Wetlands Mapping

The purpose of this project is to build on ongoing work by US FWS National Wetland Inventory (NWI), the Resources Agency, the Coastal Conservancy, & SCCWRP to complete an update of wetland and associated riparian habitat maps in Southern California coastal watersheds. 

To learn more about the project, please go the following website:

http://www.socalwetlands.com/website/main.htm .

Historical Ecology

In addition to contemporary wetland maps, The Center for Geographical Studies at CSUN is currently working on a variety of historical wetland mapping projects. Historically informed environmental analyses offer an important opportunity for land managers, land owners, anthropologists, historians, and geographers to obtain a more in-depth understanding of the natural environment and human impact.  At the present time, we have partnered with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, the University of Southern California (History and Geography Dept.), and the San Francisco Estuary Institute. We plan to continue our efforts in working these organizations and hope to encourage other local agencies to get involved in historical ecology projects in their local communities. This type of applied historical ecology is an invaluable tool for management!

To view samples of our work please download our final report for the San Gabriel Project below. For this project, we utilized a variety of historical maps including historic topographical maps, Spanish and Mexican diseno maps, historical soils maps, and various irrigations maps from the late 1800’s to identify the distribution of wetlands in the San Gabriel Valley.

You may need a copy of the Adobe Reader to view the linked documents on this page.

Documents:

• SGR Final Report (.pdf)
• SGR Geodatabase
• SGR Endnote Database of References
• SGR Final Report Bibliography (.pdf)

 

Project Maps:

• Historical Wetlands Map (.pdf)
• Historical Alignment of the San Gabriel River (.pdf)
• Historical Wetlands of the Southern Floodplain - SGR (.pdf)
• Historical Wetlands of the Tidal Fringe - SGR
• Historical Wetlands of Whittier Narrows - SGR

 

Straight into Compton?

This project explored the links between housing rate increases and demographic transitions.  The goal of this project was to pinpoint exactly where home prices have increased the most in Los Angeles County and exploring the factors that contributed to these increases.

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Payday Lending

How do you know when you’re in a tough neighborhood?” That question prompted a short field investigation, and later a GIS project that eventually found its way into a piece of federal legislation. Steve Graves, a geography professor at California State University, Northridge suspected that payday lenders, companies that offer high cost, short-term loans, tended to cluster in impoverished and tended to cluster in impoverished and minority neighborhoods.

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Public Space

This work highlights research on public space in southern California.  Focusing on the Santa Monica Pier, Dr. Davidson explored the success of the pier as an inclusive public space as well as a space for entertainment and  “nature”.

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Professors Ron Davidson and Ed Jackiewicz are currently collaborating on a project that aims to make public space, including parks, more abundant, user-friendly, culturally relevant, and ultimately, a more integral part of life in the San Fernando Valley and Greater Los Angeles area.  Their research involves: assessing park attributes with relation to the surrounding community, including resources and equipment available to park users; challenging ideas about malls as de facto public spaces; and surveying city residents (nearly 1000 have already been completed) as to their behaviors and preferences.

 They currently work with a team of students funded by University and College grants and the project is making great strides toward learning more about the role of parks and public space in our area.  The next phase will involve recommendations for existing public spaces and no less than transforming the way citizens and policy makers view these spaces.

Dynamic Maps of Ventura County

Our students are trained in a variety of technological areas besides GIS.  The link below will take you to a student project demonstrating historical landscape changes in Ventura County. For this project, our students work with a variety of cartographic and web-based applications to create these dynamic maps.

http://www.csun.edu/~ada55885/geog690c/ventura/