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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.
Designed as a storymap collection, this project will feature different multispecies thick-maps made by students exploring natureculture on campus. You can view the collection HERE and its first layer, created by undergraduate RA Ava Philson HERE.
In the first phase of the project, undergrad RA Ava Philson, in collaboration with graduate RA Emma Ridder and Dr. Nathan represented 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 also describes 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!
