Geography Field Work

Department of Geography College of Liberal Arts 1250 Bellflower Boulevard California State University Long Beach, CA 90840-1101 USA

Geography Field Work at The Beach

Field Methods Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project Cartography International Exchange Course in GIS San Dimas Terrain Analysis

Land Use Planning Biogeography World Regional Geography Human Diversity

Geography as a discipline is notable for its orientation to field work, going out into the world and studying it by direct engagement with its physical and social processes. Geography @ The Beach prides itself on its commitment to field-based education. Here are a just a few examples.

The Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project

The Department of Geography partnered with the Departments of Geological Sciences and Anthropology in writing a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to launch a project called the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project, or GDEP. The original GDEP ran from Summer 2002 through Summer 2004 and was made up of a series of field and lab based summer research projects. The goal of the project was to increase the appeal of physical geography, geology, and geoarchæology to students from background underrepresented in these fields. CSULB faculty would define a variety of projects and work with community college and high school faculty, who would nominate students for GDEP research assistantships. Then, everyone, CSULB faculty and graduate assistants, GDEP research assistants, and faculty from community colleges and high schools would work on these projects as a team, with the research results presented at the end of the summer at an on-campus research symposium. Several students went on to present their work at professional conferences and nearly all majored in one of the collaborating disciplines, transferring to CSULB, CSU Fullerton, Caltech, and UCLA and aspiring to go to graduate school. A key part of raising student ambitions past completion of a community college degree and giving them confidence to go on for four year and graduate degrees in the geosciences was the field component of GDEP work. Very happily, the GDEP team has been funded to do a second round, from Summer 2008 through Summer 2011!

World Regional Geography

Dr. Vin Del Casino teaches GEOG 100, World Regional Geography. He takes students on local field trips to expose students to the "ins and outs" of the City of Long Beach. As many students are not from Long Beach itself or have ever lived here, this field trip introduces them to the complex and contested terrain of California's most diverse city. In the photo below, Dr. Del Casino discusses Cherry Park and its location along a cultural "fault line" of the City.

Biogeography Field Trip to Palos Verdes

Dr. Chrys Rodrigue teaches GEOG 442, "Biogeography," and took her students (together with a few GEOG 140 students looking for extra credit) to Palos Verdes. There they learned to use floristic keys to identify plant species, using part of a key that Dr. Rodrigue is developing for Palos Verdes. They learned to recognize three major vegetation associations there, the coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and exotic woodland and discussed adaptations to drought and fire. Students got practice in informal transecting, in order to sample patches of vegetation spaced 50 feet apart and assess the balance between native flora and invasive species. Students then turned their attention to another hazard on the Peninsula besides fire: landslide. They learned about translational and rotational slides and the unusual geological context that produces a high slide risk there. This entailed discussion of the Palos Verdes Fault, Palos Verdes Anticline, and the thirteen marine terraces on the Peninsula produced just over the last 2.8 million years. Students got close up looks at the Portuguese Bend, Abalone Cove, and Point Fermin landslides and the "Sunken City" at Point Fermin. A forward group of street pigeons provided an impromptu opportunity to discuss the differences among wild, feral, and domesticated species and the fˆle of humans in facilitating the dispersal of exotic and sometimes invasive species.

Terrain Analysis in the San Dimas Experimental Forest

Dr. Suzanne Wechsler collaborated on a grant with the University of California, Riverside, entitled, "Fire and Terrain Controls on Soil Carbon in Chaparral Watersheds." She employed four CSULB students to help her do GPS ground control surveys and terrain analyses, comparing digital elevation models against field-measured elevations at control points on the DEMs, which entailed hiking along very steep mountainsides rigged up with Trimble GPS units, as shown in the "geography in action" shot below!

Field Methods

The Department has offered Field Methods in Landscape Analysis for some four decades! Dr. Joel Splansky taught the course for 35 years, developing it into a rigorous engagement with field observation and the written communication of field research results. The course, limited to about a dozen students, included urban geography, rural geography, and physical geography projects, including a legendary weekend project up to Mammoth and the Owens Valley. It evolved into a kind of first year graduate student boot camp and team-building tradition.

Upon the announcement of his retirement, Dr. Splansky began to work with Dr. Paul Laris to ensure the class' continuation and evolution. Dr. Laris then brought in Dr. Christy Jocoy, so that the course would engage the field expertise of both a physical geographer and a human geographer.

Cartography Trips

Dr. Judith Tyner has long had research privileges at the Huntington Library and was able to bring her cartography and maps and civilization courses on field trips to the Library, where they were able to see and even handle ancient and historically significant maps.

Another popular field trip was off to Thomas Brothers. The home of the "Tommy Guide" is an active cartography lab and an innovator in the application of mapping to real-world spatial problems (and not just getting around L.A.!). Over the years, the ties Dr. Tyner established and cultivated at Thomas Bros. and, later, with Rand McNally (which now owns Thomas Bros.) has resulted in internships for cartography and GIS students and a number of careers there. Perhaps the best-known example is that of Ms. Nancy Yoho, who graduated from The Beach in 1981, went to work at Thomas Bros., and then became Vice President of GIS Applications at Rand McNally!

Introduction to Russia: Short-Term Study Abroad

Dr. Dmitrii Sidorov co-taught an innovative summer class with Dr. Harold Schefski, the CSULB Russian Program Director, in Summer 2005. The course is an interdisciplinary course offered through the College of Liberal Arts, CLA 410, and it is entitled, "Introduction to Russia: Short-Term Study Abroad." Drs. Sidorov and Schefski brought seventeen CSULB students to Moscow and St. Petersburg, where they taught the elements of Russian language, the history of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, the literature and art of Russia, war and the geography of Russia, and popular culture and nightlife in Russia. The itinerary may be viewed at http://www.csulb.edu/~dsidorov/Russia_410/Russia_410_Itinerary.html. This course is an outstanding example of the Department's efforts to make international experience part of the education of a CSULB geography student and its encouragement of interdisciplinary collaboration.

International GIS Service Learning Exchange

Dr. Frank Gossette, in collaboration with his friend, Dr. Josef Strobl of the University of Austria, Salzburg, have conducted a unique International Coöperation in GIS course in the spring of 2002, the fall of 2003, and the spring of 2005. Another round is scheduled for spring of 2008! International student exchanges are a very desirable form of education, but, for many students at CSULB, the cost is prohibitive and spending a full semester or year abroad endangers the jobs on which they depend to work their way through school. Dr. Gossette came up with a way in which CSULB (and Austrian) students can have this wonderful and eye- opening experience on the cheap and in a time-frame most can handle.

The semesters in Salzburg and in Long Beach turned out to overlap substantially, but the CSULB semester started and ended a couple of weeks earlier than the Salzburg semester. So, Drs. Gossette and Strobl agreed essentially to co-teach a course in service learning for GIS students at their respective institutions. The Austrian students come to Long Beach for the first two weeks of the CSULB semester and stay in the homes of their American counterparts. The American and Austrian students then do a GIS project together, a pro bono custom mapping project (for the Aquarium of the Pacific in S/02). The Austrian students then departed to take the class from Dr. Strobl while the American students continued on in Dr. Gossette's class. At the end of the semester, Dr. Gossette withheld the CSULB students' final grades (to their occasional consternation!), so that they could go to Austria and stay with their counterparts and do a service-learning project (for the Austrian National Park Service in S/02). Each group of students, thus, gains a wonderful international exchange experience and gets to apply their GIS training on behalf of society -- and all they have to come up with was the air fare to the other country!

Drs. Gossette and Strobl, furthermore, involved the administration of the two campuses (Dr. Frank Fata, then Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts, traveled to Austria to meet his counterparts). As a result, there is now a coöperative agreement between CSULB and Salzburg, such that students from each institution can now take classes at the other and have them count as courses in their own universities and just pay the regular fees they would have had they taken classes at home! This short-term international service- learning exchange has created an ongoing partnership between the two universities for those students who can somehow swing a semester overseas!

To learn more about future offerings of this course, please contact Dr. Gossette.

Land Use Planning

Dr. Mike McDaniel often teaches GEOG 446 and U/ST 446, "Land Use Planning." In Fall 2007, the class took a field trip to El Segundo, to see examples in person of a specific plan, the El Segundo Downtown Specific Plan, which is widely considered one of the most successful revitalization efforts anywhere in the Southland not requiring redevelopment. They also saw a development agreement that is the basis of the new Plaza El Segundo shopping center, which is the largest 2006 retail development in Los Angeles County. This development agreement resolved conflicts among a myriad of stakeholders, including Cal Trans, the neighboring City of Manhattan Beach, two railroad companies (the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific), the EPA, and, of course, the City of El Segundo and its property owners, developer, and would-be tenants. Visiting these areas themselves gave students a better sense of what these sometimes arcane planning tools (specific plans and development agreements) signify and a personal image of what they can accomplish.

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Last revised: 12/01/07