There were many different ideas that popped into my head when I first heard the idea of Ideafest, the idea that made me the most excited was the Benefits of Smiling and Laughing. I believe that this is a good Ideafest contribution for two reasons, one being that we are two years into a worldwide pandemic, where we have had to cover out beautiful smiles, and it has removed the normalization of smiling with one another, and secondly we are all adults and college students who tend be stressed out and forget to take a second for ourselves. There were many articles that I used to do the research for my poster and the pictures I used were to make me people smile while they are reading my poster.

This GIS research project provides info how clear-cut logging effects humans relationship to the forest and is threatening the Humboldt Marten. The Humboldt Marten, Martes caurina humboltensis, is historically found exclusively in Humboldt County and is currently registered as a “species of concern” or "threaten species" in the State of California and does not have an official “endangered species” status. As unsustainable timber harvesting continues, the Marten species faces threats to their home range and the impacts of logging include environmental, economic, and social aspects. This project is in support of the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) located in Arcata, Ca.

As high-intensity wildland fires occur more frequently and increase in size, the occurrence of reburn in burn scars is also increasing; however, the ecological effects of such reburn in Western coniferous forests are not well understood. Post-prescribed fire, we investigate the changes in woody fuel loads in high and moderately burned areas of the 2000 Jasper Fire and the patterns of ponderosa pine regeneration survival in those areas. Our findings can inform a management plan to restore historic heterogeneity in the Black Hills, a culturally and economically important region of the U.S., and increase resistance and resilience to climate change.

The function and use of small clay whistles in Mesoamerica has been debated in the archaeological record and theories for their use include ritual practice and imitations of animal vocalizations. In this experimental archaeology project I wish to recreate ancient Mayan whistles, more specifically the style of whistle located in Copan and the imported moulds from sites located in current day Honduras. The whistles themselves can take the form of a variety of figures that could include animals, individuals, and deities. I want to establish a better understanding of the amount of time, resources, and skill needed to manufacture clay whistles and how they were then distributed or traded.

Currently climate change is altering landscapes all over the globe and Native American communities are at the forefront of this ongoing battle. Tribes near low-lying coastal areas are most at risk when talking about climate change and the I've chosen to focus on three tribes in Alaska, two tribes in Florida in the Everglades and four tribes in the bayous of Louisiana. In this poster I'll be talking about how climate change will not only affect the tribes' abilities to continue their subsistence lifestyle and culture but also their ability to collect traditional food sources and maintain their water rights held by the Winters v. United States court case.

At Sunset High in Del Norte, I created and implemented several curriculums held as master class “skillshops.” The topics ranged from self-care to media literacy to healthy relationships. I used a mindfulness and Polyvagal/somatic approach, while being multicultural, anti-racist, critically and resourcefully informed. The skillshops were oriented through an alliance with the students, and relied primarily on established relationships and rapport with the students. Students left the skillshops with a deeper sense of understanding the gifts within themselves, along with a more critical, embodied, and curious way of interacting with the world around them.

Volunteers with Eureka's Westside Community Improvement Association transformed what was once Jefferson Elementary school, into the now Jefferson Community Center. The building itself is used as a place to hold meetings and recreational activities. Moreover, the center is dedicated to helping youth in the community by providing a safe, reliable place to learn and explore. Two projects that we have been volunteering for as Child Development students are the SEEDs project, and the Imagination playground. These projects provide the children with access to: homework help, a community garden, cooking classes, nutritious meals, educational exploration, and lots of FUN!

The California Floristic Province (CFP) is a global hot-spot of biodiversity. Creating a database of plant distributions for the CFP is pivotal to define species’s conservation status. Students associated with the Herbarium used R to create precise polygons for the range of 62 species in the CFP. We accessed publicly occurrence repositories for our target species and used a protocol to remove outliers. Using these cleaned coordinates, we created polygons of the ranges and inferred the area in square kilometers. This information was used to create a preliminary histogram for CFP plant distribution, highlighting a high percentage of plant taxa with ranges smaller than Humboldt county.

Fire suppression over the 20th century has created dangerous conditions in many western forests. Removing fire as a natural disturbance has brought about increased fuel loading and extreme fire behavior in many areas. This study researched the accumulation of duff mounds (decomposed plant material) around legacy sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana) in the Russian Wilderness Area of the Klamath National Forest. Large amounts of fuel beneath trees poses the potential risk of tree mortality, even in a low intensity fire By assessing the dimensions, volume, distribution and physical properties of duff mounds, we can better the variability of how and where duff mounds accumulate.

Impending regulation of California’s medical-marijuana industry demands a quantifiable understanding of the extent of cultivation on private lands long devoted to commercial-scale marijuana growing. This research aimed to quantify marijuana cultivation and water storage in the Redwood Creek watershed of southern Humboldt County, where critical changes have taken place since the advent of the back-to-the-land movement in the late 1960s. A GIS-based spatial analysis, following a visual search using Google Earth imagery, yielded 303 greenhouses, 100 outdoor cultivation scenes, 164 water tanks, and 51 installed ponds on assessor’s parcels located within or partly within the watershed.