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Bill Lane Center Research News
Retracing John Muir's Walk to Yosemite
In 1868, when John Muir first arrived in San Francisco, he almost immediately crossed the Bay to Oakland and began walking to Yosemite. On April 6, Alex McInturff -- a master's student in Earth Sciences at Stanford who has been doing research in conjunction with the Bill Lane Center for the American West and our collaborator iMapData -- is setting off to retrace Muir's path across California. Alex envisions his own walk as a way to examine the history, current state and future prospects of a wide range of conservation efforts across a telling transect of California, from urban areas, through suburbs and parks, across the large parks and ranches of the Coast Range, the irrigated industrial agriculture of the Central Valley, Kesterson Wildlife Refuge, up the Merced River, across the Don Pedro Reservoir and Lake McClure, through historical mining towns, and national forests to Yosemite National Park. You can follow his journey here.
Center Researchers use Advanced Data Mapping and Visualization Tools, IMAPDATA
Thanks to a generous gift by William E. Lilley III, Center faculty and students are conducting research with an advanced, web-based, data mapping and visualization package developed by the firm iMapData. The Bill Lane Center invites inquiries from Stanford researchers interested in using iMapData in their research and teaching about the West.
Researchers at the Bill Lane Center for the American West are using a customized package of geospatial datasets to investigate relationships between geographic location, including physical and political boundaries, and political, economic, and social variables. In addition to benefiting from a wealth of regularly updated and maintained data provided by iMapData, Stanford scholars are integrating their propriety data with iMapData's extensive holdings.
These remarkable digital tools enable scholars to produce graphic representations of the relationships they discover.
IMapData's data holdings include: Politics Congressional, state, county, and city level political district boundaries with links to current information on each elected official
Economics Area socio-economic demographics, including major religious families; select agriculture crops by county; unemployment statistics by county; select regulations by state; select county business patterns (1986-2005); and banking depository institutions The Environment Current and historic weather; river gauge measurements; imagery; and geographic boundaries Essential Community Facilities Location and feature details of transportation; water treatment facilities; and water source locations Places Location and feature details of educational institutions, including libraries; parks; sports facilities; media outlets; and military installations Public Safety Location and feature details of area police and fire stations; hospitals; clinics; and community crime rates
INVITATION TO STANFORD SCHOLARS
The Bill Lane Center for the American West invites inquiries from Stanford faculty, research scholars, graduate students, undergraduates, who are interested in using iMapData in their research and teaching. Interested individuals should contact Tammy M. Frisby, Executive Director and Director of Research.
IMAPDATA
For more than 25 years, iMapData has helped government and commercial organizations quickly make intelligent data-driven decisions. IMapData supports clients by identifying geospatial data sets and analytical functionality most relevant to their particular challenges, and integrating them into powerful solutions that deliver meaningful results. More information about iMapData and their solutions is available at http://www.imapdata.com/.
The Bill Lane Center's initial license agreement with iMapData runs through August 2009.
February 24: "Rearranging the Mojave: The Desert Tortoise and Land Management in American Southwest"
On February 24, 2009, Peter Alagona, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Bill Lane Center and an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, gave a public lecture on the history of endangered species conservation in and around California. His talk focused on the conservation history of the Mojave desert tortoise in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. Alagona explained how conservation efforts for the tortoise have helped to rearrange the administrative landscape of the region. He also suggested that endangered species conservation has facilitated a redistribution of political power over land and natural resources more generally--with complicated, contested, and often counterintuitive results. These themes are at the heart of the larger book project he is working on during his year in residence at the Bill Lane Center.November 20: Closing the Barn Door after the Horses Have Fled: 'Planning' in the New West
Paul Robbins, Professor of Geography Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona
Planned subdivisions and housing developments dominate much of the landscape in suburban and rural areas of the Western United States. The Bill Lane Center for the American West hosted Professor Paul Robbins from the University of Arizona to discuss these development trends and offer explanations for why they are so prevalent. Using areas in the State of Montana as a case study, Dr. Robbins suggests that the composition of regional planning boards can provide valuable insights for explaining these trends. Dr. Robbins offers a somewhat paradoxical assertion - increased numbers of developers on planning boards are actually leading to increased conservation practices and lower rates of land conversion for housing subdivisions. The housing and development industry, through the pursuit of conservation easements and viewshed and environmental amenity protection measures tends to self-regulate its behavior in order to preserve the value of its own investments. They do so increasingly through their participation on planning boards. According to Dr. Robbins, it may be difficult for certain environmentalists to accept, but housing developers are some of their biggest allies in the fight to protect wild and scenic environments.
UC Davis/Stanford Colloquium on Western and Spatial History
On November 1,2008, The Bill Lane Center hosted over 25 graduate students and professors from both Stanford and UC Davis for a colloquium workshop on environmental, Western, American Indian, and spatial history.
The morning session included presentations from David Hickman and Ari Kelman of Davis. Hickman, an advanced graduate student, presented an unfinished chapter of his dissertation about John Muir's career as orchardist. Professor Kelman's paper looked at the political and public memory battle over the remembrance of the Sand Hill Massacre.
The afternoon session was comprised of two presentations by Jon Christensen and Professor Richard White of Stanford. Christensen showed slides and animations he created for his dissertation using GIS, a tool he is using to explore the history of conservation of the Bay Checkerspot Butterfly in California. Professor White closed out the event with a talk and presentation on railroads and the spatial politics of the American West. Each presentation included over an hour for questions and comments from all participants, with an emphasis on graduate student led discussion in particular.
Sustainable Urban Growth as Environmental Policy
A Woods Institute for the Environment Environmental Forum
For the first time in history, more than half of the world's people live in urban areas. In many Asian countries, economic growth is fueling extensive urban development, with land-use patterns remarkably similar to those in the US.
The land and resource-intensive nature of this type of rapid urban development has led to a wide variety of environmental and social impacts. In light of these trends, The Bill Lane Center proudly hosted Yale University Professor Karen Seto and University of Washington Professor Margaret O'Mara to present their research on patterns of global urban development.
Drawing from case studies in Bangalore, India, the Pearl River Delta, China, and the Silicon Valley, Drs. Seto and O'Mara discussed common themes about the international spread of low-density urban development, the policy and institutional levers that may affect the pathways of peri-urban development, and the linkages between urban growth and environmental sustainability. In consideration of the far reaching social and environmental impacts of rapid urbanization in both domestic and international settings, they put forth a bold assertion, suggesting that resource managers and policy makers alike can better confront the challenges of urban development by re-conceptualizing environmental policy as urban policy.
Credit for the project and image should be given to O'Mara and Seto, with maps produced by Reilly, O'Mara, and Seto.
Summer Series of Scholarly Lunches
The Bill Lane Center's undergraduate research assistants coordinated a weekly series of scholarly lunch discussions to discuss the work of the Center.
The series began with Prof. Zehpyr Frank's Terrain of History project, aiming to provide a spatial dimension to the study of Rio de Janeiro and apply this spatial data to elucidate stories which could tell the tale of the city. Following Prof. Frank's discussion, Professor Richard White presented on Building the West, which examined the construction of railroads in the West through both historical and spatial processes.
Professor David Kennedy, in the next presentation, discussed an American National Identity, using historical interpretations to differentiate between history happening in a place and history occurring because of location. The Center's own Jon Christensen and his research assistants presented his work on Critical Habitat, which used spatial data to analyze the success of the conservation of public lands. The Center's Executive Director, Tammy Frisby, and two undergraduates then discussed an economic model for predicting the 2008 elections.
Dr. Gregory Simon presented his work on the West with his research assistants. Later on in the summer, research assistants from the Spatial History Project discussed their work in more depth.
Such a series showcases the level of collaborative work within the Center both between scholars and between scholars and students. These lunches provided a weekly window into the work of the Center and an avenue for Center-affiliated scholars, students, and staff to actively participate in the research process.
