Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Decadal Land Surface Phenology And Water Quality In The Headwaters Illinois River Watershed, Justin Ray Rollans

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over 25 percent of the world’s population either lives on or obtains water from karst aquifers. The complex interactions between subsurface karst geologic features, the constant motion of the plant life cycle, and significant water resource demand all suggest the need to better define those interactions. The relationship of historical land surface phenology and water quality in karst topography were investigated in the Headwaters Illinois River watershed in Northwest Arkansas (NWA). This area represents high vulnerability to surface water and groundwater contamination, with both natural and anthropogenic processes such as over application of broil litter for enhanced cattle browse, affecting …

Spatio-Temporal Reconstruction Of Remote Sensing Observations, Kamrul Khan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The USDA Forest Service aims to use satellite imagery for monitoring and predicting changes in forest conditions over time within the country. We specifically focus on a 230, 400 hectares region in north-central Wisconsin between 2003 - 2012. The auxiliary data collected from the satellite imagery of this region are relatively dense in space and time and can be used to efficiently predict how the forest condition changed over that decade. However, these records have a significant proportion of missing values due to weather conditions and system failures. To fill in these missing values, we build spaciotemporal models based on …

Keeping Pace With Relative Sea Level Rise: Marsh Platform Monitoring Shows Minimal Sediment Deficit Along The Louisiana Coast, Kelly Marie Sanks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent reports estimate that the marshes of the Mississippi Delta receive just 30% of the sediment necessary to sustain current land area1. An extensive monitoring campaign by the USGS and LCPRA provides direct measurements of sediment accumulation, subsidence rates, and deposit characteristics along the coast over the past 10 years2, allowing us to directly evaluate this sediment balance. By interpolating bulk density, organic fraction, and vertical accretion rates from 273 sites, a direct measurement of organic and inorganic sediment accumulation can be made. Results show that a total of 82 MT/year of sediment is delivered to the coast. Using a …

The Energy Yield Of Global Crops 1961-2016, Quinn Montana

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It is often suggested that world food production must increase by 70%-100% or more by the year 2050 if we are to feed the anticipated world population at that time. To evaluate this claim, global crop production from 1961 to 2016 was inventoried using publicly available data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). To determine the adequacy of global crop output for humanity, annual global food crop production data (T y-1) were converted to energy yield in kilojoules (KJ y-1). These data were then compared to the annual metabolic energy requirement of the global human population. The …

Towards Quantifying Relevant Land Cover Change: A Case Study In The Central Flyway Of The Monarch Butterfly, Hanna Lenee Ford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past 20 years notable decreases in monarch butterfly populations have led researchers to begin evaluating the landscape for changes and seeking out opportunities for enacting conservation programs to better support their survival. The monarch butterfly has recently come under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act which has created a need for a more informed view of the landscape through which the migrate and breed, the central United States. In this research three spatially-explicit models are explored using the most applicable datasets currently available to address pressing policy and land manager decisions regarding monarch butterfly and pollinator …

Sustainable Intensification Of Agriculture: Opportunities And Challenges For Food Security And Agrarian Adaptation To Environmental Change In Bangladesh, Aaron Michael Shew

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates three unique aspects of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) in the context of Bangladeshi rice production. The first article presents a qualitative analysis of SAI and farmer surveys in the embanked polder region of coastal Bangladesh. The second article investigates the global food security and environmental impacts of already adopted High Yielding Variety (HYV) rice and double-cropped rice systems in Bangladesh using a spatial partial equilibrium trade model and a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The final article demonstrates a remote sensing methodology for monitoring dry season rice production at 30 m resolution in Bangladesh using a harmonic time …

Modified Landscapes, Esther Nooner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modified Landscapes is a body of work that reflects serious thought regarding Nature and its future. My personal experience and beliefs are at the core of why I believe this subject to be of great importance and why it will sustain many artists’ investigations for the time to come. The influences that informed this process are explored through experiences I had traveling, reading and exploring the photograph as a material object. The manipulation of the photograph is meant to question the beautiful, untouched scene and break the Romantic gaze that is historically tied to representations of Nature and insist upon …

The Effects Of Crystal Bridges In Downtown Revitalization Of Bentonville, Arkansas In The Last Decade, Korab Vranovci

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bentonville started the process of downtown revitalization in 2007 after they passed a bond measure. However, research on the impacts of the revitalization and the factors associated with it is limited or focused for the private sector. This study identified Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as a catalyst for the process of downtown revitalization and aimed to fill the gap in urban development and economic opportunities that arose due to the museum.

Using the “Monitoring annual urban changes in a rapidly growing portion of Northwest Arkansas with a 20-year Landsat records” (Reynolds, Liang, Li, & Dennis, 2017) it is …

Social Organization And Environmental Patterning At Tel Abu Shusha: An Integrated Spatial Approach To Survey Archaeology, Seth Price

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tel Abu Shusha, located in the Jezreel Valley of Palestine, is a large-scale archaeological site possibly identified as the cities of Biblical Gaba or Roman Gaba Hippaeon/Gaba Philippi. Surface archaeological survey of the surrounding area, conducted by the Jezreel Valley Regional Project during 2017, revealed extensive assemblages of visible settlement features dating primarily to middle and late Islamic periods. This research seeks to answer questions of settlement decision-making and societal organization, by integrating archaeological, textual, environmental, and geospatial data sources. In addition to visual interpretation, Kolmogorov-Smirnov nonparametric tests are used to gain insight on environmental settlement preferences; Ripley’s K analysis …

A Geospatial Study Of The Drought Impact On Surface Water Reservoirs: Study Cases From Texas And California, Zachary Asbury

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drought in Texas and California has been a long-term problem. Over the past 60 years reservoir construction has occurred to remedy the situation. Satellite imagery has been used historically to measure and monitor fluctuations in surface water reservoirs. This investigation integrates remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) technologies to study the impact of drought on selected surface water reservoirs in San Angelo and Dallas in Texas, and Lake Oroville in California. Expansion and shrinkage over the 2005-2016 period reveal the concrete impact that drought, along with other factors, have on the selected lakes. Fluctuations in reservoir sizes during summer …

Gis Modeling Of The Prominent Geohazards In Arkansas, Kyle Walker Rowden

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The State of Arkansas is prone to numerous geohazards. This thesis is a twofold study of prominent geohazards in Arkansas: the first fold includes a novel triggerless approach for mass wasting susceptibility modeling applied to the Boston Mountains in NW Arkansas, and the second fold is a GIS-based regression modeling of the extreme weather patterns at the state level. Each study fold is presented in this thesis as a separate chapter embracing a published peer-reviewed paper. In the first paper, I have used the analytical hierarchy process to assign preliminary statistical weights to the most cogent variables influencing mass wasting …

Decisions Set In Stone: Spatial Analyses Of Ozark Rock Art Sites, Elements, And Motifs With Gis, Jordan Lee Schaefer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to spatially analyze rock art distributions in the Salem Plateau section of the Arkansas Ozarks. Statistical tests, such as chi-square and t-testing, are applied to provide an objective view of rock art patterning in relation to the overall landscape. The data collected from these methods allow one to discern the locational preferences for rock art, which potentially reveal cultural details about the people involved with its creation. Multiple analytical perspectives are applied throughout, initially focusing on comparisons with expected values and random points. Later statistical tests use bluff shelter distributions as reference data …

Geography Of The Middle East Through The Western Lens: A Survey Of Films Set In The Middle East And Filmed In The American Southwest, Jake Bryan Rowlett

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Representation of cinematic geography is a struggle in the world of film: a power balance between the work of the filmmakers and the place itself. Often, the filmmakers tip the scales in their favor and the true nature of the place is lost in translation. Throughout the history of cinema, the geography of the Middle East has been manipulated into a vision designed for Western audiences that is strikingly disjointed from reality.

The foundation of modern Orientalist interpretations of the Middle East in film can be seen in the early decades of the film industry, through the “Biblical Epic,” and …