Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Collaborative Approaches To The Management Of Geospatial Data Collections In Canadian Academic Libraries: A Historical Case Study, Leanne Trimble, Cheryl Woods, Francine Berish, Daniel Jakubek, Sarah Simpkin

Western Libraries Publications

Special Issue: Geospatial Data Management, Curation, and Preservation - Part 2

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is a consortium of the twenty-one university libraries in Ontario, Canada. Since 1967, OCUL member institutions have worked together to share costs and workload through collective purchasing and licensing of information resources and more recently through the establishment of a shared digital infrastructure known as Scholars Portal. Under the auspices of OCUL, Ontario's university map librarians formed the OCUL Map Group in 1973 to seek opportunities to communicate and collaborate to improve the collections and services they offer their users. The opportunities …

Which Came First, People Or Pollution? A Review Of Theory And Evidence From Longitudinal Environmental Justice Studies, Paul Mohai, Robin Saha

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

A considerable number of quantitative analyses have been conducted in the past several decades that demonstrate the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of a wide variety of environmental hazards. The vast majority of these have been cross-sectional, snapshot studies employing data on hazardous facilities and population characteristics at only one point in time. Although some limited hypotheses can be tested with cross-sectional data, fully understanding how present-day disparities come about requires longitudinal analyses that examine the demographic characteristics of sites at the time of facility siting and track demographic changes after siting. Relatively few such studies …

The Environmental Impacts Of Colonialism, Lawrence Wood

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The politics of the global imperial era are having real-world environmental consequences globally, especially in the former colonies. Indifferent administration by overseas imperial powers transparently sought to enrich their home country with little to no thought about the long term environmental or political consequences for the colony. One of the main objectives of global imperialism, from the first Spanish colonies to the last of the British and Portuguese colonies, was the enhanced profitable extraction of resources. The industrial revolution fueled the need for colonial resource extraction. Industrialization and imperialism formed a positive feedback loop, in which one created a greater …

Grain Sorting In The Morphological Active Layer Of A Braided River Physical Model., Pauline Leduc, Peter Ashmore, James T. Gardner

Geography & Environment Publications

A physical scale model of a gravel-bed braided river was used to measure vertical grain size sorting in the morphological active layer aggregated over the width of the river. This vertical sorting is important for analyzing braided river sedimentology, for numerical modeling of braided river morphodynamics, and for measuring and predicting bedload transport rate. We define the morphological active layer as the bed material between the maximum and minimum bed elevations at a point over extended time periods sufficient for braiding processes to rework the river bed. The vertical extent of the active layer was measured using 40 hourly high-resolution …

Object-Based Crop Classification With Landsat-Modis Enhanced Time-Series Data, Qingting Li, Cuizhen Wang, Bing Zhang, Linlin Lu

Faculty Publications

Cropland mapping via remote sensing can provide crucial information for agri-ecological studies. Time series of remote sensing imagery is particularly useful for agricultural land classification. This study investigated the synergistic use of feature selection, Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) segmentation and decision tree classification for cropland mapping using a finer temporal-resolution Landsat-MODIS Enhanced time series in 2007. The enhanced time series extracted 26 layers of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and five NDVI Time Series Indices (TSI) in a subset of agricultural land of Southwest Missouri. A feature selection procedure using the Stepwise Discriminant Analysis (SDA) was performed, and 10 optimal …

Reconstruction Of Daily 30 M Data From Hj Ccd, Gf-1 Wfv, Landsat, And Modis Data For Crop Monitoring, Mingquan Wu, Xiaoyang Zhang, Wenjiang Huang, Zheng Niu, Changyao Wang, Wang Li, Pengyu Hao

GSCE Faculty Publications

With the recent launch of new satellites and the developments of spatiotemporal data fusion methods, we are entering an era of high spatiotemporal resolution remote-sensing analysis. This study proposed a method to reconstruct daily 30 m remote-sensing data for monitoring crop types and phenology in two study areas located in Xinjiang Province, China. First, the Spatial and Temporal Data Fusion Approach (STDFA) was used to reconstruct the time series high spatiotemporal resolution data from the Huanjing satellite charge coupled device (HJ CCD), Gaofen satellite no. 1 wide field-of-view camera (GF-1 WFV), Landsat, and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. Then, …

Tree Inventory Report: Soma District, Cody Graham, Jeremy Bigelow, Gary Shaw, Andrew Bailey, Katelynn Bisso, David Dunnington, Joshua Emmons, Morgan Farber, Cody Graham, Ryan Guidry, Max Joyner, Roger Klingelhoffer, Jonathan Newman, Nicholas Scarpelli, Geoffrey Duh

Asset Mapping: Community Geography Project

The SOMA tree inventory project was taken on by a group of fourteen students as a senior capstone at Portland State University, in September of 2015. Many of us came to this class with GiS background, however, there are others representing the diverse collection of studies offered at PSU, such as film, communication, and general sciences. Capstone courses are PSU’s requirement for all seniors that allow each student to take part in helping those in the surrounding community, by providing a benefit to organizations in need of a large group of volunteers. Our capstone course was designed to impart the …

Land System Science And Sustainable Development Of The Earth System: A Global Land Project Perspective, Peter H. Verburg, Neville Crossman, Erle C. Ellis, Andreas Heinimann, Patrick Hostert, Ole Mertz, Harini Nagendra, Thomas Sikor, Karl Heinz Erb, Nancy Golubiewski, Ricardo Grau, Morgan Grove, Souleymane Konaté, Patrick Meyfroidt, Dawn C. Parker, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Hideaki Shibata, Allison Thomson, Lin Zhen

Geography

Land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment. Understanding the drivers, state, trends and impacts of different land systems on social and natural processes helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the tradeoff these changes may represent. The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social-and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions. Land system science has moved from a focus on …

Rainfall Interception And The Coupled Surface Water And Energy Balance, Albert I.J.M. Van Dijk, John H. Gash, Eva Van Gorsel, Peter D. Blanken, Alessandro Cescatti, Carmen Emmel, Bert Gielen, Ian N. Harman, Gerard Kiely, Lutz Merbold, Leonardo Montagnani, Eddy Moors, Matteo Sottocornola, Andrej Varlagin, Christopher A. Williams, Georg Wohlfahrt

Geography

Evaporation from wet canopies (. E) can return up to half of incident rainfall back into the atmosphere and is a major cause of the difference in water use between forests and short vegetation. Canopy water budget measurements often suggest values of E during rainfall that are several times greater than those predicted from Penman-Monteith theory. Our literature review identified potential issues with both estimation approaches, producing several hypotheses that were tested using micrometeorological observations from 128 FLUXNET sites world-wide. The analysis shows that FLUXNET eddy-covariance measurements tend to provide unreliable measurements of E during rainfall. However, the other micrometeorological …

A Geographic View Of Expansion Choices By U.S. Firms In China, Rossitza Wooster, David Banis, Ayesha Khalid

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

How does geography matter for explaining the location patterns of U.S. companies in China? We combine insights from the literature on economic geography and spatial interdependence in foreign direct investment (FDI) activity, to provide a comparative analysis using both sectoral regression results and maps that illustrate patterns in the data. We use a unique sample of publicly traded U.S. firms who announced expansion of operations into China between 1980 and 2005. Regression results show that relative to the tertiary sector, firm characteristics matter more for primary sector firms, whereas province characteristics matter more for secondary sector firms. Additionally, our GIS …

Delivering Green Streets: An Exploration Of Changing Perceptions And Behaviours Over Time Around Bioswales In Portland, Oregon, Glyn Everett, Jessica Lamond, Anita T. Morzillo, Annie Marissa Matsler, Faith Ka Shun Chan

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Green Infrastructure (GI) is an increasingly popular means of dealing with flooding and water quality issues worldwide. This study examines public perceptions of, and behaviour around, bioswales, which are a popular GI facility in the United States. Bioswales are highly visible interventions requiring support from residents and policy-makers to be implemented and maintained appropriately. To understand how the residents’ perceptions and attitudes might develop over time, we interviewed residents of Portland, Oregon, living near bioswales installed 1–2, 4–5 and 8–9 years ago, to determine awareness, understanding, and opinions about the devices. We found no consistent patterns across time periods, but …

Gis-Integrated Mathematical Modeling Of Social Phenomena At Macro- And Micro- Levels—A Multivariate Geographically-Weighted Regression Model For Identifying Locations Vulnerable To Hosting Terrorist Safe-Houses: France As Case Study, Elyktra Eisman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adaptability and invisibility are hallmarks of modern terrorism, and keeping pace with its dynamic nature presents a serious challenge for societies throughout the world. Innovations in computer science have incorporated applied mathematics to develop a wide array of predictive models to support the variety of approaches to counterterrorism. Predictive models are usually designed to forecast the location of attacks. Although this may protect individual structures or locations, it does not reduce the threat—it merely changes the target. While predictive models dedicated to events or social relationships receive much attention where the mathematical and social science communities intersect, models dedicated to …

Mdocs Poster-2015-11-11, Sixty Years Young, Michael Zhou

MDOCS Publications

In support of the 60th anniversary of the Adult and Senior Center of Saratoga, Skidmore students prepared a video and exhibition, Sixty Years Young, drawing on the Center's archives and interviews, documenting its past, present and hopes for the future.

Wildlife In U.S. Cities: Managing Unwanted Animals, John Hadidian

Conservation Collection

Conflicts between people and wild animals in cities are undoubtedly as old as urban living itself. In the United States it is only of late, however, that many of the species now found in cities have come to live there. The increasing kind and number of human-wildlife conflicts in urbanizing environments makes it a priority that effective and humane means of conflict resolution be found. The urban public wants conflicts with wildlife resolved humanely, but needs to know what the alternative management approaches are, and what ethical standards should guide their use. This paper examines contemporary urban wildlife control in …

Predicting Toucan Locations In Panama Using Arcgis, Daniel J. Herrera

Geography: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Toucans are omnivorous birds native to southern Latin America and South America. They are non-migratory, and their range is disputed among experts. In an attempt to develop a better understanding of the range and behavior of toucans, correlations between toucan presence and geographic features of the area were analyzed to create a location probability map.

An Approach To Optimal Hyperspectral And Multispectral Signature And Image Fusion For Detecting Hidden Targets On Shorelines, Charles R. Bostater

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Hyperspectral and multispectral imagery of shorelines collected from airborne and shipborne platforms are used following pushbroom imagery corrections using inertial motion motions units and augmented global positioning data and Kalman filtering. Corrected radiance or reflectance images are then used to optimize synthetic high spatial resolution spectral signatures resulting from an optimized data fusion process. The process demonstrated utilizes littoral zone features from imagery acquired in the Gulf of Mexico region. Shoreline imagery along the Banana River, Florida, is presented that utilizes a technique that makes use of numerically embedded targets in both higher spatial resolution multispectral images and lower spatial …

Modis-Derived Spatiotemporal Changes Of Major Lake Surface Areas In Arid Xinjiang, China, 2000–2014, Qingting Li, Linlin Lu, Cuizhen Wang, Yingkui Li, Yue Sui, Huadong Guo

Faculty Publications

Inland water bodies, which are critical freshwater resources for arid and semi-arid areas, are very sensitive to climate change and human disturbance. In this paper, we derived a time series of major lake surface areas across Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China, based on an eight-day MODIS time series in 500 m resolution from 2000 to 2014. A classification approach based on water index and dynamic threshold selection was first developed to accommodate varied spectral features of water pixels at different temporal steps. The overall classification accuracy for a MODIS-derived water body is 97% compared to a water body derived …

Evaluating Faciltated Migration As A Climate Change Adaptation Approach In Southern Ontario's Sugar Maple Ecosystems, Kaitlyn Mcglade

Geography and Environmental Studies Major Research Papers

This research seeks to provide an explanation and evaluation of facilitated migration as an adaptation approach for improving the long-term resilience and sustainability of Acer saccharum (sugar maple) ecosystems and sugarbush production. The research concludes that faciliated migration is supported by producers and other industry stakeholders as a feasable adaptation approach for improving resilience and sustainability.

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 …

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 …

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 …