May 2, 2025
Reception & Presentations 2pm to 5pm
Cal Poly Humboldt Library
Search Presenters & Abstracts
Presenters & Abstracts: Search
Mapping Marijuana Cultivation Sites and Water Storage in the Redwood Creek Watershed, Southern Humboldt County
Cristina Bauss
Geography
Undergraduate Student
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
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.
Makeup Design for Evil Dead the Musical by Amy Beltrán and Constance Hill
Amy Beltrán
Theatre Arts
Undergraduate Student
Constance Hill
Theatre Arts
Undergraduate Student
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
National Award Winning Makeup Design for Evil Dead: The Musical by Amy Beltrán and Constance Hill.
Due to the theatre department not having a makeup class dedicated to teaching FX makeup, we had to teach ourselves the entire process of face casting, creating latex prosthetics, and designing realistic gore makeup. Our creativity ranged from using fake nails to create teeth on zombies, to using chocolate syrup to make fake blood.
Our collaborative design won us the national award for excellence in Allied Arts at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival back in February, 2019, as well as an internship with the Stage Craft Institute of Las Vegas over the summer.
"A Feminist Interpretation Of Women's Work With Koloa In The Tongan Community"
Meleana Akolo
Anthropology
Graduate Student
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
This research involves studying the Tongan culture in the San Francisco Bay Area with a feminist perspective focused on Tongan women and Tongan cultural materials known as koloa. Koloa is a major component of keeping with Tongan traditions and customs. Koloa is used for all cultural, religious, and social events. Those with proprietary entitlement are women. Women create, collect, and sell koloa. Studying women and their dominant role as cultural providers will shed light on their valuable assets and talents within the community. The Tonga Islands are located in the deep South Pacific. The study was conducted from interviews with the women, observations, and a focus group.
Pursuing Perfection: Social Media and the Ideal Self
Kaitlin Simpson
Anthropology
Undergraduate Student
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
Due to the rapid changes to social media studies, I conducted analyses of relevant literature to explore Instagram (IG) users’ motivations and methods used project images of themselves to the world that are seen as ”ideal”. The existing literature suggests IG users’ motivations for cultivating and maintaining online personas correlate with an overall trend of commodification of “self”, and data show that IG users use the platform to manage relationships online and in “real life” (face to face). IG usage highlights changes in ourselves as a result of our choices involving self-identity online, and the ways in which maintaining an IG profile changes the way we perceive and engage with others.
Map of wildfire severity of the Santa Rosa: CA 2017
John Cortenbach
Environmental Science and Management
Undergraduate Student
Richard Williams
Environmental Resources Engineering
Undergraduate Student
Buddhika Madurapperuma
Forestry and Wildland Resources/ Environmental Science and Management
Faculty
College of Natural Resources & Sciences
This study examines the Santa Rosa fire in 2017 using remote sensing techniques to estimate the acreage of burned areas. Landsat 8 imagery of the pre- and post- fires were used to extrapolate the burn severity using two methods: (i) Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) and (ii) change detection analysis. The results of burn severity of both methods were on average 24% under-approximated comparison to values supplied by Cal Fire. While comparing acreage burn, provided by CAL FIRE indicates that our results were on average 76% ±8% accuracy in identifying burn severity. Of the two methods, the change detection using iso clustered unsupervised classification scheme was more accurate.
The Marching Lumberjacks
Veronica Perez
Library Special Collections
Undergraduate Student
Library
Have you ever thought where local World Famous Marching Lumberjacks originated from? I mean where exactly did all that silliness come from? Over 50 (+1) years ago the band was able to become the most loquacious, vehement, and fatuous student lead scatter band known to mankind, and your still probably thinking “why am I reading this?” Well, because you want to know about one of the oldest student run organizations on campus because it is still successful today. How has the world's most whimsical and nonsensical band been able to exist for this long? Well the roots of the band, which has been documented very well, created the foundations of a band embedded in HSU school spirit and community.
Surface Ocean Distribution of Trace Metals in the California Current System During a Year of Anomalously Low Upwelling
Robert B. Freiberger
Chemistry, Oceanography
Undergraduate Student
Dr. Claire Till
Chemistry
Faculty
College of Natural Resources & Sciences
Upwelling in the California Current System (CCS) brings nutrient rich water to the continental shelf. Included with these nutrients are some trace metals. Trace iron (Fe) has been shown to be a control on primary productivity in the CCS. 2014 marked a year of low upwelling along the CA coast. This anomaly provides an opportunity to assess annual variability in processes affecting micronutrient distributions here. In 2014, the IRNBRU research cruise measured surface macronutrient and trace metal distributions in the CCS. Their results show lower nutrient concentrations than found in previous studies, and suggest an unusual uptake ratio of macronutrients by microorganisms in the area.
Development and Psychometric Characteristics of the Chocolate Craving Inventory
Haley Whitham
Psychology
Graduate Student
College of Professional Studies
One of the most popularly craved foods in the United States is chocolate. Yet, current definitions and ways to assess chocolate craving vary from study to study. The purpose of this investigation was to create a reliable and valid measure that can be used to assess problematic chocolate craving and its correlates. Preliminary findings indicate that the Chocolate Craving Inventory (CCI) is both a reliable and valid measure. Our investigation yielded high internal consistency and test-retest reliability in a college sample (N = 100). In addition, evidence for convergent and discriminant validity were also found. Future studies will further assess the psychometric properties of the CCI.
The Surface Distribution of Trace Metals Along a Pacific Meridional Transect: GEOTRACES GP-15 Research Cruise
Cristina Tusei
Chemistry
Undergraduate Student
Jacob Begorre
Chemistry
Undergraduate Student
Robert B. Freiberger
Chemistry, Oceanography
Undergraduate Student
Dr. Claire Till
Chemistry
Faculty
College of Natural Resources & Sciences
Many trace metals are delivered to the ocean in the form of wind-blown sediments and by riverine input, some of which are essential micronutrients. Iron has been found to play a significant role in limiting biological productivity in many regions of the ocean such as in the California Current System. Investigating this distribution of trace metals provides insight into processes affecting surface ocean waters. In Fall 2018, the GEOTRACES GP-15 cruise traveled from Alaska to Tahiti along the 152°W meridian, a region yet to be well characterized for trace metals. Our group is interested in the distribution of scandium in surface waters as a proxy for understanding processes affecting iron.
Sedimentation Risk Assessment in the Lagoa Feia Lake Basin in Brazil using Satellite and Geospatial Data
Ualas Barreto Rohrer
Environmental Science and Management
Undergraduate Student
Buddhika Madurapperuma
Faculty
College of Natural Resources & Sciences
Lagoa Feia Lake Basin is located in Rio de Janeiro-Brazil, which historically experienced sedimentation impacts due to channel ditching to manage water resources for agricultural practices. This study models the significance of sedimentation in the lake basin intergraded with land-use, soil types, and DEM data using Remote Sensing and GIS techniques. The erosion model was built using the above input variables by applying weighted overlay methods, and the vulnerable areas were mapped. Landsat 8 images were utilized for remote sensing analysis, such as image enhancement indices to detect sedimentation changes over time. The results of the study are useful to implement best management practices