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Inventory Of Western United States Glaciers- 2020, Shrinidhi Ambinakudige, Bernard Abubakari Jan 2024

Inventory Of Western United States Glaciers- 2020, Shrinidhi Ambinakudige, Bernard Abubakari

College of Arts and Sciences Publications and Scholarship

The dataset employed for delineating glacier boundaries in the Western United States comprises a compilation of original Sentinel-2 images obtained from the European Space Agency's Copernicus website. These images were instrumental in generating the glacier inventory. Additionally, the dataset includes a Python and R script specifically crafted for processing and classifying Sentinel images. The outcome of this process is represented in an ESRI shapefile, which contains an inventory of glaciers extracted from Sentinel images.


Exploring Bistatic Scattering Modeling For Land Surface Applications Using Radio Spectrum Recycling In The Signal Of Opportunity Coherent Bistatic Simulator, Dylan R. Boyd Aug 2023

Exploring Bistatic Scattering Modeling For Land Surface Applications Using Radio Spectrum Recycling In The Signal Of Opportunity Coherent Bistatic Simulator, Dylan R. Boyd

Theses and Dissertations

The potential for high spatio-temporal resolution microwave measurements has urged the adoption of the signals of opportunity (SoOp) passive radar technique for use in remote sensing. Recent trends in particular target highly complex remote sensing problems such as root-zone soil moisture and snow water equivalent. This dissertation explores the continued open-sourcing of the SoOp coherent bistatic scattering model (SCoBi) and its use in soil moisture sensing applications. Starting from ground-based applications, the feasibility of root-zone soil moisture remote sensing is assessed using available SoOp resources below L-band. A modularized, spaceborne model is then developed to simulate land-surface scattering and delay-Doppler …


The 2023 Whippoorwill Award: The 2023 Whippoorwill Award: Complex Representations Of Rural Identities And Places, Chea L. Parton, Erika L. Bass, Devon Brenner, Kate E. Kedley, Alan Hoffmann, Jennifer Sanders, Jacqueline Yahn Mrs., Michael Young Jul 2023

The 2023 Whippoorwill Award: The 2023 Whippoorwill Award: Complex Representations Of Rural Identities And Places, Chea L. Parton, Erika L. Bass, Devon Brenner, Kate E. Kedley, Alan Hoffmann, Jennifer Sanders, Jacqueline Yahn Mrs., Michael Young

The Rural Educator

Announcing the 2023 Whippoorwill Award winners.


Spatial Conservation Planning In The Southeastern United States: Alignments And Opportunities, Bradly Stewart Thornton May 2023

Spatial Conservation Planning In The Southeastern United States: Alignments And Opportunities, Bradly Stewart Thornton

Theses and Dissertations

Conservation managers and planners need the ‘best available science’ to support robust and defensible decisions, ensuring that public resources are appropriately allocated. Spatial planning products and decision-support tools developed for this purpose should enable partner organizations to achieve focus, coordination, and increased effectiveness in their investments and actions. Whereas conservation partnerships have historically created distinct planning tools, there is increasing interest for improved coordination, communication, and unifying biological datasets to improve the cohesiveness of regional management activities. We sought to inform spatial conservation planning efforts in the southeastern United States through the development of species distribution models for focal avian …


Advancements In Geospatial Monitoring Of Structures, Jordan Keith Baldwin May 2023

Advancements In Geospatial Monitoring Of Structures, Jordan Keith Baldwin

Theses and Dissertations

The need for advancements in geospatial monitoring of structures has evolved naturally as structures have become larger, more complex, and technology has continued to rapidly develop. Greater building heights generally lead to greater challenges for surveyors, limiting the practical use of traditional measurement methods. For this reason, a new complimentary method was developed and implemented to support elevation monitoring activities during construction of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, California. While some studies have explored the use of strain gauges to monitor strain development within individual members, the primary contribution of this work is that it presents a practical and …


Evaluating The Relationship Between Methane Seeps And Seafloor Geomorphology On The Northern Us Atlantic Margin, Gabriel Hernandez May 2023

Evaluating The Relationship Between Methane Seeps And Seafloor Geomorphology On The Northern Us Atlantic Margin, Gabriel Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Methane seeps are a transport pathway for carbon from seafloor sediments to the marine environment with important implications for global biogeochemical cycling. Accordingly, there is substantial interest in better understanding the processes that control seep location and predicting the distribution of seeps with existing seafloor datasets. Visual evaluation of methane seeps, in multibeam sonar water column data, suggests a spatial relationship between seeps and specific seafloor morphologic features such as ridge crests. In this thesis, seafloor geomorphology at 1996 seep detection sites on the US Atlantic margin was quantitatively characterized by geomorphologic phonotype, bathymetric position index, slope, rugosity, and aspect …


Macroecological Patterns Of Frugivorous Fishes’ Diversity (Serrasalmidae) In The Amazon Drainage Basin, Karold Vivianna Coronado Franco May 2023

Macroecological Patterns Of Frugivorous Fishes’ Diversity (Serrasalmidae) In The Amazon Drainage Basin, Karold Vivianna Coronado Franco

Theses and Dissertations

The Amazon River drainage basin is known as the most biodiverse region in the world. Regarding freshwater fish, this region contains around 15% of the world's fish richness. The fish family Serrasalmidae have a variety of feeding preferences including Pacus (herbivores) and Piranhas (carnivores). Fruit eating fish species are evolutionarily the oldest species in the family and have a mutualistic interaction with flooded forests. Considering the diversity of feeding habits of the Serrasalmidae family, it represents an excellent model to study ecological questions related to factors that influence the spatial distribution of species and factors that contribute to the maintenance …


Automated Mapping Of Oblique Imagery Collected With Unmanned Vehicles In Coastal And Marine Environments, Jacob B. Freeman May 2023

Automated Mapping Of Oblique Imagery Collected With Unmanned Vehicles In Coastal And Marine Environments, Jacob B. Freeman

Theses and Dissertations

Recent technological advances in unmanned observational platforms, including remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), have made them highly effective tools for research and monitoring within marine and coastal environments. One of the primary types of data collected by these systems is video imagery, which is often captured at an angle oblique to the Earth’s surface, rather than normal to it (e.g., downward looking). This thesis presents a newly developed suite of tools designed to digitally map oblique imagery data collected with ROV and sUAS in coastal and marine environments and quantitatively evaluates the accuracy of the …


Extended Publication: Measuring The Impact Economic Pull Factors Have On The Tier Status Of The Create Bridges Counties In Western North Carolina, Mark Seitz Jan 2023

Extended Publication: Measuring The Impact Economic Pull Factors Have On The Tier Status Of The Create Bridges Counties In Western North Carolina, Mark Seitz

CREATE BRIDGES

No abstract provided.


Issue Brief: Using County Trade Pull Factor Analyses To Measure Retail Growth In The Create Bridges Counties Of North Carolina, Mark Seitz Jan 2023

Issue Brief: Using County Trade Pull Factor Analyses To Measure Retail Growth In The Create Bridges Counties Of North Carolina, Mark Seitz

CREATE BRIDGES

This brief’s focus is on four western North Carolina counties: Macon, Jackson, Swain, and Graham, how county trade pull factors (CTPF) can be used to measure the success that CREATE BRIDGES teams have in their efforts to strengthen rural retail economies. With CTPF based on per capita sales tax revenue, those revenues are often directly associated with the tourism industry. Such tourism industry data from the CREATE BRIDGES counties and the other 17 counties of the West District of North Carolina Cooperative Extension (NC State Extension, Extension Information Technology [Cartographers], 2022) are shown to offer a regional perspective of the …


How Much Heirs’ Property Is There? Using Lightbox Data To Estimate Heirs’ Property Extent In The U.S., G. Rebecca Dobbs, Cassandra Johnson Gaither Jan 2023

How Much Heirs’ Property Is There? Using Lightbox Data To Estimate Heirs’ Property Extent In The U.S., G. Rebecca Dobbs, Cassandra Johnson Gaither

Heirs' Property

The ramifications of a tenancy in common or heirs’ property ownership are extensive. This kind of tenuous ownership affects not only individual families but also the economic health of the typically minority and lower-wealth communities where these properties tend to cluster. Very little research has identified heirs’ property extent at a broad scale, however. We present results of our approach to identifying heirs’ parcels for every county and census tract in the U.S., using geospatial methodologies and aggregated parcel records acquired from LightBox. The method estimated 444,172 heirs’ parcels for the U.S., not including territories. The combined acreage is 9,247,452 …


Geologic Mapping Of The Sparta 7.5-Minute Quadrangle In Northern Mississippi Via Remote Sensing, Traditional Geologic Survey, And Applied Geospatial Information Systems Methods, Rayford Dean Parnell Dec 2022

Geologic Mapping Of The Sparta 7.5-Minute Quadrangle In Northern Mississippi Via Remote Sensing, Traditional Geologic Survey, And Applied Geospatial Information Systems Methods, Rayford Dean Parnell

Theses and Dissertations

Traditional geologic mapping involves substantial time and labor in the field as geologic contacts are manually examined and interpreted. The processes of mapping geologic contacts can be condensed into a quicker and less laborious process using advances in remote sensing and GIS (geospatial information systems), including increased resolution and computerized data management and interpretation. Application of these advances reduces the costs and time of geologic mapping. The Sparta 7.5-minute quadrangle provides a mostly unaltered view of regional Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous geology due to its rural locale, lack of development, and stream topography. Recently LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) survey …


Surficial Geologic Mapping Of The Starkville 7.5-Minute United States Geological Survey Quadrangle 33088d-7 In Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, Jonathan Leard Dec 2022

Surficial Geologic Mapping Of The Starkville 7.5-Minute United States Geological Survey Quadrangle 33088d-7 In Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, Jonathan Leard

Theses and Dissertations

The Starkville Quadrangle is a hotspot for geological research. The Late Cretaceous is represented by the Demopolis Formation in the northeast corner of the quadrangle, followed by the Ripley Formation, and the Prairie Bluff Formation. The K-Pg boundary is exposed in the quadrangle, and the remarkable paleontology is of global importance. The Clayton Formation is the first Paleocene unit. Where the Clayton Formation channel sands are in contact with the underlying Prairie Bluff Formation, springs occur. Springs were a rare source of water in the Black Prairie and spurred the settlement of the area over 10,000 years ago. The Paleocene …


Design, Development And Evaluation Of The Ruggedized Edge Computing Node (Recon), Sahil Girin Patel Dec 2022

Design, Development And Evaluation Of The Ruggedized Edge Computing Node (Recon), Sahil Girin Patel

Theses and Dissertations

The increased quality and quantity of sensors provide an ever-increasing capability to collect large quantities of high-quality data in the field. Research devoted to translating that data is progressing rapidly; however, translating field data into usable information can require high performance computing capabilities. While high performance computing (HPC) resources are available in centralized facilities, bandwidth, latency, security and other limitations inherent to edge location in field sensor applications may prevent HPC resources from being used in a timely fashion necessary for potential United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) field applications. To address these limitations, the design requirements for RECON …


A Multi-Method Exploration Of Health Disparities And Covid-19 Incidence And Mortality In The United States, S M Asger Ali Dec 2022

A Multi-Method Exploration Of Health Disparities And Covid-19 Incidence And Mortality In The United States, S M Asger Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The 21st century experienced several health crises, especially in the form of infectious disease outbreaks such as the SARS outbreak in 2003, the H1N1 in 2009, and Ebola outbreaks in 2013. However, none has produced a worldwide socio-economic and health impact compared to the recent pandemic, known as COVID-19. As of October 4, 2022, more than 614 million cases with 6 million deaths have been reported worldwide. The United States is currently in the leading position with more than 98 million cases and 1 million deaths. The pandemic, however, did not impact the entire region similarly, and the infections …


A Geographical Analysis Of Canadian Students Taking Independent Music Lessons: The Rural Experience, Ross M. Purves, Rena Upitis Oct 2022

A Geographical Analysis Of Canadian Students Taking Independent Music Lessons: The Rural Experience, Ross M. Purves, Rena Upitis

The Rural Educator

The engagement of students taking private music lessons is affected by a range of factors, one of which is the geographic location of the student’s family. This is a geographical analysis of 6,500 questionnaire responses completed by Canadian music teachers, students, and parents, including 819 responses (12.6%) from participants living in ‘rural’ areas, as defined by Statistics Canada. Participants’ home locations were categorized on a five-point ordinal scale from ‘rural’ to ‘very large urban population center’, data-matched with further geospatial data relating to deprivation and road distances, and assessed for strength and direction of association with questionnaire items. Results revealed …


Consumption Of Fruits And Vegetables In The Mississippi Delta And The Role Of The Food Environment, Shannon Giscombe Aug 2022

Consumption Of Fruits And Vegetables In The Mississippi Delta And The Role Of The Food Environment, Shannon Giscombe

Theses and Dissertations

Differences in the prevalence of obesity are generally associated with disparities in the food environment which partially determine diet quality. In this research, I examine the relationship between the local food environment and the consumption of fruit and vegetables among individuals living in the Mississippi Delta region using survey and store availability data for individuals living in seven counties with the highest obesity rates in the state. An ordered probit model with an endogenous covariate is used to assess the marginal effect of food environment variables on the frequency of fruit or vegetable consumption. I find that longer distance traveled …


Utilization Of A Boosted Regression Tree Framework For Prediction Of Dissolved Phosphorus Concentrations Throughout The High Plains Aquifer Region, Jeffrey M. Temple Aug 2022

Utilization Of A Boosted Regression Tree Framework For Prediction Of Dissolved Phosphorus Concentrations Throughout The High Plains Aquifer Region, Jeffrey M. Temple

Theses and Dissertations

Groundwater-derived phosphorus has often been dismissed as a significant contributor towards surface water eutrophication, however, this dismissal is unwarranted, making the quantification of phosphorus concentrations in groundwater systems immensely important. Machine learning models have been employed to quantify the concentrations of various contaminants in groundwater, but to our best knowledge have never been used for the quantification of groundwater phosphorus. The goal of this research was to use a boosted regression tree framework to produce the first believed machine learning model of phosphorus variability in groundwater, with the High Plains aquifer serving as the study area. Results display a boosted …


Full Issue, Volume 10, Issue 2, Julie Fox, Donna J. Peterson, Scott Cummings Jun 2022

Full Issue, Volume 10, Issue 2, Julie Fox, Donna J. Peterson, Scott Cummings

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

No abstract provided.


Visualizing Diversity: Spatial Data As A Resource Enabling Extension To Better Engage Communities, Justin Krohn, Jacqueline Davis-Manigaulte, Christopher Fulcher, Jennifer Sarah Tiffany Jun 2022

Visualizing Diversity: Spatial Data As A Resource Enabling Extension To Better Engage Communities, Justin Krohn, Jacqueline Davis-Manigaulte, Christopher Fulcher, Jennifer Sarah Tiffany

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

Effective Extension programming relies on engaging people of all races, ethnicities, and cultures. Extension educators sometimes struggle with how best to engage communities that are not “traditional” program audiences. Centering data visualization on the strength of Black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and other potentially marginalized communities can assist Extension’s work to engage diverse staff, program participants, and advisory board members. For example, using maps to understand what languages people speak at home strengthens the connections between Extension programs and community participants and can inform staff recruitment and advisory board composition. However, maps of aggregated areas like counties can mask socioeconomic …


Evaluating The Role Of Area, Isolation, And Human Behavior On Meso-Mammals In A Small Statistical Demographic Area, Brittney Palode May 2022

Evaluating The Role Of Area, Isolation, And Human Behavior On Meso-Mammals In A Small Statistical Demographic Area, Brittney Palode

Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization offers unique challenges for wildlife. The urban landscape is fragmented and changes available resources for wildlife. Human-dominated landscapes can provide food, shelter, or cover through human-subsidized resources. However, to thrive in human-dominated landscapes, wildlife must adapt or disperse, otherwise they will die. In this study, I investigated how the urban landscape and human behavior influence urban wildlife occurrence. I established 35 camera sites during April 2020. I surveyed residential property dwellers around each camera site to determine what behavior they performed that could increase species occurrence. Gray fox and coyote site use decreased with increased isolation while no species …


Quantifying The Economic Impact Of Conservation Policy Changes Utilizing Precision Agriculture Tools, Kyle Stanley Watkins May 2022

Quantifying The Economic Impact Of Conservation Policy Changes Utilizing Precision Agriculture Tools, Kyle Stanley Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Farm Bill is a multi-billion-dollar federal legislation reenacted every five years to provide funding towards crop protection, nutrition, environmental protection, and other important focuses. The largest conservation program within the Farm Bill is the Conservation Reserve Program, which encompasses many conservation practices such as CP-33: habitat buffers for upland birds. Conservation implementation through the Farm Bill relies on voluntary producer enrollment in exchange for a rental fee to not farm enrolled land for a set time. I used yield data collected across six years from 36 agricultural fields in Humphreys and Holmes counties, Mississippi, USA, and a …


Structural And Biological Analysis Of Faults In Basalts In Sheepshead Mountains, Oregon As An Earth Analogue To Mars, Allison Bohanon May 2022

Structural And Biological Analysis Of Faults In Basalts In Sheepshead Mountains, Oregon As An Earth Analogue To Mars, Allison Bohanon

Theses and Dissertations

Microbial life on Mars is not visible from orbit or by rover cameras, but the fracture networks and scarp morphologies associated with fractures they could live in are measurable. We conducted a field analogue study of 92 normal fault scarps in the Sheepshead Mountains, Oregon to examine the correlation between scarp morphology and vegetation growth in the Steens Basalt. While vegetation is not expected on Mars, the fracture networks that sustain vegetation offer the same micro-environment that would support and protect endoliths. Structural variables were measured in the field and infrared spectra of fault scarps were measured using a handheld …


Impact Of Climate Oscillations/Indices On Hydrological Variables In The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer., Meena Raju May 2022

Impact Of Climate Oscillations/Indices On Hydrological Variables In The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer., Meena Raju

Theses and Dissertations

The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer (MRVAA) is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the United States. The main objectives of this research are to identify long term trends and change points in hydrological variables (streamflow and rainfall), to assess the relationship between hydrological variables, and to evaluate the influence of global climate indices on hydrological variables. Non-parametric tests, MMK and Pettitt’s tests were used to analyze trend and change points. PCC and Streamflow elasticity analysis were used to analyze the relationship between streamflow and rainfall and the sensitivity of streamflow to rainfall changes. PCC and MLR analysis …


Migration Ecology Of American White Pelicans: Circannual Movement, Geographic Range, And Annual Survival, Ryo Ogawa May 2022

Migration Ecology Of American White Pelicans: Circannual Movement, Geographic Range, And Annual Survival, Ryo Ogawa

Theses and Dissertations

Responses of migratory birds to seasonal climate and long-term environmental changes have been a central theme of avian migration ecology. Atmospheric conditions (e.g., winds and thermals), climate, and land cover and land use (LCLU) are major factors influencing the flights of soaring birds. Soaring American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) (hereafter, AWPEs) migrate between the subtropical Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and the temperate Northern Great Plains. American White Pelicans are also economically important piscivorous birds, causing enormous damages to the commercial Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) aquaculture in the Southeastern US. My studies aimed to evaluate the effects …


Quantifying The Effects Of Abiotic Stress On Early Season Growth, Development, And Physiological Characteristics In Corn, Charles Hunt Walne May 2022

Quantifying The Effects Of Abiotic Stress On Early Season Growth, Development, And Physiological Characteristics In Corn, Charles Hunt Walne

Theses and Dissertations

Corn is one of American agriculture's greatest success stories, where we have witnessed incredible increases in yield potential over the last half-century. However, abiotic stress is still the primary limiting factor preventing plants from reaching their true yield potential. In addition, agriculture is not exempt from the deleterious effects of changing weather patterns and the altered climate our world will face as time progresses. Thus, increasing our understanding of how crops interact with their environment both above and below the soil will be crucial to increasing production on a global scale while maximizing profitability at a local level. Five studies …


The Diffusion And Adoption Of Precision Agricultural Technologies And Practices In Six Selected Southern States, Patterson Perez Hilaire May 2022

The Diffusion And Adoption Of Precision Agricultural Technologies And Practices In Six Selected Southern States, Patterson Perez Hilaire

Theses and Dissertations

Precision agriculture continues to be prevalent within row-crop production. The purpose of this study was to investigate the adoption status of precision agricultural practices among selected row-crop (soybean, wheat, corn, cotton, peanuts, and rice) producers in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Seventy-four percent of row-crop producers surveyed in this study had adopted precision agricultural practices in their farming operations. Eighty-three percent of respondents indicated they were using automated GPS technology such as autosteer, 66% were using manual guidance such as lightbar, 63% variable-rate prescription map, and 34% auto-sprayer boom section or nozzle control. The primary source for receiving …


Understanding Alignments In Spatial Conservation Planning In The Southeast, Bradly S. Thornton, Kristine O. Evans, D Todd Jones-Farrand, S Keith Mcknight, Anne E. Mini, Catherine W. Rideout, A Blaine Elliott Jan 2022

Understanding Alignments In Spatial Conservation Planning In The Southeast, Bradly S. Thornton, Kristine O. Evans, D Todd Jones-Farrand, S Keith Mcknight, Anne E. Mini, Catherine W. Rideout, A Blaine Elliott

Forest & Wildlife Research Center Publications and Scholarship

Conservation planning products should enable organizations to achieve focus, coordination, and increased effectiveness to maximize ecological benefits. The increasing availability of large-scale geospatially-explicit data has greatly enhanced the ability to develop spatial planning resources and decision-support tools. However, the increasing number of tools and resources has also increased the awareness that independently created tools have the potential to misalign priorities within the same geography, i.e., assign different levels of priority to the same location or resource. In the southeastern United States, the largest conservation planning projects are partnership-driven and landscape-oriented, including Migratory Bird Joint Ventures and the Southeast Conservation Adaptation …


The Development Of An Immersive Virtual Exploratory Engine (Ivee) For Immersive Analytics, Sofia Karam Dec 2021

The Development Of An Immersive Virtual Exploratory Engine (Ivee) For Immersive Analytics, Sofia Karam

Theses and Dissertations

Due to increasing data complexity, researchers are struggling to visually explore data using traditional methods. Research has shown that a variety of analytics-related tasks can be enhanced using new emerging technologies (e.g., virtual reality [VR] and augmented reality [AR]). This paper provides a detailed design approach for developing an immersive virtual engine system for conducting exploratory and descriptive data analytics. This system is called the Immersive Virtual Exploratory Engine (IVEE), is a VR system that allows users to experience full intractability with its graphical elements and examines various datasets within the same immersive environment. Basic plots—such as histograms, line plots, …


Impacts Of Sea-Level Rise On Urban Properties In Tampa Due To Climate Change, Weiwei Xie Dec 2021

Impacts Of Sea-Level Rise On Urban Properties In Tampa Due To Climate Change, Weiwei Xie

Theses and Dissertations

The fast urbanization produces a large and growing population in coastal areas. However, the rise of sea level, one of the most significant impacts of global warming, makes coastal communities much more vulnerable to flooding than before. This Master’s thesis study investigates sea-level rise impacts on parcel-level property in the specific coastal city of Tampa, Florida, USA. An improved sea-level rise model based on satellite altimeter data is first used to predict future sea levels. Based on high-resolution LiDAR digital elevation data and property map, flooded properties are identified to evaluate property damage cost. This empirical analysis provides an in-depth …