Other Earth Sciences Commons^™

A Technique-Based Approach To Structure-From-Motion: Applications To Human-Coastal Environments, Robert Van Alphen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Photogrammetry is a method by which physical information can be extracted from thecorrespondence of 2-dimensional images. In the geosciences, Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry is a technique that has seen considerable interest in the past decade of research. Here I present three case studies of various scope and methodologies which can inform the use of SfM in the geosciences. First, I discuss the theoretical and algorithmic basis of SfM photogrammetry and its uses thus far in the geosciences. Chapters two through four show specific studies which highlight several approaches to SfM and the data which can be produced. Chapter five then concludes …

Field And Remote Sensing Analysis Of The 2015 Pyroclastic Density Currents At Colima (Mexico) And Calbuco (Chile) Volcanoes: Implications For Hazard Assessment And Crisis Management, Elodie Macorps

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although one of the most spectacular phenomena of active volcanoes, Pyroclastic density currents, or PDCs, are considered the most dangerous volcanic hazards. PDCs are avalanches of hot volcanic gases, ash, and larger volcanic fragments that travel at incredible speed down the flank of a volcano. High dynamic pressures, high temperatures, and high velocities are the primary dangers associated with PDCs and lead to near-complete destruction and death.

I use a multi-disciplinary approach to study the deposits left behind by PDCs, in order to understand their dynamics, their interactions with the receiving landscape, and their final distribution, starting on the ground …

Save Water Drink Wine: Challenges Of Implementing The Ethnography Of The Temecula Valley Wine Industry Into Food-Energy-Water Nexus Decision-Making, Zaida E. Darley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study demonstrates the interrelationships of people, food, energy, and water associated with Temecula Valley’s wine industry and reveals contradictions and biases in how people view these resources, which ultimately shape management and policies. The FEW (Food, Energy, and Water) Nexus is an approach increasingly used by policy- and decision-makers to understand the interrelationship of several resources. However, a FEW Nexus approach often lacks in social aspects that influence environmentally and economically sustainable outcomes, especially in the wine and wine tourism industry. When quantitative and qualitative data are available, the other challenge is which assessment to use. Two assessments often …

Coral Reef Restoration In The Tropical West Atlantic Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Linden Cheek

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is increasing threats to coasts, both from storm surge and sea level rise. Healthy coral reefs provide reduction in storm surges, wave energy, coastal flooding and everyday erosion, and are found across a variety of spatial scales. Given the state of coral reefs worldwide, active Coral Reef Restoration (CRR) in emerging as a necessary component of coastal protection. CRR can be classified as a nature-based solutions (NbS) for coastal protection that also provides a multitude of ecosystem-based services to both humans and other life. Nearly all literature on coral restoration efforts assume a steady-state of human-ecological interactions, but …

Assessment Of Land Cover Change In St. Martin’S Marsh Aquatic Preserve, Florida, Usa, Katie Wagner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

St. Martin’s Marsh Aquatic Preserve (SMMAP) is a 28,461 acre (115.18 km2) preserve located on the coast of Citrus County, Florida, USA. There has been no published research that focused on coastal change on this unique coast. This thesis research focuses on coastal land cover change that has occurred within the preserve from 1988 to 2018. Multitemporal Landsat images were classified using a support vector machine (SVM) classification, while changes in vegetation were evaluated using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Field research was conducted to examine nineteen sites for classification training and test data and notes on habitat composition. …

Reconstruction Of Radar Images By Using Spherical Mean And Regular Radon Transforms, Ozan Pirbudak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is the recovery of functions and finite parametric distributions from their spherical means over spheres and designing a general formula or algorithm for the reconstruction of a function f via its spherical mean transform. The theoretical study is and supported with a numerical implementation based on radar data. In this study, we approach the reconstruction problem in two different way. The first one is to show how the reconstruction problem could be converted to a Prony-type system of equations. After solving this Prony-type system of equations, one can extract the parameters that describe the corresponding …

Estimating Coastal Water Turbidity Using Viirs Nighttime Measurement, Chih-Wei Huang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coastal water turbidity is a key environmental factor that influences the relative clarity of the water, which therefore reduces sunlight penetration. The comprehensive spatial and temporal coverage of remote sensing allows mapping of water turbidity near the coast. Even in locations where time-consuming and expensive conventional turbidity monitoring programs exist, local technological limitations prevent complete coverage. Traditional optical satellite techniques using the visible band also have limitations in monitoring turbidity due to non-optimal observing conditions such as clouds, sun-glint, and thick aerosols. In this study, in order to complement the daytime satellite measurements, I used the data from Visible Infrared …

Assessing The Cooling Effects Of Urban Vegetation On Urban Heat Mitigation In Selected U.S. Cities, Qiuyan Yu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a growing problem worldwide. Mitigation of UHI is necessary for cities to adapt to climate change and enhance sustainable development at a city scale. Cooling cities with urban vegetation management is a sustainable solution for urban heat mitigation. Urban vegetation influences urban microclimate through the shading effect, surface roughness, and evapotranspiration. The differences in horizontal and vertical structures of urban vegetation determine the shading effect, surface roughness, and evapotranspiration. Enhancing the cooling effect of urban vegetation requires a comprehensive understanding of how vegetation structure affects UHI. The effects of horizontal structure on land surface temperature …

Optical Remote Sensing Of Oil Spills In The Gulf Of Mexico, Shaojie Sun

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Assessment of oil spills in the ocean using passive remote sensing (i.e., reflected sun light) faces two challenges: detect oil presence/absence and quantify oil volume. While the optical properties of oil allow it to be differentiated from the surrounding marine environment, sun glint can facilitate oil presence/absence detection because the oil-water spatial contrast is enhanced due to wave dampening. However, sun glint also modulates the magnitude and shape of the spectral reflectance of surface oil. In addition to this difficulty, the most critical challenge is how to quantify oil volume (or thickness) through remote sensing. To date, such quantifications have …

Enhancement Of Rainfall-Triggered Shallow Landslide Hazard Assessment At Regional And Site Scales Using Remote Sensing And Slope Stability Analysis Coupled With Infiltration Modeling, Thilanki Maneesha Dahigamuwa Rajaguru Mudiyanselage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Landslides cause significant damage to property and human lives throughout the world. Rainfall is the most common triggering factor for the occurrence of landslides. This dissertation presents two novel methodologies for assessment of rainfall-triggered shallow landslide hazard. The first method focuses on using remotely sensed soil moisture and soil surface properties in developing a framework for real-time regional scale landslide hazard assessment while the second method is a deterministic approach to landslide hazard assessment of the specific sites identified during first assessment. In the latter approach, landslide inducing transient seepage in soil during rainfall and its effect on slope stability …

Remote Estimation Of Surface Water PCo2 In The Gulf Of Mexico, Shuangling Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Surface ocean partial pressure of CO₂ (pCO₂) is a critical parameter in the quantification of air-sea CO₂ flux, which further plays an important role in quantifying the global carbon budget and understanding ocean acidification. The demand for a clearer understanding of how, and how fast, the ocean is changing due to atmospheric CO₂ absorption, requires accurate and synoptic estimation of surface pCO₂.

Surface ocean pCO₂ is mainly controlled by four oceanic processes – thermodynamics, ocean mixing, biological activities, and air-sea CO₂ exchange. Surface ocean pCO_{2 …}

Spatial And Temporal Distributions Of Pelagic Sargassum In The Intra-Americas Sea And Atlantic Ocean, Mengqiu Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pelagic Sargassum is one type of marine macroalgae that is known to be abundant in the Gulf of Mexico and Sargasso Sea. It is also known to serve as a critical habitat for many marine animals. In the past few years, large amounts of Sargassum have been reported in the Tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea (CS), causing significant environmental and economic problems. The goal of this study is to improve the understanding of Sargassum distributions, quantity, transport pathways, and bloom mechanisms in the CS and Tropic Atlantic through combining a variety of techniques including satellite remote sensing, field and laboratory …

A Comparative Study On Coastal Zone Changes And Anthropogenic Impacts Between Tampa Bay, Usa, And Xiangshan Harbor, China, During The Last 30 Years, Qiandong Guo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently, the U.S. and China are the two largest national economic entities in the world. However, it is noticeable that the two countries have considerably different strategies for economic development, environmental protection and land supply in coastal zones. In order to understand the coastline dynamics, land use land cover (LULC) changes and land management policies in the U.S. and China, a case study of the Tampa Bay (TB) watershed, Florida, U.S., and Xiangshan Harbor (XH), Zhejiang Province, China was conducted. The two areas possess similar humid subtropical climate and dense population, but experienced different anthropogenic impacts. TB sat at a …

Remote Sensing And Spatial Metrics For Quantifying Seagrass Landscape Changes: A Study On The 2011 Indian River Lagoon Florida Seagrass Die-Off Event, René Dieter Baumstark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s seagrasses are ecologically important marine environments which have suffered major degradation caused by increasing anthropogenic pressures. A 2011 seagrass die-off event caused by an algal bloom in the Florida Indian River Lagoon (IRL) was particularly severe with a majority of seagrass lost in areas such as the Banana River. An understanding of how this coastal marine environment changed is an important step toward better managing resources for conservation. Modern tools and methods provide new opportunities to study these changes at the landscape scale, a scale that informs on the larger more comprehensive state of a system. Classified satellite imagery …

Evaluating Satellite And Supercomputing Technologies For Improved Coastal Ecosystem Assessments, Matthew James Mccarthy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water quality and wetlands represent two vital elements of a healthy coastal ecosystem. Both experienced substantial declines in the U.S. during the 20^th century. Overall coastal wetland cover decreased over 50% in the 20^th century due to coastal development and water pollution. Management and legislative efforts have successfully addressed some of the problems and threats, but recent research indicates that the diffuse impacts of climate change and non-point source pollution may be the primary drivers of current and future water-quality and wetland stress. In order to respond to these pervasive threats, traditional management approaches need to adopt modern …

Using Remote Sensing To Evaluate Wetland Recovery In The Northern Tampa Bay Area Following Reduction In Groundwater Withdrawals, Amor Elder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the past, the Northern Tampa Bay Area (NTBA) wetlands saw severe declines in hydrologic conditions due to excessive groundwater withdrawal rates. Eventually these rates were reduced to allow the wetlands to recover. To monitor this recovery, the Southwest Florida Water Management district (SWFWMD) set up a fieldwork based scoring methodology, called the Wetlands Assessment Procedure (WAP). WAP has been used in many studies of the area since groundwater withdrawal reductions; with many of those studies finding the recovery to be mixed at best. However, these studies were very limited in the number of wetlands they could assess due to …

Effects Of Anthropogenic Activity On The Green Swamp Preserve Ecosystem, Barbara Ann Nordheim-Shelt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Green Swamp Preserve is a large geographic area that has sustained many changes since Europeans settled in Florida. There has been little published research on the impacts of anthropogenic activity on this system. This thesis research seeks to document more recent changes in the Green Swamp and to evaluate the effects of various human activities on the system. The study period is from 1985 to 2015. For this time period changes in land use and landcover were examined using neural network classifications. Changes in vegetation health were evaluated by examining Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Green Vegetation Index …

Development And Validation Of A Remote Sensing Model To Identify Anthropogenic Boreholes That Provide Dry Season, Refuge Habitat For Anopheles Vector Mosquitoes In Sub-Saharan Africa, James Pkemoi Kukat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A lack of surveillance systems is an impediment to public health intervention for perennial vector-borne disease transmission in northern tropical savanna region of Kenya. The population in this area are mostly poor nomadic pastoralists with little acquired functional immunity to Plasmodium falciparum, due to infrequent challenges with the parasite. A common characteristic in tropical savanna climatic zone is the availability of riverbeds that have anthropogenic boreholes that provide malaria vector mosquitoes, such as Anopheles gambiae s.l and Anopheles funestus, with aquatic refuge habitats for proliferation and endemic transmission to proximity human households during the dry-season. Unfortunately, currently there …

Modeling The Construction And Evolution Of Distributed Volcanic Fields On Earth And Mars, Jacob Armstrong Richardson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Magmatism is a dominant process on Earth and Mars that has significantly modified and evolved the lithospheres of each planet by delivering magma to shallow depths and to the surface. Two common modes of volcanism are present on both Earth and Mars: central-vent dominated volcanism that creates large edifices from concentrating magma in chambers before eruptions and distributed volcanism that creates many smaller edifices on the surface through the independent ascent of individual magmatic dikes. In regions of distributed volcanism, clusters of volcanoes develop over thousands to millions of years. This dissertation explores the geology of distributed volcanism on Earth …

Informing The Design And Deployment Of Health Information Technology To Improve Care Coordination, Diego A. Martinez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, the health care sector is 20 years behind in the use of information technology to improve the process of health care delivery as compared to other sectors. Patients have to deliver their data over and over again to every health professional they see. Most health care facilities act as data repositories with limited capabilities of data analysis or data exchange. A remaining challenge is, how do we encourage the use of IT in the health care sector that will improve care coordination, save lives, make patients more involved in decision-making, and save money for the American …

Spatiotemporal Sensing And Informatics For Complex Systems Monitoring, Fault Identification And Root Cause Diagnostics, Gang Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to cope with system complexity and dynamic environments, modern industries are investing in a variety of sensor networks and data acquisition systems to increase information visibility. Multi-sensor systems bring the proliferation of high-dimensional functional Big Data that capture rich information on the evolving dynamics of natural and engineered processes. With spatially and temporally dense data readily available, there is an urgent need to develop advanced methodologies and associated tools that will enable and assist (i) the handling of the big data communicated by the contemporary complex systems, (ii) the extraction and identification of pertinent knowledge about the environmental …

Mid-Holocene Speleothem Climate Proxy Records From Florida And Belize, Anna L. Pollock

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As global temperatures rise due to anthropogenic climate change, water resources, thus economies, are threatened. A geologically recent period of increased temperatures is the mid-Holocene and an investigation of its climate may allow for a better understanding of future precipitation and changes to regional water resources. The regions of interest are tropical Northern Central America and subtropical North America with Belize and Florida representing each climate zone. By reconstructing mid-Holocene climate in Florida and Belize, I hope to provide a better understanding of how increased temperatures and a reduced latitudinal temperature gradient impacts both precipitation patterns and variability. Today, drivers …

Use Of System Dynamics Modeling To Explicate The Theory-Of-Change Of A Social Marketing Innovation, Brian J. Biroscak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community coalitions are an important part of the public health milieu and thus subject to many of the same external pressures as public health organizations--including changes in required strategic orientation. Many funding agencies have shifted their funding agenda from program development to policy change. Thus, the Florida Prevention Research Center created the Community-Based Prevention Marketing for Policy Development framework to teach community coalitions how to apply social marketing to policy change. The dissertation research reported here was designed to explicate the framework's theory-of-change. The research question was: "What are the linkages and connections between CBPM inputs, activities, immediate outcomes, intermediate …

Impacts Of The Anomalous Mississippi River Discharge And Diversions On Phytoplankton Blooming In Northeastern Gulf Of Mexico, Brendan O'Connor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

On April 20, 2010 a tragic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) drilling rig marked the beginning of one of the worst environmental disasters in history. For 87 days oil and gas were released into the Gulf of Mexico. In August 2010, anomalous phytoplankton activity was identified in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico, using the Fluorescence Line Height (FLH) ocean color product. The FLH anomaly was bound by approximately 30-28 degrees North and 90 and 86 degrees West and there was a suggestion that this anomaly may have occurred due to the presence of oil. This study was designed to …

Long-Range, Passive Wireless Monitoring Using Energy-Efficient, Electrically-Small Sensor Nodes And Harmonic Radar Interrogator, Ibrahim Nassar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the use of the harmonic radar technique for passive wireless sensing applications. Issues of DC power consumption, high RF activation power, large node size, and short communication range associated with the existing passive wireless sensing technologies are addressed by the development of novel, completely passive, high efficiency, compact 3-D harmonic sensor nodes. The node transceiver employs a passive frequency doubler to return the second harmonic of the interrogation signal, and electrically-small 3-D antennas to achieve the compactness and high efficiency. The developed nodes fit inside a sphere with a diameter < 3 cm and achieve communication range > 60 m using a 43 dBm EIRP …

Harmful Algal Blooms Of The West Florida Shelf And Campeche Bank: Visualization And Quantification Using Remote Sensing Methods, Inia Mariel Soto Ramos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) are natural phenomena that can have negative impacts on marine ecosystems on which human health and the economy of some Gulf States depends. Many of the HABs in the GOM are dominated by the toxic dinoflagellate Karenia brevis. Non-toxic phytoplankton taxa such as Scrippsiella sp. also form intense blooms off the Mexican coast that result in massive fish mortality and economic losses, particularly as they may lead to anoxia.

The main objectives of this dissertation were to (1) evaluate and improve the techniques developed for detection of Karenia spp. blooms …

Mapping And Assessing Urban Impervious Areas Using Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis: A Case Study In The City Of Tampa, Florida, Fenqing Weng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The advance in remote sensing technology helps people more easily assess urban growth. In this study, the utility of multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) is examined in a sub-pixel analysis of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery to map urban physical components in Tampa, FL. The three physical components of urban land cover (LC): impervious surface, vegetation and soil, were compared using the proposed MESMA with a traditional spectral mixture analysis (SMA). MESMA decomposes each pixel to address the heterogeneity of urban LC characteristic by allowing the number and types of endmembers to vary on a per pixel basis. This …

On The Spatial And Temporal Variability Of Upwelling In The Southern Caribbean Sea And Its Influence On The Ecology Of Phytoplankton And Of The Spanish Sardine (Sardinella Aurita), Digna Tibisay Rueda-Roa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Southern Caribbean Sea experiences a strong upwelling process along the coast from about 61°W to 75.5°W and 10-13°N. In this dissertation three aspects of this upwelling system are examined: (A) A mid-year secondary upwelling that was previously observed in the southeastern Caribbean Sea between June-July, when land based stations show a decrease in wind speed. The presence and effects of this upwelling along the whole southern Caribbean upwelling system were evaluated, as well as the relative forcing contribution of alongshore winds (Ekman Transport, ET) and wind-curl (Ekman Pumping, EP). (B) Stronger upwelling occurs in two particular regions, namely the …

Remote Sensing Of Whitings In The Bahamas, Ryan Allen Lloyd

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Whitings on both the Great Bahama Bank (GBB) and Little Bahama Bank (LBB) were evaluated using data collected from 2000-2010 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. A semi-objective method was developed to classify whiting patches from other look-alike features using the recently developed Floating Algae Index (FAI) algorithm, an empirical cloud masking algorithm, and a gradient analysis from the 250-m resolution MODIS data. A total of 1,500 images with minimal cloud cover was used to calculate long-term and seasonal trends as well as an average daily coverage for both banks. Annual and …

Urbanization And Land Surface Temperature In Pinellas County, Florida, Bruce Coffyn Mitchell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the early 1800's, many studies have recognized increased heat in urban areas, known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect, as one of the results of human modification to the natural landscape. UHI is related to differences in land surface temperature (LST) between rural areas and urban areas where factors of the built environment such as the thermodynamic capacities of materials, structural geometry, and heat generating activities cause increased storage and re-radiation of heat to the atmosphere. This thesis examines the correlation between factors of urbanization and differences in land surface temperature (LST) in the subtropical climate of Pinellas …