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Multispecies Bruinsmap

This exciting initiative is the start of what will hopefully become a multi-year sustainable multispecies thick-mapping project of the UCLA campus (the university mascot is the “Bruin” bear). Lab-incubated concepts and methods will be brought to service for the entire UCLA community via a new map that makes visible the many “layers” of multispecies lives, bodies and ecocultural relationships on campus. 

 

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In the first phase of the project, undergrad RA Ava Philson, in collaboration with graduate RA Emma Ridder and Dr. Nathan will represent a quantitativequantitiative survey of bird communities on campus, as well as more humanistic reflections on the human/bird “co-becoming” process to create the first “layer” of the ArcGIS-based storymap/thick-map. The larger storymap frame will also describe the overall goals and rationale of this project: that of bringing a different kind of attentiveness and care by human-Bruins for their nonhuman companion-Bruins on campus (plant, animal, fungal and microbial).

 

Future growth of the Bruinsmap will hopefully bring together student artists, performers, creative writers and ecologists to build further layers!

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