Geography Faculty Research

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

Grants, Contracts, and Awards

 

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2009

Project ALIGNED: Addressing Locally-tailored Information Infrastructure & Geoscience Needs for Enhancing Diversity

Dr. Chrys Rodrigue is Senior Researcher on an NSF-funded project by the Association of American Geographers, Project ALIGNED, the purpose of which is to develop a set of tools and strategies that a variety of joint geography/geology programs can apply to diversify and grow their majors. This is a Geoscience Directorate (GEO) Opportunity for Enhancing Diversity (OEDG) Track 1 (proof of concept) project. The grant is housed at the AAG, with Dr. Rodrigue serving as a subcontractor-consultant.

Funded: $199,276. Effective dates: 1 September 2009 through 31 August 2012. Grant #0914645.

2007

Recruiting and Training the Next Generation of Geoscientists: Geosciences Diversity Enhancement Program (GDEP) Track 2

Dr. Christopher T. Lee is PI, with Co-PI's Dr. Richard Behl (Geological Sciences), Dr. Suzanne P. Wechsler, Dr. Camille Holmgren, and Dr. Lora Stevens (Geological Sciences), and Faculty Associates Dr. Christine M. Rodrigue, Dr. R. Dan Francis and Dr. Gregory Holk (Geological Sciences), Dr. Carl Lipo, Dr. Hector Neff, and Dr. Michael Cannon (Anthropology), and Dr. David Whitney (Psychology) on a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to recreate and extend the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program of 2002-2004. GDEP 2 will bring back the summer research projects done by CSULB, community college, and high school faculty and graduate students with research assistants from underrepresented groups at the local community colleges and high schools. The project will be extended to include community field trips for students' families and others to build community and family support and encouragement for students to major in geography, geology, archæology, or environmental science and policy. Local corporations will be recruited to provide internships for GDEP participants as well.

Submitted for review in October 2006. Funded: $1,088,000. Effective dates: 1 August 2007 through 31 July 2011. Grant #0703798.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Dr. Deborah Thien is Co-Investigator in a research team that has won a five year grant from the CIHR, entitled "Open doors/closed minds: Locating mental health after the asylum." The project, based at York University in Toronto, will examine de-institutionalization of the mentally ill into home and community based situations, but increasingly into conditions that are inadequately supported. The project will examine urban and rural aspects of this history, focussing on case studies in two rural communities in Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia and the city of Vancouver. The goal is to illuminate the problems faced by everyone involved in de-institutionalization: the patients themselves, their care-takers, and policy decision-makers. The Principal Investigators of the grant are Megan Jean Davies and Erika E. Dyck, and the other Co-Investigators are Chris Atchison, Geertje Boschma, Elise Rose Chenier, Judith Fingard, Kathleen Anne Kendall, Kathryn McKay, Robert Mezies, John Aitken Mills, Marina Helen Morrow, Diane Barbara Purvey, and John Garvey Rutherford.

Funded: $43,701 for the 2007-09 phases.

Rotary Grant for University Teachers

Dr. Chris Carter was awarded a Rotary Grant for University Teachers. He will use the grant during his sabbatical from LBCC (where he is a tenured Associate Professor of Human Geography), from Spring 2008 through Fall 2008. The goals of his grant project including teaching in the Geography Department at the University of La Serena, Chile; developing online collaborative exercises to link geography students in Chile with geography students in Long Beach; offer a seminar series on changing ethnic patterns in Southern California, trade between Long Beach and Chile, and the community college model of higher education in Californial.

Funded: $22,500

USNC/INQUA and NSF Travel Grant

Dr. Camille Holmgren was awarded a Travel Fellowship for Early Career Scientists in order to attend the XVII INQUA Congress in Cairns, Australia, in August 2007. This award is funded by the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Quaternary Research with monies from the National Science Foundation.

Funded: $2,300

2006

Mobility of Homeless People and Their Use of Public Transport in Long Beach, CA

Dr. Christine L. Jocoy is PI and Dr. Vincent Del Casino is Co-PI on a grant proposal to METRANS to study movement patterns of homeless people in Long Beach. The study will conduct focus group with self-identified chronic and transitional homeless to understand the language they use in discussing their mobility. The study will then design questionnaires to collect data on the frequency of public transit use, the location of starting points, intermediate stops, and destinations, bus routes used, and reasons for public transit use. Data collection includes identifying chronic and transitional homeless, the ways they fund public transit use, and their demographic characteristics. Analysis will highlight the spatial extent of homeless mobility, transportation routes used including holes in service, and the differences in use among different types of homeless riders.

Submitted for review in October 2005. Funded: $84,980 (February 2006).

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Dr. Deborah Thien won a postdoctoral fellowship, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, University of Northern British Columbia, for her project, "Birth, Death, and Bingo: The Emotional Geographies of the Royal Canadian Legion."

AAG-NSF Travel Grant to Attend IGU Meeting, Brisbane, Australia

Dr. Christine L. Jocoy was awarded a travel grant to attend the International Geographical Union conference, which will be held in Brisbane, Australia, from the 3rd through the 7th of July, 2006. The grant is funded by a joint program of the Association of American Geographers and the National Science Foundation.

Funded: $1,750 (February 2006).

CSULB Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee Awards for 2006-07

The Department of Geography is proud to announce that six faculty have been awarded SCAC Awards for 2006-07.

• Dr. Vincent Del Casino was awarded one class of reassigned time to complete a textbook in social geography.
• Dr. Camille Holmgren received a Summer Stipend for summer 2006 to conduct laboratory analysis of packrat middens she and a student team collected in Joshua Tree National Monument in spring 2006 and a collaborator, Dr. Julio Betancourt, arranged to submit for radiocarbon dating. The goal is to evaluate the effects of long-term vegetation change as a backdrop for projecting the effects of climate change and direct human impacts on the landscape for park management purposes.
• Dr. Christine L. Jocoy was awarded one class of reassigned time to analyze data on community attitudes towards the homeless expressed in Long Beach newspapers and public focus groups.
• Dr. Paul Laris received one course of reassigned time to explore how ecological restoration practitioners are at once restricted by social and ecological structures and enabled by their ability to manipulate ecosystems within these restraints to develop innovative ways of increasing biodiversity at their sites.
• Dr. Dmitrii Sidorov was awarded one course of reassigned time to investigate the urban dimension of the originally imperial concept of the Russian Orthodox "Third Rome," Moscow. He has chosen to relinquish the monies for this award, because he was also awarded a sabbatical for 2006-07 and plans to spend the entire year in Russia and thought that someone else might be able to make use of the reassigned time.
• Dr. Suzanne P. Wechsler received one course of reassigned time in order to conduct a project on watershed delineation and GIS hydrologic model parameter development for the Lake Barbara Watershed in Orange County. Lake Barbara is one of only three naturally occurring surface water bodies in OC. Delineating the area drained into Lake Barbara would help in assessing water quality and quantity inputs to the lake.

2005

GPS Ultrasystems Tree Mapping 2005

Dr. Suzanne P. Wechsler is PI for a contract project in which teams of student interns will be employed directly by Ultrasystems Environments (http://www.ultrasystems.com/welcome.html ) to use the Department of Geography's Global Positioning System (GPS)equipment (which will be rented by Ultrasystems for this project)and GIS technology to record and map 200 to 300 willow trees in the San Diego Creek, Newport Beach, CA. Dr. Wechsler will oversee their field work, perform QA/QC on data collected and produced, and work with students to create the map.

Submitted for review in November 2005. Funded: $2,331 (November 2005 through January 2006).

Digital Ports: GIS-based Decision Support System for the Port Complex

Dr. Christopher T. Lee is PI and Dr. Suzanne P. Wechsler is Co-PI for a METRANS proposal. The purpose of this project is to develop a digitally-based interactive Decision Support System (DSS) for the Port Complex that is based in a geographic information system (GIS). The Digital Ports DSS is intended to support the needs of METRANS researchers and various port- related stakeholders. Accurate and responsible decisions require access to accurate data. A decision support system (DSS) is a computer program application that analyzes data and presents it so that users can make decisions more easily (SearchCIO, 2005). In the context of the Ports, the Digital Ports DSS will serve as a one-stop geospatial data storage and retrieval portal.

The Digital Ports GIS will contain features extracted from very high resolution satellite imagery and elevation data. These include building footprints and heights, road and rail networks and terrain surfaces. These data sources will be combined with additional existing GIS data sources which may include but are not limited to aerial photography, zoning information, and census and associated demographic information. These digital data sources will serve as the backbone of the Digital Ports DSS. The product will be disseminated through a web portal where interested users can access and download the various data sources.

Submitted for review in October 2005. Status: denied ($84,996).

Integrated Management of Applications and Geospatial Education

Dr. Christopher T. Lee is PI, Dr. Suzanne P. Wechsler is Co-PI, and Dr. Paul Laris is Senior Faculty for an NSF proposal that will provide ten undergraduate students per year, drawn from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and Long Beach City College (LBCC) an opportunity to:

Conduct field and laboratory-based, hypothesis driven research that incorporates techniques of GIS/ remote sensing acquired through prior coursework, while earning course credit toward their broader academic goals in normally scheduled, semester-long courses at CSULB or LBCC and receiving a summer stipend.

Build on their initial knowledge of physical geography by enrolling in an upper division environmental geography class (CSULB GEOG 340) during the spring academic semester. In addition to exposure to more advanced concepts of landscape and political ecology, students will learn to develop research hypotheses in a classroom environment, with the assistance of IMAGE project scientists and graduate research assistants. Development and selection of research hypotheses will be coördinated with landscape and political ecology-based management issues of importance to selected land managers in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Utilize and enhance the knowledge gained in the course sequence outlined above by working six full-time summer weeks as part of a research team comprised of CSULB scientists, graduate research assistants, and a blend of community college and CSU students. Teams will collect and analyze field and digital geospatial data and using the results to test the selected hypotheses. Research foci include but are not limited to habitat health and restoration, fire hazard, and non-point source pollution. Participants will be provided a summer stipend and travel funds to present findings at regional conferences. CSULB student participants will enroll in courses as matriculating CSU students. Enrollment for LBCC students will be through CSULB Extension. Tuition costs for both groups will be included as part of the student support.

Submitted for review in August 2005. Status: strongly recommended for funding but monies were not available due to NSF budget changes ($347,031).

Collaborative Research: RUI: High Latitude Land Degradation in Tierra del Fuego

Dr. Paul Laris is PI on a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation. The proposed project explores land change dynamics in the rangelands of Tierra del Fuego, Chile (approximately 52.5 to 54.00S). It connects to two key themes in global change and sustainability science: (1) dryland degradation (commonly referred to as desertification); and (2) the impact of climate change on nature-society relationships in high latitude locations. Conventional wisdom attributes a 30 year regional decline in sheep numbers to 20th century high stocking rates and associated land degradation (i.e., an overshoot of the land's carrying capacity). The project considers an alternative hypothesis; political economic factors coupled with a steady reduction in snowfall due to a pronounced warming trend caused the decline in sheep. Results hold theoretical implications for the role of property regimes in driving land change, and the vulnerability and societal response to climate change.

Submitted for review in August 2005. Status: Pending ($183,101).

Joshua Tree National Park Competitive Research Grant: A Long-Term Vegetation History of the Mojave-Colorado Desert Ecotone at Joshua Tree National Monument

Dr. Camille Holmgren is Lead PI on a grant proposal to the 2005 Joshua Tree National Park Competitive Research Grant program. Dr. Julio Julio L. Betancourt of the USGS and the University of Arizona Desert Laboratory is the Co-PI. The proposal is to fund the reconstruction of thousands of years of climate and vegetation change in the Joshua Tree National Monument throughout the transition zone between the low (Colorado) desert and high desert (Mojave), using the pollen and larger plant and animal materials embedded and fossilized in woodrat pack middens.

Submitted for review in July 2005. Funded: $11,997 (September 2005).

Subcontract: Santa Ana Water Basin Wetlands

Dr. Antonia Wijte (Biological Sciences) is PI and Dr. Suzanne P. Wechsler is Co-PI on an IIRMES subcontract for research in the Santa Ana Water Basin Wetlands to identify Region 8's existing inventory of CRAM assessments and focus efforts on CRAM assessment utilizing existing inventory. Work with SCCWRP to develop a random sample procedure for CRAM work in Region 8. Keep track of CRAM scores and sites visited, so that when the inventory is done (or as it is incrementally completed) Region 8 and/or CSULB Foundation will be able to update NWI maps with the CRAM scores we've already gotten. The maps are to be produced through GIS by Dr. Wechsler.

Submitted for review in July 2005. Status: Pending ($36,999).

2003

National Science Foundation: Holocene Climate Change in the Central Canadian Arctic

Dr. David Porinchu is Lead PI on a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation. The proposal addresses high-resolution quantitative reconstructions of Holocene climatic changes and their impacts on environment and people in the Central Canadian Arctic. Funded: $397,002.

National Science Foundation: Holocene Climate Change in the Uinta Mountains of Utah

Dr. David Porinchu is Co-PI on a proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation. This project proposes creation of high-resolution records of Holocene climatic change, drought variability, and monsoon behavior from the Uinta Mountains in Utah. Funded: $305,000.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Drs. Dennis Fisher (Department of Psychology) and Vincent Del Casino submitted a proposal entitled, "Interventions for Hard-to-Reach Club Drug Users," to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This evidence-based prevention intervention for ecstasy and other club drug users will expand on current outreach efforts at the Center for Behavioral Research and Services (CBRS) at California State University, Long Beach. Specifically, the focus will be on the capacity and infrastructural expansion of our current health education and HIV prevention and risk reduction outreach and intervention programs. The target will be both current male club drug users and men who have never used club drugs. The project will also target hard-to-reach populations that CBRS has identified through existing projects that are not typically noted in the literature as at-risk for using club drugs and for HIV, including: young men who frequent Long Beach "mini raves" or "garage parties"; older men who frequent drug-sex parties; internet-related social networks that access drugs and sex online; and existing population of drug users who are adding club drugs to their own drug use. Funded: $341,221 (year one, renewable for three years).

National Science Foundation: GT-REP

Drs. Chris Lee (PI), Suzanne Wechsler (Co-PI), Chrys Rodrigue (senior faculty mentor) and Paul Laris (senior faculty mentor) have signed off on a grant proposal to the Geography and Regional Science Program at NSF to support a Research in Experiences for Undergraduates project. Dr. Jennifer Garwick-Lonergan of the Department of Psychology is a faculty associate of the project, responsible for assessing the success of the proposal, should it be funded. The project is called the Geospatial Technologies Research and Education Partnership (GT-REP).

The purpose of this roughly $630,000 project is significantly to increase the size and sophistication of the fire risk database that the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center (a NASA Regional Earth Science Applications Center) has developed from field work done by teams of RESAC interns over the last three summers. The GT-REP would provide the workforce needed to increase the live fuel moisture collection activities from the six current sites to twenty new sites that will be chosen through GIS analysis and field reconnaissance. The GT-REP would follow LFM over the course of three whole years, rather than just the summer. The purpose of the LFM collection is to see if changes in the moisture content of vegetation during the spring and fall can be detected by changes in the reflectance of AVIRIS airborne hyperspectral data. Interns will also prepare the AVIRIS imagery for analysis by rectifying them to maps. The database will help UCSB and Aerospace Corporation develop better models for predicting changes in wildfire hazard on a real-time basis for use by local fire agencies.

The size of the research assistant workforce is too large to be confined to the Geography Department, so this program will be made available to students in other departments on this campus (Geology and Biology and possibly Anthropology), Earth Science and Biology at CSUDH, Biology and Geography at CSUN, and the geography departments at CSULA and CSU Fullerton, as well as to local community colleges (e.g., Long Beach City College and Rio Hondo College). The research internships will run for 20 weeks each and will eventually provide exposure to the geospatial technolgies to 48 undergraduates. Denied. To be resubmitted in F/04.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration: IMAGE

Drs. Christopher Lee, Suzanne P. Wechsler, Christine M. Rodrigue, Paul Laris, and Laura Henriques (Science Education), together with Drs. Dar Roberts, Max Moritz, Rick Church, Charles Jones, and Phaedon Kyriakidis and Mr. Phil Dennison of UC Santa Barbara, have just submitted a $2,900,582 grant proposal to the NASA REASoN Coöperative Agreement Notice solicitation. The project, named the Integration and Management of Applications and Geospatial Education (IMAGE), will secure funding for the continuation of the NASA Regional Earth Science Applications Center housed in the Department and its Southern California Wildfire Hazards Center. The funding is also meant to expand the remote sensing activities of the RESAC into other areas, both in the region (San Dimas Experimental Forest and Crystal Cove State Park) and into different applications (the fire-related flood and mudslide cycle). IMAGE will entail research, applications, and educational activities during its five years of operation, should funding be granted. Partners include UC Santa Barbara, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the San Dimas Experimental Forest, Crystal Cove Park in Orange County, and Jet Propulsion Lab. Not funded.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration: HAVOC

Drs. Christopher Lee, Suzanne P. Wechsler, Christine M. Rodrigue, and Carl Lipo (Anthropology), were part of a team consisting of Anita M. Sohus, Karen Yuen, Parvin Kassaie, François Rogez, Lucian Plesea, William M.Whitney, Virgil A.Hammon, and Cynthia H.Atkinson of Jet Propulsion Lab; Crist Kachikian, Hong-Lie Qiu, Paula Arvedson, Dave Mayo, Steve LaDochy, John Gamon, Paul Narguizian of CSU Los Angeles; Helen M. Cox, Gerry Simila, and Kenneth S. Berry of CSU Northridge. This team has submitted a $3 million education-oriented NASA REASoN grant, designed to produce inquiry-based teaching modules for K-12 education focussed on natural hazards. These modules will use data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, Landsat, AVIRIS, AirSAR, ASTER, and MISR, as well as GPS Networks and will feature an online tool based on a clickable interactive map that allows manipulation and interpretation of multiple earth science remote sensing data sets. This project is called the Hazards Assessment and Visualization Online: a Collaboration or HAVOC. Not funded.

2002

City of Lakewood

Drs. Frank Gossette and Suzanne Wechsler have just received a $25,000 contract from the City of Lakewood to provide GIS services.

National Science Foundation and Association of American Geographers: IGU Travel

Dr. Unna Lassiter received a grant from NSF and the AAG to defray her costs travelling to the International Geographical Union to present her research on the social construction of animals and hear the keynote speaker, Nelson Mandela, discuss the relevance and importance of geography.

Universitywide AIDS Research Program of the University of California

Dr. Vincent Del Casino has been notified that his proposal, "Cognitive Distance, Mobility Patterns, and Drug Use Among MSM" has been funded for 2002-2003. The grant is for $66,340 in direct costs and will cover release time for Dr. Del Casino to conduct ethnographic research on designer drug use and related HIV risks in Long Beach among "men who have sex with men." The research draws from his background in medical/social geography and ethnographic methodologies and will focus attention on how MSM "cognitively map risk."

National Institutes of Health

Dr. Vincent Del Casino (PI) and Dennis Fischer (Psychology, Co-PI) have submitted a $1,838,918 proposal on "Locality, Mobility, Drugs & HIV Among Gay/Bisexual Men." The proposal is under review in the Behavioral, Social, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse program.

CSULB Enhancing Educational Effectiveness Award Program

Both Drs. Suzanne Wechsler and Vincent Del Casino have received "EEE" Awards. Dr. Wechsler, together with her collaborators, Dr. Teresa Ramirez-Herrera (a geographer in the Geological Sciences Department) and Dr. Christopher Lowe (Biological Sciences), each received a substantial Enhancing Educational Effectiveness award. Each will receive 0.2 re-assigned time to work on geological, ecological, and marine biological labs and modules for the new course, Geography *481 (GIScience Applications for the Natural Sciences), which is targeted to Geology and Biology majors. Dr. Del Casino, together with his collaborator, Dr. Tim Keirn of History, has received a summer stipend from the Enhancing Educational Effectiveness Award program, so that they can work on developing a World Historical Geography Certificate Program at CSULB.

National Institutes of Health

Dennis Fischer (Psychology, PI) and Dr. Vincent Del Casino (Research Geographer) submitted a $3,039,434 proposal to the Behavioral, Social, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse program, which, if funded will investigate "Designer Drugs & HIV Prevention in Gay/Bisexual Men."

2001

National Science Foundation: G-DEP

Drs. Chrys Rodrigue and Suzanne Wechsler were part of a team of eight co-PIs that received a three year $852,000 NSF grant. This project was spearheaded by Dr. Beth Ambos, Department of Geological Sciences and (then) Associate Dean for Instruction, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and (now) Acting Dean for Graduate Studies. Other co-PIs in the three year project include Drs. Dan Francis, Rick Behl, Jim Sample, and María-Teresa Ramírez-Herrera of the Department of Geological Sciences, and Dr. Dan Larson of the Department of Anthropology.

Dr. Laura Henriques of the Department of Science Education, Dr. David Whitney of the Department of Science, and our own Dr. Chris Lee are also associates of the proposed project. Dr. Lee has put the resources of the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center at the disposal of the project.

The purpose of the grant is to integrate underrepresented students in the geosciences by involving them in research projects conducted by CSULB geosciences faculty and faculty from several community colleges and high schools in the area. The students recommended by the high school and community college faculty work as research assistants during the summer and then co-author scientific publications and conference papers and present their work to their home institutions. This project is to help remedy the lack of exposure to the field-oriented geography, geology, and archaeology disciplines experienced by promising young urban students who may never have even gone on a field trip outside the city. The hope is that, by participating in field research and working with faculty in the geosciences, some of these students may begin to put the various geosciences on their radar for possible major selection and lend their perspectives to geography, geology, and archaeology. If urban students won't come to the geosciences, then the geosciences will come to them!

Scholarly and Creative Activities Award Program

Dr. James Curtis was selected to receive a University Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee Award (SCAC). This honor confers a summer stipend for Summer 2002, which enabled him to conduct field research in Mexico.

NSF-Funded Quick Response Grant

Dr. Chrys Rodrigue has been awarded a small NSF-funded grant from the Natural Hazards Center of the University of Colorado, Boulder, to defray costs associated with a study she is conducting on media coverage of the terrorist attack of September 11th. She will be submitting a Quick Response Report to the Center in January 2002 and has been invited to submit a paper for an anthology of Center-funded studies being put together in June 2002.

2000

City of Carson

Dr. Frank Gossette received a $12,000 contract for a project, "Implementation and Training for Global Positioning Satellite Systems (GPS): City of Carson, CA." In this project, which ran from September 2000 through June 2001, Dr. Gossette assisted the City of Carson to acquire and develop GPS capabilities for infrastructure management projects. This project employed one student intern.

City of Manhattan Beach

Dr. Frank Gossette received another $12,000 contract for a project, "Implementation and Training for Global Positioning Satellite Systems (GPS): City of Manhattan Beach, CA." This project, which ran from September 2000 through June 2001, helped the City of Manhattan Beach acquire and develop GPS capabilities for infrastructure management projects. Like the Carson project, this one also employed one student intern.

City of Lakewood

Dr. Frank Gossette was awarded a $40,000 contract for a project entitled "Geographic Information Systems for the city of Lakewood, CA." This project, running from 1 July 2000 through 30 June 2001, developed innovative approaches to mapping information for community development and public infrastructure management, and it provided internship opportunities for four CSULB Geography students.

National Geographic Society

In winter 2000, Dr. James Curtis submitted a final report on a grant he had received from the National Geographic Society for research conducted on urban structure in Ensenada and La Paz, Baja California.

CSULB

In spring 2000, Dr. James Curtis received $1,500 from the University to conduct research on application of the urban regions concept to Lima, Peru. The initial phase of that research was conducted during spring break, 2000.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration: RESAC

Dr. Chris Lee directs a NASA Regional Earth Science Application Center (RESAC), which he brought over from CSU Dominguez Hills on moving to our department in Fall 2000. This RESAC is the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center. There are only eight RESACs in the country (the others, all doctoral institutions, are UC Berkeley and the universities of Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Maryland, and Connecticut). Besides CSULB, the other partners in this center are UC Santa Barbara, Ærospace Corporation, Los Angeles County Fire Department, and Jet Propulsion Lab. Funding amounts to $1.5 million through February of 2002. The goal of this NASA RESAC is to provide fire hazard maps incorporating remote sensing and weather modelling data to the LACFD to assist them in managing fire hazards at the urban-wildlands interface.

Beside the Wildfire Hazard Center, Dr. Lee is conducting two pilot projects for the NASA Earth Science Applications Research Program (ESARP), in coöperation with the Soil and Water Science Department of the University of Alexandria in Egypt, the University of Guelph in Canada, and Boulder County in Colorado. The overall purpose of the ESARP is international, state, and local workforce development and capacity-building in support of NASA Earth Science Enterprise goals. This $300,000 pair of pilot projects includes one project in Egypt and one in Colorado. The first entails analysis of new high resolution satellite data for farm systems analysis and to build an historical data archive of 50 Landsat Thematic Mapper images for use by the students of Alexandria, Guelph, and CSULB in studies of long-term vegetation dynamics and agricultural development on the northwest coast of Egypt. The second project is to assist Boulder County in developing remote sensing capacity, including high resolution IKONOS imagery, software and training, and image processing support.

Dr. Lee arrived at CSULB after spending a year away from CSUDH as a NASA Visiting Senior Scientist in Washington, D.C., where he worked on developing the NASA State, Local, and Tribal Initiative design. He was (and remains) responsible for the Workforce Development and Capacity Building element, which he represents at conferences, workshops, and to NASA Headquarters.

CSULB Campus Assessment Committee

Dr. Chrys Rodrigue was awarded one class of reassigned time in the fall and student assistant money to work on a campus project on incorporating program assessment into the curriculum. This project has yielded comparisons of our curriculum with the national geography standards and with the curricula of other CSU geography programs in the Greater Los Angeles Area. It led to the department developing its own goals and objectives, which were also used as a benchmark for comparing the overall undergraduate curriculum.

Association of American Geographers

Dr. Judith Tyner reports that she received an AAG Research Grant to help with expenses for "Millie the Mapper: The Role of Women in Geography and Cartography in WWII." She commented that this means she'll actually have to do this project! ;-)

1999

CSULB President's Office

Dr. Frank Gossette reports that the Department worked with the CSULB President's Office on an enrollment management mapping project. Its purpose "is to provide a visual representation of a proposed CSULB service area which maintains the university's ethnic, geographic, and academic program diversity while enrolling applicants who demonstrate the most potential for academic success."

Two versions of the map were planned. The maps would show CSULB and indicate high school districts, individual high schools, and their distances from CSULB with the use of 5-mile concentric rings. The locations of CSU Fullerton and CSU Dominguez Hills would also be shown for reference. In addition, the first version would include the number of first time freshman enrollees for Fall 1999, and the second would include Stanford 9 scores and the percentage of AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) population for each school.

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Last revised: 08/29/09