Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Future Benefits To Set Conservation Priorities For Wetlands, Samuel B. Merrill

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

In an era of rising sea levels, costal land managers including land trust representatives, municipal planners, and others contributing to decisions about whether to develop or protect coastal parcels do not have viable means of evaluating future values on wetlands that will be created when sea levels rise. This project develops and tests a software modeling approach to help address this issue, in combination with a novel, expert-opinion driven benefit-cost framework. The beta test used three parcels in Scarborough, Maine: Hampton Circle, Maine Audubon, and Pine Point. It used a group of experts to 1) allocate initial values to these …

Classification, Visualization, And Analysis Of The Islamic State’S Narrative, Steven D. Bixler

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The Islamic State (IS) declared the establishment of a Caliphate on June 29, 2014 in Mosul, Iraq. Since that declaration, IS has communicated a four-part narrative to the global community through Dabiq magazine, its e-publication. Each of the ten editions of Dabiq has provided insight into IS’s aspirations and reinforced its message of rejecting post-colonial structures. Critical to realizing its objective is establishing a foothold for the Caliphate through jihad (holy war), establishing legitimacy through jamaah (governance), achieving tawhid (unity), and expanding through hijrah (immigration). Each publication contains these narrative elements to document IS’s progress. Classifying, visualizing, and mapping will …

The Process Geography Of Law (As Approached Through Andalucian Gitano Family Law), Susan G. Drummond

Susan G. Drummond

Comparative law and legal anthropology have for long theorized on the basis of a traditional geography which saw states, regions, locales and social fields as having durable boundaries containing stable and homogenous cultures. This idea of place is now undergoing a massive transformation in response to the effects of and theories about globalization. The emerging ‘process geography’ rejects these traditional ideas, arguing that they are not, and indeed have never been aspects of reality, which is better represented by an imagery of processes. However, it is argued here that globalization is not a synonym for homogenization, nor has place suddenly …

Prolegomenon To A Pedestrian Cartography Of Mixed Legal Jurisdictions: The Case Of Israel/Palestine, Susan G. Drummond

Susan G. Drummond

The relationship between cartography and law provides a unique focus through which to examine mixed legal jurisdictions. Through an exploration of the various uses of law, cartography, and nation building, the author postulates that mixed legal jurisdictions are created through the subtle incorporation of the originally unfamiliar “Other”. In Canada, European settlers asserted sovereignty through the mapping and naming of territory in ways that did not accord with traditional Aboriginal patterns of usage or conceptualizations of space. The eventual creation of a legal middle ground between these peoples, as articulated by Richard White, is the basis of the author’s analysis …

Promoting Predators And Compassionate Conservation, Arian D. Wallach, Marc Bekoff, Michael Paul Nelson, David Ramp

Conservation Collection

No abstract provided.

At A Crossroads: Midtown, Inc. 2005-2015, Amanda Rees, Caleb Ashburn, Cheltzie Brown, Eric Derhammer, Jessica Dixon, Kelsie Hughes, Rachel Knapp, Morgan Robinson, Anastasia Romain

Columbus Community Geography Center

Established in 2005, MidTown, Inc., a self-identified community development organization, celebrated its 10^th anniversary in 2016. After a decade’s work, the organization is presently reviewing its activities as it takes a moment to consider its future trajectory. To facilitate this process MidTown, Inc. partnered with Columbus State University’s Columbus Community Geography Center to support MidTown, Inc.’s efforts. In fall 2015, nine students in CSU’s urban geography course, taught by Dr. Amanda Rees, researched and completed this report including: Celeb Ashburn, Cheltzie Brown, Eric Derhammer, Jessica Dixon, Kelsie Hughes, Rachel Knapp, Morgan Robinson, Anastasia Romain, and C.E. Sturgeon. An online …

Modeling Vegetation Mosaics In Sub-Alpine Tasmania Under Various Fire Regimes, Gabriel I. Yospin, Samuel W. Wood, Andrés Holz, David M.J.S. Bowman, Robert E. Keane, Cathy Whitlock

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Western Tasmania, Australia contains some of the highest levels of biological endemism of any temperate region in the world, including vegetation types that are conservation priorities: fire-sensitive rainforest dominated by endemic conifer species in the genus Athrotaxis; and fire-tolerant buttongrass moorlands. Current management focuses on fire suppression, but increasingly there are calls for the use of prescribed fire in flammable vegetation types to manage these ecosystems. The long-term effects of climate and alternative management strategies on the vegetated landscape are unknown. To help identify controls over successional trajectories, we parameterized a spatially explicit landscape-scale model of vegetation and fire …

Online Mapping Tools For Geolocating Amish Settlements, Andrew M. Wilson, Brian J.B. Lonabocker, Megan E. Zagorski

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

This technical note demonstrates the value of using online mapping tools as a method of geolocating Amish settlements. Primarily using freely available Bing and Google maps and published lists of the addresses of Amish ministers, we geolocated 1,362 Amish households in Ohio and 1,203 in Pennsylvania, representing about 10% of Amish households in those states. From these data we were able to derive a population density map of the Amish across Ohio and Pennsylvania. We caution that our map is merely a model and based on several assumptions, but the product is a finer resolution map of Amish distribution than …

Short-Tailed Temperature Distributions Over North America And Implications For Future Changes In Extremes, Paul C. Loikith, J. David Neelin

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Some regions of North America exhibit nonnormal temperature distributions. Shorter-than-Gaussian warm tails are a special subset of these cases, with potentially meaningful implications for future changes in extreme warm temperatures under anthropogenic global warming. Locations exhibiting shorter-than-Gaussian warm tails would experience a greater increase in extreme warm temperature exceedances than a location with a Gaussian or long warm-side tail under a simple uniform warm shift in the distribution. Here we identify regions exhibiting such behavior over North America and demonstrate the effect of a simple warm shift on changes in extreme warm temperature exceedances. Some locations exceed the 95th percentile …

Migration Governance And Migration Rights In The Southern African Development Community (Sadc): Attempts At Harmonization In A Disharmonious Region, Belinda Dodson, Jonathan Crush

Southern African Migration Programme

This paper examines prospects for enhanced regional migration governance and protection of migrants’ rights in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Migration in this region is substantial in scale and diverse in nature, incorporating economic, political and mixed migration flows. In addition to movements between countries within the region, migrants also come from across the African continent and even further afield. At its foundation in 1992, SADC as an institution initially embraced a vision of intra-regional free movement, but this has not become a reality. If anything, there has been a hardening of anti-migrant attitudes, not least in the principal …

Food Deserts: Usda Report Review, Christopher Rahm

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The purpose of this Capstone will be to provide city, county, and eventually state, entities with the knowledge to better identify those areas which would fall under the auspice of the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, as laid out in a report by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Council on “Food Deserts.” Food deserts are those areas in which access to nutritious foods is limited by distance, by lack of transportation, or both. Food deserts have also been linked to obesity in children and adults, with the attendant health problems. With this knowledge, starting at the local level, …

Decision Science For Housing And Community Development: Localized And Evidence‐Based Responses To Distressed Housing And Blighted Communities, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Jeffrey Keisler, Senay Solak, David Turcotte, Armagan Bayram, Rachel B. Drew

Michael P. Johnson

Aerosol And Urban Heat Island Effects On Warm Cloud-Top Shortwave Infrared Reflectance And Visible Albedo, Heather Glickman-Eliezer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study uses ten years of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data (1999-2009) to assess urban effects of anthropogenic aerosols and Urban Heat Island (UHI) on cloud-top radiative properties of optically thick clouds. GOES images at noon local time of channels 1, 2, and 4 are used to calculate visible albedo, and shortwave infrared reflectance at 3.9-µm. Cloud-top particle radius is inversely related with SWIRR. Albedo and cloud fraction are measured for cold and warm clouds, and SWIRR is used as a particle-radius proxy for warm clouds only. AERONET fine-mode particle retrievals (fAOD) from the CCNY station are used for …

American Dreamer: First-Time Homeownership And The Affective Geographies Of Dwelling, Stephen Boatright

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research examines the experiences novice homebuyers in New York City and Oakland, CA have during the home search and decision-making processes. Using a mixed-method approach that combines ethnography with critical discourse analysis and non-representational theory, this work examines the ideology of homeownership as well as the tensions that stem from its emotional affordances. It addresses a lacuna in the housing literature regarding the turbulent everyday emotional tensions that buyers confront as they navigate the highly professionalized real estate industry. Homeownership is lauded for being a relatively low-risk tool for highly leveraged investment; however, using data drawn from a series …

White House Presidential Fellows Story, Derreck Blake Deason

Derreck Blake Deason

WhoData was cited in a White House Presidential Fellows story on how data and technology made a difference in post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans.

China's Nine-Dashed Map: Continuing Maritime Source Of Geopolitical Tension, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

The South China Sea (SCS) is becoming an increasingly contentious source of geopolitical tension due to its significance as an international trade route, possessor of potentially significant oil and natural gas resources, China’s increasing diplomatic and military assertiveness, and the U.S.’ recent and ongoing Pacific Pivot strategy. Countries as varied as China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and other adjacent countries have claims on this region’s islands and natural resources. China has been particularly assertive in asserting its SCS claims by creating a nine-dash line map claiming to give it de facto maritime control over this entire region without regard to …

Crowdsourcing Global Wastewater Data, Don Mosteller, Sam Cohen, Cory Nestor, Angel Hsu, Omar Malik

Yale Day of Data

No time to waste: Crowdsourcing global wastewater treatment data

Worldwide, over 80 percent of wastewater is discharged into water bodies without undergoing treatment, severely impairing human well-being and ecosystem vitality along the way. National performance on wastewater treatment is difficult to quantify and is poorly understood due to a lack of common definitions, poor data collection standards, and limited historical data. To address this, the Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a research group that produces a biennial ranking of country-level environmental performance, developed a first-of-its kind national wastewater treatment indicator.[1]

The indicator assesses wastewater treatment performance for 183 countries, …

4th International Symposium On Sensor Science (I3s2015): Conference Report, Peter Seitz, Debbie G. Senesky, Michael J. Schöning, Peter C. Hauser, Roland Moser, Hans Peter Herzig, Assefa M. Melesse, Patricia A. Broderick, Patrick Thomas Eugester

Department of Earth and Environment

An international scientific conference was sponsored by the journal Sensors under the patronage of the University of Basel. The 4th edition of the International Symposium on Sensor Science (I3S2015) ran from 13 to 15 July 2015 in Basel, Switzerland. It comprised five plenary sessions and one morning with three parallel sessions. The conference covered the most exciting aspects and the latest developments in sensor science. The conference dinner took place on the second evening of the conference. The I3S2015 brought together 170 participants from 40 different countries.

Moving Fluid Mud Sondes, Optical And Acoustic Sensing Methods In Support Of Coastal Waterway Dredging, Charles R. Bostater, Tyler A. Rotkiske

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Airborne, Satellite and In-Situ optical and acoustical imaging provides a means to characterize surface and subsurface water conditions in shallow marine systems. An important research topic to be studied during dredging operations in harbors and navigable waterways is the movement of fluidized muds before, during and after dredging operations. The fluid movement of the surficial sediments in the form of flocs, muck and mud is important to estimate in order to model the transport of solids material during dredging operations. Movement of highly turbid bottom material creates a lutocline or near bottom nephelometric layers, reduces the penetration of light reaching …

A Multilevel Analysis Of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Effect On Preterm Births In Georgia, Usa, Wei Tu, Jun Tu, Stuart H. Tedders

School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability Faculty Publications

This study estimates the neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) effect on the risk of preterm birth (PTB) using multilevel regression (MLR) models. Birth data retrieved from year 2000 and 2010 Georgia Vital Records were linked to their respective census tracts. Principle component analysis (PCA) was performed on nine selected census variables and the first two principal components (Fac1 and Fac2) were used to represent the neighborhood-level SES in the MLR models. Two-level random intercept MLR models were specified using 122,744 and 112,578 live and singleton births at the individual level and 1613 and 1952 census tracts at the neighborhood level, for …

A Multiscale Mapping Assessment Of Lake Champlain Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms, Nathan Torbick, Megan Corbiere, Yu-Pin Lin

Dartmouth Scholarship

Lake Champlain has bays undergoing chronic cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms that pose a public health threat. Monitoring and assessment tools need to be developed to support risk decision making and to gain a thorough understanding of bloom scales and intensities. In this research application, Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), Rapid Eye, and Proba Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) images were obtained while a corresponding field campaign collected in situ measurements of water quality. Models including empirical band ratio regressions were applied to map chlorophylla and phycocyanin concentrations; all sensors performed well with R² and root-mean-square error (RMSE) ranging …

Performance Of High Resolution Satellite Rainfall Products Over Data Scarce Parts Of Eastern Ethiopia, Shimelis B. Gebere, Tena Alamirew, Broder J. Merkel, Assefa M. Melesse

Department of Earth and Environment

Accurate estimation of rainfall in mountainous areas is necessary for various water resource-related applications. Though rain gauges accurately measure rainfall, they are rarely found in mountainous regions and satellite rainfall data can be used as an alternative source over these regions. This study evaluated the performance of three high-resolution satellite rainfall products, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM 3B42), the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP_MVK+), and the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely-Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) at daily, monthly, and seasonal time scales against rain gauge records over data-scarce parts of Eastern Ethiopia. TRMM 3B42 rain products show …

Stone Walls And Shopping Malls: Retail Landscapes In The Bluegrass, Jason Richards

Kaleidoscope

This paper is an analysis of the recent use of veneered stone walls in the contemporary retail landscapes of the Bluegrass. These walls have been used in conjunction with other elements of the region’s landscape symbol vocabulary to re-create the equine landscape of Central Kentucky in commercial spaces. They seek to evoke the region’s symbolic landscape of wealthy horse estates, utilizing their inaccessibility to elicit an associative attitude of aspiration in the shopper. But they also speak to the values of the businesses and citizens who produce them. The earliest of these walls were found in the street frontage and …

Evapotranspiration In The Nile Basin: Identifying Dynamics, Trends, And Drivers 2002-2011, H. Alemu, A. T. Kaptué, G. B. Senay, M. C. Wimberly, Geoffrey Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Analysis of the relationship between evapotranspiration (ET) and its natural and anthropogenic drivers is critical in water-limited basins such as the Nile. The spatiotemporal relationships of ET with rainfall and vegetation dynamics in the Nile Basin during 2002–2011 were analyzed using satellite-derived data. Non-parametric statistics were used to quantify ET-rainfall interactions and trends across land cover types and subbasins. We found that 65% of the study area (2.5 million km2) showed significant (p < 0.05) positive correlations between monthly ET and rainfall, whereas 7% showed significant negative correlations. As expected, positive ET-rainfall correlations were observed over natural vegetation, mixed croplands/natural vegetation, and croplands, with a few subbasin-specific exceptions. In particular, irrigated croplands, wetlands and some forests exhibited negative correlations. Trend tests revealed spatial clusters of statistically significant trends in ET (6% of study area was negative; 12% positive), vegetation greenness (24% negative; 12% positive) and rainfall (11% negative; 1% positive) during 2002–2011. The Nile Delta, Ethiopian highlands and central Uganda regions showed decline in ET while central parts of Sudan, South Sudan, southwestern Ethiopia and northeastern Uganda showed increases. Except for a decline in ET in central Uganda, the detected changes in ET (both positive and negative) were not associated with corresponding changes in rainfall. Detected declines in ET in the Nile delta and Ethiopian highlands were found to be attributable to anthropogenic land degradation, while the ET decline in central Uganda is likely caused by rainfall reduction.

Changing Geography Of Retailing In Japan: Move From Traditional Shopping Arcades To Malls, Adam Peach

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Understanding Immigrant Housing Integration In Canada — The Role Of Transnational Engagements, Vincent Zubedaar Kuuire

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examined the relationship between immigrant housing consumption behaviours in Canada and transnational engagements (specifically remittances and transnational housing investments). Immigrant integration remains a paramount issue of interest to scholars and policy experts especially because of Canada’s adoption of immigration inflow as its principal population growth policy. Within the broader context of immigrant integration, adequate housing of immigrants is an important marker of integration; justified by the many benefits associated with it including improvement in children’s educational outcomes, enhancement of employment stability and enhancement of both physical and mental health, among others. However, a corollary of increasing number of …

Mahogany Intertwined: Enviromateriality Between Mexico, Fiji, And The Gibson Les Paul, Jose E. Martinez-Reyes

Jose E. Martinez-Reyes

This article builds a theory of enviromateriality through a global ethnography that engages both the material culture and materiality of a tree species, Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), and the global political ecology of forest conservation. The author seeks to understand what Adorno calls the ‘constellation’ between people and mahogany by tracing human–nature relations through the global commodity chain focusing on one particular artefact, the Gibson Les Paul, an iconic solid wood electric guitar made primarily of mahogany grown in Mexico and Fiji. Enviromateriality considers three phases in which to examine the material and materiality in a variety of processes that …

Measuring Community Flood Awareness And Preparedness In The Maitland Area And Lower Hunter Valley, Nsw, Neil Dufty, Amanda Hyde, David Webber, Ingrid Berthold, Elise Armstrong

Neil Dufty

The Hunter River of NSW has a long history of flooding. February 2015 was the sixtieth anniversary of the 1955 Hunter Region flood, the largest flood in the region’s recorded history. In conjunction with the commemoration, the NSW State Emergency Service (NSW SES) and the Hunter Local Land Services commissioned consultants Molino Stewart to extend previous social research in Maitland by surveying participants about the status of their own flood awareness and preparedness. The 2015 study and previous social research found that in Maitland flood-prone communities there appears to be a relatively low perception of personal flood risk. On the …

Heirloom: A Piper's Orchard Abecadarian, Shin Yu Pai

The Goose

Poetry by Shin Yu Pai

Georeferenced Data Employed In The Spatial Analysis Of Neighborhood Diversity And Creative Class Share In Chicago, Bradley Bereitschaft, Rex Cammack

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

The dataset described in this article, and made available as an accompanying spreadsheet, was used in the study entitled, “Neighborhood diversity and the creative class in Chicago,” to assess the spatial associations between neighborhood diversity and the creative class at the neighborhood (i.e., census tract) scale in Chicago [1]. In this study, we found a significant positive association between the creative class and the proportion of gay households and income diversity, but not racial or linguistic diversity. However, a geographically-weighted regression (GWR) analysis demonstrated substantial spatial nonstationarity among these relationships. This article describes the creative class, diversity, and control variables, …