Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Smoke, Air, Fire, Energy (Safe) In Rural California: Critical Reflections On An Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, Deepti Chatti, Carisse Geronimo, Cassidy Barrientos, Jana Ganion, Malcolm Moncheur, Peter Alstone Phd, Shawn Bourque, Tanya Garcia, Tesfayohanes Yacob

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article provides a synthesis of the interconnected problems of tenuous energy access, wildfires, and exposures to high air pollution in Indigenous communities in rural California through the lens of ongoing collaborative research being carried out by researchers at Cal Poly Humboldt, Schatz Energy Research Center, Karuk Department of Natural Resources, and the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe. The collaboration is funded by the Strategic Growth Council of the state of California, and we hope is the beginning of a longer term relationship between all partners. We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawing on energy engineering, air pollution science, and …

Cannabis, Communities, And Place: (Re)Constructing Humboldt’S Post-Prohibition Present, Josh Meisel, Dominic Corva, Ara Pachmayer

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Since 1990, many Cal Poly Humboldt faculty and students have made cannabis the focus of scholarship and learning. This work has been shaped by the political, economic, and cultural legacies of cannabis in Humboldt County. Scholarly interest spans multiple dimensions of cannabis cultivation, commerce, consumption, and related social issues. As a multidisciplinary team of scholars, Cal Poly Humboldt faculty affiliated with the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research (HIIMR) have also shaped the Bachelor of Arts in Cannabis Studies that will launch in Fall 2023. This is the first social science degree program in the United States with this orientation. …

On The Acceptance Of Urban Beavers In Martinez, California, Zane A. Eddy

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

As ecosystem engineers, beavers construct complex riparian and wetland habitats that benefit many other species, including endangered salmonids. Through their landscape alterations, beavers also promote increased groundwater recharge and provide refugia during wildfires and high flow events by impounding water and allowing it to spread across the landscape. Prior to the North American colonial fur trapping campaigns, there were between 60 and 400 million beavers in North America. By the beginning of the 20th century, beavers were extirpated from many parts of the continent, however through human efforts, their population has since rebounded to between 10 and 15 million. The …

In-Flux: Economic And Community Adaptations Of Former Timber Mill-Towns In The American West, Cherilyn P. Ashmead

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Once built around natural resource extractive industries, rural communities’ economies are changing as the United States is transitioning away from its industrial past. While much research has focused on rural economic shifts from natural resource production toward amenity-driven economies (Morzillo et al., 2015; Winkler et al, 2007), less research has explored the economic and demographic trends in areas pursuing new modes of production. This two-part study focuses on an understudied region with historic ties to timber in dry mixed-conifer forests, much of which are under federal land management. With few natural amenity draws, the region has largely maintained production-based sectors. …

Assessing California Commercial Fishing Community Well-Being In The Context Of Marine Protected Area (Mpa) Formation, Samantha Cook

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Marine protected areas (MPAs)—defined geographic areas where fishing and harvesting activity is limited or restricted—have emerged as a popular marine biodiversity and climate resilience strategy worldwide. MPA monitoring efforts often follow MPA designation to help inform the adaptive management of MPAs and MPA networks. In 2012, California completed the largest statewide system of MPAs to date, consisting of 124 MPAs covering 16% of state waters. Following MPA implementation, the state initiated a long-term monitoring program (2019-2022) to help inform the 10-year MPA management review. This two-chapter thesis presents findings from a state-funded project to conduct long-term socioeconomic monitoring for human …

"The World Has Changed, And The Wiyot Changed With It:" The Socio-Political Processes And Rationale Of Cultural Landscape Decolonization On Wiyot Ancestral Land, Mark C. Adams

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis examines recent successful efforts by the Wiyot Tribe in Humboldt County, California to resist and reverse forms of settler-colonial oppression with tangible and unprecedented results. The original inhabitants of Humboldt Bay: the Wiyot, and their allies in the local community, have overcome settler socio-political resistance in three contentious, public disputes to preserve and restore tribal sovereignty over ancestral land and culture. While much has been written about the history of the United States as a settler-colonial project, more research is necessary to understand the processes of grassroots decolonization efforts to alter cultural landscapes. Using a combination of feminist …

Cartographies Of Debt: Auto Title Loans And Spatial Inequality, Michihiro C. Sugata

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Despite being a decade removed from the 2008 Financial Crisis, an alarming number of Americans are turning to alternative finance service providers (AFSP) for “short term” loans. These loans typically carry triple digit interest rates and can contribute to exacerbating the financial precarity of the borrowers. This article investigates the relationship between the spatial distribution of the AFSP industry and considers the impacts of this saturated presence on the individuals who live in these neighborhoods. Using the Phoenix metropolitan area as a site of exploration, I examine where the industry has pooled and look at the descriptive characteristics of those …

Agent-Based Models In Supporting Pedestrian Transportation Planning And Design, Nicholas A. Perdue

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Agent-based models offer a new approach to understanding human-urban interactions in transportation systems, allowing individual entities within a system to be characterized with cognitive and behavioral properties. This paper discussed the role of agent-based representations of pedestrian transportation systems, detailing the underlying assumptions and techniques behind different types of pedestrian models and illustrating the differences between aggregate and individual agent representations. It then turns attention to the case study and the development of a cognitive pedestrian model as a way to illustrate the spectrum of potential spatial behaviors that are enabled by material changes to the transportation network. The paper …

Making And Breaking Trust In Forest Collaborative Groups, Emily Jane Davis, Lee K. Cerveny, Donald R. Ulrich, Meagan L. Nuss

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

There has been a recent increase in use of an organized, forest ‘collaborative’ group approach for multi-stakeholder input on federal forestlands in the U.S. West. This approach relies on the creation of shared trust to achieve social agreement. Yet growing critiques suggest a lack of trust in the U.S. Forest Service [Forest Service], between stakeholders, and the collaborative process itself. We conducted three comparative case studies of established forest collaborative groups in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho to ask how trust is created and damaged or broken in this context. We found multiple, interlinked dimensions to trust, including significant reliance on …

Rethinking The Fiscal Relationship Between Public Lands And Public Land Counties: County Payments 4.0, Mark Haggerty

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In 1908, Congress authorized payments to local governments, including counties and school districts, to compensate for the non-taxable status of the newly established forest reserves within their boundaries. The original program shared revenue generated from commercial activities on public lands, e.g. timber harvesting, not anticipating the major changes in the volume and types of activities on National Forest lands, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, that have played out over the past century. Two subsequent reforms – the appropriated Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) in 1976 and ‘transition’ payments made between 1990 and 2018, including payments associated with the Northwest …

Community-Based Initiatives For Neighborhood And Community Rehabilitation: A Case Study Of The Mission District, San Francisco, California, Francesca Monique Gallardo

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Through the case study of San Francisco, CA’s Mission District, this research project addresses how community-based affordable housing development is operationalized to rehabilitate communities and neighborhoods experiencing effects of gentrification, mass displacement, and cultural dilution. My goals were to identify how the processes of building a sense of community, trust, and cohesion- rehabilitating and critical to affordable housing development efforts in the Mission District? And, how are nonprofit community development organizations engaging with these processes in collaboration with citizen and community partners? The final objective is to provide evidence-based strategies to assist other at-risk minority communities and neighborhoods in the …

Implications Of Unmanned Aircraft Systems And Sense Of Place: A Case Study In The Mono Basin, Sara Elizabeth Matthews

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This paper contributes to an understanding of the social implications of using UAS in natural resource areas; specifically, the ways in which these tools impact human constructed sense of place. This paper draws on in-depth interviews and document analysis to (a) develop an understanding of place meanings held among Mono Basin stakeholders and (b) define the ways in which increased UAS presence may interact with these visions of place.

In short, this research shows that sense of place in this rural area is influential in the way that UAS are received by local stakeholders. The changing nature of place meanings …

Nature, Socio-Spatial Divisions And Connections: An Examination Of El Jardín De Guadalupe, Elizabeth Moreno

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Culture is often discussed in the content of social behavior but, how culture is spatially linked to landscapes is often overlooked. Points of social and cultural reproduction is not only tied to landscapes, but there are constantly challenged as new cultures are introduced into a space. Latino culture in the United States has, and continues to, reshape America’s landscapes. For purpose of this thesis, the reshaping of landscapes will be observed in a community. This project examines the perception that Latinos avoid participation in a community garden. This perception is not entirely true, as there was one Latina participating. As …

Listening To The Mattole: Lessons In Bioregionalism, Cannabis, And Capitalism From A Northern California Community, Nicola R. Walters

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the United States, from the 1960s through the 1970s, nearly a million Americans left urban areas to establish themselves in rural environments; this exodus is now known as the back-to-the-land movement. Nestled in the mountains of Northern California, along a capricious river, and surrounded by natural beauty, the Mattole Valley became home to many of these back-to-the-land immigrants. Seasoned in the social and cultural movements of Berkeley and San Francisco during the 1960s, the “new settlers” transformed the social and environmental landscape of southern Humboldt County as they integrated into rural communities. The Mattole Valley offers a unique look …

Voices Of Cully: A Case Study Of The Living Cully Weatherization And Home Repair Project 2.0, Lucy J.T. Cultrera

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The Cully neighborhood is situated in the Northeast quadrant of Portland, Oregon. It is 2.75 square mile plot of land and home to roughly 13,000 people. In addition to being one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Portland, it is the most densely populated, with the smallest amount of parkland per capita. Over the last two decades, home value has increased 203% in Cully, compared to a 90% citywide increase. Amidst these development trends are stories of incredible resilience, resistance and activism from the affected community. My project is a case study of one anti-displacement initiative, which was developed and …

Access To Recreational Open Space In Patterson, Ca: A Geospatial Analysis Utilizing Geographic Information Systems, Leanne S. Lynch

Projects

Many cities throughout California have experienced land use shifts from prime agricultural land to developed industrial and residential areas without considering access to recreational open space. Access to recreation through open space or parks is beneficial for the health and well-being of the community while providing aesthetic value and potential preservation of local ecosystems. Since 2002 the City of Patterson, located in California’s Central Valley, has rezoned over 800 acres of agricultural land for urban and industrial use while developers reserved recreational open space (parkland) at locations inconvenient to existing neighborhoods. Although several acres of parkland have been added to …