By: Svetlana Babaeva

We’re thrilled to once again showcase the impressive work of a GIS student from Santa Monica College! This time, we spotlight the exceptional talents of Svetlana Babaeva, whose dedication and analytical skill shine through in her latest project. Svetlana has taken on one of the most urgent and complex issues facing Californians today: the dramatic and ongoing rise in rent across Los Angeles County. With a sharp geographic lens and a commitment to uncovering meaningful insights, she’s mapped and analyzed this crisis with clarity and purpose. In her own words …

Los Angeles, often seen as a land of opportunity and the embodiment of the “California Dream,” drew me in 2019 with its vibrant cultural energy. However, I soon encountered the city’s harsh reality: a crushing housing crisis that personally affected me and nearly a third of my neighbors who spend over half their income on rent.

Understanding the Housing Crisis Through GIS

After five years of observing this crisis and studying geography at Santa Monica College, I realized my personal struggle was part of a larger issue impacting over 60% of Los Angeles County residents. This led me to create Rent Pressure in Los Angeles, a story map using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to pinpoint areas most affected by severe rent burdens. My spatial analysis highlighted central and downtown Los Angeles County as particularly vulnerable, prompting questions about the sustainability of living here. This project has significantly deepened my understanding of how geographic thinking and GIS can illuminate and address critical real-world issues beyond just housing. These patterns clearly warrant continued investigation within this area of study.

Acknowledgements

I am incredibly grateful to the Santa Monica College Geography Program for their exceptional guidance. Special thanks to Professor Jing Liu, whose five GIS courses and unwavering support were instrumental in developing this project and my forthcoming Geospatial Technology certificate. I also extend my sincere appreciation to Professor Robert O’Keefe for introducing me to critical geographic thinking, Professor Pete Morris for his insightful, multidisciplinary approach to California geography, and Professor William A. Selby for his inspiring presentations. Their combined contributions have provided an invaluable foundation and continue to inspire my geographic explorations.

Showcase Your Geographic Work on Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography

Are you passionate about California’s landscapes, communities, or pressing challenges? Have you created maps, visualizations, research projects, or multimedia presentations that explore the geography of the Golden State? If so, we invite you to contribute to Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography — an online platform dedicated to telling California’s story through a geographic lens.

We’re looking for student and faculty contributions that connect clearly to California — whether you’re examining climate change impacts, housing and rent patterns, water resources, wildfire dynamics, transportation systems, cultural diversity, immigration, or any number of issues shaped by place and space. Submissions can be analytical or creative, visual or written, but they must offer geographic insight into the state’s dynamic human or physical landscapes.

By sharing your work, you not only gain professional exposure but also help inform and inspire others to better understand California — its regions, its people, and the challenges it faces.

If you’re interested in being featured, or have a student whose work deserves a wider audience, we’d love to hear from you! Let’s rediscover the Golden State together, one geographic story at a time.

The post Rent Pressure in L.A first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

At Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography, one of our missions is to feature the impactful work of students who apply geographic thought and analysis to pressing California issues. We’re proud to present Jason Runnels, a dedicated student from Santa Monica College.

Jason has completed a significant project titled Wells, Crops, and Crisis: Exploring the Spatial Relationships Between Groundwater Depletion, Crops and Landcover in Tulare County, CA. This timely and insightful work delves into the critical issue of groundwater depletion in Tulare County, examining its spatial relationships with agricultural practices and land cover.

We encourage you to explore Jason’s work by following the link above. Additionally, please take a moment to read his bio (see below) and learn more about his motivations for addressing this critical issue.

A twenty-five-year resident of California, Jason Runnells, the creator behind this featured project, brings a deeply personal perspective to the state’s pressing water resource challenges. With roots in a multi-generational Colorado farming family, he possesses a lifelong appreciation for the intricate relationship between land and water in semi-arid environments. This foundational interest has culminated in a focused exploration of Tulare County’s groundwater issues, a critical component of California’s larger sustainability puzzle.

This project leverages the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to investigate the complex spatial interplay between shifting groundwater levels and established land use patterns. The resulting analysis provides valuable insights for the broader conversation surrounding water management and long-term environmental planning in the region.

Jason’s path to geography and GIS is as unique as his perspective. After a successful two-decade career in the music industry, a desire to more deeply understand the natural world led him back to academia. Under the mentorship of Professor Jing Liu at Santa Monica College, a passion for cartography and spatial analysis was ignited. This newfound dedication to geography has led to an internship as the GIS lead for The Canyon Alliance, where he is instrumental in developing geographic databases and tools to support local disaster preparedness efforts.

Upon graduating this spring with an associate degree in Geography, Jason will continue his studies at UCLA, pursuing a major in Geography/Environmental Studies and a minor in Geospatial Information Systems & Technologies. This project stands as a testament to his dedication and a promising glimpse into a future dedicated to applying the power of geography to real-world environmental challenges.

The post Wells, Crops, and Crisis first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

That leaves you a lot of latitude for exploring what interests you, pun intended! Heck, the ideas generated by this revelation could start sprouting like mushrooms after our recent rains. Which reminds me …

Today we are highlighting the work of Christopher Campbell, a student in the GIS program at Santa Monica College. In the link below, Christopher delves into the where and the why in California of the elusive wild morel mushroom. The story that unfolds in his text, maps, and photos is as interesting as it is informative. He shows us that we can systematically explore and understand any natural wonder of interest to us, provided we employ sound scientific reasoning as well as basic geographic concepts and principles.

Morels by Christopher Campbell

So, the moral of this story is that whatever you find fascinating — in the Golden State or elsewhere — the science of geography and the tools of GIS can be your guides to securing a deeper understanding of that which sparked your curiosity.

If you are interested in learning GIS at Santa Monica College, please check out their offerings in Geography Program in the Earth Sciences Department.

** Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography welcomes submissions of California-themed projects from students and faculty from any CA institution of higher education to be highlighted on our web site. This includes, but is not limited to, articles, papers, maps and presentations– GIS or otherwise).

Even if you are working/ studying outside CA, we’ll consider your contributions too, provided the content has a clear and unambiguous connection to California geography.

For more information: info@rediscoveringthegoldenstate.com

The post The “Morel” of the Story … first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

One topic of concern that is familiar to Angelinos is the toll that the car culture has on the environment and quality of life in southern California. In a detailed and informative story map presentation, Amir Heibl, a GIS student at SMC, posed real-world geospatial questions while employing appropriate and innovative spatial analysis methods to address those issues.

We invite you to view his thought-provoking work entitled Gimme Shelter!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with GIS, it can be thought of broadly as the marriage of computer cartography and database management. More specifically, it is a computerized system for capturing, storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing geospatial information. Crucially, the data in a GIS contains a locational element which allows for spatial analysis of anything plotted on the surface of the Earth.

GIS is frequently used to answer why things are where they are. In the case of many human endeavors, it also helps decide where things will go or be. Businesses increasingly use GIS for such tasks as locating their customer bases, maximizing the efficiency of delivery fleets, and finding the best location to put in a retail store. Governments use GIS for a host of applications. From knowing the location of a city’s fire hydrants, to managing critical habitat and open space, to tracking and understanding the movement of goods, services, and people though a city, state or nation, GIS helps administrators make informed and timely decisions with real-world implications for the people they serve.

But GIS, along with interactive mapping applications, can be used effectively as a tool for stimulating learning and inspiring critical thought. As we have now seen in Amir’s work above, GIS allows you to explore spatial data, ask questions about that data and display it in ways that provide insights and inspiration for others to follow up on or act upon.

If you are interested in learning GIS at Santa Monica College, please check out their offerings in Geography Program in the Earth Sciences Department.

** Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography welcomes submissions of California-themed projects from students and faculty from any CA institution of higher education to be highlighted on our web site. This includes, but is not limited to, articles, papers, maps and presentations– GIS or otherwise).

Even if you are working/ studying outside CA, we’ll consider your contributions too provided the content has a clear and unambiguous connection to California geography.

For more information: info@rediscoveringthegoldenstate.com

The post Gimme Shelter! first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

But that leaves plenty of spatial error to exploit. For instance, in past years, residents of the Sierra Nevada foothills community of O’Neals cited historical markers that placed the center somewhere near their Spring Valley School. Using the latest technologies, more recent measuring surveys by geography students and others have finally zeroed in on what seems to be the accepted location a little farther up North Fork Road near North Fork.

According to surveys completed by volunteers from Fresno State University (including an official state surveyor) and the National Forest Service and the USGS, this is the confirmed geographic center of California as of 2017: latitude 37°09′58″N, longitude 119°26′58″W or (depending on how your GPS reads) 37.16611°N, 119.44944°W. The residents of North Fork have maintained a sign next to their road declaring their town as the center. Local organizations that include the North Fork History Group dedicated a plaque at the verified site a few miles southeast of North Fork along Road 225. By 2017, it had been replaced by a new plaque at the end of some stairs where you may also find a “CAL CENTER” marker. It is fittingly surrounded by an iconic California Sierra Nevada foothills woodland that includes oak and buckeye, but don’t expect to find much human activity there.

If you would like to go there, the late Huell Howser produced a video about this site: Center of California- California’s Gold (608)

The post Finding California’s Geographic Center first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.