Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Annual Meeting October 25–28, 2017 Chico, California

Abstracts for Oral Presentations and Posters

Oral Presentation Abstracts

Mark D. O. Adams, markdadams@fs.fed.us, USDA-Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station; and Susan Charnley, scharnley@fs.fed.us, USDA-Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. The Environmental Justice implications of USFS Hazardous Fuel Reduction: Three Case Studies. Hazardous fuel reduction (HFR) activities are a key management tool employed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in the interior West and California. HFR activities—stand thinning, prescribed burning, biomass modification—are implemented in part to reduce the transmission of wildfire risk from national forest system lands to adjacent non-federal lands. The USFS is obligated by the 1994 executive order on environmental justice to identify communities with high proportions of low-income or racial/ethnic minority residents that may be impacted by agency actions, and ensure that steps are taken to protect these communities from a disproportionate burden of negative environmental impacts caused by agency actions. Logically, the order also extends to the generation of environmental benefits by those actions. Hazardous fuel reduction activities, when successful, can reduce the direct risk of catastrophic wildfire and the indirect risk of poor air quality generated by such fires—an environmental benefit that should be shared as equitably as feasible by all communities neighboring a national forest. We analyzed HFR data from twelve national forests in three western U.S. regions to assess the degree to which hazardous fuel reduction benefits were negatively associated with environmental justice community demographics. While no such general negative association was found, we report on three case studies, from Arizona, California, and Washington, in which local spatial associations between the absence of HFR activity and the presence of environmental justice populations illustrate the difficulty USFS managers face in balancing biophysical and community protection objectives in implementing programs like HFR.

Stuart C. Aitken, saitken@mail.sdsu.edu, Department of Geography, San Diego State University. Young People's Rights and Sustainable Ethics. With this paper I discuss the curtailment of minority young people's right in the face of the transformation away from state socialism in the first instance, toward seemingly free and open neoliberal statehood in the second. Drawing on the local feminist politics of Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz, I argue that Spinosan sustainable ethics make more sense as a push against the excesses of neoliberal governance than proclamations of universal rights. I use empirical examples of precarity, dispossession, and emotional citizenry from Eastern Europe and Latin America to highlight the power of sustainable ethics to build potentia (i.e., young people's capacities for change and transformation).

Clark Akatiff, cpakatiff@yahoo.com, Palo Alto, California. The Fabulous Life and Mysterious Death of William Bunge, Radical Geographer, 1928–2013. The life of William Bunge is remembered, especially in its revolutionary impact upon the profession of Geography. Primarily sourced from film and tape interviews and recorded telephone conversations, as well as upon an archive of correspondence with the late William Bunge, his main ideas and his place in the ongoing evolution of geography will be presented. The author, his ally and friend for forty years, will use Bunge's own words to demonstrate his thoughts on theory, practice, and politics of Geography. Additionally, his personality and personal history as they influence his significance will be considered.

Jeff Baldwin, baldwije@sonoma.edu, Sonoma State University. Sustainability Education through Active-Learning in Large Lecture Settings: Evaluation of Four Out-of-Class Exercises. Large classes on sustainable development present certain challenges. Often, high student-to-instructor ratios encourage passive learning pedagogies. However, because sustainability education seeks to increase awareness and help students shift to more sustainable behaviors, more active learning is often prescribed by pedagogical experts. This study provides analysis of four out-ofclassroom activities undertaken by students in recent offerings of an experimental course on sustainable development taught at Sonoma State University in California. Those activities, innovated specifically for this course, attempt to increase learner-centered activities in large classes that averaged 124 students. Analysis of open-ended reflections indicates that many students experienced raised awareness of sustainability issues. Beyond aspirational statements, student...