Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Le Nature Degli American Studies, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Al “Futures of American Studies Institute” di Dartmouth del 2003 lanciai una provocazione sulle “geografie immaginate” dell’americanistica. Volevo mettere in discussione sia le celebrazioni romantiche del “luogo” in quanto elemento in qualche modo autentico e particolare, minacciato da un mondo sempre più globalizzato e controllato dalle multinazionali, sia l’esaltazione della “delocalizzazione” nelle società in rete, negli “spazi di flusso”, nella mobilità senza attrito. Suggerivo che queste, come altre geografie poco studiate, si sposano troppo facilmente con molte correnti dell’eccezionalismo americano.

Introduction To Gis Using Open Source Software, 4th Ed, Frank Donnelly

Open Educational Resources

This tutorial was created to accompany the GIS Practicum, a day-long workshop offered by the Newman Library at Baruch College CUNY that introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) using the open source software QGIS. The practicum introduces GIS as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps. This tutorial was written using QGIS version 1.8 "Lisboa", a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) desktop GIS software package.

Remote Sensing Of Soil Moisture In Vineyards Using Airborne And Ground-Based Thermal Inertia Data, Aiman Soliman, Richard J. Heck, Alexander Brenning, Ralph Brown, Stephen Miller

Publications and Research

Thermal remote sensing of soil moisture in vineyards is a challenge. The grass-covered soil, in addition to a standing grape canopy, create complex patterns of heating and cooling and increase the surface temperature variability between vine rows. In this study, we evaluate the strength of relationships between soil moisture, mechanical resistance and thermal inertia calculated from the drop of surface temperature during a clear sky night over a vineyard in the Niagara region. We utilized data from two sensors, an airborne thermal camera (height ≈ 500 m a.g.l.) and a handheld thermal gun (height ≈ 1 m a.g.l.), to explore …

The Role Of Suburbia In The Attribution Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Jochen Albrecht, Peter Marcotullio, Andrea Sarzynski, Niels Schulz

Publications and Research

The original goal of the research presented here was to quantify by world region, the contribution of urbanized areas to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (EDGAR, 2011). Regressions on population density and growth rate, GDP, and heating/cooling degree days, as well as a row of other non-significant variables, show that the contribution of urban extents is between 38% and 49% of total emissions (Marcotullio et al., 2012). In spite of using very liberal definitions of urban extents (GRUMP, 2011) this is at the low end of academic estimates (Satterthwaite, 2008; WEO, 2008; Dhakal, 2010). It is no surprise that the …

Global Futures And Government Towns: Phosphates And The Production Of Western Sahara As A Space Of Contention, Mark Drury

Publications and Research

The study of natural resources lends itself to theorizing the politics of nature and the politics of time. The space of Western Sahara, where both remain highly contested, provides an opportunity to consider the ramifications of resources in political conflict at different historical moments. Drawing from environmental histories of North Africa and the Sahara, as well as the anthropology of time, the author focuses on two historical moments. The first, from 1945 to 1972, concerns the discovery of phosphate deposits during the Spanish colonial period and the implications of this discovery for political authority in the Sahara more broadly. The …

Allometric Scaling And Resource Limitations Model Of Tree Heights: Part 1. Model Optimization And Testing Over Continental Usa, Yuli Shi, Sungho Choi, Xiliang Ni, Sangram Ganguly, Gong Zhang, Hieu V. Duong, Michael A. Lefsky, Marc Simard, Sassan S. Saatchi, Shihyan Lee, Wenge Ni-Meister, Shilong Piao, Chunxiang Cao, Ramakrishna R. Nemani, Ranga B. Myneni

Publications and Research

A methodology to generate spatially continuous fields of tree heights with an optimized Allometric Scaling and Resource Limitations (ASRL) model is reported in this first of a multi-part series of articles. Model optimization is performed with the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) waveform data. This methodology is demonstrated by mapping tree heights over forested lands in the continental USA (CONUS) at 1 km spatial resolution. The study area is divided into 841 eco-climatic zones based on three forest types, annual total precipitation classes (30 mm intervals) and annual average temperature classes (2 °C intervals). Three model parameters (area of single …

Allometric Scaling And Resource Limitations Model Of Tree Heights: Part 2. Site Based Testing Of The Model, Sungho Choi, Xiliang Ni, Yuli Shi, Sangram Ganguly, Gong Zhang, Hieu V. Duong, Michael A. Lefsky, Marc Simard, Sassan S. Saatchi, Shihyan Lee, Wenge Ni-Meister, Shilong Piao, Chunxiang Cao, Ramakrishna R. Nemani, Ranga B. Myneni

Publications and Research

The ultimate goal of this multi-article series is to develop a methodology to generate continuous fields of tree height and biomass. The first paper demonstrated the need for Allometric Scaling and Resource Limitation (ASRL) model optimization and its ability to generate spatially continuous fields of tree heights over the continental USA at coarse (1 km) spatial resolution. The objective of this second paper is to provide an assessment of that approach at site scale, specifically at 12 FLUXNET sites where more accurate data are available. Estimates of tree heights from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) waveform data are used …

The Geography Of Global Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions: An Exploratory Analysis, Jochen Albrecht, Peter Marcotullio, Amdrea Sarzynski, Niels Schulz, Jake Garcia

Publications and Research

The purpose of this paper is to describe global urban greenhouse gas emissions by region and sector, examine the distribution of emissions through the urban-to-rural gradient, and identify covariates of emission levels for our baseline year, 2000.We usemultiple existing spatial databases to identify urban extent, greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, N2O, CH4 and SF6) and covariates of emissions in a “top-down” analysis. The results indicate that urban activities are significant sources of total greenhouse gas emissions (36.8 and 48.6 % of total). The urban energy sector accounts for between 41.5 and 66.3 % of total energy emissions. Significant differences exist in …

Community Loss: A New Social Indicator, Jochen Albrecht, Mimi Abramovitz

Publications and Research

The Community Loss Index ðCLIÞ, a new social indicator, focuses on the understudied role of place as a source of stress and an aggregator of individual experiences. Building on the relationship between loss and stress, the index attempts to capture collective loss, defined as the chronic exposure by neighborhood residents to multiple resource losses at the same time. Using maps, the article analyzes the spatial distribution of six types of loss in New York City and the characteristics of people who live in high- and low-loss neighborhoods. Regionalization reveals a neighborhood-based concentration of loss, patterns of loss that are both …

Mydigitalfootprint.Org: Young People And The Proprietary Ecology Of Everyday Data, Gregory Thomas Donovan

All Open Access Legacy Dissertations and Capstone Projects

Young people are the canaries in our contemporary data mine. They are at the forefront of complex negotiations over privacy, property, and security in environments saturated with information systems. The productive and entertaining promises of proprietary media have led to widespread adoption among youth whose daily activities now generate troves of data that are mined for governance and profit. As they text, email, network, and search within these proprietary ecologies, young people's identity configurations link up with modes of capitalist production. The MyDigitalFootprint.ORG Project was thus initiated to unpack and engage young people's material social relations with/in proprietary ecologies through …

Claiming Space, Redefining Politics: Urban Protest And Grassroots Power In Bolivia, Carwil Bjork-James

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the role of space-claiming protests by primarily left grassroots social movements in Bolivia's current political transformation. Space claiming includes mass protests that physically control or symbolically claim urban space through occupations of plazas and roads, sit-ins, blockades, and other measures. As a theoretical construct, space claiming brings together tactics of collective action and meanings of public spaces, and looks at the consequences of their interaction. This dissertation is based on ethnographic engagement and oral interviews with protest participants and their state interlocutors during twelve months of fieldwork and archival research. By using detailed ethnographic evidence--of social life …

Scaling Food Security: A Political Ecology Of Agricultural Policies And Practices In Bukidnon, Philippines, Ryan Ehrhart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Debates over food security strategies in the Philippines have pitted the neoliberal paradigm of trade liberalization, export cropping, and chemical and biotech agricultural methods against the food sovereignty paradigm of protectionism, staple cropping, and sustainable agriculture methods.

The Philippine government has long pushed for yield increases of staples. However, there has been dissonance between governmental desires for rice self-sufficiency and pursuit of a more export-oriented agricultural economy. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Trade Organization have pressured the government of the Philippines to adopt various tenets of neoliberalism (trade liberalization, privatization, deregulation, …

From Property Abandonment To Predatory Equity: Writings On Financialization And Urban Space In New York City, Desiree Justina Fields

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Financial markets, actors and imperatives are increasingly central to today's global capitalism, even in areas of the economy traditionally distinct from finance, such as real estate. This financialization changes the role of mortgage capital in urban space from building place-bound wealth to facilitating the extraction of value from place. This dissertation addresses questions about how financialization operates in the rental market, specifically its relation to: earlier processes of urban disinvestment, ongoing social and political struggles around urban space, the meaning of home and social reproduction. These questions correspond to broader theoretical debates about the contingent relationship between today's urban context …