Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Public-Ish, Aliah Werth

Masters Theses

Climate change affects public space, and architecture must establish tenets that prioritize pedestrians in this difficult era. Greywater re-use can be a mechanism for creating shade, and in turn, public space.

As heat waves grow more intense, the vast swaths of asphalt that connect commercial zones pose greater risks to public health and to urban vitality. This thesis records the typical material, spatial, and lived conditions of strip malls in urban heat islands, and demands more from infrastructure in public-ish space.

Heat violence weaves through Los Angeles’ built form. Parking space minimums, required setbacks, and height restrictions pull buildings away …

Changes Of Winter Severity In Arkansas During 1901-2100, Christian Garcia

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to quantify the winter severity in a way that was reproduceable and easy to understand. The Accumulated Winter Severity Seasonal Index (AWSSI) was chosen for this reason and was used to quantify winter severity by season across the state of Arkansas. The variables that go into the AWSSI calculation are maximum daily temperature, minimum daily temperature, daily snowfall, and daily snow depth. When the snowfall and snow depth were missing, they can be estimated using daily temperature and precipitation. Then the estimated snowfall and snow depth can be subsequently used to quantify the winter …

Hazardous Weather And Human Response In The Southeastern United States, Daniel Burow

Doctoral Dissertations

Effectively mitigating the human costs of future hazardous weather events requires examining meteorological threats, their long-term patterns, and human response to these events. The southeastern United States is a region that has both a high climatological risk and a high societal vulnerability to many different meteorological hazards. In this dissertation, I study hazardous weather and human response in the Southeast through three different lenses: identifying uniquely simultaneous hazards posed by tropical cyclones, assessing precipitation and synoptic weather patterns on hazardous weather days, and examining patterns in intended response to tornado watches. I find that simultaneous and collocated tornado and flash …

Airborne Observations Of Thermal Anisotropy From Urban Residential Neighbourhoods In Salt Lake City, Utah, Samantha J. Claessens

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Urban surface temperatures are important variables in urban climatological processes. This thesis examines the directional variability of remotely sensed urban surface temperatures (thermal anisotropy or Λ) for three vegetated residential neighbourhoods in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Airborne thermal remote sensing using a thermal imager sampled the directional brightness temperature (DBT) at three times within a day for each site. Results indicate that temporal variability over a 20 – 30-minute flight was not negligible. Average DBT were then extracted from atmospherically corrected images and plotted on polar plots. For low density residential neighbourhoods Λ is increased with increasing tree-canopy coverage …

Lightning Activity In The Continental United States On An Enso Time Scale, 2002-2015, Tyler M. Gingrich

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

This investigation examined the frequency and spatial pattern of lightning in the continental United States from 2002 to 2015. Before analysis, flashes were grouped based on their El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase and Spatial Synoptic Classification (SSC) type for the winter season (December, January, and February). The purpose of this study is to better understand the relationship between planetary teleconnections, synoptic scale air masses, and micro scale phenomena, specifically lightning, in the continental United States. Evidence suggests ENSO cold phase flashes tend to have a lower frequency in number of flashes and flash days, as well as a northward …

Spatial And Temporal Controls On Streamflow Variability In The San Juan Mountains, Colorado, Christopher Lewis Hancock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project characterizes and examines changes to the annual hydroclimatic cycle throughout alpine regions of Colorado with a focus on trends in snowpack and snowmelt hydrology. Datasets analyzed for this research include 79 SNOTEL sites throughout Colorado (24 in the San Juan Mountains) which provide climate metrics for Water Years 1988-2018. Impacts on streamflow are evaluated in the San Juan Region through a network of 11 USGS stream gauges. Correlation matrices and linear regression methods examine the relative controls on the magnitude and timing of discharge, and trend detection using the regional Kendall test quantifies the rate of change within …

The Effect Of Sub-Facet Scale Geometry On Vertical Facet Temperatures In Urban Street Canyons, Rainer V.J. Hilland

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Surface temperature plays a key role in many micro-scale urban processes. Walls comprise a significant percentage of the urban surface, yet are under-represented by many methods of thermal remote sensing and not considered in detail by micro-scale surface temperature mod- els. This thesis presents a novel method of mobile thermal observation performed in urban street canyons in London, ON that uses a thermal imager as well as a visual spectrum camera to provide dense spatial and temporal resolution of micro-scale wall temperature distributions. Images are manually classified by a series of nominal variables and the resulting data set discusses 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, …

A Paleoenvironmental Investigation Of Eolian Influx In Lacustrine Sediments Of The Southern Rocky Mountain Region, Rebecca L. Brice

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Potential indications of long-term trends in paleoclimate, specifically winds, in the Southern Rocky Mountain region of the United States were tested using lacustrine sediment from South Blue Lake in the Wet Mountains of Colorado. This study builds upon existing eolian and lacustrine research, and investigates paleowind in a location not yet studied in this manner. Variability in sediment laminae, particle size, and mineralogy show similar patterns during the mid-Holocene warm period (ca. 5500 cal. yr BP - ca. 6000 cal. yr BP). These patterns indicate a warmer, drier, windier period that is contrasted by a less variable period in the …