Contained within the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Center for Geographical Studies provides technical and related support for faculty research programs and grants. The center's mission is to promote and foster the use of GIS technology in education and research at California State University, Northridge and the larger southern California community.  We seek to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty, students, and groups in the local community who can benefit from using geographical information and spatial analysis.

The center has focused on a diversity of GIS and multimedia projects.  For the past 3 years the Geography Department and the Center have served as a regional mapping hub for the production of wetlands maps in association with the National Wetlands Inventory.  We are in the process of expanding our mapping applications into the field of historic ecology and have just completed a project mapping the historical wetlands of the San Gabriel River watershed with the Southern California Coast Watershed Research Project, the University of Southern California, and the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council.

Housed in the Department of Geography, we provide shared hardware and software resources, data archives and access, consulting services, community outreach and courses for GIS education. Our Geography Department hosts among one of the most advanced GIS labs in southern California and compliments this lab with a suite of sophisticated GIS courses.  The center is dedicated to fostering student participation in funded research projects and community service.  Student research assistants and interns are an integral component of the center's productivity.  Our goal is to expose students to real world problems and solutions while providing the local community with an opportunity to utilize our expertise.

Mapping Wetlands in Newport Beach, CA.