Beyond The Edge Of The Planted Field: Exploring Community-Based Environmental Education, And Invisible Losses In Settler And Indigenous Cultural Contexts, Samantha Da Rosa Holmes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Walpole Island Land Trust and the Sydenham Field Naturalists came together for a focus group at the Walpole Island Heritage Centre and spoke of the relevance environmental education plays in the awareness of a shared history between communities from separate cultural contexts. From the focus group this research is able to contextualize the conversation between a non-Indigenous and an Indigenous community-based environmental organization, and their focus on the relationship between people, place, and history. The context of the conversation being the colonial legacies of land use management and educational practices and how these institutions prolong the effect of invisible …

Probiotic Yoghourt For Health, Nutrition And Women's Empowerment In Kenya: A Community-Based Approach, Ellena Andoniou

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation aims to examine the impacts of probiotic yoghourt on health, nutrition and women’s empowerment within the context of HIV/AIDS in Kenya. Mixed methods that combine quantiative and qualitative approaches are used to understand the effects of probiotic yoghourt on the health, nutrition and quality of life for men and women. Results of the quantiative analysis (n=227) demonstrated that the probiotic yoghourt confers a variety of health benefits – physiological (fewer urogenital conditions and digestive problems; reduced dependence on medical treatment), and psychological (perceived improvements with bodily appearance, felt an increased meaningfulness with life). Results of the qualitative analysis …

Examining The Active Transportation - Built Environment Relationship In London, Ontario, Douglas M. Rivet

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Research on the relationship between the built environment and active transportation has accelerated and expanded over the past 20 years. This growth is in large part due to continuing evidence of rising rates in obesity and Type-2 diabetes that coincides with decreasing rates of physical activity across all ages in the post-industrial world. Walking more is a simple solution to increasing rates of physical activity. While for most people walking is possible throughout the day, there has been a decrease in the use of walking as a means of transportation. This study examines environmental determinants of active transportation from two …

Gogeomatics And Its New London Ontario Group, Chunhua Liao, Hongyu Zhang, Peter Crawford

GIS Day

GoGeomatics Canada is an online career network for the Canadian geomatics community. Founded in 2005, the website provides job postings, events listings, magazine articles and newsletter services for geomatics professionals. Informal and free monthly networking events at pubs across Canada are happening in more than ten regions including Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara, Calgary, Vancouver, and Edmonton. In October 2016, a new GoGeomatics London chapter was founded by a group of graduate students from the Department of Geography at Western University to bring social and career development events to the local geospatial community. The first event was held on Oct. 25 at …

Use Of Drones And Gis To Identify Geoglyphs In The Sihuas Valley, Peru, Felipe Gonzalez-Macqueen

GIS Day

Geoglyphs are anthropogenic features built onto the landscape by either removing a layer from the ground to expose the soil underneath or adding layers on top to create a relief. The most well-known examples of this are in the Nazca Valley, Peru where features can measure up to 400m long and have a variety of shapes. However not all geoglyphs are as big and complex as these, as is the case of the Sihuas Valley, Peru where geoglyphs are smaller and less elaborate in comparison. To identify and map these geoglyphs and other features, we used a combination of satellite …

Examining The Community Food Environments For Elementary School-Aged Children In The City Of London And Middlesex County, Ontario, Catherine Dubreck

GIS Day

Childhood obesity is a growing public health issue of global importance. In Canada, one in four children and youth are overweight or obese. Research suggests diet plays a crucial role in childhood obesity, and that prevalence rates of overweight or obesity among children in a neighborhood may relate to area socioeconomic characteristics and other environmental factors. The community nutrition environment (e.g., the type, location, and accessibility of food outlets) and the consumer nutrition environment (e.g., the price, promotion, placement, and availability of healthy options and nutrition information) can influence dietary habits, including the specific meal a child orders from a …

Coffee Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, And Agrarian Livelihoods In Puerto Rico, Ileana I. Diaz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research investigates whether coffee can play a role in building food sovereignty in Puerto Rico as well as how farmers perceive the effects of growing coffee agroecologically on their livelihoods. The most important contribution of this research is to raise and answer the question of whether a cash crop such as coffee can be part of a food sovereignty strategy. I conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with farmers in Puerto Rico. The findings indicate that agroecological farmers in Puerto Rico believe that growing coffee is an important part of pursuing food sovereignty - which is the framework they used to …

Uncertainty Analysis Of The Performance Of A System Of Best Management Practices For Achieving Phosphorus Load Reduction To Surface Waters, Jason D.M. Igras

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The repeated occurrence of Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms suggests an inadequate phosphorus management system that results in excessive loads to the lake. In response, Canadian and United States’ governments have issued a new management objective, a 40% reduction in total and dissolved reactive phosphorus loads relative to 2008. To provide scientific evidence to guide managers toward achieving their management objective, we used the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) 31010 Bowtie Risk Analysis Tool to analyze the performance of the phosphorus management system. The effectiveness of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) and their adoption were combined into a Bayesian belief …

An Automated Framework To Identify Lost And Restorable Wetlands In The Prairie Pothole Region, Ann Waz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

While progress has been made in automating wetland identification, identifying lost and restorable wetlands remains a challenge. A suite of automated methods was developed and applied to the Nose Creek watershed near Calgary, Alberta to establish a historical wetland inventory and the proportion of permanently versus temporarily lost wetlands. A power-law function of wetland area vs. wetland frequency using wetlands derived from the fusion of a high resolution digital elevation model and near-infrared data identified permanent loss of 11.0% by number and 0.6% by area. The difference between historical and existing wetlands was used to estimate a further temporary …

The Effects Of Municipal Waste Disposal Method On Facility Support And Diversion Attitudes And Behaviours, Jason A. Bayne

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Currently in Ontario there is an increasing amount of waste and a need for solutions other than landfills to deal with this waste, with diversion rates at 48% and landfills filling up more researched is needed to explore this topic (WDO. 2014). This study uses a survey of households in Ontario, Canada to better understand if people will divert less material if they knew their waste was going to a WtE facility, levels of support for WtE facilities and expressed diversion behaviours. Participants were randomly selected from communities with different end-of-stream waste solutions with and without WtE: London which has …

Urban Walkability Measures: Data Quality, Cautions, And Associations With Active And Public Transportation Across Canada, Thomas C. Thayer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has emerged as a primary tool to study the built environment (BE) and its correlates. Accurate results employing GIS-based methods, however, depend on high-quality data sets and agreement on the appropriate nature and scale of areal units. Exploratory groundtruthing exercises illuminated possible issues of data accuracy. GIS-derived walkability measures for intersection density and land use mix were calculated for 2011 using Census of Canada data to determine whether commercially- or municipally-sourced urban data sets were better suited for BE studies. Road network data were ‘cleaned’ to remove unwalkable sections of road and to repair instances of …

Evaluation Of The Uav-Based Multispectral Imagery And Its Application For Crop Intra-Field Nitrogen Monitoring And Yield Prediction In Ontario, Yang Song

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has the capability of acquiring high spatial and temporal resolution images. This new technology fills the data gap between satellite and ground survey in agriculture. In addition, UAV-based crop monitoring and methods are new challenge of remote sensing application in agriculture.

First, in my thesis the potential of UAV-based imagery was investigated to monitor spatial and temporal variation of crop status in comparison with RapidEye. The correlation between red-edge indices and LAI and biomass are higher for UAV-based imagery than that of RapidEye. Secondly, the nitrogen weight and yield in wheat was predicted using the UAV-based …

Automated Impact Crater Detection And Characterization Using Digital Elevation Data, Ian M. Pritchard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Impact craters are used as subjects for the remote study of a wide variety of surface and subsurface processes throughout the solar system. Their populations and shape characteristics are collected, often manually, and analysed by a large community of planetary scientists. This research investigates the application of automated methods for both the detection and characterization of impact craters on the Moon and Mars, using machine learning techniques and digital elevation data collected by orbital spacecraft. We begin by first assessing the effect of lunar terrain type variation on automated crater detection results. Next, we develop a novel automated crater degradation …

Environment And Health Perceptions In The Vicinty Of Surface Mining Concessions In The Upper West Region Of Ghana, Roger Antabe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The emergence of a gold mining industry and the influx of Artisanal Small Scale Mining following recent discoveries of gold deposits in Northern Ghana have posed new socio-cultural, economic, environment and health challenges for residents in a dry savannah zone that is already facing negative consequences of environmental change. Yet, knowledge of the impact of this emerging industry on the health of local population, and the extent to which it makes such a stressed environment more uninhabitable, has been lacking. In addition, studies elsewhere, mostly in the southern part of the country where mining predominates, have largely concentrated on assessing …

Application Of Polarimetric Sar For Surface Parameter Inversion And Land Cover Mapping Over Agricultural Areas, Xiaodong Huang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, novel methodology is developed to extract surface parameters under vegetation cover and to map crop types, from the polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images over agricultural areas. The extracted surface parameters provide crucial information for monitoring crop growth, nutrient release efficiency, water capacity, and crop production. To estimate surface parameters, it is essential to remove the volume scattering caused by the crop canopy, which makes developing an efficient volume scattering model very critical.

In this thesis, a simplified adaptive volume scattering model (SAVSM) is developed to describe the vegetation scattering as crop changes over time through considering …

Assessing Climate Change Adaptation And Health In Coastal Cambodia: The Human-Environment Interaction, Mengieng Ung

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the relationship between humans and their environment in the context of climate change in coastal Cambodia. Specifically, this thesis focuses on household energy consumption behavior, climate change adaptation and subjective human health impacts. A cross-sectional survey of 1823 individuals in four coastal provinces in Cambodia was conducted. A series of quantitative analyses, including complementary log-log regression, ordered logistic regression and logistic regression analysis, were employed to analyze the data. The results showed that both past experience of extreme climatic events and awareness of climate change had a positive relationship with household energy reduction behavior. Females and rural …

Stages To Learn: Trees As A Restorative Amenity In And Around Schools, Eli Paddle

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Trees are the most prominent natural urban landscape feature, offering a host of direct and indirect health benefits to users. The dominant discourse on children’s environments has focused on access to neighbourhood-scale urban green spaces, such as parks or playgrounds. The present research instead focuses upon trees as small-scale, doorstep nature exposures that are passively experienced around schools. The findings suggest a disparity in the provision of the positive environmental exposure provided by trees in the Southwestern Ontario walk sheds surrounding elementary schools. Children exposed to the greatest levels of socio-economic distress live in neighbourhoods served with the lowest tree …

The Battle Of Hastings: A Geographic Perspective, Christopher E. M. Hewitt

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Battle of Hastings (1066) is one of the most widely studied battles in medieval history. Yet despite the importance that research shows geography to play in the outcome of such conflicts, few studies have examined in detail the landscape of the battle or the role the landscape played in its eventual outcome. This study, consequently, seeks to assess the impact of geographic factors in understanding the events that shaped the Battle of Hastings. The analysis was undertaken using a geographic information system (GIS) with qualitative and quantitative techniques. Historical and current data combined in a series of detailed state …

Children's Physical Activity And The Built Environment: The Impact Of Neighbourhood Opportunities And Contextual Environmental Exposure, Christine A. Mitchell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Childhood obesity rates have risen dramatically since 1981, in part due to decreased physical activity (PA) levels. Research suggests that PA is influenced in part by an individual’s exposure to and engagement with their built environment. Using a multi-tool protocol, this thesis examines how (a) neighbourhood opportunities facilitate or constrain children’s moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) and (b) contextual environmental exposure facilitates or constrains children’s MVPA. Results suggest that children’s MVPA is influenced by their built environment, but more so by the contextual environments that they are directly exposed to rather than their overall neighbourhood settings. Children are mobile and unlikely to …

An Investigation Of The Marketing Practices Of Local Food Businesses In Southwestern Ontario, Mark D. Mcgregor

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis presents research from two interrelated studies examining the marketing practices of local food businesses in Southwestern Ontario. Focus groups were held with food system stakeholders to examine their attitudes and insights toward developing new technologies (i.e., smartphone and web-based tools) to promote local food. A survey of direct-market farmers sought to uncover their marketing practices and motivations. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that although technology already plays a prominent role in marketing, there is a strong desire for more metrics to measure the efficacy of marketing efforts. Further, new technologies should facilitate producer-consumer connections, as …

Using Map Interfaces To Visualize And Access Archival Resources: Results Of A Survey Of North American Archives, Tom Belton

Western Libraries Presentations

This presentation reveals the results of a 2015 survey of North American archives as to their views on the utility of mapping layers to provide access to archival resources.