Historical Ecology
In addition to contemporary wetland maps, The Center for Geographic 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. Situated in the Geography Department, the Center provides expertise in using geographic information systems (GIS) for this type of analysis. GIS provides the unique ability to integrate a variety of historical data types into a spatial format allowing for large scale regional mapping efforts and analysis
Over the past two years we have developed a program that focuses on integrating with other research and public agencies. 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
We recently completed our historical wetlands mapping project along the San Gabriel River Watershed. Our next project, funding by the Coastal Conservancy with San Francsico Estuary Institute will include historical wetlands mapping of the Santa Clara River, Oxnard Plain, and lower Ventura River in Ventura County. 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.
San Gabriel River Watershed Historical Ecology Project - Final Report, Data, and Maps:
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 (.pdf)
Historical Wetlands of the Upper Floodplain - SGR (.pdf)
Historical Wetlands of Whittier Narrows - SGR (.pdf)
