Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Late Jurassic Dinosaurs On The Move, Gastroliths And Long-Distance Migration, Josh Malone

Geography: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The Jurassic Morrison Formation of the Rocky Mountain and Colorado Plateau regions is famous for its dinosaur fossils. The Morrison Formation (150-157 Ma) is comprised mostly of sandstone and mudstone that was deposited in a terrestrial deposition system that included fluvial, paludal, and lacustrine environments. Paleocurrent data indicates that Morrison sediment was transported to the north and east. Within the Morrison Formation, we find exotic pebble and cobble-size durable clasts of quartzite, chert and vein quartz weathering out of the mudstone paleosols. We interpret these exotic clasts as gastroliths, carried within the gastric mills of dinosaurs. For this study, we …

The Effects Of Urban Development And The Incidence Of Flooding And Discharge Changes From 1956-2016: A Case Study From Juan Diaz Township, Republic Of Panama, Virgilio De Jesus Quintero Rodriguez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The increase in flood occurrences in the Township of Juan Diaz has affected thousands of families and hundreds of businesses and has negatively impacted the lives of thousands of residents, who expect the worse every time there is a prolonged period of rain. Some of the residents lose their appliances, cars, furniture and houses every year. This study examines the relationship between urban development and flooding. Also, it addresses the influences of topography, green cover, population changes, runoff changes, and social dynamics on this relationship. This study implemented the use of thematic cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), personal interviews and …

Mapping Time-Space Brickfield Development Dynamics In Peri-Urban Area Of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Mohammad Mehedy Hassan, Levente Juhasz, Jane Southworth

GIS Center

Due to the high demand for cheap construction materials, clay-made brick manufacturing has become a thriving industry in Bangladesh, with manufacturing kilns heavily concentrated in the peripheries of larger cities and towns. These manufacturing sites, known as brickfields, operate using centuries-old technologies which expel dust, ash, black smoke and other pollutants into the atmosphere. This in turn impacts the air quality of cities and their surroundings and may also have broader impacts on health, the environment, and potentially contribute to global climate change. Using remotely sensed Landsat imagery, this study identifies brickfield locations and areal expansion between 1990 and 2015 …

The Importance Of Landscape Position Information And Elevation Uncertainty For Barrier Island Habitat Mapping And Modeling, Nicholas Matthew Enwright

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Barrier islands provide important ecosystem services, including storm protection and erosion control to the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, and tourism. As a result, natural resource managers are concerned with monitoring changes to these islands and modeling future states of these environments. Landscape position, such as elevation and distance from shore, influences habitat coverage on barrier islands by regulating exposure to abiotic factors, including waves, tides, and salt spray. Geographers commonly use aerial topographic lidar data for extracting landscape position information. However, researchers rarely consider lidar elevation uncertainty when using automated processes for extracting elevation-dependent habitats from lidar data. …

Lidar-Based Sinkhole Detection And Mapping In Knox County, Tennessee, J Clint Shannon, David Moore, Yingkui Li, Cathy Olsen

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Sinkholes are one of the major causes of damage to roads, buildings, and other infrastructure throughout the US. Sinkholes near or on roads are especially costly and occasionally deadly. Knox County and much of East Tennessee are located within karst areas (comprised of porous and soluble limestone and dolomite), deeming it at risk for sinkholes. Currently, Knox County uses contour maps to manually identify sinkholes. Supported by a geographic information system (GIS), we developed a streamlined model to identify the locations and extents of potential sinkholes using 1.3-ft resolution LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data and applied it to the …

The Long-Run Effects Of Tropical Cyclones On Infant Mortality, Isabel Miranda

Master's Theses

In the United States alone, each tropical cyclone causes an average of $14.6 billion worth of damages. In addition to the destruction of physical infrastructure, natural disasters also negatively impact human capital formation. These losses are often more difficult to observe, and therefore, are over looked when quantifying the true costs of natural disasters. One particular effect is an increase in infant mortality rates, an important indicator of a country’s general socioeconomic level. This paper utilizes a model created by Anttila-Hughes and Hsiang, that takes advantage of annual variation in tropical cyclones using annual spatial average maximum wind speeds and …

Determining The Effect Of Mission Design And Point Cloud Filtering On The Quality And Accuracy Of Sfm Photogrammetric Products Derived From Suas Imagery, Daniel Shay Hostens

MSU Graduate Theses

This research investigates the influence that various flight plan and mission design strategies for collecting small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) imagery have on the accuracy of the resulting three-dimensional models to find an optimal method to achieve a result. This research also explores the effect that using gradual selection to reduce the sparse point cloud has on product accuracy and processing details. Imagery was collected in the spring of 2018 during leaf-off conditions at six field sites along the North Fork of the White River. The aerial imagery was collected using a DJI Phantom Pro 4 sUAS. Four different image …

Assessing How Terrain Representations And Scale Affect The Accuracy Of Distance Estimates, Kristian Mueller

Geography ETDs

Terrain is often displayed on maps either as background or foreground. Although terrain representations are ubiquitous, there is not a thorough understanding of map-readers’ cognition of geographic surfaces from various terrain representations. The research described in this thesis empirically assessed map users’ abilities at estimating straight-line distance using maps with two different types of terrain representations and at three different scales. The objective of this research was to assess how accurately map users estimate distance on the ground taking into account variations in elevation. Participant data in the form of demographics and distance estimates were statistically analyzed to determine if …

Homelessness In Portland, Oregon: An Analysis Of Homeless Campsite Spatial Patterns And Spatial Relationships, Krystle N. Harrell

Geography Masters Research Papers

Homelessness is a complex American social issue. Understanding the homeless population, including how many people experience homelessness, how they entered the experience, their demographics, how they survive, and where they survive, aids policymakers, planners, and advocates in developing the appropriate approaches and solutions to end and prevent homelessness. Analysis of homeless spatial patterns and distributions across different locales provides a more in-depth understandings of this population and how best to support them, from the local to national level. Using geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical methods, this study examines the spatial patterns of homeless campsites and their relationship with urban …

The Image From The Road: Towards Mapping The Phenomenological, Rachel Anna Smith Loerts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An area of focus, used in early and contemporary forms of cognitive geography research, is the ‘cognitive map’, a concept that suggests “that people hold a map-like database in their minds to which they can add and use to tackle geographical tasks”. Kevin Lynch, an urban planner in the 1960s, was an early adopter of the cognitive map approach to reveal spatial cognition, what or how people see their environment, specifically cognition of the urban environment. Lynch’s research aimed to develop empirical methods, to identify how people make spatial relationships. Contemporary tools like machine learning are now considered relevant for …

Vulnerability Of Industrial Facilities In The Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor To Relative Sea Level Rise And Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge, Joseph Blake Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Relative sea level rise (RSLR) and tropical cyclone-induced storm surge are major threats to the Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor (LMRIC) which has approximately 120 industrial complexes located within the corridor. Spatial interpolation methods were applied to the 2004 National Oceanic and Atmospheric published Technical Report #50 subsidence dataset and cross-validation techniques were used to determine the accuracy of each method. Digital elevation models (DEMs) were created for the years 2025, 2050, and 2075, based on these predictive surface of subsidence rates. Future DEMs were utilized to model RSLR and determine the extent of storm surge on the LMRIC by …

Archaeology And Climate Change: Sites At Risk Of Sea Level Rise In The Puget Sound, Christy Lynn Berg

2019 Symposium

The Puget Sound Watershed, located along Washington’s Northwest coast, contains 5,467 recorded archaeological sites. 1,290 of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The majority of these sites are located along the coastline and associated waterways making them highly susceptible to climate change induced sea level rise. This research uses data provided from The Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and a geographic information system (GIS) to determine the susceptibility of thousands of sites to rising sea-levels. A mosaic of 10m resolution digital elevation models (DEMS) was created for the Puget Sound Watershed and elevation …

Characterizing Spatiotemporal Patterns Of White Mold In Soybean Across South Dakota Using Remote Sensing, Confiance L. Mfuka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Soybean is among the most important crops, cultivated primarily for beans, which are used for food, feed, and biofuel. According to FAO, the United States was the biggest soybeans producer in 2016. The main soybean producing regions in the United States are the Corn Belt and the lower Mississippi Valley. Despite its importance, soybean production is reduced by several diseases, among which Sclerotinia stem rot, also known as white mold, a fungal disease that is caused by the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is among the top 10 soybean diseases. The disease may attack several plants and considerably reduce yield. According to …

Visualizing Barrier Dune Topographic State Space And Inference Of Resilience Properties, Li-Chih Hsu

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

The linkage between barrier island morphologies and dune topographies, vegetation, and biogeomorphic feedbacks, has been examined. The two-fold stability domain (i.e., overwash-resisting and overwash-reinforcing stability domains) model from case studies in a couple of islands along the Georgia Bight and Virginia coast has been proposed to examine the resilience properties in the barrier dune systems. Thus, there is a need to examine geographic variations in the dune topography among and within islands. Meanwhile, previous studies just analyzed and compared dune topographies based on transect-based point elevations or dune crest elevations; therefore, it is necessary to further examine dune topography in …

Multidimensional Analysis Of Vulnerability: Methodological Advances And A Case Study From Malawi., Park Mcmillan Muhonda

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Since 1990s rural households in Malawi, constituting 85% of the population, have experienced deepening livelihood vulnerability, often manifested as persistent food insecurity. Livelihood crises have since been blamed on or attributed directly to weather perturbations/climatic shocks i.e. El-Nino induced climate variability/drought conditions. This study revealed that persistent livelihood crisis in rural Malawi cannot be attributed to or squarely blamed on weather shocks alone, rather it is at the intersection of various livelihoods shocks that rural livelihood vulnerability in Malawi is exacerbated i.e. worsening and deepening.

Thus, rural livelihood vulnerability to climate shocks in Malawi is manifest not in isolation but …

Remote Sensing Of Avalanche Paths In Glacier National Park, Montana, Morgan Voss

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Snow avalanches are the common form of mass wasting in the high mountain environments of Glacier National Park (GNP), Montana. These natural disturbances play important roles in mountain ecosystems by regularly disturbing montane systems, providing critical habitat for some species, transporting debris, and influencing vegetation and fire dynamics. Since the 1900s, natural avalanche-related activity recorded along important transportation corridors within the park has frequently disrupted transportation.

While many of the steep slopes of GNP are susceptible to avalanching, formal inventories exist only for small, critical portions of the park and they vary substantially from one another. GNP’s protected status does …

Object-Based Supervised Machine Learning Regional-Scale Land-Cover Classification Using High Resolution Remotely Sensed Data, Christopher A. Ramezan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

High spatial resolution (HR) (1m – 5m) remotely sensed data in conjunction with supervised machine learning classification are commonly used to construct land-cover classifications. Despite the increasing availability of HR data, most studies investigating HR remotely sensed data and associated classification methods employ relatively small study areas. This work therefore drew on a 2,609 km2, regional-scale study in northeastern West Virginia, USA, to investigates a number of core aspects of HR land-cover supervised classification using machine learning. Issues explored include training sample selection, cross-validation parameter tuning, the choice of machine learning algorithm, training sample set size, and feature selection. A …