Yolonda Youngs, Ph.D.

Yolonda Youngs, Ph.D. 

Professor 

California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB)

Department of Geography and Environmental Studies

Email: YYoungs@csusb.edu

• 2009    Ph.D. in Geography, Arizona State University
• 2004    M.S. in Earth Sciences (Geography), Montana State University
• 1993    B. A. in Anthropology, Florida State University

Twitter @DrYoGeography      Academia.com 

Research Gate      Google scholar      LinkedIn

Research and Teaching Expertise: 

• environmental geography 
• Long Term Environmental Monitoring (LTEM) for Climate Resiliency & Restoration
• conservation of natural & cultural resources
• environmental justice
• national parks & international protected areas (UNESCO)
• coastal & marine resources 
• GIS & geospatial technology
• environmental policy – land & water management
• sustainable & regenerative tourism and outdoor recreation
• field studies & methods
• interdisciplinary, team, & community engaged research 
• western United States and Europe (regional expertise)  

Courses:

• Environmental Sustainability
• National Parks and Public Lands
• Conservation of Natural Resources
• GIS for Social Sciences
• Environment & Society
• Field Methods in Geography 
• World Regional Geography
• Introduction to Cultural Geography
• Geography of Outdoor Recreation
• Global Tourism & Sustainability
• Geography of Europe
• Professional Conferences

My work seeks to document, preserve, and interpret the environmental and cultural geography of landscapes in national parks and international protected areas over time.  This work is organized under two themes.

My Long Term Environmental Monitoring (LTEM) projects are located in national parks and UNESCO sites in the United States and Europe.

• My methods and approaches combine fieldwork, environmental monitoring, repeat photography, GIS, landscape change analysis, and the digitization of historic photographs and map documents.  
• I work collaboratively with teams of interdisciplinary faculty and students from ecology, biology, geology, anthropology and other disciplines  to create rigorous datasets that may be useful to a range of scholars, scientists, public and tribal land managers, non-profit environmental groups, the public, and federal, tribal & public land and water agencies.
• The goal of these projects is to produce a consistent, thematic, and geographically organized dataset of environmental and landscape conditions and their change over time.  Field site visits and data collection occur annually or biannually. This data is a valuable source of information that reveals the impact of climate change and the potential for restoration and resilience. 
• My active research field sites include Yellowstone National Park (WY, MT, ID), Grand Teton National Park (WY), Grand Canyon National Park (AZ), and Channel Islands National Park (CA), Inland Empire (southern CA).
• I regularly publish the results of this work as peer-reviewed journal articles and scientific reports as well as publicly accessible Story Maps. 
• Grant funding is currently being sought to build new collaborations with interdisciplinary field-based teams, expand field site locations in coastal and marine areas, and to create an online data dashboard for all the locations in one publicly accessible website. 

Another theme of my work explores how visual representations influence environmental policy and management in national parks and protected areas.

• I seek to better understand and interpret how the process of socially constructing landscape representations shapes scientific knowledge and understanding, climate resiliency, cultural heritage and identity, environmental justice, social equity, an access and use of public lands.  
• Through my research trajectory, I seek to better understand how multiple, often conflicting ideas and meanings of nature are contested, negotiated, and translated into natural and cultural resource management policies and how this process can be traced through the medium of landscape.
  
• Evidence and products of this research theme include publication of my books, book chapters, refereed journal articles, public talks, and keynote lectures. 
• I am currently working on a three book series that highlights these themes in the Grand Canyon NP, Yellowstone NP, and Grand Teton NP.
• The first book in this series is Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon (2024, University of Nebraska Press). I trace the arc of the national park idea and how people came to know the Grand Canyon through a journey behind the scenes of popular imagery (postcards, photographs, and films).  Through this work I explore the cultural, social, and spatial process of creating a national park as an iconic place and how visual representations of the canyon shaped environmental conservation, park management, tourism, and social and cultural identity over 150 years.

My publications include books, journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, and technical reports. My first book is The American Environment Revisited: Historical Environmental Geography of the United States (2018, with Geoffrey Buckley). I have published journal articles in the Geographical Review, Society and Natural Resources: An International Journal, and GeoHumanities and others . 

My research is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. National Park Service  and Department of the Interior (NPS & DOI), the Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU) national network, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, and other state or university funds.  

I am a passionate educator who strongly believes in a synergy between my scholarship and teaching. My teaching emphasizes active learning that encourages students to take ownership of their learning experiences and personalize their education to their intellectual needs and curiosities. [If a Map Could Talk newspaper story about my teaching]. I strive to empower students to find their passions in academic programs and courses and connections to their communities in ways that link them to new learning opportunities and fuels their pursuit of environmental careers. My students advance to jobs and careers as park rangers, museum staff, environmental consultants, conservation organizations, federal and state public lands managers, environmental educators, K-12 teachers, university researchers and scholars, river advocates, and GIS technicians.

My scholarly training is fortified by my doctoral work at Arizona State University’s Department of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. At ASU, I was a Research Associate in the NSF funded IGERT in Urban Ecology program, a Preparing Future Faculty and Scholar (PFx), and a Research Assistant at the NSF funded Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC),

Awards for my work include ISU Outstanding Researcher Award (2018), the Apple Inc. Distinguished Educator Award (for use of iPads in innovative teaching for the classroom and fieldwork), U.S. Scholar Award (International Cartographic Association), International Geographical Union Scholar Award, Lary Ford Fieldwork Award in Cultural Geography (Association of Pacific Coast Geographers), and the Carville Earle Award (Historical Geography Speciality group of the American Association of Geographers).

I serve on national and regional positions within my discipline. I am the Chair of the American Association of Geographers Protected Areas Speciality Group (AAG PASG – national service). I have also served as the Vice-Chair and a founding member of this group. I have served as the elected AAG Regional Councilor for the Pacific Coast states (APCG – national & regional service) of American Association of Geographers (3 years), as a elected member of the Executive Council of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG, 4 years), and as the former Director of the Nature, Culture, and Parks Research (NCPR) group at ISU. 

I am an active member in the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) with engagement in the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), EUROGEO (European Association of Geographers), (AAG) American Association of Geographers, (AGS) American Geographical Society, (APCG) Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, and the (RGS) Royal Geographical Society. I present my research regularly at national and international conferences, including the International Geographical Union (IGU) and American Association of Geographers (AAG) conferences. 

I enjoy kayaking, rafting, camping, hiking, road cycling, running and travel. 

To learn more about my scholarship, publications, teaching, and potential collaboration opportunities, please click on the tabs above.

I welcome new students interested in research projects along the themes of my work. Please email me directly to inquire about current openings.