The Seattle COVID-19 Oral History Project (SCOHP), sponsored by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, was started in the spring of 2020 as an initiative to document the experiences and stories of workers and unemployed individuals in Western Washington during the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing especially on communities of color, the project aims to create an oral history archive for students, researchers, and the general public housed in the Labor Archives of Washington (LAW). Although educational institutions such as Columbia University have started oral history projects to document the effect of COVID-19 on their local communities, many of these are not geared specifically toward frontline workers, whose daily lives have collectively been changed the most by the pandemic. I have developed the idea and structure for SCOHP as a project utilizing oral history to obtain an in-depth, on-the-ground perspective for studying workers and marginalized communities specifically. I collaborate with the local chapter of the Asian and Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA Seattle), UNITE HERE Local 8, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1199NW to set intentions for the project, co-develop interview questions, and recruit interviewees. Collaborating with LAW, I have helped create and implement oral history trainings for a team of 12 student interns who will assist in preparation, interviewing, and processing. Our goal is to collect and process at least 20 interviews over the course of Winter and Spring of 2021, focusing on the topics of worker health and safety, race and intersectionality, childcare, the Black Lives Matter movement, labor unions, and differences across industries. This work is important for both documenting the experiences of occupational and other communities who have often been underrepresented in media coverage and popular discourse on COVID-19, and highlighting the intersections between occupation, race, ethnicity, immigration, and public health in a global pandemic.

Over the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in wildfires and their severity. Wildfire is a natural phenomenon that needs to happen to regenerate life within ecosystems. It kills off the old growth, allowing new growth to flourish in its place. Previously, scientists and political officials understood wildfire as an enemy of the forest, partly because forests were valued as commodities. Wildfire has its benefits but has devastating affects on communities. This study examines wildfire in the wilderness urban interface (WUI) within the Cascades Mountain Range, Washington. This study has three parts. First, I mapped the WUI over two decades in the Cascades Mountain Range, Washington. Second, I created a spatial index to depict risk levels across the study area. Last, I met with stakeholders to understand the current practices of wildfire fighting and the needs of the community. This research found significant growth in the WUI, interesting variation in wildfire risk across the Cascades, and conflicting interests among the stakeholders, ranging from privileging forest ecology to valuing the economy. These insights were gained by using geospatial techniques. Wildfires aren’t going away, and we need to understand how communities will be impacted and can prepare for the future.

 The Cascades mountains of the Pacific Northwest are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and increases in temperature have led to decreased snow and an uncertain future. A reduced snowpack has significant ramifications for the evolving ski and backcountry Winter recreation industry in Washington state. My research considers a changing natural landscape and its hydrological processes in the face of global climate change, from the lens of backcountry recreation. I use geospatial analysis to quantify the extent to which the snowpack of the Cascades has been impacted by temperature increases using data from snowpack telemetry sites and remotely sensed hydrologic data, and models its future state given predicted climate scenarios. I discuss the dynamics of winter backcountry recreation including increased usage, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, avalanche awareness and risk, and the existential threat to Pacific Northwest Winter recreation when mountain snowfall becomes rain.