Digital Commons Network^™

A Gis Analysis Of The Dynamics Of Power: An Example From 18th-Century Piedmont Virginia, Crystal Lynn Ptacek

Masters Theses

The neighborhood surrounding historic Indian Camp plantation located in Virginia’s eastern piedmont provides an opportunity to examine past identity formation and power dynamics. Using public records and ArcGIS, I researched this historical community to explore networks in which these individuals were involved. Historic land patents and transactions surrounding the Indian Camp property were given a geographical context, and based on resulting maps, research has identified a dynamic neighborhood whose members were deeply entangled in one another’s lives. Many who patented lands around Indian Camp did not do so because of a lack of opportunity in their home counties or due …

Location And Competitive Strategy In Retail: The Case Of Gamestop In Michigan, Karl P. Schrantz

Masters Theses

The State of Michigan offers a unique retail environment that offers a diverse arena for firms to interact and compete in. The state has many cities of different size and a multitude of retail chains that operate within them. Over the past two decades this competition has become even stiffer with the rapid growth of big box retailers. In spite of this general notion there are often the less known stories of small retailers that have been able to compete and survive big box retailing. This research aims to assess how a smaller retail chain, GameStop in this case, is …

Agriculture, Influence, And Instability Under The Ancien Régime: 1708-1768, Adam J. Polk

Masters Theses

The French Revolution has been studied from myriad perspectives. The majority of scholarship focuses on the political and urban chaos of the times. Agricultural conditions and the influence of onerous taxation and stagnant agricultural options are given only a cursory examination in most research. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between agronomic and environmental conditions and the eruption of violence in urban centers during the French Revolution and the years leading up to it (1708-1768). This period prior to the French Revolution serves as a template to investigate the nature of the rural-agricultural influences, with a particular focus paid …

Gis-Based Streambank Video Mapping To Determine Erosion Susceptible Areas, Brett Allen Connell

Masters Theses

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, excess sediment is a significant cause of water quality impairment for rivers (USEPA, 2009). Therefore, determining the areas of river where streambank erosion is the highest should provide valuable information. Considering the amount of funds being spent on river restoration and storm flow retention, there needs to be a more efficient method to document annual conditions, on a watershed scale. Traditional streambank survey methods are limited in total characterized area, time consuming, environmentally intrusive, and expensive. This project describes the development of a Bank Erosion Susceptibility Index (BESI) to map landscape scale, streambank …

Spatial Discrepancies Between Nhdplus And Lidar-Derived Stream Networks, Nicole Marie Samu

Masters Theses

Many organizations demand that current water resource issues necessitate improved stream network mapping for more accurate and reliable watershed analysis and modeling results, which can ultimately enable better management and policy decisions. Stream network data from the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus) and derived from Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) are each widely accepted to be of superior quality compared to many other conventional datasets. Each dataset indicates potential to improve a wide range of water resource applications; NHDPlus for its high spatial accuracy and functionality, and LIDAR-derived networks for their high resolutions. NHDPlus is publicly available and widely used; …

Improvements In Multi-Tool Surveying Efficiency For Archaeological Geophysics, Caitlyn Marie Williams

Masters Theses

Conventional archaeological excavation methods are, by nature, extremely invasive and result in study areas being irrevocably altered for the sake of research. For this reason, near-surface geophysical techniques have been incorporated into archaeological investigations to aid in determining the locations of buried features with minimal damage to the site. The objective of this research was to perform a geophysical survey at an archaeological site on the Akrotiri Peninsula in Cyprus to locate evidence of a Roman naval base and to develop an improved data management workflow that will improve the usefulness of geophysical data to archaeologists.

An on-site archaeologist determined …

Predictive Modeling In Western Louisiana: Prehistoric And Historic Settlement In The Kisatchie National Forest, Erik Nicholas Johanson

Masters Theses

This thesis is an effort to provide the US Forest Service with a tool to effectively and efficiently protect and manage the cultural resource heritage of the Kisatchie National Forest. The development and subsequent evaluation of modeling efforts are vital to the archaeology of the region. There are two goals of this modeling project: to evaluate the active US Forest Service Predictive Model and secondly, if warranted, which it was, to improve upon previous models in the region. To do so 23 environmental variables were analyzed, many of which are inter-related, to develop a new set of probability zones while …

Geophysical Study At Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park, Manchester, Tennessee, Stephen Jay Yerka

Masters Theses

The Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park covers over 800 acres within Manchester, Tennessee, and is owned and managed by the Tennessee Division of State Parks. The central archaeological site within the park boundary is The Old Stone Fort mounds that enclose about 50 acres on a plateau above the convergence of the Big Duck and the Little Duck Rivers. The hilltop enclosure dates to the Middle Woodland Period, and radiocarbon dates obtained at the site range from the first to the fifth century A. D. Because of its size and apparent complexity, previous investigations of the site have been …

Aquatic Habitat Mapping Within The Obed Wild And Scenic River For Threatened And Endangered Species Habitat Delineation, Joseph Ross Candlish

Masters Theses

There is a need to define a more efficient and accurate approach to aquatic habitat mapping. Traditional approaches have focused on intense biological/non-biological sampling and observation analysis within specific and restrained scales. Therefore, an underwater video mapping system (UVMS) has been developed in efforts to identify federally protected aquatic species’ habitats within the Obed Wild and Scenic River (OBRI). The UVMS kayak apparatus provides georeferenced video footage correlated with GPS (global positioning systems) for GIS (geographic information systems) mapping applications. Based on its fluvial and geomorphological trends, OBRI was dissected quantitatively and integrated into databases for species-specific GIS habitat queries. …