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The Machine In The Rice Field: A Spatial Analysis Of Mechanized Rice Processing Infrastructure Along The Cooper River, 1780 - 1830, Jacob Hockenberry

All Theses

This thesis examines the spatial and physical characteristics of mechanized rice processing infrastructure along the Cooper River in South Carolina’s Lowcountry between 1780 and 1830. Historic rice plantation plats and modern geospatial data provided new information regarding the location of rice processing machines in relation to other plantation landscape features. This research analyzed seven rice plantations that contained these machines. Each plantation plat was georeferenced using ArcGIS Pro to support a detailed spatial analysis of these processing sites. While literature has extensively detailed the social, economic, environmental and enslaved aspects of rice culture in the Lowcountry, little research has specifically …

Converging Human Intelligence With Ai Systems To Advance Flood Evacuation Decision Making, Rishav Karanjit

All Theses

The powers that artificial intelligence (AI) has developed are astounding, with recent success in integrating into a human cognitive workflow. AI will attain its full potential only if, as part of its intelligence, it also actively teams up with humans to co-create solutions. Combining AI simulation with human understanding and strategic abilities through data convergence may optimize the process and provide a capacity akin to "teaming intelligence." This thesis will introduce the concepts of Human AI Convergence (HAC) capabilities for flood evacuation decision-making. The concept introduced in this thesis is the first step toward the HAC concept in weather disaster …

Quantitative Techniques For Classifying Mouldings: An Exploration Of Logistic Regression Within Architectural Investigations, Chase Pilcher

All Theses

Since the passing of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, the realm of architectural history has evolved, becoming more interdisciplinary. There was a shift in focus from looking at architecture from a fine art point of view to looking at it through a social lens. The new social perspective approach focused not only on the buildings but also on the people that inhabited or constructed the space. Approaching architectural investigations in this manner has allowed for a deeper understanding of the influences that shaped the built environment. Advancements in technology have also aided in furthering our overall comprehension of …

Economic Impact Assessment Of Nature-Based Coastal Resilience Solutions In Charleston. Estimating Local Economic Effects With Algorithm-Based Supporting Tool., Oksana Veselkova

All Theses

Coastal cities are at the forefront of the risks induced by climate change. Local communities are adversely affected, but the essential cultural assets and economies are also at risk of damage or destruction. In the efforts to limit hazard risk exposure, local governments are increasingly planning for long-term flood protection. One prospective flood risk mitigation measure is living shorelines or nature-based adaptation. The coastal ecosystems, such as beaches, wetlands, barrier islands, oyster reefs, and salt marshes, deliver multiple benefits to communities, including recreation, natural resources, freshwater, and carbon sequestration. Moreover, when combined with structural solutions, they can effectively reduce water …

Net-Zero Target And Emissions From Land Conversions: A Case Study Of Maryland's Climate Solutions Now Act, Philip Hutton

All Theses

Many climate change “solution” plans include net-zero goals, which involve balancing the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) with their removal. Achieving net-zero goals is particularly problematic for soils because they are often excluded from GHG inventories and reduction plans. For example, Maryland’s Climate Solutions Now Act (Senate Bill 528) put forward a target of net-zero emissions by 2045. To achieve these goals, the state of Maryland (MD) needs to quantify GHG emissions. Soils are currently excluded from MD’s GHG assessments. This study examines the challenges in meeting net-zero goals by using carbon dioxide (CO₂). The current study quantified …

Supporting Us Army Next-Generation Ground Vehicle Simulation Modeling Using An Integrated Ontology Suite, Edward Louis

All Theses

The development of the US Army’s next-generation of ground vehicle systems is supported by simulations that predict vehicle performance and inform engineering design choices in the design and acquisition process. In this paper, we describe the development of an Integrated Ontology Suite to support modeling and simulation of next generation military ground vehicles. The ontology suite is intended to address model reuse challenges and increase the shared understanding of ground vehicle system simulations. It is intended to function in a Model Library structure that stores, documents, assembles, and executes vehicle simulations. The ontology suite consists of four domain ontologies: Vehicle …

Unmanned Ground Vehicle Proximal Sensing For Forage Biomass Production Estimations, Curtis Erwin

All Theses

A large increase in productivity could be realized by small increases in efficiency and utilization on grasslands due to their large area. Pre-harvest biomass estimations can help forage producers make better informed management decisions. Producers of dry hay and hay silage can better identify plant growth stages and the optimal time to harvest. Grazers can better determine the most efficient number of animals and stocking density. The goal of this study was to create a novel pre-harvest biomass estimation method utilizing compressed height combined with an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). A compression plate named a “compression ski” was constructed and …

Park Equity Modeling: A Case Study Of Asheville, North Carolina, Anisa Young

All Theses

Parks and greenspaces are publicly available entities that serve the vital purpose of promoting multiple aspects of human welfare. Unfortunately, the existence of park disparities is commonplace within the park setting. Specifically, marginalized individuals encounter limited park access, insufficient amenity provision, and poor maintenance. To remedy these disparities, we propose a process in which we select candidate park facilities and utilize facility location models to determine the optimal primary parks from both existing and candidate sites.

We note that platforms currently exist to identify the geographical areas where residents lack sufficient access to parks. However, these platforms do not yet …

Stepping Into The Past: A Spatial And Temporal Analysis Of Charleston’S Streetscape Through Imagery, Travis Galli

All Theses

The tradition of preservation has long focused on the built environment of historic buildings, while ignoring the very environment they reside in, specifically streetscapes. This thesis seeks to identify the spatial and temporal changes in streetscapes occurring on King Street and Chalmers Street from 1700 until 1971 and provide guidelines for the preservation and restoration of streetscapes to their periods of historic significance between ca. 1750-1971. By collecting and analyzing images of the streetscape at different period in time, specific features and materials were identified. Imagery included historic photos, paintings, and sketches. Broken into specific periods, this study tracks changes …

Does Naturalness Influence Positive Learning Outcomes During Environmental Education Field Trips?, Lydia Kiewra

All Theses

Environmental education (EE) field trip programs in the United States often take place in outdoor, natural settings. Such natural environments provide ample opportunity for hands-on and immersive learning to occur, which may allow for positive cognitive and moral development in children. However, recent research on the impact of more natural settings on youths’ academic success has produced mixed outcomes, suggesting that the relationship between levels of naturalness and student success is more complex than previously assumed. Utilizing student surveys collected during 283 EE field trip programs and remotely sensed land cover data, this study examines the relationship between levels of …

Development Of A Management Zone Scoring Index & Economic Returns Of Grid & Management Zone Soil Sampling In Coastal Plain Soils Of The Southeastern United States, Alexander M. Coleman

All Theses

Precision agriculture seeks to improve conventional farming practices through the use of Management Zones (MZ). There are many ways to create MZs and it’s not always easy to decide which MZ would provide optimal results for the specified application. Good MZs should have little variation within a zone, but large differences when compared to other zones. Previous research has been inconsistent on the ability of MZs to capture yield variation. One objective of this research was the development and application of the Management Zone Scoring Index (MZSI) to assess efficacy of 13 zone delineation methods at capturing yield data variation. …

Defending A Nation: Synthesizing Geographic Information System Analysis And Ground Penetrating Radar To Locate Battlefield Features Associated With The 1780 Siege Of Charleston, Lisa Gardiner

All Theses

Common methods used to locate battlefield features have not been utilized extensively on the Charleston peninsula. This thesis explores methods used to locate battlefield features and their effectiveness on the Charleston peninsula. The methods were utilized in areas related to the Siege of Charleston in 1780 during the American Revolution. These methods include research into historic accounts of battlefield features, geographic information systems (GIS) to georeference historic maps of the Charleston peninsula, LiDAR to detect the topography of the land and locate any changes to the land over time, and finally ground penetrating radar (GPR) to locate any battlefield features. …

Modeling The Abrasion And Transport Of Mud Aggregates In The James River, Virginia, Jonathan C. Hollingsworth

All Theses

Recent research has found that dredged material placed in rivers and estuaries tends to erode as aggregated particles as opposed to individual particles. These aggregated particles, or mud aggregates, are then observed to undergo abrasion during bedload transport. Testing of these mud aggregates in an aggregate tumbler and a flume suggested that the aggregates could only travel a few kilometers before losing over approximately 90% of their effective diameter due to abrasion (Perkey et al., 2019). Current sediment transport models do not simulate the process of abrasion.

An aggregate abrasion routine was derived from existing research and then added to …

Exploring Uncertainties In Households’ Hurricane Evacuations, Jiayun Shen

All Theses

Hurricane Matthew was the most powerful hurricane during the Atlantic Hurricane Season in 2016. It caused tremendous damages to infrastructure and coastal areas of the United States. This thesis uses survey data collected in 2017 from residents in the Jacksonville Metropolitan Area after Hurricane Matthew. Survey questions were designed to capture evacuation-related decisions, information sources usage, socio-economic factors, perceived certainty and intra-familial interactions. The first part of the thesis modeled households’ perceived certainty to identify factors that affect different perceived certainty topics. Certainty topics included were: whether one lives in an evacuation zone, time of hurricane impact, evacuation preparation time …

Evaluating Photovoltaics In A Peak-Shaving Supply Management Role In Rural Communities, Patrick Anderson

All Theses

ABSTRACT I

Little literature exists on measuring agricultural buildings with data collected from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) mounted aerial cameras. Survey grade tools produce highly accurate results, but with high financial and temporal costs. Satellite imagery is readily available and relatively low-cost but has low spatial and temporal resolution. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are emerging as a balance between these traditional methods for measuring and monitoring natural and constructed environments. The objective of this study was to compare the accuracy of building measurements in the orthophotos generated from satellite and UAV imagery based on control measurements without Ground Control Points …

Assessing The Value Of South Carolina’S Coastal And Timber Resources, Andrew Davis Purcell

All Theses

South Carolina is blessed with abundant natural resources that span from the southern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, across the Piedmont, and into the coastal plain that borders the Atlantic Ocean. These resources are known to hold tremendous value to the state but are often understudied, leaving little documentation to support the claim of their value. The purpose of this thesis is to identify South Carolina’s coastal natural resources, estimate the economic value of these coastal resources by individual habitat components, and to estimate the effect of timber tax on property inheritance in South Carolina. By doing so, these …

Development And Assessment Of Nematode Management Zones In Cotton: Gossypium Hirsutum, William Aubrey Eubank

All Theses

Populations of plant-parasitic nematodes are difficult to manage due to their inherently sporadic nature and uneven distribution throughout a field. Soil sampling accompanied by laboratory extraction is the preferred method for estimating densities and locations of nematodes within a field. The uneven and sporadic nature of nematodes make them well suited for zone management in row crops, provided that effective zones can be defined. Effective zone definition for precision agriculture requires that differences in factors between zones are large and differences within zones are small.

This study compared methods of defining zones based on physical soil properties, soil SSURGO data, …

Hydrogeologic And Geomorphic Processes In A Wastewater Spray Irrigated Agricultural System Located In A Karstic Seasonably-Cold Climate, Timothy J. Daniel

All Theses

Wastewater reuse, particularly via the use of spray irrigation of treated effluent, is a common practice worldwide and can help lessen the impact of the overconsumption of water resources. The increased recharge to the subsurface that enhances weathering and erosion during the irrigation application process makes it important to characterize any changes in the land surface over time. The Living Filter at Pennsylvania State University receives on average 1.5 million gallons per day (MGD) of secondary treated wastewater effluent year round. This Living Filter has been in continuous operation in some capacity for the past 55 years without any significant …

The Corner Store(S) Of Charleston: A Comparative Analysis Of The Evolution Of A Retail Form, Kyunhea Kwon West

All Theses

Charleston’s canted corner stores are dotted throughout the downtown peninsula, their preservation a testament to the longevity of this vernacular building form and the vibrancy of the commercial mixed use building type. The corner placement and design of these stores capitalized on traffic from busy street intersections, and maximized the potential for the stores to provide essential goods and services to the community. There are significantly fewer of these buildings today than once occupied the downtown landscape. A concentration of corner stores marked King Street as the city’s commercial corridor while the distribution pattern throughout residential neighborhoods emphasized the convenience …

Developing Optimization System For Improving Highway Network Performance Under Seismic Hazards: A Case Study Of Charleston, Sc, Nixon Wonoto

All Theses

A significant number of bridges in the Central and Southeastern United States (CSUS) are known to have a design that is lacking or no seismic consideration. In an article by Wong et al., Charleston is considered an active seismic zone, and the economic loss from the Charleston region could reach over $14 billion if 1886 Charleston’s earthquake would happen again in the near future. Due to lack of present consideration in seismic design for bridges in CSUS, there has been emerging research that studies retrofit strategies for CSUS region such as in Charleston. However, most of the retrofit program, including …

An Analysis Of Costs And Cost Trends For Southern Forestry Practices, Daniel Callaghan

All Theses

Timber production in the Southern United States has benefited greatly from the use of a range of intensive and sometimes costly silvicultural practices. To aid in the assessment of these costs, costs of forestry practices have been reported periodically for the South for over 60 years; however, few detailed analyses of cost trends have been done. This thesis analyzes changes in silvicultural practices costs in relation to changes in the cost components of these practices as well as larger economic factors and changes in the forest industry. Additionally, discounted cash flow analyses were used to examine possible effects of cost …

A Visual Data Analysis Of The Toxics Release Inventory, Theodore Charles Langlois

All Theses

The Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a collection of data detailing the way hazardous chemicals are handled in industrial facilities. By requiring certain manufacturing facilities to report releases, the EPA offered the public unprecedented access to environmentally relevant data. Since its inception in 1986, the TRI has grown and changed both in chemicals and industries monitored. This thesis uses the data visualization platform Tableau, publicly available yearly TRI reports, and Life cycle impact assessment methodology to create a tool which 1) improves upon previous analyses of the TRI dataset, 2) offers an analysis based on previously underexplored …

Capturing, Mapping, And Analyzing Clemson University's Academic Building Utility Consumption, Henry David Busch

All Theses

Clemson University has set sustainability goals in 2007 for the years 2020, 2025, and 2030. This research works in conjunction with Clemson University Facilities (CUF) to take strides towards these goals. The academic buildings on campus are metered monthly for their utility use (electricity, steam, chilled water, water, sewer, and natural gas). The patterns for all of the academic building utility use for the 2017 calendar year were captured with the use of Tableau. A foundational meter billing database was created to streamline the monthly billing process within CUF and a tool was created to analyze the resulting data. Further, …

Characteristics Of Whooping Crane Home Ranges During The Nonbreeding Season In The Eastern Migratory Population, Hillary L. Thompson

All Theses

ABSTRACT In 2001, a reintroduced population of Whooping Cranes, known as the Eastern Migratory Population (EMP), was established in the eastern United States. The breeding range for the EMP was in central Wisconsin and the populated originally migrated to the Florida Gulf coast during the nonbreeding season. Beginning in approximately 2004-05, the wintering range for cranes shifted from the Florida Gulf coast to inland marshes in Florida. Between 2007-08 and 2017-18 the winter distribution of this population expanded north to include areas as distant as southern Indiana. To date, there has been no assessment of habitat use of the EMP …

Accounting For Soil Inorganic Carbon In The Ecosystem Services Framework For United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Garth Raymond Groshans

All Theses

Soil inorganic carbon (SIC) is currently not included in the list of key soil properties related to ecosystem services (e.g., provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services). Soil inorganic carbon is a dynamic key soil property used in soil classification, taxonomy and fertility, therefore its inclusion in the framework of ecosystem services is important. With soils rapidly changing due to human use and climate change, the soil ecosystem services framework should not include only soil organic carbon (SOC), but SIC as well since it is of global importance to soil fertility and the long-term carbon cycle, especially in semiarid and arid …

North American Bat Monitoring Program (Nabat) In South Carolina: Acoustic Detection And Landscape Occupancy Of Bats, Benjamin D. Neece

All Theses

Bats are under threat from habitat loss, energy development, and the disease white-nose syndrome. The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) suggests standardized, large scale monitoring to benefit ecologists and managers. Our first objective was to determine the efficacy of NABat in South Carolina. Detection probabilities differ within and among species and among survey conditions. Thus, our second objective was to determine factors affecting detection probabilities. Finally, effective management strategies addressing large scale threats require landscape scale analyses. Thus, our third objective was to conduct state-wide assessments of environmental factors influencing landscape occupancy and generate predicted distributions. We conducted NABat …

Assessment Of Impacts Of Repealing The Universal Helmet Law In South Carolina, Nancy Khanal Chhetri

All Theses

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistics shows that South Carolina is one of the state with the highest number of the motorcycle fatalities and the fatal crashes. South Carolina repealed its Universal Helmet Law in 1980 which might be one of the reason for the increment of crashes and fatalities in South Carolina. Head and facial injuries are main causes of death in case of motorcycle fatal crashes. Helmet use can save number of lives and reduce the head and facial injuries. The thesis focuses on the advantages of the helmet use and necessity of Universal Helmet Law …

Impacts Of Rail Transit Investments On Demographics And Land Use: 1990-2010, Aubrey Trinidad

All Theses

This paper studies the changes in land use and population characteristics around station areas following the building of rail transit stations in 14 major cities in the United States from 1990 to 2010. It answers the question: how have investments in US rail transit made since the 1990s affected land use and demographics? It also looks at the specific effects of investments on population density, race, and ethnicity, means of transportation, median housing value, median household income, vehicle access share, occupations, and land use represented by the share of multifamily versus single-family housing. Using block group level US census data …

Assessment Of South Carolina's Department Of Transportation (Scdot's) Readiness To Perform Data Driven Safety Assessments, Hind A. Ali

All Theses

Under MAP-21 federally mandated requirements, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), South Carolina is implementing a data-driven based safety decisions and roadway safety performance, which is highly evaluated based on the assessment of safety related information including roadway, traffic, and crash data. Roadway characteristics and Traffic data in most case a subset of the Model Inventory Management System (MIRE) version 1.0 for roadway and traffic data, or from Minimum Model Uniformity Crash Criteria (MMUCC) for crash data. For all that, this thesis involves analyzing and investigating the state-of the-practice and the state-of-the-art of the current SCDOT …

Locating Stable Sites: Climate Refugia In The Southern Appalachians, Alexander Harper Nelson

All Theses

Climate change continues to be one of the most challenging threats to global biodiversity and species persistence. In response, conservation design researchers and applied practitioners have recently begun to call for the identification of critical areas of stable climatic and environmental conditions that may preserve the platform of current climate dynamics, and promote the adaptation and dispersal of diverse taxa across the landscape. Due to their historically buffered and resilient features, climate refugia are considered valuable conservation targets that may function as robust bastions for climatically-sensitive endemic species. In this thesis research, I have worked to define the potential stability …