Map of wildfire severity of the Santa Rosa: CA 2017

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.

Mapping Ancient Maya Ceramics in Belize

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

A common form of relative dating in Mesoamerica is through ceramic chronology. This is due to the fact that ceramics preserve well, especially the humid environment. Through cross-dating across sites, different types of ceramics can be arranged with loose sets of dates. HSU’s Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao archaeology project in Belize has been collecting ceramic data since 2009, and the information has been placed into GIS to view and query visually. This focuses on one of the larger settlements studied by the project, N950. The initial GIS processing uses N950’s Structures 30, 32, and 36. The map produced represents when the ceramics were found and where they are relative to each other.

Mapping Ancient Maya Lowlands

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

Aleck Tan and Breana Esparza will assist Dr. Marisol Cortes-Rincon in mapping the areas between Dos Hombres and Gran Cacao using GIS and remote sensing techniques. Aleck Tan has been using satellite imagery to analyze the vegetation in the area in order to identify the extent of the causeways by applying remote sensing techniques of calculating the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Breana Esparza has been applying different methods of spatial analysis to create topographic contours of quarries and water features near the site N950. The information gathered would help create a better understanding of how ancient Mayan rural communities lived within their environments.

Mapping Marijuana Cultivation Sites and Water Storage in the Redwood Creek Watershed, Southern Humboldt County

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.

Mapping Our Way to Zero Waste

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

A Zero Waste perspective is supportive of reducing plastic consumption. Zero Waste Humboldt cooperated with six local governments and three schools with sponsorship from Coast Central Credit Union, Strong Foundation, and Mad River Rotary Club. They obtained a startup grant from the Footprint Foundation to implement the process of installing water bottle refilling stations to support the local communities and reduce the amount of single use plastic. They needed several maps in different mediums showing the locations where they have installed the water bottle refilling stations. I supported their efforts by making a web based map and a printed map for their public outreach.

Mapping Species Ranges in the California Floristic Province

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

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.

Mapping the Ancient Maya ‘Landscape’: A GIS approach to identify undocumented archaeological structures in Northwestern Belize

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

This project presents a unique approach to mapping the Maya landscape of Northwestern Belize. The basis of the research will explore various GIS and cartographic techniques to manipulate and visualize geospatial data to map and produce a model to assist with predictive site survey of archaeological structures. As a result of this research, various images of relief visualization will be produced to help with pre-field planning for the summer 2018 field season. This project is part of the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project (DH2GC) led by Dr. Marisol Cortes-Rincon at Humboldt State University.

Mapping the Cellular Origins of Atherosclerotic Plaque

Hannah Cornwell, Biological Sciences Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease causing plaque formation in arteries, leading to morbidity and mortality. Smooth muscle cells may contribute to plaque formation, but the exact origin remains unknown. Researchers can analyze smooth muscle cell function using histology, spatial transcriptomic analysis, and CODEX protein visualization. Using lineage tracing models with Rainbow mouse reporter lines, they can study cell fate and phenotypic shifts, identifying possible targets for disease tracking and modification to improve disease progression.

Mapping the Northcoast Environmental Center Adopt-A-Beach Program "Clean Beaches, Clean Water"

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

For my internship I have been working with the Northcoast Environmental Center to use geospatial analysis and cartography to map their Adopt-A-Beach program. For my poster I would like to display the process and final outcome of the work I have been doing.

Mapping the Sierra Nevada

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

Mapping the Sierra Nevada HSU advanced geospatial students map a variety of topics to accompany text in a forthcoming book about Environmental Issues in the Sierra Nevada.