The Department of Geography at California State University houses a NASA Regional Earth Science Applications Center (RESAC), called the Southern California Wildfire Hazards Center (SCWHC), which concentrates on making remotely sensed imagery useful for those working to prevent and fight fire hazards on the urban-wildlands interface in the mountains of Southern California. The SCWHC would like to expand its workforce substantially in order to increase the spatial and temporal resolution of its fire databases. The required workforce is too large to be confined to the Geography Department.

As such, we would like to share the RESAC's and SCWHC's activities with a large number of students outside the Department and outside CSULB. We are creating a memorable undergraduate research experience for them that will affect their education and career choices and the skills they bring to their future activities. These skills are the geospatial techniques and technologies, including remote sensing, GIS, GPS, thematic mapping, and spatial statistics, which are of increasing importance to geographers, ecologists, geologists, and geoarchæologists, the geospatial technology related fields (GTRFs).

GT-REP focusses on undergraduate students from Los Angeles and Orange county CSU and community college campuses, particularly those from underrepresented groups in the GTRFs. They will be trained in the preparation, processing, and analysis of remotely sensed imagery and shown how these images correlate with the physical characteristics of vegetation they collect in the field and the changing fire risk these characteristics indicate over the course of the year. The specific goals of the Geospatial Technology Research and Education Partnership are to:

1. Increase the accessibility of geospatial research for a greater number of students, particularly underrepresented students, by presenting opportunities for students to conduct field and computer laboratory research in locales easily accessible to CSULB and its partner institutions.
2. Increase the awareness by undergraduates of the career potential in geospatial technology and the geospatial sciences as defined above;
3. Support the work of the developing CSU-NASA Education Collaborative by integrating RESAC GT-REP activities with on-going CSU-NASA science education projects;
4. Expand the spatial and temporal resolution (more often, for longer periods, at more sites, over greater areas) of the existing SCWHC field sampling and databases associated with fire risk, the basic science contribution of GT-REP; and
5. Create a model for local and remote research experiences throughout the academic year that accommodates the special needs of diverse students of comprehensive, urban, commuter universities and colleges.
6. Enable a seamless transition from community colleges into the California State University system and from the CSU into doctoral institutions specializing in the geospatial technologies and geosciences.