Digital Commons Network^™

Preserving Soil Survey Data With Gis, Christopher C. Miller, Marianne S. Bracke

Libraries Research Publications

Purdue University Libraries are resurrecting a 1906 Soil Survey of Tippecanoe County, Indiana and mashing it with itself in order to add value, access, and interaction beyond the more traditional scan/describe/store model of collection recovery. It is an attempt to leverage the evolving technologies of librarianship (description, yes, but also text markup, web application-building, and geographic information systems [GIS]) toward the benefit of our users' maturing needs and expectations.

This poster provides some context to the materials and the project and documents the process of taking beautiful, important, but underused analog materials and decompiling them in order to re-build a …

Gis As A Web 2.0 Education Tool, Jeremy W. Donald

Library Faculty Research

This talk will present the results of a partnership between university and middle school students who will learn basic techniques for representing demographic and political boundary data with GIS software, and then create one or more projects focused on encouraging and facilitating the use of public information by the local community. GIS, in combination with Web 2.0 tools, will be used as a medium for communicating the data that serves as the basis for political representation and policy decisions.

Goals and objectives will be to increase political awareness, dialogue, and participation among both (university & middle school) groups of students. …

Environmental Studies: Interdisciplinary Research On Maine Lakes, Philip J. Nyhus, F Russell Cole, David H. Firmage, Daniel Tierney, Susan W. Cole, Raymond B. Phillips, Edward H. Yeterian

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Interface Of Drainage Division For Modeling Wetlands And Riparian Buffers In Agricultural Watersheds

Journal of Spatial Hydrology

In a complex watershed, isolated wetlands, riparian wetlands and riparian buffers provide important functions such as flood attenuation and water quality improvement. For conservation purposes, it is critical to properly delineate drainage areas for these features such that their impacts on runoff, sediment and pollutant transport can be reasonably simulated. However, traditional methods for watershed delineation typically fill depressions or ignore riparian features in order to maintain the continuity of surface flow pattern. In this study we develop an ArcView geographic information system (GIS) interface for watershed delineation that accounts for wetlands and riparian buffers. Based on digital elevation model …

Environmental Studies: Interdisciplinary Research On Maine Lakes, Philip J. Nyhus, F Russell Cole, David H. Firmage, Daniel Tierney, Susan W. Cole, Raymond B. Phillips, Edward H. Yeterian

Philip J. Nyhus

No abstract provided.

Landslide Susceptibility And Hazard Derived From A Landslide Inventory Using Data Mining – An Australian Case Study, P. Flentje, David Stirling, R. N. Chowdhury

Faculty of Engineering - Papers (Archive)

The University of Wollongong landslide research team has developed a comprehensive GIS-based Landslide Inventory of the 550 km2 Wollongong Local Government Area (WLGA) and surrounding regions, just south of Sydney in the State of New South Wales, Australia. This inventory includes 575 landslide sites and forms the crucial centerpiece of the methodology reported in this paper. The inventory identifies 2.95% of a 188 km2 escarpment study area to be covered by landsliding reported during the last 120 years. With GIS-based data sets, a ‘slide’ category landslide susceptibility map layer has been developed with the aid of ‘knowledge-based’ data-mining techniques. Susceptibility …

An Evolutionary Model Of Parabolic Dune Development: Blowout To Mature Parabolic, Padre Island National Seashore, Texas, Winston Mckenna

LSU Master's Theses

The Texas barrier islands have been studied and well documented in relation to barrier island evolution and morphology (Leatherman, 1979; Morton, 1994; White and Weise, 1980). The detailed analysis and mapping of various dune types and systems that comprise Padre Island National Seashore, specifically parabolic dunes, is the focus of this research. Dune surveys and doqq’s, along with wind and weather records were used to develop an improved morphodynamic model for parabolic dunes. The wind records were provided by the Padre Island National Seashore, the National Data Climate Center, and the Texas Coastal Ocean Observation Network. Individual dune surveys were …

Are Home Values Affected By Sinkhole Proximity? Results Of A Hedonic Price Model, Spencer Fleury Ph.D.

Spencer Fleury Ph.D.

Though they lack the high profile and sheer destructive force of hurricanes, floods, and other natural hazards, sinkholes have on occasion generated significant damage to buildings, roads, and other human-built structures, and should be considered natural hazards in their own right. In sinkhole-prone areas where market insurance against sinkhole damage is available, economic theory suggests that homes located there should be valued somewhat lower than homes located in areas where sinkholes are rare or nonexistent, in recognition of both the risk faced by the homeowner in a sinkhole-prone area, and the cost of insuring one’s property against that risk. Working …

International Trade In The San Bernardino Region: Transportation, Trends, And Employment, Mirya R. Holman, Travis Coan

Mirya R Holman

International trade presents significant employment, growth, and revenue opportunities for the San Bernardino region, which encompasses San Bernardino County and several cities in Riverside County and is located to the immediate east of Los Angeles County. Proximity to the San Pedro Bay Port complex (which includes the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach) and access to a transportation and logistics network expanding out across the U.S., makes the San Bernardino region a prime location for companies participating in international trade activity. The purpose of this report is to quantify trade activity in the region, while also estimating the employment …

Use Of Geospatial Information And Remote Sensing Data To Support Improved Roadway Access Management, Reginald R. Souleyrette, P. E. Plazak, D. J. Plazak

Reginald R. Souleyrette

Urban and suburban roadways serve two distinct and sometimes conflicting purposes: providing mobility and allowing access to land and land developments. High-level urban roadways (e.g. arterials) should primarily serve mobility needs of travellers and goods. Low level, local roadways should primarily allow for land development access. Arterials that allow too much direct land access fail to function properly in terms of both traffic operations and safety. Such roadways are in need of access management. The operational and safety benefits of access management are impressive; access management has been shown to reduce crash rates on urban and suburban arterials by up …

Distribution And Habitat Characterization Of The Florida Burrowing Owl In Non-Urban Areas, Mark S. Mueller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The full geographic distribution and habitat use of the Florida Burrowing Owl, a state "Species of Special Concern," is not well-understood, particularly in remote, non-urban areas. This thesis aimed to expand and improve knowledge about non-urban burrowing owls. We first compiled databases of historic sighting observations. Fieldwork verified and updated existing breeding observation point records and also yielded new breeding locations. Using a GIS, we characterized observed land use, landcover, relevant soil attributes, projected future land use and managed area status for selected points. We quantified landcover within biologically-determined buffer distances around burrows from our own field-verified records. Using standard …

Hydrolgeologic Groundwater Sensitivity And Vulnerability Mapping In South Central Kentucky, Andrea Croskrey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Groundwater sensitivity (Ray and O'dell 1993 a) refers to the inherent ease with which groundwater can be contaminated based on hydrogeologic characteristics. We have developed digital methods for identifying areas of varying groundwater sensitivity for a ten county area of south-central Kentucky relevant to a scale of 1: 24,000. The study area includes extensive limestone karst sinkhole plains, with groundwater that is generally extremely sensitive to contamination. Digitally Vectorized Geologic Quadrangles (DVGQs) were combined with elevation data to both identify hydrogeologic groundwater sensitivity regions and to identify zones of "high risk runoff where contaminants could be transported in runoff from …

Standardizing Geospatial Information For New England Conservation Lands: Data Capture Methods And Technology, Richard Sutton, Sam Merrill

GIS Applications

In 2002 The New England Environmental Finance Center and Applied Geographics issued the Feasibility Study for a GIS Inventory of New England Conservation Lands 1 describing the conservation lands data status throughout EPA Region 1 (New England). This report identified stakeholders and technologies participating in the maintenance of conservation lands data within this region. In the four years since that initial report dramatic changes have occurred in the technical means by which geographic data are delivered from their respective repositories. These changes have been most pronounced and obvious in the area of web mapping services. Web mapping services are software …

Estimating Spatial Sediment Delivery Ratio On A Large Rural Catchment

Journal of Spatial Hydrology

Soil erosion and sediment yield from catchments are key limitations to achieving sustainable land use and maintaining water quality in streams, lakes and other water bodies. Controlling sediment loading requires the knowledge of the soil erosion and sedimentation. However, sediment yield is usually not available as a direct measurement but estimated by using a sediment delivery ratio (SDR). An accurate prediction of SDR is important in controlling sediments for sustainable natural resources development and environmental protection. There is no precise procedure to estimate SDR, although the USDA has published a handbook in which the SDR is related to drainage area. …

Modeling For Management In A Compliance World, Christopher D. Dore, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In practice, compliance-driven cultural resource “management” and its requirements for resource location, evaluation, impact assessment, and mitigation manifests a fundamentally different use of geospatial predictive modeling than do research-oriented investigations. This difference primarily results from the lack of an iterative research design. In research-oriented modeling, iterations of model building and model testing gradually build a more robust model and lead to an increased understanding of the variables that condition human spatial behavior in the past. In a compliance environment, spatial models are rarely built and evaluated; rather, once built, they are applied in a single iteration. An assumption is made …

Use Of Gis In The Provision Of Emergency Services In Small Municipalities Huntington, Wv As A Case Study, Maria Eulalia Simental

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Although disaster management is a national concern, at the most basic level it is the responsibility of county emergency management agencies to cope with disasters. The objective of this research is to gauge the extent of the adoption and future benefits of the use of GIS technology by first responders and stakeholders to assist in the planning and response to an emergency and to provide a working GIS application model for emergency response in small municipalities, using Huntington, West Virginia as a case study, and how the resulting tools linked with GIS can provide visual and interact decision support capabilities …

Data Processing In Space, Time, And Semantics Dimensions, Farshad Hakimpour, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This work presents an experimental system for data processing in space, time and semantics dimensions using current Semantic Web technologies. The paper describes how we obtain geographic and event data from Internet sources and also how we integrate them into an RDF store. We briefly introduce a set of functionalities in space, time and semantics dimensions. These functionalities are implemented based on our existing technology for main-memory based RDF data processing developed in the LSDIS Lab. A number of these functionalities are exposed as REST Web services. We present two sample client side applications that are developed using a combination …

Delineating Hurricane Vulnerable Populations In Orleans Parish, Louisiana, Stephanie Pedro

LSU Master's Theses

Since settlement first began, equality issues between different social classes have been evident in the location of where residents settled in New Orleans. This research seeks to answer the question: What socioeconomic indicators are prevalent in the areas most-at-risk to flooding which could inhabit populations least able to evacuate? I will use Census 2000 block group data from the socioeconomic sample data (SF3) collected in 2000, along with other economic and GIS data from the New Orleans region to statistically represent the distribution of risk by selecting indicators predicted to be in flood zones from a classification tree analysis. Then, …

The Application Of Gis In Maritime Boundary Delimitation: A Case Study On The Indonesia-East Timor Maritime Boundary Delimitation, I Made Andi Arsana, C. Rizos, Clive H. Schofield

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (East Timor) attained independence on 20 May 2002, marking its separation from Indonesia. As a newly independent country, East Timor is faced with a number of significant international opportunities, together with some obligations that it must fulfil, including the delimitation of its international boundaries. Similarly, for Indonesia, with 10 maritime neighbours, the delimitation of maritime boundaries is a significant challenge. This paper describes a preliminary study on the delimitation of the Indonesia - East Timor maritime boundary, with a focus on technical aspects. Geospatial data has been obtained from the Indonesian government and processed with …

Voting With Your Hands: Gis And Experiential Learning, Jeremy W. Donald

Library Faculty Research

Experiential learning is a trend in liberal arts colleges. Students are increasingly asked to learn by tackling problems beyond the classroom, often in the context of the local community. This can mean knowing how to apply technology and quantitative data to analyze and understand a problem, and GIS is a powerful tool for place- and data-based analysis. In concert with the chairs of the Political Science and Sociology departments, the GIS librarian at Trinity University developed a plan for teaching GIS in a semester-long flagship course on election statistics and redistricting in Bexar county. Course design provided users with early …

Development As Destruction; Geographic Analysis Of Land Use Changes In Port Of Spain, Trinidad, Carla Waldron

Anthropology Theses

Trinidad and Tobago developed from an agricultural colony to a nation whose main economic driving forces include oil, natural gas and the service industries. This study seeks to examine how the changes in the economy and industrial sectors affected changes in the land use of the capital city of Port of Spain. Specifically it seeks to discover how the current service centred industrial boom has affected the urban land use of each district of Port of Spain and compares current trends with those in the past using city boundary, population, employment, housing to support land use data. Findings demonstrate that …

Modern Technologies For Design Data Collection, James Samuel Bethel, Steven D. Johnson, Monica Prezzi, Boudewijn H. W. Van Gelder, Bob G. Mccullouch, Ali Fuat Cetin, Seungwoo Han, Mosab Hawarey, Changno Lee, Aparajithan Sampath, Jie Shan

JTRP Technical Reports

Design data collection involving the use of Lidar instrument, in conjunction with GPS proves to be very effective. Data required to model two bridges over the I-70 was collected on a single day, involving five and six sessions with Lidar equipment. Even though the data was collected on two bridges, it did not cause any disruption of the traffic, either on the Interstate or on the bridges. A major cause of concern during survey activities, particularly along interstates is safety, both for the motorists as well as the people involved in data collection. Lidar data collection was found to be …

Tool Time: Melding Watershed And Site Goals On Private Lands, Gary Bentrup, Michele M. Schoeneberger, Mike Dosskey, Gary Wells, Todd Kellerman

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Creating effective agroforestry systems with broad public support requires simultaneously addressing landowner and societal goals while paying respect to ecological processes that cross spatial and political boundaries. To meet this challenge, a variety of planning and design tools are needed that are straight-forward and flexible enough to accommodate the range of issues and the many individual decision-making processes involved. In this paper, we offer some principles that should be considered when developing planning and design tools for agroforestry. To illustrate how these principles might be used, we will present a few tools from the Comprehensive Conservation Buffer Planning project at …

Information System For Environmental Technologies, Maria Del Carmen Gomez Hernandez

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) play an important role in environmental management solutions, and they are being used with increasing frequency in environmental studies. The use of GIS technology in environmental studies provides a better way to manage, analyze, display and share the information. In this thesis, I automated a process for constructing GIS maps of odor complaints and inspections that have been used to study odor complaints in the vicinity of three landfills in Jefferson Parish. I provided an application that integrates daily environmental observation and monitoring data into a GIS and publishes the resulting maps through the Internet. The …

Evaluation Of A Method Of Estimating Agricultural Chemical Use, Kaye Wilson-Anderson, F. S. Faruque, T. Carithers, K. Wilson, W. Williams, H. Li, W. May, J. Olivier

Faculty Publications - College of Nursing

This research evaluated the validity of an economic-based measure of agricultural chemical use on specific crop types. Estimated chemical use measures, reported in a budget planning document prepared collaboratively with input from farmers, vendors, researchers, and representatives from numerous agricultural agencies, were compared to chemical use measures collected through face-to-face interviews with local farmers regarding their actual chemical application practices over the past growing season. A rural agricultural-based county in Mississippi, USA, was the study area for this project. The measures of comparison were the estimated and actual ounces of individual fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides used per acre on corn, …

Gml Represntation For Interoperable Spatial Data Exchange In A Mobile Mapping Application, Venu Madhav Singh Kanaparthy

Theses and Dissertations

Geographic information is critical to GIS applications located remotely for executing business operations. GIS applications need to interoperate to be able to share information for analysis and decision making process. Heterogeneity and complexity of information models and structures limit the data flow and application interoperation. Advancements in Internet technologies provided new opportunities for delivering spatial information to remote users. However, spatial data delivered is in proprietary structures, limiting the utility to GIS applications. To enable information flow between GIS applications a portable data modeling approach is necessary. However, geographic information is inherently complex to model. A comprehensive and standardized vocabulary …

Towards Integration Of Soap-Based Web Services And Ogc Web Services, Shujing Shu

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Over the last several years, the Web Services model of Geographic Information Systems has been rapidly evolved and materialized. In this thesis project, I have reviewed the current status of integrating the general Web Services technology (SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI) and OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) Web services standards in developing distributed GIS computing. The overlap of the web service model and the technology stack between the SOAP-based Web Services and OGC Web Services indicates the feasibility of integration. OGC has named all core general Web Services Technologies (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI) in its envisioned OWS architecture. OGC has also started putting efforts …

Assessment Of Groundwater Resources Using Remote Sensing And Gis, Muna Khalil Al Hammadi

Theses

Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing have witnessed an enormous interest in various applications related to geology, hydrology, hydrogeology, and water resources. The use of GIS and remote sensing has become a common practice worldwide. The UAE is no exception. The study of groundwater resources and its sustainability is of prime concern for authorities in the UAE. Although, groundwater may not be suitable, in most cases, for drinking and other potable purposes, it represents the main source for irrigation in the country. About 85% of the total water consumption in the UAE is groundwater.

This study is devoted to the …

Search And Recovery Of The Space Shuttle Columbia: A Geospatial 1st Responder Perspective, Jeffrey M. Williams

Faculty Publications

A first person account of the Texas geospatial volunteers and their efforts to recover the remains of the Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew lost over eastern Texas and western Louisiana on February 1st, 2003.

Developing Risk Assessment Maps For Schistosoma Haematobium In Kenya Based On Climate Grids And Remotely Sensed Data, Kelsey Lee Mcnally

LSU Master's Theses

It is important to be able to predict the potential spread of water borne diseases when building dams or redirecting rivers. This study was designed to test whether the use of a growing degree day (GDD) climate model and remotely sensed data (RS) within a geographic information system (GIS), could be used to predict both the distribution and severity of Schistosoma haematobium. Growing degree days are defined as the number of degrees centigrade over the minimum temperature required for development. The base temperature and the number of GDD required to complete one generation varies for each species. A monthly climate …