Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cell Towers As Urban Sensors: Understanding The Strengths And Limitations Of Mobile Phone Location Data, Ziliang Zhao

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding urban dynamics and human mobility patterns not only benefits a wide range of real-world applications (e.g., business site selection, public transit planning), but also helps address many urgent issues caused by the rapid urbanization processes (e.g., population explosion, congestion, pollution). In the past few years, given the pervasive usage of mobile devices, call detail records collected by mobile network operators has been widely used in urban dynamics and human mobility studies. However, the derived knowledge might be strongly biased due to the uneven distribution of people’s phone communication activities in space and time.

This dissertation research applies different analytical …

Mobility And Activity Space: Understanding Human Dynamics From Mobile Phone Location Data, Yang Xu

Doctoral Dissertations

Studying human mobility patterns and people’s use of space has been a major focus in geographic research for ages. Recent advancements of location-aware technologies have produced large collections of individual tracking datasets. Mobile phone location data, as one of the many emerging data sources, provide new opportunities to understand how people move around at a relatively low cost and unprecedented scale. However, the increasing data volume, issue of data sparsity, and lack of supplementary information introduce additional challenges when such data are used for human behavioral research. Effective analytical methods are needed to meet the challenges to gain an improved …

An Ethno-Historical Account Of The African American Community In Downtown Knoxville, Tennessee Before And After Urban Renewal, Anne Victoria

Masters Theses

Urban renewal programs that applied large-scale removal of community urban space and structures, have a long history of differential impact to its community members. These effects persist. Furthermore, current redevelopment projects continue to negatively adjust the landscapes for African Americans. Most research on these impacts tends to focus on the economic failure of downtown, or the displacement of community structures, such as businesses, homes, and churches. Less is studied on the human experience before and after the change. Based on an ethno-historical account of three African American communities in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, this thesis examines the memories of the landscape …

Drinking And Remaking Place: A Study Of The Impact Of Commercial Moonshine In East Tennessee, Helen Rosko

Masters Theses

Moonshine has undergone resurgence in recent years with the passage of the 2009 liquor laws in Tennessee, allowing for 41 counties to open and operate commercial moonshine distilleries. The rise of legalized moonshine is connected to broader economic changes and has already had a significant impact on the cultural landscape and the selling and remaking of place, in both East Tennessee and Appalachia, two historically underserved regions of the United States. Specifically this thesis research asks: How is place being sold, represented, and re-made through the proliferation of moonshine in East Tennessee? I address this question through an analysis of …

Non-Residential Pedestrian Access To Transit Systems: A Gis Modeling Application, Luis Miguel Taboada

Masters Theses

The success of a city’s urban transit system relies on the efficacy of its pedestrian infrastructure. A functional and access-oriented pedestrian network translates into safer pedestrian travel, increased demand in transit ridership, increases in commerce patronage, and reduced motorized travel (i.e., less congestion, and less vehicle emissions). Prioritization and allocation of sidewalk construction improvements are not always done in conjunction with transit service provisions. As a result, potential destinations are left inaccessible to pedestrians using the transit system. This study is motivated by concurrent research involving sidewalk improvement prioritization methods, within the scope of home-based work pedestrian transit trips. This …

‘Capitalism A Nuh’ Wi Frien’. The Formatting Of Farming Into An Asset, From Financial Speculation To International Aid, Luigi Russi, Tomaso Ferrando

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This paper deciphers the formatting of farming into an asset by tracking the modalities by which financial calculation is enabled across different sites of agency.

The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products.

We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel …

Contested Notions Of Irishness: Social Integration And The Multiple Intersections Of Ethno-Racial, Religious, And National Identities In Dublin, Ireland, Neil Conner

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the contested notions of identity (e.g. ethno-racial, religious, and national) and the growing tensions between native-born Irish citizens and recently arrived immigrants living in the Republic of Ireland. Examining these political and cultural intersections broadens our geographic understandings by contributing to larger geographic literatures consisting of: the geographies of inclusion and exclusion; collective identity construction; sense of belonging; community – both real and imagined; small-scale human territoriality; (social) integration; religiosity; and, of course, notions of Irishness. Despite the significance of these geographic issues in contemporary society, there exists a considerable lacuna within the discipline of Geography as …

Human And Black Bear Interactions In Buncombe County, North Carolina, From 1993–2013, Adam Guy Alsamadisi

Masters Theses

Over the past 20 years the frequency of interactions between humans and black bears in Buncombe County, North Carolina has been increasing, posing threats to human safety, black bear populations, ecological stability, and conservation support. During this time, both the human population and the American black bear population increased in southern Appalachia, which, combined with both urban expansion and landscape fragmentation, led to an increase in human and black bear interactions. Reducing future interactions with black bears is important as these interactions put support for conservation at risk. I performed a landscape analysis to better understand where human and black …

Establishing A Chronology Of Late Quaternary Glacial Advances In The Cordillera De Talamanca, Costa Rica, Rebecca Susan Potter

Masters Theses

Little research has focused on glacial events in the tropics. Providing an absolute glacial chronology in Costa Rica will build a foundation for future glacial chronologies and paleoclimate reconstructions in the highlands of Central America. Evidence of past glaciation, including moraines and glacial lakes, is preserved within formerly glaciated valleys in the Cordillera de Talamanca. Orvis and Horn (2000) constrained deglaciation ages of the most recent glacial event in the Cordillera de Talamanca based on radiocarbon dates of glacial lake sediments. Radiocarbon ages indicated complete deglaciation after 12.4 ka cal BP but before 9.7 ka cal BP (Orvis and Horn, …

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 …

Linking Soil Moisture And Carbon-Cycle Processes In Two Understudied Terrestrial Ecosystems: Ecuadorian Páramo Grasslands And Constructed Agricultural Wetlands, Julie Yvette Mcknight

Doctoral Dissertations

A better understanding of soil-water interactions and associated feedbacks in carbon-cycle processes is necessary for addressing knowledge gaps in the global carbon budget. This doctoral dissertation research investigated soil carbon-cycle processes in two ecosystems, Ecuadorian páramos and constructed agricultural wetlands, which are understudied in terrestrial carbon research. These sites represent ecosystems where land-use induced changes in soil moisture were expected to play an important role in soil carbon processes.

Soil carbon dioxide (CO₂) flux and extracellular enzyme (EE) activities were measured to assess changes in soil carbon processes in soil from four types of land use in Ecuadorian …

A Decade Of Lessons Learned: The Local Implementation Of Stormwater Programs In Tennessee, Catherine Trudy Olsen

Masters Theses

Over the past decade, communities across the nation have innovated, regulated, and constructed their way to managing urban stormwater runoff, with the grand goal of making the nation’s waters fishable and swimmable. Regulated under federal NPDES MS4 Phase II stormwater permits, communities have endeavored to implement the comprehensive requirements of this unfunded federal mandate. Reducing the considerable impact of municipal runoff on water resources across the country is imperative to the achievement of grand goals under the Clean Water Act: to restore and protect the quality of the nation’s waters (USEPA, 2000). Across the state of Tennessee, the capacity of …

Stand Dynamics Of A Unique Pygmy Forest, El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico, U.S.A, Sarah Jones Wayman

Masters Theses

The pygmy forest is a rare ecosystem found on the 3000-year-old McCarty’s basalt flow in El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico. The forest is dominated by contorted, shortstatured forms of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex C. Lawson) and piñyon pine (Pinus edulis Engelm.). The purpose of this research was to investigate the history of this unique forest and attempt to isolate reasons why the trees grow in such peculiar forms. We first used tree-ring patterns from 32 ponderosa pines growing on a sandstone kipuka located within the McCarty’s flow as a proxy for past precipitation, and used …

Time Series Analysis Of Modis Ndvi Data With Cloudy Pixels: Frequency-Domain And Sizer Analyses Of Vegetation Change In Western Rwanda, Ephraim Robert Love

Masters Theses

Remote sensing is a valuable source of data for the study of human ecology in rural areas. In this thesis, I attempt to analyze the presence of a long-term trend indicative of post-resettlement adaptation in the vegetation signals of Western Rwanda. There is a dearth of research utilizing medium resolution imagery to study difficult environments, such as tropical-montane regions, where complex topography and cloud cover diminish image accuracy. I attempt to add to the extant literature on frequency-domain smoothing methods as well as the literature on human-environment interaction in tropical-montane regions by applying a harmonic filtering and smoothing algorithm to …

Data Fusion Methods For Improved Demographic Resolution Of Population Distribution Datasets, Amy Nicole Rose

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite the availability of multiple global population distribution datasets, these datasets are limited by their lack of demographic depth. Although large area spatial datasets of population distributions currently exist, similar spatial representations of other demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are scarce. Spatial microdata that include detailed demographic information are rarely available for small areas, thus limiting the complex analysis of population subgroups. To address the lack of demographic resolution in existing population distribution datasets, a first step would be to develop large area microdata that can be attached to a country- or global-level population distribution dataset. This can be achieved by …

Visualizing The Historic Landscape Of Montserrat: Social Justice Through Community Mapping In A Post-Colonial Environment, Kevin Patrick Russell

Masters Theses

Scholars across the disciplines of geography, archaeology, and history argue for need to reconceptualize representations of history in post-colonial environments and to actively orientate scholarly research towards increasing the inclusion of local knowledge with 'expert' academic knowledge through participative methods. This thesis will show that the landscape surrounding the Little Bay Plantation contains cultural associations vital to a "socially just" interpretation of Montserrat culture that is not captured by existing archaeological research centered on ruins of the plantation infrastructure and European historical discourse. Through a participatory research methodology this thesis shows that there are many memories inscribed within and upon …

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 …

Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Taxi Availability And Pick-Ups: A Case Study Of Suzhou, China, Yicong Zhong

Masters Theses

This study utilized a seven-day taxi trajectory dataset to investigate the difficulty of finding vacant taxis in Suzhou, China, by analyzing the imbalance (IMB) between rider pick-ups and the number of vacant taxis on each road segment in Suzhou. To recognize significant local high vs. low frequency patterns of events, and to make the values of imbalance as representative as possible, a hierarchical structure of multi-resolution time windows that split each hour into as many as four parts was developed based on the minimum variance method of hierarchical clustering (Ward, 1963). In addition to imbalance, the second variable to be …

Using Gis To Identify At-Risk Populations Of Military-Generated Dust, Darcy Ann Ayers

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

This project uses GIS and an anthropological perspective to identify local populations surrounding Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) that are most at risk from military vehicle-generated dust. Using ArcGIS, the following data was analyzed in order to better understand impacts from dust on the local population: • Prevailing wind rose data from National Water and Climate Center under the USDA National Resources Conservation Service, • Digital Elevation Model (DEM) map of the island provided by National Elevation Dataset from USGS, and • The US Census data of the local population distribution surrounding the military base at PTA. When studying demographics, I …