Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Prepare For, Respond To, Recover, And Learn From Disasters: Using Data-Driven Methods To Model And Understand Disaster Resilience, Jinwen Xu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community resilience reflects the ability of human communities to prepare for, respond to, recover, and learn from disastrous events. Community resilience carries different meanings in different phases of disaster management (i.e., preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation). With the emergence of new geospatial data sources, human activities now can be captured through social media, mobile signals, and nighttime illuminations, which makes it possible to describe the conditions among various communities before, during, and after disasters. Therefore, this dissertation explored the use of different types of geospatial data sources (social media, nighttime light remote sensing, land-use data, and census survey data) during …

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. …

Habitat Suitability Index Model Of The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis Pratensis) In West-Central Florida, Courtney E. Buck

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis pratensis) is a state threatened endemic subspecies of the Sandhill Crane (Nesbitt & Tacha, 1997). With a population that was estimated at a maximum of 5,000 individuals in 2003 (Nesbitt & Hatchitt, 2008), it is imperative to identify potentially viable habitats, as Florida is rapidly developing. This research develops a Habitat Suitability Index model to determine unsuitable to optimally suitable habitat locations throughout west-central Florida. To do so, six suitability variables based on the crane’s life history were evaluated: Potential nesting area, immediate nesting area, wetland coverage, foraging area, brooding area, and road proximity. …

An Investigation Of Habitat Suitability Factors And Their Interactions For Predicting Gopher Tortoise Habitat, Abigail V. Lavallin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates the interaction between four habitat factors vital to the gopher tortoise in Florida. Federally and state listed as threatened throughout its entire range, the gopher tortoise is vital to protect, not only for itself individually but its burrows provide an essential habitat to over 300 species making it a key stone species within its environment. Historic habitat modeling methods are reviewed for the gopher tortoise to highlight the gap on this topic. This research expanded on the methods utilized by Baskaran et al. (2006) evaluating the soil, landcover, percentage of canopy cover and the depth to water …

Reconstructing Historical Hurricane Tracks In The Atlantic Basin: Three Case Studies From The 1840s, Emily L. Cerrito

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Analyzing past tropical cyclone activity enables researchers to recognize patterns of hurricane variability, estimate hurricane return periods, and assess local risk to future storms. This paleotempestology study used original primary data to make the historical record as comprehensive and accurate as possible for three major hurricanes: October 1844, October 1846, and September 1848. This thesis presents the reconstructed storm tracks, assesses the societal impacts, and evaluates the storm intensity of these three major hurricanes for the eastern U.S. and Cuba. The data utilized in this study include ship logbooks, newspapers, diaries, and instrumental meteorological records. A geographic information system (GIS) …

Characterizing Benthic Habitats Using Multibeam Sonar And Towed Underwater Video In Two Marine Protected Areas On The West Florida Shelf, Usa, Jennifer L. Brizzolara

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates a way to characterize the geology and biology of the seafloor in two Marine Protected Areas on the West Florida Shelf. Characterization of benthic habitats needs to include sufficient detail to represent the complex and heterogeneous bottom types. Characterizations can be interpreted from multiple data sets and displayed as benthic habitat maps. Multibeam sonar bathymetry and backscatter provide full spatial data coverage, but interpretation of such data requires some form of ground truth (to characterize the habitat). Imagery from towed underwater video provides continuous transects of seafloor data, which provide a more efficient method than data from …

A Composite Spatial Model Incorporating Groundwater Vulnerability And Environmental Disturbance To Guide Land Management, Johanna L. Kovarik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research has long recognized and studied the dynamics of groundwater processes. More recently, groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) are being recognized for their diversity and vulnerability to anthropogenic impact. Groundwater in karst landscapes presents a distinctive situation where flow through the subsurface often moves rapidly on the scale of days and weeks as opposed to years or millennia in other systems. This distinctive situation of karst systems and their vulnerability to human impacts necessitate an integrated and multifaceted approach for the management of these important resources. However, development of such an approach is complicated by the difficulty of obtaining detailed data …

No More Hidden Secrets: Human Rights Violations And Remote Sensing, Tommy O'Connell, Stephen Young

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Aim: This study used both high resolution and medium resolution satellite imagery to test three semi-automated remote sensing methods, in an attempt to identify useful tools to support eye-witness testimony and reports on human rights violations. As huts are routinely burned down during attacks on a village, particularly in Sudan, the number of huts and villages burned can be used to corroborate on-the-ground reports.

Methods: Three remote sensing methods (Supervised Classification, Change Detection, and Feature Extraction) were performed on imagery from both before the attacks in February 2006 and after the attacks to examine any useful trends that could be …

Assessing The Environmental Justice Implications Of Flood Hazards In Miami, Florida, Marilyn Christina Montgomery

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While environmental justice (EJ) research in the U.S. has traditionally focused on inequities in the distribution of technological hazards, the disproportionate impacts of Hurricane Katrina on racial minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged households have prompted researchers to investigate the EJ implications of natural hazards such as flooding. Recent EJ research has also emphasized the need to examine social inequities in access to environmental amenities. Unlike technological hazards such as air pollution and toxic waste sites, areas exposed to natural hazards such as hurricanes and floods have indivisible amenities associated with them. Coastal property owners are exposed to flood hazards, but also …