Upper Colorado & Salt-Verde-Tonto River Basins
• Assisted with the development of a flash flood climatology for the Binghamton, NY National Weather Service county warning area
• An unpublished account of the July 2003 "1,000-year flood" of central New Jersey