Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exchange And Social Interaction In The Tennessee River Valley: A Geospatial Approach To The Analysis Of Late Archaic Archaeological Sites, Justin S. Bailey

Masters Theses

The cultural manifestation known as the Shell Mound Archaic persisted in the lower Midwest and Midsouth region of the Eastern United States for over four millennia beginning in the Middle Archaic ca. 8900 cal BP and terminating at the end of the Late Archaic ca 3200 cal BP. A geospatial approach is applied to the analysis of exotic material exchange of the Late Archaic (ca. 5800-3200 cal BP) to assess how foraging peoples in the Tennessee River Valley interacted and persisted during this time. Exotic material items manufactured from copper, marine shell, steatite, and other nonlocal materials demonstrate distinct spatial …

Analysis Of Interdunal Wetlands And Ecosystem Dynamics Using Uas And Obia In Ludington State Park, Michigan, Claire Gilbert

Masters Theses

The Great Lakes sand dunes are the world's largest freshwater dune complex. There is a functional relationship between coastal wetlands and freshwater sand dune, referred to as interdunal wetlands. Interdunal wetland systems are highly dynamic and change dramatically seasonally and annually. Using geographic information systems (GIS) and unoccupied aerial systems (UAS), this thesis project is focused on understanding the spatial distribution of sparse and dense vegetation, and abiotic influence such as distance to coast, slope, and aspect influence interdunal wetland stability within a Great Lakes shoreline dune system. Object-based image analysis (OBIA) classification results extracted meaningful vegetation densities of growth …

Using Historical Maps For Contaminated Site Identification And Prediction, And Environmental Justice Implications: A Case Study In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dana Heusinkveld

Masters Theses

As the production of synthetic chemicals has grown in the past centuries to increase production, lower costs, and generally make our lives more convenient, detecting and understanding the environmental impacts of these compounds has lagged significantly behind their mass production and wide-spread use. To combat this trend, sources of these contaminants, especially those that have been removed from the landscape, need to be quickly identified to make mitigation and remediation efforts more effective. In this study, historical Sanborn maps are used to extract and digitize historical site/land use in Grand Rapids during the early 1900s through the practical application of …

Creating A Distribution Model Of Invasive Rusty Crayfish (Faxonius Rusticus) In Michigan Streams Using Publically Accessible Data, Robert C. Homan

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to create a predictive model of habitat suitability for the invasive rusty crayfish (Faxonius rusticus) throughout the state of Michigan. F. rusticus often outcompete and extirpate native crayfish species, so understanding their habitats of success is instrumental in monitoring vulnerable ecosystems. Michigan State University and the Michigan DNR conducted extensive field surveys across 461 streams sites from 2014-2016. This project compares this field data set to data from publicly available national datasets with the purpose of revealing the ecosystems most vulnerable to the introduction of F. rusticus. The pattern of F. rusticus …

Snow And Non-Snow Events Based Winter Traffic Crash Pattern Analysis And Developing Lake Effect Snow Induced Crash Count Prediction Model, Bandhan Dutta Ayon

Masters Theses

This study aims to (i) find the spatial-temporal traffic crash pattern and (ii) develop a statistical model for predicting LES induced traffic crash counts. Three southwest Michigan counties: Allegan, Kalamazoo and Calhoun are selected to conduct this study. Snow and non-snow event based comparative analysis are conducted using Getis-Ord Gi* statistic to identify high density crash cluster locations in the study area. While several new and oscillating hot spots are detected in Allegan during snow, no hot spot is detected during non-snow events based analysis. In Kalamazoo, traffic crashes do not exhibit much difference in spatial-temporal trend during snow or …

An Intra-Site Spatial Analysis Of Fort St. Joseph (20be23) In Niles, Mi, Katelyn Deann Hillmeyer

Masters Theses

In the field of archaeology, surveying and mapping have played key roles in documenting and analyzing site data. With the advancements in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this integration of spatial data is made easier and better visualization can be attained for site layout and artifact distributions both horizontally, in space, and also vertically through a temporal component. The ongoing excavations at Fort St. Joseph (Smithsonian trinomial- 20BE23), near Niles, Michigan, makes it an excellent site for exploring the evolution of applied GIS methodology and the adjustment of among ongoing static database applications to new spatial methods of investigating site distributions. …

Four Dimensional Approach To Center City Transformation: A Case Study Of Knoxville, Tn: 1884—1950, Joseph Ryan Roberts

Masters Theses

Urban morphological models were created to enhance our understanding of urban growth and form. Prior to Geographical Information Systems (GIS), these models were supplementary products of ideas and concepts that set out to explain the spatial configuration of the urban landscape. While these models are of great importance to the field, they are mostly two-dimensional (2D) and static. Three-dimensional (3D) modeling has strengths in landscape visualization, manipulation, and planning, where analyses of historical urban landscapes may be carried out efficiently and thoroughly. A method that utilizes 3D modeling through time or four-dimensional (4D) modeling will enhance our understanding of transformation …

A Study Of Colloquial Place Names Through Geotagged Social Media Data, Yuan Liu

Masters Theses

Place is a rich but vague geographic concept. Much work has been done to explore the collective understanding and perceived location of place. The last few decades have seen rapid expansion in the use of online social media and data sharing services, which provide a large amount of valuable data for research of colloquial place names. This study explored how geotagged social media data can be used to understand geographic place names, and delimit the perceived geographic extent of a place. The author proposes a probabilistic method to map the perceived geographic extent of a place using Kernel Density Estimation …

Integrating Social Media In The Development Of A Special Event Population Dynamics Model, Kelly Michelle Sims

Masters Theses

With society’s increasing participation in social media, scientists now have access to new sources of data that reflect our daily activities in space and in time. Such data are plentiful and, more notably, at an unprecedented granular level. The ability for users to capture and express their geolocation through their phones’ global positioning system (GPS) or through a particular location’s hashtag or Facebook Page provides a great opportunity for modeling spatiotemporal population dynamics. High resolution population models and databases for episodic special events can be extremely useful for enhancing emergency management and response. This research assesses the feasibility of improving …

Assessing Survivability Of The Beijing Subway System, Yan Li

Masters Theses

The assessment of survivability is a common topic in critical network infrastructure research. In order to examine the critical components whose disruptions can cause huge system degradation, many measures have been approached to depict the characteristics of network systems. Serving more than ten million passengers a day, the Beijing subway system, which ranks third in the world for its length and annual ridership, raises survivability issues in the face of potential disruptions of network components along with its constantly increasing complexity. In this research, we provide an accessibility-based survivability measure with which to explore how potential outages of network components …

Data Storage Alternatives For A Gridded Crop Disease Risk Forecasting System, Paul J. Roehsner

Masters Theses

Three separate storage technologies able to serve gridded data were selected for comparison of performance in terms of providing speed and expandability to a crop disease forecasting system. The three storage technologies chosen were PostgreSQL (a relational database management system), MongoDB (NoSQL system), and netCDF files. Speed tests were performed for each by running two different crop disease risk forecasting models requiring data of different spatiotemporal resolutions. Multiple trials were done using different storage hardware. Systems were then qualitatively compared for expandability by noting the process involved in adding successive crop disease forecasting models.

It was found that due to …

Change And Continuity: Euro-American And Native American Settlement Patterns In The St. Joseph River Valley, Allison M. Kohley

Masters Theses

In recent years there has been a particular interest in the fur trade and colonialism through identification and investigation of Fort St. Joseph. This fort was an 18th century French trading post in the St. Joseph River valley located in southwestern Michigan and northwestern Indiana. This study expands our current understanding of the change and continuity of the Euro- American and Native American settlement patterns in the valley during the periods immediately prior to, during, and after the abandonment of Fort St. Joseph through the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical analyses.

Gis-Based Flood Analysis For Adequate Flood Mitigation In An Unplanned Urban Area; The Case Of Pikine Dagoudane In Dakar County, Senegal, Sokhna Helene Diop

Masters Theses

Since 1989, Pikine Dagoudane, in the suburbs of Dakar City has faced several flooding events, resulting in economic loss, environmental degradation and severe disturbance of the social life of the residents. The mitigation programs implemented have not appeared to provide any relief since 2000. Review of the existing literature on the crisis has revealed that the general scale of the studies, and the insufficient attention to some of the major factors could be accounted for such little efficiency. This thesis applies a different approach, based on a small area and focusing mainly on topographic characteristics, to provide a better understanding …

Agriculture, Influence, And Instability Under The Ancien Régime: 1708-1768, Adam J. Polk

Masters Theses

The French Revolution has been studied from myriad perspectives. The majority of scholarship focuses on the political and urban chaos of the times. Agricultural conditions and the influence of onerous taxation and stagnant agricultural options are given only a cursory examination in most research. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between agronomic and environmental conditions and the eruption of violence in urban centers during the French Revolution and the years leading up to it (1708-1768). This period prior to the French Revolution serves as a template to investigate the nature of the rural-agricultural influences, with a particular focus paid …

Spatial Discrepancies Between Nhdplus And Lidar-Derived Stream Networks, Nicole Marie Samu

Masters Theses

Many organizations demand that current water resource issues necessitate improved stream network mapping for more accurate and reliable watershed analysis and modeling results, which can ultimately enable better management and policy decisions. Stream network data from the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus) and derived from Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) are each widely accepted to be of superior quality compared to many other conventional datasets. Each dataset indicates potential to improve a wide range of water resource applications; NHDPlus for its high spatial accuracy and functionality, and LIDAR-derived networks for their high resolutions. NHDPlus is publicly available and widely used; …

Improvements In Multi-Tool Surveying Efficiency For Archaeological Geophysics, Caitlyn Marie Williams

Masters Theses

Conventional archaeological excavation methods are, by nature, extremely invasive and result in study areas being irrevocably altered for the sake of research. For this reason, near-surface geophysical techniques have been incorporated into archaeological investigations to aid in determining the locations of buried features with minimal damage to the site. The objective of this research was to perform a geophysical survey at an archaeological site on the Akrotiri Peninsula in Cyprus to locate evidence of a Roman naval base and to develop an improved data management workflow that will improve the usefulness of geophysical data to archaeologists.

An on-site archaeologist determined …

Predictive Modeling In Western Louisiana: Prehistoric And Historic Settlement In The Kisatchie National Forest, Erik Nicholas Johanson

Masters Theses

This thesis is an effort to provide the US Forest Service with a tool to effectively and efficiently protect and manage the cultural resource heritage of the Kisatchie National Forest. The development and subsequent evaluation of modeling efforts are vital to the archaeology of the region. There are two goals of this modeling project: to evaluate the active US Forest Service Predictive Model and secondly, if warranted, which it was, to improve upon previous models in the region. To do so 23 environmental variables were analyzed, many of which are inter-related, to develop a new set of probability zones while …