Extreme Heat Resilience

In May 2025, I was appointed Assistant Research Professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning at the University of Arizona, following two years of postdoc under the guidance of Associate Professor of Planning and Sustainable Built Environments Ladd Keith at the Heat Resilience Initiative.

My research on extreme heat is mostly funded by CLIMAS, a Regional Integrated Science and Assessments (RISA) program, funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that includes experts from social, physical, and natural sciences who collaborate with partners across the Southwest to develop sustainable solutions for regional climate challenges. My research aims to bridge climate science and decision-making to advance heat resilience in rural, tribal, and border communities in the U.S. Southwest. You can find below publications from our team work at the Heat Resilience Initiative, as well as more personal projects and essays.

2026 - A memo for the American Planning Association on Planning for Rural Heat Resilience:

Heat is often presented as an urban problem, and heat resilience planning efforts thus far have largely focused on urban areas. But rural and small communities are also severely impacted by extreme heat. Though this urban focus has generated important advances, attention to heat risks, vulnerabilities, and planning capacity in rural communities has lagged. As heat risks intensify, rural and small communities need planning approaches that account for more dispersed populations, limited infrastructure, and constrained local capacities. This PAS Memo addresses this gap by examining how rural communities can increase their resilience to extreme heat.  It begins by discussing factors that exacerbate the impacts of extreme heat on rural communities. It then outlines the seven principles of the heat resilience planning framework and details strategies for heat mitigation (reducing heat in built environments) and heat management (preparing for and responding to heat events) tailored for rural and small-town contexts. Finally, the article proposes action steps for planners to increase heat resilience in rural and small communities.

2025 - A systematic literature review examining how extreme heat is conceptualized, governed, and addressed in rural contexts - an area that remains under explored compared to urban heat research. By synthesizing interdisciplinary scholarship across public health, planning, geography, and broader climate resilience, the review identifies key gaps in knowledge, highlights the specific challenges rural communities face, and lays the groundwork for future empirical research on rural heat resilience in the U.S. Southwest and beyond.

Published in Weather, Climate and Society, it is available open access here.

A short publication, drawing from our rural heat work, published on the American Association of Geographers’ Just Rural Futures blog.

Boyer, A.L., Ahn, M. & Keith, L. 02/22/2025. Expanding the focus: toward heat equity in rural areas. Just Rural Futures, American Association of Geographers' Rural Geography Specialty Group

The Heat Diary project:

It started in the summer of 2023, when I was still working on water and river conservation issues but I found myself spending the entire summer in Phoenix…under the scorching heat. My colleague Brian F. O’Neill at Arizona State University and I began turning our shared experience into fieldwork. Our zines Heat Diary: Visualizing the Geography of Heat (Issue 1 and 2) is the result: a blend of street photography, field notes, and personal reflections from two political ecologists walking the overheated sidewalks of the hottest major city in the United States.

The zine is available on the GeoZONe Zine Repository: https://geoz.one/

We also wrote a reflective piece on our zine-making work, published in Cultural Geographies in Practice. You can read it here.

Abstract: This contribution examines the zine as a drafting board – a creative space for experimentation and interdisciplinary collaboration at the crossroads of science and photography. While presenting research in alternative formats is not a novel concept, we advocate for expanding conversations around the methods, rationale, and value of zine-making within academic and public discourse. Using our project, Heat Diary: Visualizing the Geography of Heat - Issue 1: Devices, as a case study, we delve into the methods, challenges, and strategies involved in producing a zine informed by the place-based perspectives of a geographer and a sociologist living and working in Phoenix, Arizona. Set in the context of record-breaking heat waves in 2023 and 2024, Phoenix’s innovative urban heat mitigation efforts, and the proliferation of new signage and infrastructure addressing extreme temperatures, the project reflects the evolving geographies of heat. Blending ethnographic fieldnotes, visual documentation, and collaborative research, this zine serves as both a record of these transformations and a creative reflection on the broader implications of urban heat in one of the world’s hottest cities.

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In line with my goal to contribute to the growing body of social science scholarship on heat, I actively seek out new publications on the topic. Extreme heat has long been overlooked in the social sciences and humanities. I read Heat: A History. Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet by historian On Barak. This book offers a timely and original contribution, exploring the historical, political, and cultural dimensions of this escalating crisis. I published a review in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. You can read it here.

Cover photography by Brian O'Neill, Phoenix, Summer 2023