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Arkansas Water Resources Center Annual Technical Report, 2017, Arkansas Water Resources Center

Arkansas Water Resources Center Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Innovating For Impact: The Next Evolution Of Library Consortia, Xan Arch, Isaac Gilman

Collaborative Librarianship

Academic library consortia have traditionally focused on resource sharing and e-resource purchasing as core programs and value propositions for members. However, as academic libraries increasingly look beyond financial value and seek to demonstrate impact on institutional priorities and student outcomes, consortia must evolve to provide services that support those goals. This paper presents selected examples of innovative consortial programs that can have a significant impact on teaching, learning, and research at members’ institutions as suggested models for other consortia that may be engaged in reviewing strategic priorities and programs.

Mapping Student Days: Collaborative Ethnography And The Student Experience, Andrew Asher, Jean Amaral, Juliann Couture, Barbara Fister, Donna Lanclos, M. Sara Lowe, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Collaborative Librarianship

Research on students’ educational experiences demonstrates the importance of a holistic understanding of the complexity of students’ lives to developing library programs, services, and resources that effectively address undergraduate needs. The “A Day in the Life” (ADITL) project investigated a typical day for over 200 students at eight diverse institutions in the US. Examining the local and individual expressions of student taskscapes – the ensemble of interrelated social activities across time and space – placed each student’s relationship to their library in a larger description of their academic and personal lives. By exploring the whole student experience, this multi-site ethnographic …

Ict Use By Smallholder Farmers In Rural Mozambique: A Case Study Of Two Villages In Central Mozambique, Kathlee Freeman, Fridah Mubichi

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

This study adds to the empirical evidence of information and communication technology (ICT) use by smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study draws on qualitative data collected from eight focus groups segmented by gender and consisting of adult farmers in two villages in central Mozambique. Special attention was given to the types of ICTs that farmers have access to and the dissemination of agriculture information through various ICTs. Findings indicate that the characteristics of ICTs explain why cell phone and radio use is prevalent, while access to television remains limited. The type of information accessed also varied by ICT type, …

Improving Wayfinding And Signage Systems Of The Ragunan Zoo As A Way To Enhance Visitors’ Quality Time, Yulia Nurliani Lukito, Enira Arvanda

ASEAN Journal of Community Engagement

Ragunan zoo is the biggest zoo in Jakarta that becomes one of the most favorite recreation areas during holidays. Unfortunately, the existing signage in the zoo does not provide simple wayfinding and good signage systems that resulted in the confusion of visitors in exploring the zoo. Beside recreation, zoo also functions as, educational and conservational areas. Confusing wayfinding and signage make visitors have less time to enjoy the exhibits and reduce visitors’ motivation to fulfill the education and conservation goals. This paper analyzes existing wayfinding and signage systems at the Ragunan Zoo and proposes a more comprehensive system by using …

Integrated Assessment Of Shallow-Aquifer Vulnerability To Multiple Contaminants And Drinking-Water Exposure Pathways In Holliston, Massachusetts, Birgit Claus Henn, Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, Allegra Denehy, Marcie Randall, Nichole Cordon, Bilin Basu, Brian Caccavale, Stefanie Covino, Ravi Hanumantha, Kevin Longo, Ariel Maiorano, Spring Pillsbury, Gabrielle Rigutto, Kelsey Shields, Marianne Sarkis, Timothy Downs

Sustainability and Social Justice

Half of U.S. drinking water comes from aquifers, and very shallow ones (table) are especially vulnerable to anthropogenic contamination. We present the case of Holliston, a Boston, Massachusetts suburb that draws its drinking water from very shallow aquifers, and where metals and solvents have been reported in groundwater. Community concerns focus on water discolored by naturally occurring manganese (Mn), despite reports stating regulatory aesthetic compliance. Epidemiologic studies suggest Mn is a potentially toxic element (PTE) for children exposed by the drinking-water pathway at levels near the regulatory aesthetic level. We designed an integrated, community-based project: five sites were profiled for …

Vgi In Surveying Engineering: Introducing Collaborative Cloud Land Surveying, Ioannis Sofos, Vassilios Vescoukis, Maria Tsakiri

Journal of Spatial Information Science

olunteered geographic information (VGI) has enabled many innovative applications in various scientific fields. This paper introduces a new framework called "collaborative cloud-based land surveying" (CCLS) that uses VGI principles for data sharing among surveyor engineers to boost the productivity and improve the quality of their applications. A cloud-based spatio-temporal data repository is presented, aiming to facilitate the sharing of VGI among surveyor engineers. A fully-functional distributed software application has been developed and used to apply CCLS in a large-scale land surveying project run by the Greek Ministry of Culture, which involves the mapping of the historic center of Athens. Results …

Quantifying Space, Understanding Minds: A Visual Summary Approach, Mark Simpson, Kai-Florian Richter, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Alexander Klippel

Journal of Spatial Information Science

This paper presents an illustrated, validated taxonomy of research that compares spatial measures to human behavior. Spatial measures quantify the spatial characteristics of environments, such as the centrality of intersections in a street network or the accessibility of a room in a building from all the other rooms. While spatial measures have been of interest to spatial sciences, they are also of importance in the behavioral sciences for use in modeling human behavior. A high correlation between values for spatial measures and specific behaviors can provide insights into an environment's legibility, and contribute to a deeper understanding of human spatial …

Modeling And Manipulating Spacetime Objects In A True 4d Model, Ken Arroyo Ohori, Hugo Ledoux, Jantien Stoter

Journal of Spatial Information Science

The concept of spacetime has long been used in physics to refer to models that integrate 3D space and time as a single 4D continuum. We argue in this paper that it is also advantageous to use this concept in a practical geographic context by realizing a true 4D model, where time is modeled and implemented as a dimension in the same manner as the three spatial dimensions. Within this paper we focus on 4D vector objects, which can be implemented using dimension-independent data structures such as generalized maps. A 4D vector model allows us to create and manipulate models …

Wyoming Sage-Grouse Working Groups: Lessons Learned, Thomas J. Christiansen, Lorien R. Belton

Human–Wildlife Interactions

The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) has been the subject of multiple status reviews under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Wyoming accounts for approximately 38% of the range-wide population. Since 2000, 2 statewide and 8 local citizen working groups have been established in Wyoming to developed conservation plans and advise state policy. The first statewide plan for the conservation of sage-grouse was formally adopted in 2003. The statewide plan established local sage-grouse working groups charged with developing and facilitating implementation of local conservation plans. Those 8 plans were completed in 2007 and 2008, and updated in 2014. From 2005-2017, …

Remote Sensing Of Forests Using Discrete Return Airborne Lidar, Hamid Hamraz, Marco A. Contreras

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Airborne discrete return light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point clouds covering forested areas can be processed to segment individual trees and retrieve their morphological attributes. Segmenting individual trees in natural deciduous forests, however, remained a challenge because of the complex and multi-layered canopy. In this chapter, we present (i) a robust segmentation method that avoids a priori assumptions about the canopy structure, (ii) a vertical canopy stratification procedure that improves segmentation of understory trees, (iii) an occlusion model for estimating the point density of each canopy stratum, and (iv) a distributed computing approach for efficient processing at the forest level. …

Complete Mitogenome Sequences Of Smooth Hammerhead Sharks, Sphyrna Zygaena, From The Eastern And Western Atlantic, Derek S. Guy, Cassandra L. Ruck, Jose V. Lopez, Mahmood S. Shivji

Biology Faculty Articles

We report the first mitogenome sequences of the circumglobally distributed, highly mobile, smooth hammerhead shark, Sphyrna zygaena, from the eastern and western Atlantic. Both genomes were 16,729 bp long with 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNAs, 22 tRNAs and a non-coding control region. The two Atlantic shark sequences differ from each other by 13 SNPs, and by 43 and 44 SNPs from the published mitogenome of an S. zygaena specimen from the eastern Pacific Ocean. The cross-Atlantic mitogenome sequences reported here provide a resource to assist with population genetics studies of this widely exploited species of conservation concern.

Assessment Of Vegetation Response To Wildfire At Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico: Case Study Of The Las Conchas Fire, Gladys Valentin-Gonzalez

Geography ETDs

In the past couple of decades, there has been an increase in the occurrence of wildfire events in the United States. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that over 73,000 wildfires on average occur annually in the U.S., burning about 7.3 million acres of land. Bandelier National Monument, in northern New Mexico, has been affected by several wildfires in the past 40 years, one of the most recent being the Las Conchas Fire in 2011, which burned over 60,700 hectaresin Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve. This research explores a remote-sensing based assessment of vegetation response to and recovery …

Common Goods In Uncommon Times: Water, Droughts, And The Sustainability Of Ancestral Pueblo Communities In The Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, Ad 1100-1700, Michael Aiuvalasit

Anthropology Theses and Dissertations

Adapting our infrastructure and institutions to climate change is a crucial dilemma for modern society. Archaeologists should be well positioned to address this issue with examples from the past. Yet, too often when we find that cultural changes are synchronous with climate variation, such as abandonment of a region during a drought, we advance causal arguments to what may merely be correlations. I argue that identifying proxies for resource management in the archaeological record, particularly for resources managed by collective action and vulnerable to climate change, can help to address this problem. To test this approach I studied water management …

Spatio-Temporal Characterization Of Arctic Landscapes Using Geospatial Analytics, Zachary Lance Langford

Doctoral Dissertations

Amplified warming in the Arctic has likely increased the rate of landscape change and disturbances in northern high latitude regions. Satellite remote sensing is a valuable tool for monitoring natural and anthropogenic changes occurring in remote, northern high latitude environments over multiple time scales. It offers the potential to characterize the vegetation, land cover, hydrology, geomorphology and permafrost characteristics of the Arctic landscape and improve and improve our understanding of changes these ecosystems are undergoing due to effect of natural and anthropogenic climate change and changing disturbance regimes. Combined with ground based observations of ecological processes, remote sensing offers opportunities …

Seasonal Resource Selection And Habitat Treatment Use By A Fringe Population Of Greater Sage-Grouse, Rhett Boswell

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Movement and habitat selection by Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus uropasianus) is of great interest to wildlife managers tasked with applying conservation measures for this iconic western species. Current technology has created small and lightweight GPS (Global Positioning Systems) transmitters that can be attached to sage-grouse. Using GIS software and statistical programs such as Program R, land managers can analyze GPS location data to assess how sage-grouse are geospatially interacting with their habitats. Within the Panguitch Sage-Grouse Management Area (SGMA) thousands of acres of land have been restored or manipulated to enhance sage-grouse habitat; this usually involves removal of pinyon pine …

Research On Integration And Sharing Solutions For Big Structured Data For The Marine Environment, Wei Wang, Wenfang Cheng, Jing Chen, Ya-Nan Yu, Jianxun Zhang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

The data-intensive science, a new paradigm in scientific discovery, demands an urgent solution to integrate and share big marine environment data. Through the modeling of marine environmental features (such as Temperature, Salinity, Density et al.), a novel solution is presented in this paper. This solution employs Hadoop and Hbase, based on the Bigtable algorithm first proposed by Google Inc. By using hierarchical technology, scalability of the data integration framework is realized. Additionally, an efficient execution of various queries is realized by using the customized auxiliary index algorithm. In the experimental cluster environment constructed from four ordinary personal computers, experiments involving …

Comparison Of Complete Bouguer Anomalies From Satellite Marine Gravity Models With Shipborne Gravity Data In East Sea, Korea, Dong Ha Lee, Tri Dev Acharya

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

This paper describes the results of complete bouguer anomalies (B.A) computed from the free-air anomalies (F.A) of Sandwell and DTU13 marine gravity models that derived from satellite altimetry observations in the area of East Sea, South Korea. In order to confirm the usefulness of satellite-derived gravity anomalies to analyze the geophysical, geological and geographical characteristics in East Sea, the results of marine gravity models have been compared with shipborne gravity anomalies obtained from KHOA (Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency). To calculate the complete B.A, we applied complete bouguer correction which consists of three steps: the bouguer slab correction (Bullard A), …

Relationships Between Complex Pediatric Health Conditions And The Built, Physical And Social Environments, Brittany Corley

Theses & Dissertations

The relationship between human health and the environment is complex and overall poorly understood. The environment has a lasting impact on health, and the processes appear to start at conception. Thus, this dissertation examines the potential relationship between pediatric health and the environment.

The first relationship examined was between the built environment and comorbid Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Many publications have reported the relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage, Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder, and Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, the link between the built environment and Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder symptom severity is poorly understood. …

Drone-Enabled Remote Sensing For Transportation Infrastructure Assessment, Colin Brooks

INSPIRE Archived Webinars

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS or “drones”) are a rapidly developing technology that can help meet the needs of transportation agencies for reliable, repeatable data that can save money and increase safety for the data collection process. By taking advantage of flexible platforms that can deploy a variety of sensors, transportation agencies and their information suppliers can help meet these data needs for operations, asset management, and other areas. Location-specific data on infrastructure condition and distresses can help with improved management of assets.

In this presentation, recent applied research led by a Michigan Technological University team is reviewed, with a focus …

'Catch The King' Tide Thank You And Review, Jon Derek Loftis

Presentations

"Catch the King" was a citizen science GPS data collection effort centered in Hampton Roads, VA, that mapped the King Tide's maximum inundation extents to validate and improve predictive models for future forecasting of increasingly pervasive "nuisance" flooding. GPS data points collected by volunteers effectively breadcrumbed/traced the high water line by pressing the 'Save Data' button in the Sea Level Rise App every few steps along the water's edge during the high tide on the morning of Nov. 5th, 2017.

Response from the event's dedicated volunteers, fueled by the local media partners' coverage leading up to the event, and over …

Development Of The New Educational Content "Small Uas In Civil Engineering Application Scenarios", E. Levin, K. Vach, R. Shults

Michigan Tech Publications

The key point of this paper is presentation of the main idea and some results of the project "Small UAS in civil engineering application scenarios" (SUAS-CAS). This project was proposed by newly established in 2016 ISPRS WG V/7: "Innovative Technologies in Training Civil Engineers and Architects". Here we are presenting our experience in using low-cost UAS in training architects at Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, which was chosen as basic for this project. In the first part of paper, the project outline is presented. Then the first and possible follow project outcomes were described. In some details is …

Academics: The Newsletter Of The Swosu College Of Arts And Sciences, Peter Grant

aCAdemicS: The Newsletter of the SWOSU College of Arts & Sciences

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Impact Of Hurricane Katrina On The Coastal Wetland Of St. Bernard, Louisiana, Rukumani Rimal

Geosciences Theses

The wetlands of the coastal Louisiana have been disappearing at an alarming rate. The rate was further accelerated during the Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina converted a large area of wetland into open water by bulk removal of vegetation, flooding, and killing of plants through the salt water inundation. The aim of this study was to quantify wetland loss rates in a high salinity wetland of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana before and after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. Change-detection-mapping and analysis, using Landsat TM images, was used for generating the change matrices. Images from 1990 and 2010 were analyzed to estimate total …

Exploring Settlement Patterns At The Ancient Maya Port Site Of Conil, Quintana Roo, Mexico, Verna Gentil

Anthropology Theses

The ancient Maya port site of Conil is located in the modern community of Chiquilá on the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1528 Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish Conquistador, reported that Conil was a large town consisting of 5,000 houses. Recent work at the site has revealed that Conil appears to have one of the largest settlements along the northern coast of the Yucatan During the Late and Terminal Preclassic period and again during the Late Postclassic. This project presents the results of surveys that took place in 206 and 2017 at Conil that succeeded in documenting 106 …

Validating Geospatial Analysis With Community Risk Perception Survey In Big Island, Hawaii, Darcy Ann Ayers

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Military vehicle-generated particulate matter released into the atmosphere are possible concerns for human health. The author’s prior geospatial research has been to identify, using GIS analysis, the local populations surrounding a military installation in Hawaii that are most at-risk from the vehicle-generated particulate matter. A continuation of the past research, this project aims to assess the perceived impact of the identified dust pollution among local residents by conducting a survey through both qualitative and quantitative methods. The survey of health and public perception is then used to validate the model developed in the previous GIS analysis. This research is a …

2017 Eurēca Abstract Book, Office Of Undergraduate Research

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Listing of student participant abstracts.

A Reconciled Estimation Of The State Of Cryospheric Components In The Southern Andes And California Using Geospatial Techniques, Pushkar Inamdar

Theses and Dissertations

Glaciers are the essential source of fresh water not only to human sustenance, but it is also vital for all lifeforms on earth. Glaciers are also key components in understanding rapid changes in climate. This makes understanding of glacier mass, extent, and overall state essential. In this dissertation, the objective was to analyze the state of snow and ice masses in the mid (California) and low latitude (Chile/Argentina) western American regions using geospatial technology. This study also analyzed the effects of anomalies in snow mass on the regional agricultural practices in California’s Central Valley. In the Southern Andes, the digital …

Large-Scale Graph Visual Analytics, Fangyan Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Large-scale graph analysis and visualization is becoming a more challenging task, due to the increasing amount of graph data. This dissertation focuses on methods to ease the task of exploring large-scale graphs through graph sampling and visualization. Graph sampling aims to reduce the complexity of graph drawing, while preserving properties of the original graph, allowing analysis of the smaller sample which yields the characteristics similar to those of the original graph. Graph visualization is an effective and intuitive approach to observing structures within graph data. For large-scale graphs, graph sampling and visualization are straightforward strategies to gain insights into common …

Spatiotemporal Variation In Space Use By Eastern Wild Turkeys In Mississippi, Ryo Ogawa

Theses and Dissertations

Spatiotemporal variation in animal space use is critical for understanding how individual animals respond to changes in resource availability across space and time. My study was aimed to: 1) determine functional responses of habitat selection by eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) across 7 study sites in Mississippi; and 2) determine the effect of temporal vegetation variation on order-II habitat selection by wild turkeys over 12 years. I developed resource selection functions using radio telemetry location data. Individual-specific coefficients of order-III habitat selection for forest were related inversely to forest availability in meta-regressions. Yearly coefficients of order-II habitat selection for …