Library News - Research Guides at Sonoma State University Library

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Focus on: SSU Research

10/31/2025

Rita Premo

Sonoma State faculty continue to produce excellent scholarship and creative activity. The following include articles and other materials disseminated during the month of October.

Leyva, L. A., Mitchell, N. D., Posada-Castañeda, R., Byrne, M. H., Luna-Bazán, R., Ashkenazy, Y., & Abreu-Ramos, E. (2025). Racially-Affirming Community in Instructional Servingness for Latin Students’ Gateway Mathematics Classroom Participation. AERA Open, 11.

Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) advance servingness (i.e., racially-affirming support for Latin* students through campus programs and services) to promote academic success. However, the role of mathematics instruction in servingness is underexamined. Given how gateway mathematics courses filter out racial diversity in STEM majors, insights about Latin* students’ experiences of instruction in these courses can enhance servingness. This study analyzed 27 undergraduate Latin* students’ experiences of servingness through classroom participation in gateway mathematics courses at an HSI. We focused on classroom participation due to its well-documented influence on Latin* students’ mathematics identities and STEM persistence. Latin* students largely reported supportive instruction that reduced risks of participation. However, cultivating a racially-affirming community (a key aspect of servingness on the broader HSI campus) was also necessary to disrupt racialized influences and ensure Latin* students’ equitable access to participation. We conclude with implications for research and practice to advance servingness through STEM education across HSIs.

Ricart, A. M., Gómez, J. B., Karm, R. H., Largier, J. L., Bastos Correa De Souza, V., Dias, A. S., Velázquez, M. G., Nelson, T., Cavanaugh, K. C., Cavanaugh, K. C., & Hughes, B. B. (2025). Persistent kelp forests during a massive decline reveal the importance of land–sea connectivity. Ecology (Durham), 106(9), Article e70212.

A fundamental goal in ecology is to understand the drivers of stability in natural ecosystems in the face of disturbances. However, this is challenging when biotic and abiotic stressors operate simultaneously across multiple spatial scales. Such is the case for bull kelp forests (Nereocystis luetkeana) in northern California, where losses of predators combined with marine heatwaves have led to shifts from kelp forest to sea urchin barren states. However, despite the >90% loss of bull kelp forests since 2014, some patches remain. Here, we investigate the bull kelp community assemblage in these remnant patches as well as the drivers of bull kelp forest resistance. We used a combination of in situ field surveys (years 2020–2022), remote sensing data (years 2016–2022), and a laboratory grazing experiment with urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). We found that, in addition to the two dominant states (kelp forest vs. urchin barren), there is a third community state dominated by understory canopy‐forming macroalgae that stays subsurface. Moreover, bull kelp abundance and cover were positively associated with freshwater flow and proximity to freshwater sources, and bull kelp persistence was positively associated with sand cover, all of which seem to diminish sea urchin abundance and the negative effects of sea urchin herbivory on bull kelp. This was also shown in the laboratory experiment where sea urchin herbivory rates on bull kelp decreased with decreasing salinity. Overall, these results suggest that freshwater influence in shallow coastal environments could prevent loss of bull kelp and show that land–sea connections should be considered for species‐specific management and conservation actions.

García, J. J., & Ni, H. W. (2025). Editorial to the special issue on Diversity Science: From theory to action in applied settings. Current Psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.).
Over the past few years, furthering diversity science as an interdisciplinary field has been vital to addressing societal inequalities that disproportionately affect historically marginalized and minoritized communities. Within a diversity science framework, human behavior and psychological processes are shaped by—but also influence—social environments. Plaut (2010) originally defined diversity science as “the study of the interpretation and construction of human differences—of why and how differences make a difference—within the context of existing, historically shaped cultural and structural realities” (p. 168). This field has several theoretical principles, including the need to dismantle the mask of neutrality afforded to those in dominant groups, a focus on minoritized perspectives to resist homogeneity in psychological processes among minoritized groups, an examination of the sociocultural climate that minoritized persons navigate, and centering a sociocultural approach to understand different racialization processes among communities of color (Plaut, 2010; Miller et al., 2019). Since then, diversity science has had remarkable growth and recognition as a legitimate field of study that includes various diverse communities (Causadias et al., 2023; Miller et al., 2019). In the backdrop of historical/current backlash against DEI—and to highlight the scientific contributions of this diversity science to the broader academic community—our special issue features 18 articles from both U.S. and international scholars, representing countries such as China, Türkiye, Spain, South Korea, Japan, Ethiopia, Portugal, Germany, and Taiwan. Articles within this special issue span multiple fields, including Educational Psychology, Health Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Kinesiology, Developmental Social Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Medicine, Behavioral Sciences, Public Health, and Social/Economic Psychology. Featured work applies the theoretical principles of diversity science to five contexts: education, healthcare, industrial/organizational, stress-based research, and innovative methodology.

Shrestha, S. (2025). Device and method for determining a level or concentration of an analyte in a person's blood from one or more volatile analytes in the person's breath (U.S. Patent No. 12278013). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

A device configured to determine a level or concentration of a disease-related analyte in a person's blood from volatile analyte(s) in the person's breath. The device includes one or more sensors configured to detect the volatile analyte(s) in the person's breath, a microcontroller in communication with each sensor, a transmitter, a battery, and a housing. The microcontroller contains logic that correlates parameter values from the sensor(s) or the level/concentration of the volatile analyte(s) to the level/concentration of the disease-related analyte. The transmitter is configured to transmit the parametric value from each sensor and/or the level/concentration of the volatile analyte(s) and/or the disease-related analyte. The housing surrounds, encloses and/or secures the sensor(s), the microcontroller, the transmitter and the battery, and contains a tube or opening through which the person exhales so that the person's breath contacts the sensor(s).

If you're interested in other scholarly and creative works by Sonoma State faculty, you can check out items from the SSU Faculty book display on the 2nd floor of the Schulz Information Center or use the specialized search option within OneSearch and select SSU Research.

Psychology, Electrical Engineering, Biology, Mathematics

Focus on: SSU Research

08/29/2025

Sonoma State faculty conduct research and create art and knowledge that changes the world. Below are a few recently released examples:

Kouba, P. V., Latimer, A. M., Young, D. J. N., Odkins, M., Bell, D. M., Clark, I. R., & North, M. P. (2025). Prescribed and natural fire help restore fire-adapted conditions in an Eastern Sierra Jeffrey pine forest. Forest Ecology and Management, 595, Article 123010.

In the western US, restoring forests to historical, fire-adapted conditions can reduce fire risk, but most fire-adapted restoration targets in California focus on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. By comparison, Eastern Sierra Jeffrey pine forests experience distinct climate and growing conditions, and both their historical structure and the effects of fire suppression are different from those of their west-side counterparts. In this study, our goals were (1) to use spatially-explicit forest reconstruction methods to estimate the historical, fire-adapted structure of eastern Sierra Jeffrey pine forests; (2) to describe the structural changes observed after 54–65 years of fire exclusion; and (3) to quantify the structural effects and restoration potential of 1–2 recent fire events that followed the fire exclusion period. At two sites in the Eastern Sierra near Mammoth Lakes, CA, we surveyed stands and collected tree ring series to establish tree ages and reconstruct maps of the forest at the end of the frequent-fire period (1941), after the period of fire exclusion (1995/2006), and in recent years (2018). We found that half a century of fire exclusion led to denser stands with fewer, smaller openings and larger clumps of trees, much like in the western Sierra. However, east-side forests were not as departed from fire-adapted conditions, and 1–2 fire events in recent years showed potential to restore many structural characteristics to their prior state. Our results can inform forest management decisions, and they support the use of prescribed fire and managed wildfire in forest restoration. [Display omitted] •Historical forests here were less dense, with smaller tree-clumps and larger gaps.•Eastern Sierra Jeffrey pine forests are not as departed as many western US forests.•Low productivity and shorter fire exclusion period may have limited forest changes.•Return of fire after ∼60 years restored aspects of active-fire forest structure.

Virmani, R., Mason, D., & Suarez, M. (2025). (Re)claiming sacred spaces: Male educators of color speaking truth to power in the classroom. In Building Community to Center Equity and Justice in Mathematics Teacher Education (Vol. 6, pp. 315–330).

This new volume of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) Professional Book Series provides mathematics teacher educators practical ideas of how to build community to center conversations and action on equity and justice in mathematics teacher education. This 24-case collection of experiences from mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) expresses how they build community in the following kinds of settings in order to provide examples of how this work can be done in a variety of MTE contexts: Cases to Build Community with Prospective Teachers; Cases to Build Community in Professional Development with Practicing Teachers; and Cases to Build Community with Graduate Students and Fellow Mathematics (Teacher) Educators. This book is written from and with a critical, practitioner stance and provides a variety of research-based cases (e.g., scenarios, tasks, modules, activities) to support MTEs to build community in mathematics teacher education courses and professional development collaborations. Creating learning communities that center on the joy, beauty, resiliency and variety of experiences and ways of knowing community members, particularly marginalized communities, is critical to promote agency and action that can support critical conversations that disrupt oppression in mathematics and mathematics teacher education.

Smeds, E. A., Cooper, Z., & Bentley, L. P. (2025). lacunr: Efficient 3D lacunarity for voxelized LiDAR data from forested ecosystems. Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Structural complexity has been considered a key driver of ecological phenomena in forested ecosystems. Geographic metrics that attempt to summarize the heterogeneity of complex 3‐dimensional (3D) spatial structures, such as fractal dimension and rugosity, provide insights into ecological processes such as biodiversity, productivity and resilience. Lacunarity is a popular metric for quantifying the spatial heterogeneity of 2‐dimensional data via determining the texture associated with patterns of spatial dispersion. Given the widespread availability of 3D remote sensing data, it is beneficial to increase the scaling efficiency of existing computational algorithms to make lacunarity calculations feasible for voxelized LiDAR data. We present an open‐source software package ‘lacunr’, written in the R programming language, which allows for efficient calculation of 3D lacunarity using LiDAR point clouds, with specific emphasis on forest stands. It includes tools to process point clouds into voxel data and 3D spatial maps and facilitates rapid visualization of lacunarity curves via built‐in plotting functions. ‘lacunr’ is applicable to LiDAR data regardless of collection method (e.g. terrestrial or airborne), as it only requires a point cloud with XYZ data for use. This makes it accessible for a wide range of users, specifically ecologists and foresters. ‘lacunr’ can easily be integrated into existing data‐analysis workflows for LiDAR data and removes a significant computational barrier previously hindering calculations of lacunarity using 3D point clouds.

Quinn, C. A., Burns, P., Jantz, P., Salas, L., Goetz, S. J., & Clark, M. L. (2024). Soundscape mapping: understanding regional spatial and temporal patterns of soundscapes incorporating remotely-sensed predictors and wildfire disturbance. Environmental Research. Ecology, 3(2), 25002.

Increased environmental threats require proper monitoring of animal communities to understand where and when changes occur. Ecoacoustic tools that quantify natural acoustic environments use a combination of biophony (animal sound) and geophony (wind, rain, and other natural phenomena) to represent the natural soundscape and, in comparison to anthropophony (technological human sound) can highlight valuable landscapes to both human and animal communities. However, recording these sounds requires intensive deployment of recording devices and storage and interpretation of large amounts of data, resulting in large data gaps across the landscape and periods in which recordings are absent. Interpolating ecoacoustic metrics like biophony, geophony, anthropophony, and acoustic indices can bridge these gaps in observations and provide insight across larger spatial extents and during periods of interest. Here, we use seven ecoacoustic metrics and acoustically-derived bird species richness across a heterogeneous landscape composed of densely urbanized, suburban, rural, protected, and recently burned lands in Sonoma County, California, U.S.A., to explore spatiotemporal patterns in ecoacoustic measurements. Predictive models of ecoacoustic metrics driven by land-use/land-cover, remotely-sensed vegetation structure, anthropogenic impact, climate, geomorphology, and phenology variables capture landscape and daily differences in ecoacoustic patterns with varying performance (avg. R 2 = 0.38 ± 0.11) depending on metric and period-of-day and provide interpretable patterns in sound related to human activity, weather phenomena, and animal activity. We also offer a case study on the use of the data-driven prediction of biophony to capture changes in soniferous species activity before (1–2 years prior) and after (1–2 years post) wildfires in our study area and find that biophony may depict the reorganization of acoustic communities following wildfires. This is demonstrated by an upward trend in activity 1–2 years post-wildfire, particularly in more severely burned areas. Overall, we provide evidence of the importance of climate, spaceborne-lidar-derived forest structure, and phenological time series characteristics when modeling ecoacoustic metrics to upscale site observations and map ecoacoustic biodiversity in areas without prior acoustic data collection. Resulting maps can identify areas of attention where changes in animal communities occur at the edge of human and natural disturbances.

Gutiérrez, R., Ortega, O., Lahme, B., & Ford, B. (2025). I was scared and excited to do the work: rehumanizing mathematics through lesson study at a Latine-serving institution. International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 14(5), 73–88.

Mathematics instructors seek to address the well-being of students who are Indigenous, Black and Students of Color who have experienced mathematics classrooms as harmful spaces. Lesson study (LS), which engages multiple instructors at once, is a viable tool for enacting institutional change. This study investigates one US university mathematics and statistics department implementing a rehumanizing mathematics (RM) framework and especially how one AfroLatina member experienced the work. Changes in their instruction sought to better support Latine students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The study sought to understand what meaning faculty members made of their work.

Kirsch, R. E., & Ray, E. (2025). Bunkerization as a fantasy of consumer sovereignty: The politics of American disaster preparation. Thesis Eleven, 189(1), 54–69.
This paper theorizes “bunkerization” as an organizing principle in American society that emerged after the atomic bombings of Japan and continues through contemporary crises. Bunkerization reconfigures domestic space as a defensive fortress through consumer choices, inverting Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty from “the sovereign is he who decides in the exception” to “the sovereign is he who is decided by the exception.” Three key arguments are advanced: (1) bunkerization explains how Americans oriented themselves post-1945 and manifests distinctively in American society; (2) bunkerized society transforms citizens into consumer-sovereigns managing personal micro-states while maintaining American identity; and (3) this consumer sovereignty fantasy reveals how America conceptualizes its katechontic function—restraining apocalypse while envisioning post-collapse futures. Bunkerization is critiqued as a neoliberal fantasy that individualizes collective threats, making them manageable through market choices rather than collective action, leaving citizens to purchase their way to an illusory safety.

Turner, A. A., Clark, M. L., Salas, L., Seymour, C., Snyder, R. L., … Taljaard, P. (2025). BioSoundSCape: A bioacoustic dataset for the Fynbos Biome. Scientific Data, 12(1), Article 1432.
Most biodiversity data are collected at fine spatial scales, but threats to species and ecosystems occur at broad spatial scales. Remote sensing allows broad-scale assessment of biodiversity but these data need to be ground-truthed with contemporaneous in situ datasets. Various faunal groups produce sounds or vocalizations which can then be related to remotely-sensed data. As part of the NASA-led BioSCape project, the BioSoundSCape project deployed Autonomous Recording Units (ARUs), which record sounds in an approximately 50 m radius, at 521 sites spread across an area of approximately 119,058 km 2 in the Greater Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, during the wet and dry seasons of 2023. The ARUs recorded sounds one in every ten minutes, over 4–10 days, producing 825,832 minutes of recordings (approximately 400,000 minutes of recording in each season). These sound data are georeferenced to within 20 m, with time and date information, so may be useful for relating biodiversity patterns in soundscapes to vegetation structure, fire history, plant phenology, distance to roads and other human infrastructure.

Environmental Studies, Geography, and Planning, Political Science, Biology, Mathematics, Education