Digital Commons Network^™

Conservation And Management Of Greater Sage-Grouse In Strawberry Valley: Quantifying Influences On A Traditional Capture Method And Long-Term Trends In Clutch Size, Janae Radke

Theses and Dissertations

The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a species of conservation concern that has undergone serious declines in the last century. The Strawberry Valley sage grouse population in Utah underwent such a decline from an estimated 3,500 sage grouse in the 1930s to 150 sage grouse in the early 2000s. This decline initiated a long-term conservation and monitoring project in Strawberry Valley with the goal of preserving the sage grouse population. As part of this ongoing conservation project, we investigated factors that impact the success of capturing sage grouse using the night-lighting method (Chapter 1). We found that capture success is …

Chasing Freedom Runaway Slaves And Soldiers During The War Of 1812, Lane Lisonbee

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On the morning of September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key made an indelible contribution to United States patriotism. Through the night he had witnessed the British bombardment of the American Fort McHenry while aboard the H.M.S. Tonnant, a British ship on which he had been detained after helping to negotiate the release of an American prisoner of war. He and his companion, Colonel John Stuart Skinner, had anxiously kept their eyes on the flag flying over the fore, and when in the early light of day they could see chat the stars and stripes stripes of che American banner …

Tree Damage Patterning In Alaskan Forests, Emma Barton, Richard Gill, Haden Penrod

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2024

• Tree defoliation (from insect parasites) is not abnormal in the densely forested areas of Alaska, but large outbreak events in recent years have led to cause for alarm.

• To better understand the factors affecting defoliation, we used remote sensing and GIS (geospatial information system) technologies to look at mortality spatial patterns across Hemlock and Spruce forests in southeast Alaska.

• Elevation and proximity to water as well as other factors were considered in determining the impacts of outbreak events due to evidence that changes in landscape can alter parasitism behaviors (Roland & Taylor, 1997).

Using Severity Weighted Risk Scores To Prioritize Safety Funding In Utah, Tomas Barriga Aristizabal

Theses and Dissertations

Budgets for transportation improvements are limited so it is important for governments to focus on improving locations most in need of safety funding. The objective of the Two-Output Model for Safety (TOMS) is to provide the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) a reliable method to prioritize safety improvements on state-owned roadways among the different regions. This research will improve the existing Crash Analysis Methodology for Segments (CAMS) and Intersection Safety Analysis Methodology (ISAM) being used to analyze crashes on Utah roadways. The scope of this project is improving on the existing CAMS and ISAM to work together within R, to …

"The Trees Act Not As Individuals"--Learning To See The Whole Picture In Biology Education And Remote Sensing Research, Rebeka A.F. Greenall

Theses and Dissertations

To increase equity and inclusion for underserved and excluded Indigenous students, we must make efforts to mitigate the unique barriers they face. As their knowledge systems have been historically excluded and erased in Western science, we begin by reviewing the literature on the inclusion of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in biology education and describe best practices. Next, to better understand how Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (NHPI) students integrate into the scientific community, we used Social Influence Theory as a framework to measure NHPI student science identity, self-efficacy, alignment with science values, and belonging. We also investigated how students …

The Economic Regions Of Chinese Civilization: A Gis-Based Analysis Of Grain Markets In China, 1736-1842, Karl Ryavec, Mark Henderson, Rocco Bowman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Effects Of Urban Growth Within The Greater Salt Lake Area On Local Meteorological Conditions Using Urban Canopy Modeling, Corey L. Smithson

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing urbanization of the greater Salt Lake City area (GSLA) has contributed to the development of an urban canopy over this area. This canopy refers to the effects of building profiles, varying land surface properties and anthropogenic heating on local meteorological conditions including temperature, humidity, and wind velocity. Urban Canopy Models (UCMs) can be used to represent these characteristics on a mesoscale without needing to develop models accounting for effects of individual buildings. One method used to classify urban areas are Local Climate Zones (LCZs), which assign different properties to different types of urban areas. A baseline model that …

Non-Tuberculous Mycobacterium Correlation With Geochemical Characteristics Of Soil And Basalt In Hawaii, Leeza Marie Wells

Theses and Dissertations

Non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) cause opportunistic lung disease though environmental exposure pathways. Among the United States, Hawaii has a significantly higher infection rate. Preliminary studies have shown certain environmental factors, such as phosphorus and other select soil geochemical characteristics, to be statistically significant to NTM occurrence. However, a model to predict NTM occurrence based on soil geochemistry had yet to be attempted. A selection of 40 NTM positive and 40 NTM negative soils from Oahu were selected for a geochemical analysis to search for possible correlations to mineralogy and elemental abundances that may promote, or inhibit, NTM growth in the environment. …

User Guide For Urban Canopy Modeling In Wrf. Version 1.0, Corey L. Smithson, Natalie J. White, Hans R. Klomp, Eric C. Monson, Bradley R. Adams

Faculty Publications

Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) have developed this guide for running a WRF simulation using a single layer urban canopy model (UCM). This was developed specifically for the Greater Salt Lake Area but is adaptable to other urban areas. This guide includes information on running WRF simulations to study theoretical urban growth scenarios.

Semantic Overflow Of Powerful Feelings: Digital Humanities Approaches And The 1805 And 1850 Versions Of Wordsworth's Prelude, Dylan Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

Scholars have repeatedly contrasted the 1805 and 1850 versions of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude since the discovery and publication of the former by Ernest De Sélincourt in 1926. Points of contention have included the 1850 poem’s grammatical revisions and shifts toward greater political and religious orthodoxy. While these discussions have waned in recent decades, digital humanities tools allow us to revisit oft-debated texts through new lenses. Wanting to examine scholarly claims about The Prelude from a digital humanities perspective, I collaborated with Dr. Billy Hall to enter both versions of the poem into a data analysis and visualization tool, which …

Creating Habitat Suitability Models For Restoration Of Sesbania Tomentosa And Chenopodium Oahuense On Molokai, Hawaii, Bronwyn Meldrum

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Hawaii is home to incredible diversity in both plant and animal life. Nearly 90% of Hawaii’s 1,400 plant taxa are found nowhere else in the world, and in an ecosystem threatened by invasive species and terrain alteration, this puts them at risk of extinction. As pressures on global biodiversity intensify, conservation efforts and restoration of endangered species are of the utmost importance. The Molokai Land Trust is actively working to eradicate invasive kiawe (Prosopis pallida) forests and to restore endemic species and other native vegetation on the Mokio Preserve. These vital efforts are made more difficult because the …

Nutrient Loadings To Utah Lake From Bulk Atmospheric Deposition, Mitchell Matthew Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Atmospheric deposition is a marginally understood source of nutrient loadings to waterbodies. Atmospheric deposition occurs via wet (rain, snow) and dry (gaseous and particulate transport) pathways. Bulk atmospheric deposition is defined as the total deposition from both wet and dry pathways. Utah Lake is a shallow eutrophic freshwater lake located in central Utah, USA. Recent studies have shown atmospheric deposition to be a significant contributor to the nutrient budget of Utah Lake. This study presents the analysis using three different methods of six years' worth of wet atmospheric deposition samples from nine locations around the lake, though these samples do …

Sustainably Providing Accurate Local River Discharge Data With Global Hydrologic Modeling And Bias Corrections, Riley Chad Hales

Theses and Dissertations

The Global Water Sustainability Initiative of the Group of Earth Observations (GEOGloWS) supported an initiative to develop a global hydrologic model. The purpose of the modeling initiative is to build a high-quality model using the best available datasets and modeling methods with the primary emphasis on accessibility of the model. The goal is to make the model a sustainable source of river discharge information to supplement the capacity of those countries without the local capacity to maintain sufficient gauge networks and local modeling capabilities and cyberinfrastructure. Past research developed a modeling approach and piloted implementations and data and visualization services …

Applied Machine Learning In Development Of Geospatial Information Tools For Sustainable Groundwater Management, Saul Gallegos Ramirez

Theses and Dissertations

Groundwater plays an important role in sustainable water resource management. Globally, the development of groundwater resources for irrigation provides a stable water source and enhances food security. However, developing groundwater resources is difficult, requiring the collection, synthesis, analysis, and dissemination of information about groundwater in an accessible, effective manner so decision makers have the knowledge and tools to implement sustainable management strategies. In this dissertation, I present solutions to assist with the paucity of groundwater data. The first problem I explore is extending the Palmer Drought Severity Index to near present day. This dataset is crucial to current groundwater imputation …

Understanding The Ahupua'a: Using Remote Sensing To Measure Upland Erosion And Evaluate Coral Reef Structure, Logan Kalaiwaipono Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Under ever intensifying pressures from land use, climate change, and erosion, tropical islands are among the most vulnerable systems in the world. Terrestrial systems are weakened by intensifying land use patterns, the weakening of which is highlighted when high intensity rainfall events erode sediment and leads to sediment deposition on the marine system. The deposition of sediment on the marine system is a major stressor that can lead to weakened coral reefs and a decrease in marine resources commonly gathered for food. These interactions have led to the emergence of biocultural resource management strategies, one of which is the ahupua'a …

Wildfire Modeling With Data Assimilation, Andrew Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

Wildfire modeling is a complex, computationally costly endeavor, but with droughts worsening and fires burning across the western United States, obtaining accurate wildfire predictions is more important than ever. In this paper, we present a novel approach to wildfire modeling using data assimiliation. We model wildfire spread with a modification of the partial differential equation model described by Mandel et al. in their 2008 paper. Specifically, we replace some constant parameter values with geospatial functions of fuel type. We combine deep learning and remote sensing to obtain real-time data for the model and employ the Nelder-Mead method to recover optimal …

A Machine Learning Approach For Identification Of Low-Head Dams, Salvador Augusto Vinay Mollinedo

Theses and Dissertations

Identifying Low-head dams (LHD) and creating an inventory become a priority as fatalities continue to occur at these structures. Because obstruction inventories do not specifically identify LHDs, and they are not assigned a hazard classification, there is not an official inventory of LHD. However, there is a multi-agency taskforce that is creating an inventory of LHD. All efforts have been performed by manually identifying LHD on Google Earth Pro (GE Pro). The purpose of this paper is to assess whether a machine learning approach can accelerate the national inventory. We used a machine learning approach to implement a high-resolution remote …

Principles For Using Remote Data Collection Devices And Deep Learning In Evaluating Social Impact Indicators Of Engineered Products For Global Development, Bryan J. Stringham

Theses and Dissertations

Evaluating the social impacts of engineered products, or effects products have on the daily lives of individuals, is critical to ensuring that products are having positive impacts while avoiding negative impacts and to learning how to improve product designs for a more positive social impact. One approach to quantifying a product's social impact is to use social impact indicators that combine user data in a meaningful way to give insight into the current social condition of an individual or population. However, determining social impact indicators relative to engineered products and individuals in developing countries can be difficult when there is …

Building Software Compliant Multidimensional Datasets Through Programmatic Solutions, Jon Enoch Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Meteorological and other multidimensional, georeferenced data is used extensively in science and engineering. These datasets are produced, shared, and used by organizations all over the world. Conventions have been developed specifying the metadata and format of these datasets in an effort to standardize the data and make it compatible with current and future software and web services. By necessity, the conventions are complex and difficult to implement correctly, resulting in useful datasets that are unusable in many applications due to lack of compliance with the conventions. By programmatically assigning metadata and guiding the dataset creator through the dataset creation process, …

Yardang Morphometry And Substrate Properties In Ignimbrites Of The Campo Piedra Pomez, Argentina Compared With The Medusae Fossae Formation, Mars, Dylan Stephen Mcdougall

Theses and Dissertations

Yardangs are streamlined ridges carved by the action of wind into consolidated yet erodible substrates. The direction of sediment transport is indicated by their elongate shapes and steep sides which redirects most of the sediment transport layer onto adjacent low-lying surfaces, resulting in lower erosion rates on the elevated areas. Despite this simple premise, the rates of erosion and transport as well as the material properties necessary to form yardangs have until now been largely unknown. This study aims to determine how material properties affect yardang dimensions in order to use yardang morphometry to derive the mechanical properties of a …

Saferplaces Global Platform: An Ai-Based Digital Twin Solution For Flood Risk Intelligence In Urban Areas [Online], Stefano Bagli, Paolo Mazzoli, Valerio Luzzi, Lorenzo Borelli

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Our cities are flooding with increased frequency due to more severe weather events and a growing anthropogenic pressure (i.e., soil sealing, urban expansion, man induced land-subsidence, etc.). An accurate and detailed characterization of flood hazard is a fundamental step in order to improve or optimize the resilience of cities to potential flood losses and damages. SaferPLACES platform provides a cost-effective and user-friendly cloud-based solution for flood hazard and risk management in urban areas. The flood intelligence underlying the SaferPLACES platform integrates the following main components: 1) a Digital Twin automatic generator able to exploit the available big open climate and …

Assessing The Groundwater Vulnerability To Nitrates And Pesticides Within The Geospatial Decision Support System Landsupport, Marialaura Bancheri, Alessia Perego, Giuliano Langella, Daniele Lezzi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This work presents how to assess the groundwater vulnerability to both pesticides and nitrate within the geospatial Decision Support system (s-DSS) of LandSupport, though two new web-based, freely-available dynamical tools, named the pesticide fate tool and nitrate fate tool. The pesticide fate tool is based on the extended transfer function model (TFM-ext), specifically expanded to consider the transport of reactive solutes, i.e., pesticides. The nitrate fate tool is based on the coupling of the ARMOSA model, used to simulate the crop growth dynamics and the consequent nitrate leaching within the most biological active zone (i.e. the rooting depth of the …

A System Dynamic Approach For Managing Transboundary Water Systems, Santosh S. Palmate, Saurav Kumar, Rocky Talchabhadel, Esmaiil Mokari

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Transboundary waters are vital to the sustainability and survival of human communities on the U.S.-Mexico border region, a nearly 2,000 mile-long arid zone in North America currently affected by climate uncertainties. We focus on the Rio Grande–Hueco Bolson (RG-HB; also known as Rio Bravo–Valle de Juarez in Mexico) water system, which is essential for the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez region. Water management in the region is characterized by limited and dwindling water supplies, increasing demands for water from multiple sectors, and a segmented governance system spanning two U.S. states and two countries. The region faces several drivers of change, including climate …

Improving Water Distribution Network Data Extraction From Rawgpr Images With Multi-Agent Techniques And Machine Learning, Gemma Stanton, David Ayala-Cabrera

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Concerns around climate change, disaster resilience, and digitization underscore the importance of reliable and affordable information about critical infrastructure such as water distribution networks (WDNs) in order to prevent/mitigate potential negative effects. For instance, lack of data from WDNs enables problems such as leaks to persist undetected. While manual and destructive detection methods exist to monitor the health of WDNs (e.g., impact echo, laser scan, among others), these methods lack the power to provide comprehensive data for continuous modelling, operation, assessment, and maintenance. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) offers one non-destructive testing method that is inexpensive and easily operable; however, the …

Optimal Management Of Irrigation Water Using Ant Colony Optimisation, Duc Cong Hiep Nguyen, Holger Maier, Graeme Dandy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Irrigation is vital for food production in many parts of the world, particularly in dry areas or in periods of water scarcity. However, with growing water demands due to population growth, economic development and climate change, there is likely to be a significant reduction in the amount of water available for irrigation. This challenges how to manage the available irrigation water in the most effective way. The feasible solutions of this problem are (i) the optimal allocation of land and water resources for irrigation management to maximise net return, subject to constraints on area and water allocation and (ii) the …

The Quantification And Valuation Of Food Provision In The H2020 Landsupport Project, Angelo Basile, Marialaura Bancheri, Alessia Perego, Marco Botta

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many tools are nowadays available for ecosystem services evaluation, including those referring to provisioning services (Grêt-Regamey et al., 2017). In the case of the geospatial approach developed in the H2020 LandSupport (LS) project, we decided to use the concept of equivalent wheat to compare potential provisioning services in the geospatial domain. In fact, the estimation of the ecosystem service provided by soils could be highly variable in function of the change in crops and then the specific land use and management. In addition, the choice of using equivalent wheat to analyze different areas allows to express the ecosystem service in …

Modelling Application For A Multiple Ecosystem Services Quantification Within The Geospatial Decision Support System Landsupport, Angela Puig-Sirera, Antonio Coppola, Angelo Basile, Piero Manna

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Ecosystem services (ES) in the last years have been a topic in the spotlight of scientific community and policy, being a global challenge in the agenda of European environmental policies (e.g., European Green Deal). The research community aims to classify and quantify these services but to date there are no standardized approaches. Rather, different approaches are used that are expert-based or empirical, qualitative rather than quantitative, applied depending on the spatial scale and output required. Here we present our approach to the quantitative evaluation of provision and regulating ESs, in which the soil is considered a key factor in regulating …

Lowering The Technological Barrier In Developing, Sharing And Installing Web Gis Applications, Rohit Kumar Khattar

Theses and Dissertations

Portability of web applications between web servers of different organizations can be challenging and can complicate sharing and collaborative use of such tools. Given the distributed nature of the web, this lack of portability is usually not a concern because a user in one organization can link to and use a web application hosted by another organization. However, access control or differentiation may be needed by an organization in terms of area of interest, input data, analytical techniques, access control, presentation, branding, and language. This is true for many government organizations, and their associated web sites, and servers. In such …

Communities Of Water: An Examination Of Cooperation And Conflict In Water Management Practices In The Central Peruvian Andes, Sylvie D. Littledale

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores two examples of water management in the highland Peruvian villages, San Pedro de Llancha and San Antonio de Chinchina. One example is of cooperation and union between the two communities. The other is of conflict between the same two villages just 40 years prior. I examine ethnographic and ethnohistorical data from both the collaborative period and the conflictive period of these two communities’ relations over water. The data suggest that, while the outcomes of these two periods were drastically different, the processes through which these communities came into relation with one another were quite similar. Their communal …

Efficacy Of Social Media Analysis As A Service (Smas) For Crisis Events, Rohit Kumar Khattar

Theses and Dissertations

Social media data can be collected and analyzed during and after crisis events to aid in disaster relief efforts. Setting up a system to perform this analysis is associated with various technical challenges. This thesis presents the design and implementation of a social media analysis as a service system. This system is hosted on cloud infrastructure and allows for on demand collection, processing, and delivery of social media data via an intuitive web interface. The service model and cloud infrastructure allow the system to be highly scalable and produce near real time analysis data. A cost evaluation of the system …