Human Ecology

Closing the Digital Divide

Laughter bounces off the tile floor in the Davis Senior Center as small groups of UC Davis students huddle with older adults around laptops. They are working together to price flights to visit family, write emails or buy medicine online.

“Let’s see what happens when I do this,” said Christine Adams, of Davis, as she pecks at a key on her laptop. “OK, now how do I pick an emoji using the keyboard?”

UC Davis Landscape Architecture Students Redesign Vallejo Bus Stop

An ordinary bus stop in Vallejo has a fresh new look. The local site got a makeover designed by UC Davis students Ashley Gear and Katie Wong, both seniors majoring in landscape architecture.

Solano County Transit (SolTrans), which runs the bus service in Vallejo, recently unveiled its newly transformed bus stop located at Gary Circle and Magazine Street. SolTrans chose the students’ design, which Gear and Wong created last spring for the “Plants in the City” course led by Assistant Professor Haven Kiers.

Citizen Scientists Help UC Davis Researchers Spread Native Plant Seeds in Urban Areas

Bus stops, bike paths, sidewalks and other spots often overlooked in the community will become areas of beauty — for the sake of science. That’s the idea behind the Seed Pile Project, which asks community members from as far east as Sacramento and as far west as the East Bay to drop a pile of native wildflower seeds near their home or office and monitor the growth.

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Environmental Justice Movement Gains Momentum in Sacramento

New forms of environmental justice organizing — from grassroots movements to government-led policy initiatives — are building healthier and more equitable communities within the Sacramento region, suggests a new study by the University of California, Davis. 

COVID-19 Taking a Toll on Everyday Lives, UC Davis Research Suggests

More Stress Expected as Lockdowns Continue, People Get Sick, Unemployment Persists

Rare research on the effects of a pandemic undertaken during an ongoing disaster shows that COVID-19 has severely affected people’s daily emotional lives and mental health, increasing their stresses the longer lockdowns, fear of getting sick and financial strains continue.