Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Development Of A Multiband Remote Sensing System For Determination Of Unsaturated Soil Properties, Cyrus D. Garner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A multiband system including active microwave sensing and visible-near infrared reflectance spectroscopy was developed to measure unsaturated soil properties in both field and laboratory environments. Remote measurements of soil volumetric water content (θv), soil water matric potential (ψ), and soil index properties (liquid limit [LL], plastic limit [PL], and clay fraction [CF]) were conducted. Field-based measurement of θv was conducted using a ground-based radar system and field measurements within 10 percentage points of measurements acquired with traditional sampling techniques were obtained. Laboratory-based, visible and near infrared spectroscopy was found to be capable of obtaining empirical, soil specific regression functions (partial …

Remote Sensing Insights Into Storage Capacities Among Plains Village Horticulturalists, Adam Wiewel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Maize was a fundamental component of the diet and economy of Middle Missouri Plains Village groups, sedentary farmers with settlements along the Missouri River during the last millennia. More than a century of study has contributed to our understanding of agricultural production among these peoples, but little effort has been made to consider temporal variation in production. Such an understanding is crucial to examining changes that occurred before and after the arrival of colonists and their trade goods in the seventeenth century. Plains archaeologists have suggested that the storage capacity of Middle Missouri villages increased during the sixteenth through the …

Environmental And Climatic Constraints On Large-Scale Camelina Production In Eastern Arkansas, Benjamin Robert Tracy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Camelina sativa is a cold weather crop that is typically grown in semi-arid environments in the Western United States, usually as a spring crop, but sometimes during the winter. Research analyzing climate data and soil hydrology is important to better understand the environmental and terrain conditions necessary for Camelina farming wherever it is proposed for large-scale production. This study focused on various conditions and constraints pertaining to the potential for Camelina as a crop biofuel in Eastern Arkansas. Due to interest in the economic potential of crop biofuels in this area, and in particular the low input costs for Camelina, …

Pattern Exploration And Event Detection From Geo-Tagged Tweets, Yugian Huang

Open Access Theses

Twitter is one of the most famous social networking services in the world. With 313 million monthly active users, Twitter can produce around 6,000 tweets per second, which corresponds to around 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year. Besides being a successful company, Twitter provides a great opportunity to scientists from various disciplines. Twitter allows users to tweet with a location tag, which enables the connection of virtual networks to the events happening in real life. Because of the massive amount of valuable geographic information, location-based services, targeted advertising, and social network studies could benefit …

Remote Sensing Of Snow Using Bistatic Radar Reflectometry, Abi Komanduru

Open Access Theses

Snow and ice processes are a critical part of the Earth’s hydrological and climate cycles. These processes can serve as an important source of fresh water as well as a cause of flooding. Various missions have been proposed by NASA and ESA for the purpose of remote sensing of snow. This research looks at applying bistatic radar reflectometry to the remote sensing of snow water equivalent. The resulting phase offset from changes in optical path length due to reflection through snow are the primary measurements made. The research uses data from a field campaign in Fraser, CO, involving an instrument …

A Gis Approach To Modeling Groundwater Levels In The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, Josef Orion Lilly

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Groundwater depletion, a subject of growing concern for a significant portion of Arkansas, may lead to future economic challenges for the Arkansas Delta region. The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer is the uppermost aquifer and features the largest groundwater capacity in the Mississippi Embayment Aquifer System. The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, commonly referred to as the “alluvial aquifer”, spans 53,000〖 km〗^2 underlying portions of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee. As the alluvial aquifer trends southward for approximately 250 miles alongside the Mississippi River, its geographical extent ranges from 50 to 125 miles wide. There is a …

Lidar-Assisted Extraction Of Old Growth Baldcypress Stands Along The Black River Of North Carolina, Weston Pierce Murch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The remnants of ancient baldcypress forests continue to grow across the Southeastern United States. These long lived trees are invaluable for biodiversity along riverine ecosystems, provide habitat to a myriad of animal species, and augment the proxy climate record for North America. While extensive logging of the areas along the Black River in North Carolina has mostly decimated ancient forests of many species including the baldcypress, conservation efforts from The Nature Conservancy and other partners are under way. In order to more efficiently find and study these enduring stands of baldcypress, some of which are estimated to be more than …

Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry Analysis Of Ground Deformation Within The Coso Geothermal Site, California, Erik Vaughn Brawner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Earth’s surface movement may cause as a potential hazard to infrastructure and people. Associated earthquake hazards pose a potential side effect of geothermal activity. Modern remote sensing techniques known as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) can measure surface change with a high degree of precision to mm scale movements. Previous work has identified a deformation anomaly within the Coso Geothermal site in eastern California. Surface changes have not been analyzed since the 1990s, allowing a decade of geothermal production impact to occur since previously assessed. In this study, InSAR data was acquired and analyzed between the years 2005 and 2010. …

Trade And Transport In Late Roman Syria, Christopher Wade Fletcher

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the relative notoriety and miraculous level of preservation of the Dead Cities of Syria, fundamental questions of economic and subsistence viability remain unanswered. In the 1950s Georges Tchalenko theorized that these sites relied on intensive olive monoculture to mass export olive oil to urban centers. Later excavations discovered widespread cultivation of grains, fruit, and beans which directly contradicted Tchalenko’s assertion of sole reliance on oleoculture. However, innumerable olive presses in and around the Dead Cities still speak to a strong tradition of olive production. This thesis tests the logistical viability of olive oil transportation from the Dead Cities to …

Geospatial Analysis Of Droughts, Rice And Wheat Production, And Agrarian Vulnerability: A District-Level Study Of The Self-Calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index In India, Aaron Michael Shew

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Droughts have affected more people than any other natural disaster in the last century, causing billions in economic damages and millions of deaths. As the Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) have heated in the Indian Ocean, drought patterns across South Asia have changed; the Indian monsoon has become more volatile and less predictable. In this study, monthly self-calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index (sc-PDSI) data for the time period between 1950 and 2009 were interpolated to India’s districts; then the data were analyzed for changes in frequency and severity. The data were further evaluated using Anselin’s Local Moran’s I Statistic to elicit …

A Gnawing Problem: Does Rodent Incisor Microwear Record Diet Or Habitat?, Salvatore Samuel Caporale

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dental microwear has been shown to reflect food preferences and habitat in extant vertebrates, and its analysis has been applied to fossil assemblages to infer paleodiet and paleoenvironment. Such reconstructions are, of course, only as good as the extant baseline used to infer relationships between wear pattern and diet/habitat. This study tests, through dental microwear texture analysis, the potential of modern rodent lower incisors to reveal those relationships, and evaluates the extent to which effects of diet and habitat can be parsed from the signal. Microwear texture profiles were created for individual lower rodent incisors (n=430) using confocal profilometry and …

A History Of African And South American Basins, Rebecca A. Bobick

Open Access Theses

As hydrocarbon development in Africa and South America continues to expand, understanding the geologic evolution as well as the geologic symmetry of each of the continent's coastal basins grows increasingly important. Unfortunately, there's currently no comprehensive database that contains the stratigraphic record, depositional environments, and tectonic evolution available for either Africa or South America. Therefore, the goal of my research is to create an extensive datapack and guide booklet for Africa's major sedimentary basins, complete the South America datapack that's currently being constructed, and correlate the western African conjugate basins to the eastern South American conjugate basins. To accomplish this, …

Estimating The Water Quality Condition Of River And Lake Water In The Midwestern United States From Its Spectral Characteristics, Jing Tan

Open Access Dissertations

This study focuses on developing/calibrating remote sensing algorithms for water quality retrieval in Midwestern rivers and lakes. In the first part of this study, the spectral measurements collected using a hand-held spectrometer as well as water quality observations for the Wabash River and its tributary the Tippecanoe River in Indiana were used to develop empirical models for the retrieval of chlorophyll (chl) and total suspended solids (TSS). A method for removing sky and sun glint from field spectra for turbid inland waters was developed and tested. Empirical models were then developed using a subset of the field measurements with the …

Evaluation Of Conservation Practices Through Simulation Modeling And Tool Development, Gurdeep Singh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For the first objective, predicted impacts of selected Mississippi River Basin Initiative (MRBI) conservation practices (CPs) on sediment and nutrient loss were assessed. The study area was L’Anguille River Watershed (LRW), a priority focus watershed of the MRBI program and the simulated CPs were filter strip, critical area planting, grade stabilization structure, irrigation land leveling, irrigation pipeline, irrigation water management, and nutrient management. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was calibrated (1998 – 2005) and validated (2006 – 2012) for flow, sediment, total phosphorus (TP), and nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) at the Colt site (503 sq. km. drainage area) and …

Towards Systematic Selection Of Terrain- And Ground Cover-Specific Lidar Filtering Parameters, Vance Green

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accurate automated classification of LiDAR point clouds is a well-known problem and proper parameterization of the classification algorithm is essential to creating useful bare-earth terrain models. Parameterization is particularly important in areas characterized by extremely low relief, such as the Little Red River Irrigation Project Area in central Arkansas. In this kind of landscape, analyses such as hydrological flow models are sensitive to small changes in the topography, and therefore prone to errors in the classification of the LiDAR point cloud and the digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from it. Developing effective project-specific parameters requires a high degree of knowledge …

Thermodynamic Modeling Of Aqueous Geochemistry Of Chlorine Salts: Application To Stability And Habitability Of Liquid Brines On Mars, Amira Elsenousy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The WCL (Wet Chemistry Lab) instrument on board the Mars’s Phoenix Lander has identified the soluble ionic composition of the soil at the landing site. Two important ions were detected at the landing site; perchlorates (ClO4-) with a concentration of ~ 2.4 wt% and chlorides (Cl-) with a concentration of 0.54 wt%. Between chloride and perchlorate ions three other oxidized ions exist and called chlorine ions: hypochlorite ClO - (ox. state +1), chlorite ClO2- (ox. state +3) and chlorate ClO3- (ox. state +5). These oxidized ions might be existed as intermediate species on the surface of Mars but remained undetected. …

Solubility And Detectability Of Hydrocarbons On The Surface Of Titan, Sandeep Singh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Titan’s thick atmosphere is enriched with organic compounds and its surface holds reservoirs of hydrocarbons. This makes Titan the only other candidate in our solar system (apart from Earth) to have stable liquid at the surface. The stability and characteristics of liquid and ices on the surface of Titan are of high importance in understanding its surface-atmosphere interactions. Titan’s hydrological cycle is similar to what we see on Earth, with the exception of methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6) taking the place of water. The smoggy atmosphere veils the surface of Titan from the view of Cassini spacecraft, except at seven …

Lidar And Machine Learning Estimation Of Hardwood Forest Biomass In Mountainous And Bottomland Environments, Bowei Xue

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Light detection and ranging (lidar) has been applied in various forest applications, such as to retrieve forest structural information, to build statistical models for identification of tree species, and to monitor forest growth. However, despite significant progress in these areas, the choice of regression approach and parameter tuning remains an ongoing critical question. This study focused on choosing the right spatial generalization level to transform lidar point clouds to 2D images which can be further processed by mature image processing and pattern recognition approaches. It also compared the prediction ability of popular machine learning algorithms applied to aboveground forest biomass …

Aerial Thermography In Archaeological Prospection: Applications & Processing, Autumn Chrysantha Cool

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aerial thermography is one of the least utilized archaeological prospection methods, yet it has great potential for detecting anthropogenic anomalies. Thermal infrared radiation is absorbed and reemitted at varying rates by all objects on and within the ground depending upon their density, composition, and moisture content. If an area containing archaeological features is recorded at the moment when their thermal signatures most strongly contrast with that of the surrounding matrix, they can be visually identified in thermal images.

Research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s established a few basic rules for conducting thermal survey, but the expense associated with the …

Mapping Ancient Baldcypress Forests For Conservation At Black River, North Carolina, Jordan Nichole Burns

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A few ancient baldcypress-bottomland hardwood forests survive across the southeastern United States in a mosaic of remnant old-growth stands left untouched by extensive logging during the early 20th century. Uncut stands in the Southeast that survived centuries of disturbance following European settlement tended to be too senescent and non-commercial to justify logging. Remnant ancient baldcypress forests at Black River, North Carolina, appear to contain the oldest living trees in eastern North America and The Nature Conservancy has protected several of these stands. However, the full extent of ancient bottomland forests along Black River is not known and many valuable tracts …

Toolstone Use In Ozark Prehistory: Assessing Adaptations To A Lithic Dichotomy In The Boston Mountains And Springfield Plateau, Luke Allen Morris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Toolstone use in the Ozark Mountains is a reactionary process reliant on how the landscape provides or constrains chipped stone for prehistoric populations. These technological adaptations are recognized at sites throughout the area, but no regional assessment of lithic assemblages provides answers as to why certain stones are used at a particular location. This thesis employs a five step mass analysis of lithic assemblages, and GIS visualizations to observe how the organization of stone technologies vary based on location within contrasting geologic contexts. The chert-bearing Springfield Plateau, and the Boston Mountains with siltstone, are two neighboring dichotomous landscapes that illustrate …

Automatic Extraction Of Plots From Geo-Registered Uas Imagery Of Crop Fields With Complex Planting Schemes, Anthony A. Hearst

Open Access Theses

Complex planting schemes are common in experimental crop fields and can make it difficult to extract plots of interest from high-resolution imagery of the fields gathered by Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). This prevents UAS imagery from being applied in High-Throughput Precision Phenotyping and other areas of agricultural research. If the imagery is accurately geo-registered, then it may be possible to extract plots from the imagery based on their map coordinates. To test this approach, a UAS was used to acquire visual imagery of 5 ha of soybean fields containing 6.0 m2 plots in a complex planting scheme. Sixteen artificial targets …

Evaluating Intensity As A Controller Function For Nextgen Scenarios With Increased Capacity, Caitlin Anne Surakitbanharn

Open Access Theses

Automated separation assurance is the most mature concept to handle increasing airspace traffic and capacity needs, yet the system lacks a way to pre-emptively identify aircraft separation problems. The intensity control measure looks to find situations where if an aircraft pair makes an unplanned change in heading or altitude at the wrong moment, an unrecoverable situation arises. This research analyzes static, open loop air traffic data in an en-route sector to determine how many high intensity aircraft pairs (HIP) exist per minute, and if the intensity measure is a safely manageable function for air traffic controllers. It is found that …

Assessing Inland Hazards Associated With Hurricanes In The U.S. Atlantic Basin, Dereka Latrese Carroll

Open Access Theses

The skill of tropical-cyclone (TC) track forecasts has steadily improved over the past decades, as has the understanding of TC risk in coastal regions. However, there is still much to be learned about the TC risk in inland regions, which is complicated by the presence of coastal evacuees, and includes hazards such as inland flash flooding and tornadoes. This was exemplified by Hurricane Ivan (2004), which spawned 118 tornadoes and produced significant rainfall amounts contributing to flooding inland. Ivan was responsible for 25 deaths in the U.S. and $18.8 billion (2004 USD) in damages. As part of a larger effort …

Retrofiting Lid Practices Into Existing Neighborhoods: Is It Worth It?, Timothy Wright

Open Access Theses

Low impact development (LID) practices are gaining popularity as a way to manage stormwater close to the source. This reduces infrastructure requirements and helps to maintain hydrologic processes close to predevelopment conditions. Studies have shown LID practices to be effective in reducing runoff and improving water quality. However, little has been done to aid decision makers in selecting the most effective practices for their needs and budgets.

To this end, the L-THIA LID model has been applied. Using readily available data sources, multiple scenarios can quickly be examined, and then analyzed to determine the cost of implementation and the approximate …

Climate Change In Native American Communities: Challenges Of Comprehension, Context, & Communication, Patrick Austin Freeland

Open Access Theses

Very little literature exists which details how climate change impacts Indian Country. This study first investigates how US newspaper stories published from 1991 to 2011 present American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) perceptions, and observations, of environmental changes resulting from climatic change. Several specific risk, impacts, and vulnerabilities were documented, and observations of climate change from AI/AN perceptions were analyzed for content to identify three frames of perspective: pan-Indian, tribally-specific, and individual perceptions. By law, ethical considerations are paramount when dealing with research in Native American tribes and communities. While each nation is supposed to review research to assess the risk and …

Bedrock Geological Map Of The Rockhouse Quadrangle, Carroll And Madison Counties, Arkansas, Douglas Eben Jones

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A digital geologic map of the Rockhouse quadrangle, Carroll and Madison counties, Arkansas, was created on a 1:24,000 scale using ArcMap 10 and Photoshop CS4. The data obtained in the field are digitized onto the United States Geological Survey (USGS) digital raster graphic (DRG) of the Rockhouse quadrangle. The geology in the Rockhouse quadrangle consist entirely of sedimentary rocks that are Paleozoic ranging from Lower Ordovician to Mississippian in age. The Ordovician System is represented by the Cotter, Powell, Everton, and St. Peter Formations. The Cotter and Powell are the prominent bluff forming units throughout the quadrangle and along the …

Archaeological Geophysics, Excavation, And Ethnographic Approaches Toward A Deeper Understanding Of An Eighteenth Century Wichita Site, Michael Don Carlock

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research exemplifies a multidirectional approach to an archaeological interpretation of an eighteenth century Wichita village and fortification located on the Red River bordering Oklahoma and Texas. A battle that is believed to have occurred at the Longest site (34JF1) in 1759 between Spanish colonials and a confederation of Native Americans led to several Spanish primary documents describing the people that lived there, the fortification and surrounding village, and of course the battle itself. Investigation of the Longest site (34JF1) in Oklahoma presents a remarkable opportunity to combine extensive historical research, archaeological prospecting using geophysics, and traditional excavation techniques in …

Manifold Learning Based Spectral Unmixing Of Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Data, Jun-Hwa Chi

Open Access Dissertations

Nonlinear mixing effects inherent in hyperspectral data are not properly represented in linear spectral unmixing models. Although direct nonlinear unmixing models provide capability to capture nonlinear phenomena, they are difficult to formulate and the results are not always generalizable. Manifold learning based spectral unmixing accommodates nonlinearity in the data in the feature extraction stage followed by linear mixing, thereby incorporating some characteristics of nonlinearity while retaining advantages of linear unmixing approaches. Since endmember selection is critical to successful spectral unmixing, it is important to select proper endmembers from the manifold space. However, excessive computational burden hinders development of manifolds for …

The Interactive Effects Of Multiple Stressors On Lithobates Catesbeianus And Anaxyrus Americanus, Matthew Kyle Holden

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Amphibian populations worldwide have experienced dramatic declines, and many species have already become locally, regionally, or globally extirpated with thousands more being threatened with extinction. These declines have occurred more rapidly in amphibians than any other group of vertebrates, which is especially concerning to scientists because amphibians serve as indicator species of overall environmental health. Major causes for amphibian declines are discussed in Chapter 1 and include: habitat modification and destruction, commercial over-exploitation, introduced species, environmental contaminants, global climate change, and infectious diseases.

Chapter 2 discusses the major research aspects of the thesis by examining the interactive effects of multiple …