Hello! My name is Ariel Daniels and I am a class of 2024 graduate student at the UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. Throughout my life, doing routine beach/park clean-ups shed light on the intrinsic relationship between people and nature for me.
Once getting into college and going down the path of Environmental Science and Policy, the multitude of GIS courses both within environmental science and urban planning steered me into different interests of environmental justice, stratification/inequality, sustainability, transport and land use policies, and planning that I’m eager to explore further in my Environmental Policy specialization in the UCSB MESM program and later in my career.
As part of a group project, I looked to answer the question of whether there is a stark deficit with Californians' relationship to nature, and more specifically, the ocean, based on varying demographics (i.e. race, age, income). This was measured through the means of total travel time to the ocean. Total travel time was collected by driving cars as the mode of transportation given the previous conclusion by NOAA Channel Islands and recorded in minutes.
As a result, we found that there is considerable significance between populations and where they spatially reside, defined by environmental justice indicators like income and race when discussing ocean access. Yet, age seems to show no significance. I have calculated that the highest average travel time among races is 1 hour and 54 minutes for Native Americans and the lowest average travel time among races is 27 minutes for African Americans.
From the project, I took away that many underlying factors can be taken into account of why certain communities frequent the beach and other coastal areas that go beyond income level, age, or race. Continuing to look into these factors is the best method to strengthen conservation. I hope from my contribution that these results can provide real implications for planning.
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