I See CI

Exploring Santa Rosa Island with Virtual Reality

About Our Project

What is SURF?

SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows) is an 8-week faculty mentored research program for students at CSU Channel Islands. The program allows students to be introduced to interdisciplinary research and creative activities in an engaging learning community. Each faculty project has a different focus and outcome, with three students researching under faculty mentors.

Find more info about SURF here

What is the goal of our project?

The goal of our project is to increase access and accessibility to Santa Rosa Island, part of Channel Islands National Park, by creating a virtual reality tour of the trails on the island. We hope to increase access for those who haven't had the opportunity to go to the island due to factors such as disabilities, socioeconomic background, race, etc. Visitation to National Parks and access to open spaces are disproportionately more attainable by white, high-income groups. More specifically, getting to Santa Rosa island requires time, money, and physically able individuals. This unfortunately reduces the accessibility of the island to only a few groups who meet the criteria or students who are funded through CSUCI. Our goal is to bring awareness to the lack of accessibility and inequity regarding park access, by creating a virtual reality tour of the island to share with the community.

Who are we?

Dr. Emily Fairfax

Dr. Kiki Patsch

Alyssa Connaughton

April Hoberg

Emily Orsborn

Our team consists of three students and two faculty from the Environmental Science and Resource Management (ESRM) department at CSUCI. April Hoberg, Alyssa Connaughton, and Emily Orsborn are all seniors pursing ESRM degrees at CSUCI. Dr. Kiki Patsch is an Assistant Professor who teaches coastal geomorphology, GIS, and remote sensing. Dr. Emily Fairfax is also an Assistant Professor who teaches environmental statistics, GIS, and data visualization.

Click on our names below our pictures to view our personal websites.

Why VR?

Accessibility

Access to outdoor spaces is severely lacking in equity across many demographics. The vast majority of visitors to National Parks are composed of white people. Minority and ethnic groups, as well as people from low-economic backgrounds, suffer from equitable access to the outdoors. This may be due to monetary or transportation restraints. People with disabilities are also not represented well in outdoor spaces; often physically unable to access certain areas, or are unable to participate in outdoor activities.

More locally, many students attending CSU Channel Islands do not get the opportunity to visit the school's research station on Santa Rosa Island. Students often struggle to find the opportunity to visit Santa Rosa Island due to monetary, physical, or scheduling constraints. Trips to the island through the campus are also disproportional depending on the major.

Virtual Reality

In order to combat this inequity, we have created the Santa Rosa Island Virtual Tour Series. Virtual reality tours of the island provide a cheap, easy to use solution to be able to access the outdoors for a wider range of people. Our VR tours are hosted publicly on GooglePoly, which you can access for free on your computer, or you can buy a GoogleCardboard Headset for $15 to experience the tours in full 360 view. Take a trip to the island, without leaving your home!

The process of creating a virtual reality tour is also low-cost and easy. Anybody can create a VR tour! Read below to find out how.

How to Make A Virtual Reality Tour

Creating the tours

The first step is determining the area you would like to show and if you will be taking your own pictures or using existing Google Street View Imagery.
If you are taking your own pictures, you can use either a 360 camera such as the Theta 360 Camera or through the cell phone app Google Street View.
To download pictures taken from taken from a Theta, visit here.
To download pictures from Street View App: Google Maps > your data in maps > download your maps data > chose export location.
To start the tour creation process, begin at the Tour Creator Website and start a new tour.
When creating a new scene, you are able to chose from searching through Google Street View or upload your own 360 photos.
Once 360 photo spheres are added in, you can add in points of interest. Points of interest allow for additional information and images to be added on top of the 360 photo sphere.
Publish tour once completed.

How to view your tour

Once you have created your tour, they can be viewed online through GooglePoly or through the Google Cardboard Headset. To view through the Cardboard Headset, download the app Google Expeditions and search for your tour.

Google Cardboard Headsets

The Google Cardboard headsets are $15, which allows classrooms to have multiple sets. Virtual tours such as these allow for students to be able to learn about the outdoors without having to leave their classroom or home. These headsets are simple to use and an easy way to get started with using virtual reality software. To purchase a Google Cardboard Headset, visit the link below.

Google Cardboard Store

Resources

To learn more about creating a virtual reality tour in GooglePoly, visit these websites: TourCreator and Tech&Learning.

Where Will We Be Going?

Santa Rosa Island

Santa Rosa Island is the second largest of the eight Channel Islands, located off the coast of Southern California. There are five islands within the Channel Islands National Park: San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa and Santa Barbara. To learn more about the Channel Islands National Park and Santa Rosa Island, visit the NPS website here.

CSUCI Santa Rosa Island Research Station

CSU Channel Islands is fortunate enough to be one of the few California State Universities with a research station located on a National Park. The research station is used by classes from CSU Channel Islands, faculty and student independent researchers, researchers from other institutions, local K-12 schools, and local community members. To learn more about the Santa Rosa Island Research Station, visit the SRIRS website here.

The tour series currently consists of three trails: Lobo Canyon, Historic Ranch, and Torrey Pines.

Lobo Canyon trail is approximately 9.2 miles. This virtual tour focuses on geology.

Torrey Pines trail is approximately 6.4 miles. This virtual tour focuses on botany.

Historic Ranch is approximately 1 mile. This virtual tour focuses on the history of the island.

To view our tours, visit the tour section on this website by clicking here.

Next Steps for Our Project

There is a lot of potential for this project and our team only scratched the surface of what's possible! Since we only had eight weeks to create these tours, we are excited to see how this project will progress over time. The goal is to make everything publicly available, including the tours, handouts, and websites, so the public can enjoy Santa Rosa Island! Eventually, we would like for all the trails and attractions on the island to be included in a VR tour. This could be done through a CI capstone project or other research project. Due to COVID-19, we weren't able to visit the island to take our own 360 images and island photos, so our tours aren't as customized as we would like. We are hopeful that we will have the opportunity to improve them in the future with our own images from the island.

Literature References

Bursztyn, N. 2020. From Grand Canyon to Yosemite: Lessons Learned from the Development and Assessment of Digital Geoscience Field Trips for Mobile Smart Devices. Parks Stewardship Forum. 36:241-245.

Corner, J.C. and Skraastad-Journey, P.D. 2008. Accessing the Locational Equity of Community Parks through the Application of Geographic Information Systems. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration. 26:122-146.

Daniels, E., Cottingham, M., Walsh, D. W., & Pearson, D. (2017). An Evaluation of University Recreation Center Outdoor Programs for People With Disabilities: Perspectives From Professionals. Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership, 9(1), 83–97. https://doi.org/10.18666/jorel-2017-v9-i1-7451

Koppen, G., Tveit, M. S., Sang, Å. O., & Dramstad, W. (2014). The challenge of enhancing accessibility to recreational landscapes. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift, 68(3), 145–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/00291951.2014.904399

Sugerman, D. (2001). Inclusive Outdoor Education: Facilitating Groups That Include People with Disabilities. Journal of Experiential Education, 24(3), 166–172. https://doi.org/10.1177/105382590102400307

Rigolon, Alessandro, and Travis Flohr. “Access to Parks for Youth as an Environmental Justice Issue: Access Inequalities and Possible Solutions.” Buildings, vol. 4, no. 2, 2014, pp. 69–94., doi:10.3390/buildings4020069.

Střelák, David, et al. “Examining User Experiences in a Mobile Augmented Reality Tourist Guide.” Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments - PETRA '16, 2016, doi:10.1145/2910674.2935835.

Weber, Joe, and Selima Sultana. “Why Do So Few Minority People Visit National Parks? Visitation and the Accessibility of ‘America's Best Idea.’” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 103, no. 3, 2012, pp. 437–464., doi:10.1080/00045608.2012.689240.

Xiao, X., Krymkowski, D., Lawson, S., Manning, R., and Valliere, W. 2018. Indicators for a Transportation Recreation Opportunity Spectrum in National Parks. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration. 36:90-112.

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