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Full-Text Articles in Geography

Hungry Farmers: A Political Ecology Of Agriculture And Food Security In Northern Ghana, Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong Aug 2014

Hungry Farmers: A Political Ecology Of Agriculture And Food Security In Northern Ghana, Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Whilst Ghana has made momentous strides in national food security over the last decade, peasants in the rural north, indeed, those who produce the bulk of the country’s food, are also the hungriest population. This paradox immediately raises profound questions for research in human-environment geography. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate some of these questions, with particular emphasis on why Ghana’s food system is failing precisely those who produce food. The research combines insights from agrarian political economy and political ecology, and is informed by nine months of intensive fieldwork. Three carefully selected case studies uncover the full …


Impacts Of Spatial, Environmental, And Compositional Differences On Community-Level Flowering Phenology, Isaac William Park May 2014

Impacts Of Spatial, Environmental, And Compositional Differences On Community-Level Flowering Phenology, Isaac William Park

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates three important topics related to flowering phenology throughout the United States. First, this work evaluates the utility of herbarium records for estimating historical variation in community-level flowering phenology, and evaluate the relationship of such estimates to satellite-derived greenup timing at regional scales. This dissertation then reconstructs historical variations in flowering phenology throughout the spring, summer, and autumn across South Carolina for the years 1951 through 2009. These estimates will then be compared to seasonal temperature variations throughout this period. Finally, this dissertation develops novel herbarium-based methods to separate intraspecific phenological variations over space from changes in flowering …


Re-Examining An Air Mass-Based Approach To Detecting Structural Climate Change, 1948-2011, Joseph James Larsen May 2014

Re-Examining An Air Mass-Based Approach To Detecting Structural Climate Change, 1948-2011, Joseph James Larsen

Theses and Dissertations

Air mass-based approaches to observing changes in climate can have considerable value beyond simple trends of temperature and moisture, providing more thorough understanding of structural climate patterns. Few methodologies have adequately characterized recent air mass modification, however. This research seeks to update and improve upon the methods of a prior study, providing new data from 1948-2011, as well as more rigorous statistical analyses. Air mass types were created, and monthly averages of temperature, dewpoint, and relative frequency were calculated for each of the air masses in all four seasons; then the time series were submitted to regression analysis. The results …