Geography Commons^™

Gardiner Rodeo 2023, Gardiner, Montana, Ava Worbets, Megan Schultz

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This study was conducted for the Gardiner Chamber of Commerce to provide insight into the characteristics of attendees of the 2023 Gardiner Annual National Rodeo Association (NRA) Rodeo. Paper surveys were completed by 50 attendees of the event. Results show that 66% of respondents were residents of Montana, and of those Montana residents, 42% were from Park County. Out-of-county respondents spent an average of 6.14 nights in Gardiner and more people spent money on gasoline and restaurants/bars while visiting the area than any other spending categories. Respondents to the survey reported a total spending of $14,045 in the Gardiner area. …

‘Following The Line Of Least Resistance’: African American Women In Domestic Work, 1899–1940, Taylor Simsovic

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This paper examines the challenges faced by African American women employed in domestic service between 1899 and 1940, with a focus on how race, class, and gender intersected to shape their experiences. Specifically, the study investigates how these women continued to perform reproductive labor as they migrated from the South to Northern states during the Great Migration. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, the analysis argues that Black women's persistent employment in undervalued labor within white American homes was driven by the mutually constitutive systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. These systems channeled Black women into …

Settling Into Inequality: Resettled Afghans In The Washington Dc Metro Area, Harry Frey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August of 2021, nearly 90,000 Afghans who had fled their country have been resettled in the United States, constituting one of the largest groups of refugee arrivals in the U.S. in recent history. Working from a database I created from the administrative records of a non-profit refugee aid group, I use data and spatial analysis to examine the demographics of Afghans resettled in the DC metro area, the characteristics of the census tracts and counties in which they have been resettled, and their access to public transportation. I find that the …

Lightning-Ignited Wildfires In The Western United States: Ignition Precipitation And Associated Environmental Conditions, Dmitri Alexander Kalashnikov, John T. Abatzoglou, Paul Loikith, Nicholas J. Nauslar, Yianna Sotirios Bekris, Deepti Singh

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cloud-to-ground lightning with minimal rainfall (“dry” lightning) is a major wildfire ignition source in the western United States (WUS). Although dry lightning is commonly defined as occurring with <2.5 mm of daily-accumulated precipitation, a rigorous quantification of precipitation amounts concurrent with lightning-ignited wildfires (LIWs) is lacking. We combine wildfire, lightning and precipitation data sets to quantify these ignition precipitation amounts across ecoprovinces of the WUS. The median precipitation for all LIWs is 2.8 mm but varies with vegetation and fire characteristics. “Holdover” fires not detected until 2–5 days following ignition occur with significantly higher precipitation (5.1 mm) compared to fires detected promptly after ignition (2.5 mm), and with cooler and wetter environmental conditions. Further, there is substantial variation in precipitation associated with promptly-detected (1.7–4.6 mm) and holdover (3.0–7.7 mm) fires across ecoprovinces. Consequently, the widely-used 2.5 mm threshold does not fully capture lightning ignition risk and incorporating ecoprovince-specific precipitation amounts would better inform WUS wildfire prediction and management.

Canary In The Forest?—Tree Mortality And Canopy Dieback Of Western Redcedar Linked To Drier And Warmer Summers, Robert A. Andrus, L. R. Peach, A. R. Cinquini, Joseph Hulbert, J. T. Yusi, Andres Holz, M. Fischer, Kevan B. Moffett, Multiple Additional Authors

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Aim: Forest dieback is increasing from unfavourable climate conditions. Western redcedar (WRC)—a culturally, ecologically and economically important species—has recently experienced anomalously high mortality rates and partial canopy dieback. We investigated how WRC tree growth and dieback responded to climate variability and drought using tree-ring methods. Location: Pacific Northwest, USA. Taxon: Western redcedar (Thuja plicata). Methods: We collected tree cores from three tree health status groups (no canopy dieback, partial canopy dieback, and dead trees) at 11 sites in coastal (maritime climate) and interior (continental climate) WRC populations. From growth rates, we computed four growth indices that assessed the resilience to …

Developing Youth-Informed And Quality-Aware Spatial Accessibility Measures To Urban Parks Using A Survey-Based 2sfca Method In London, Ontario And Halifax, Nova Scotia, Zhe Chang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Park-related research has gained much attention in recent years, yet not enough studies have focused on the inequity of park accessibility and quality. These are crucial elements that influence youth’s park use, which in turn influence their physical, mental, and social development. Existing literature uses park size as the supply level to examine park accessibility but fails to consider any other park characteristics (e.g., amenities, general condition). This research developed youth-informed and quality-aware measures to consider the influence on park attraction by its quality and size rather than size only. This was implemented by consulting a youth advisory council to …

Nonprofit Accountability: Effects Of Subsector On Online Accountability, Ibrahima F. Yaro, Trent A. Engbers

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Scandals within the nonprofit sector over compensation and management have increased calls for nonprofits to demonstrate accountability. Many organizations have responded by disclosing information online and providing tools that allow web-based interactions with stakeholders. The literature on nonprofits’ online accountability has found that the level of nonprofit online accountability is affected by their size, age, asset, revenue, and location, but hasn’t been examined in terms of how subsector influences online accountability. Through a web-content analysis of fifty-five nonprofits, this research investigated how subsector (arts and culture, education, health, and human services) influences online accountability using a framework of four types …

Understanding Urban Energy Landscapes Through A Territorialization Lens: A Comparative Case Study Of Energy Use In Two Eco-Districts - Parc Marianne, Montpellier And Olympic Village, Vancouver, Dominica Babicki

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To address the problem of transitioning to a lower-carbon energy system this dissertation, addresses energy use in eco-districts to provide insights into what a low carbon future could look like and on how it can contribute to the development of sustainable energy landscapes. To understand the role of energy in eco-districts, an Urban Energy Landscape (UEL) conceptual framework is used to investigate energy distribution and usage in two case study eco-districts, with one located in Montpellier, France (Parc Marianne) and the other in Vancouver, Canada (Olympic Village). To reveal how UELs can lead to the development of sustainable energy landscapes, …

Scaling Up The Relevance Of Land-Sea Connections In Coastal Bacteria Pollution Vulnerability, Bea E. Van Dam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bacteria pollution closures of Maine’s coastal shellfish harvest areas have substantial negative consequences for coastal businesses and communities. Sustainability solutions for Maine’s shellfish harvesting areas and businesses require new types of knowledge and information to protect water quality and public health while avoiding unnecessary fishery closures. Coastal management agencies have interests in tools to support science-based management decision-making related to pollution and sustainability solutions for businesses and communities.

Prior research into land-sea connections has demonstrated uses of geographic information and statistical methods to facilitate management and science communication. Research in Maine has focused on identification and comparison of attributes influencing …

Syrian Refugee Place Attachment And Place Making In Ottawa, On, Kiran Va Unger-Basappa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

How can Syrian refugees’ feelings of attachment towards places and spaces in Ottawa, ON be used to indicate their own sense of integration into Canadian society? Exploring research participants’ place attachments to the city of Ottawa enables a greater understanding of their lived geographies that either hinder or elevate their integration experience. The mixed-method data collection used in this research study include an online qualitative survey, in-depth interviews, and a mental mapping exercise. The analysis of the data is based upon five factors of place attachment used to define integration. These are comfort, security, relationships, involvement, and rootedness. …

Methodological Analysis On Settler Territoriality And The Rise Of The Yellowstone Wild Bison Advocacy Movement, Red G.R. Burkett

Theses - ALL

Bison bison, also known as the North American Buffalo, are a keystone species of endemic megafauna in the Great Plains prairie ecosystem. Bison were driven nearly to extinction in the late 19th century when millions of buffalo were massacred by settlers in order to starve Indigenous civilians and force them onto federally-managed Reservations as a step in the centuries-long ethnic-cleansing of Turtle Island. Such genocidal methods were a primary tool in erasing the land claims of Indigenous nations and colonizing the territories of Indigenous communities who depended on bison as a primary source of food and materiel for social reproduction. …

Methodological Analysis On Settler Territoriality And The Rise Of The Yellowstone Wild Bison Advocacy Movement, Red G.R. Burkett

Theses - ALL

Bison bison, also known as the North American Buffalo, are a keystone species of endemic megafauna in the Great Plains prairie ecosystem. Bison were driven nearly to extinction in the late 19th century when millions of buffalo were massacred by settlers in order to starve Indigenous civilians and force them onto federally-managed Reservations as a step in the centuries-long ethnic-cleansing of Turtle Island. Such genocidal methods were a primary tool in erasing the land claims of Indigenous nations and colonizing the territories of Indigenous communities who depended on bison as a primary source of food and materiel for social reproduction. …

Heat Mapping Crime: A Data-Driven Approach To Policing In New York, Beruktawit Gebreamlak, Daniel Ochoa

altREU Projects

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City has seen a surge in criminal activities. In 2023, major crime continues to be higher compared to pre-pandemic levels. Although progress is being made to reduce the number of murders and robberies, law enforcement is continuing to struggle with increases in felony assaults and car thefts. Our project serves to benefit members of the community and law enforcement alike. We created a heat map, which is a visual representation of data that uses colors to represent different values. In the context of crime mapping, our heat map is used to …

Water Quality Land Cover Change And Water Quality In Wetlands At The City Of Gresham, Or, Evelyn Barajas, Michael Gonzalez

altREU Projects

The City of Gresham, Oregon has implemented constructed wetlands around the area as an attempt to collect, filter, and purify water from different sources such as rain, agricultural waste, and domestic waste. We focused our research on three different facilities: Columbia Slough Water Quality Facility (CSWQF), Fairview Creek Water Quality Facility, and Brookside Water Quality Facility. For each of these, we conducted tests and looked at the concentration levels for nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients such as NH3-N (ammonium), NO3-N (nitrate), TKN (total Kjeldahl nitrogen), O-PO4 (phosphate), and Total P (total phosphorus), as well as heavy metals like Total Cu (total …

Beyond Borders: Representations Of Refugees And Place In Clarkston, Georgia, Sarah Ryniker

Theses and Dissertations

In the last thirty years, socio-political shifts within the city of Clarkston, Georgia, have led to an evolution in representations of the city and of its many refugee and immigrant populations. This dissertation examines the site-specific effects of the evolving policies and practices of refugee resettlement and integration within the city of Clarkston and the emerging immigrant gateway of the South. While the city itself has transformed, so have its representations of refugees, challenging imaginative geographies and complicating the mainstream dichotomic racial imaginative geographies and socio-political representation of the U.S. South. Using qualitative methods, I analyze materials from four years …

Improved Fine-Scale Tropical Forest Cover Mapping For Southeast Asia Using Planet-Nicfi And Sentinel-1 Imagery, Feng Yang, Xin Jiang, Alan D. Ziegler, Lyndon Estes, Jin Wu, Anping Chen, Philippe Ciais

Geography

The accuracy of existing forest cover products typically suffers from “rounding” errors arising from classifications that estimate the fractional cover of forest in each pixel, which often exclude the presence of large, isolated trees and small or narrow forest clearings, and is primarily attributable to the moderate resolution of the imagery used to make maps. However, the degree to which such high-resolution imagery can mitigate this problem, and thereby improve large-area forest cover maps, is largely unexplored. Here, we developed an approach to map tropical forest cover at a fine scale using Planet and Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery …

Conceptual And Technological Advancements In Visitor Use Management Of Coastal And Estuarine Environments, Tyler Cribbs

All Dissertations

This dissertation demonstrates the exploration and use of conceptual and technological advancements in the science of visitor use management (VUM). The goal of this effort is to help better understand visitors to park and protected areas (PPAs) and more specifically, better manage our coastal and estuarine environments (i.e., coastal protected areas (CPAs). These concepts and techniques are 1) further implementing the use of cellphone data in recreation ecology and VUM, 2) assessing the use of advanced imagery, virtual reality (VR), in visual-based methods to determine visitor indicators and thresholds, and 3) assessing visitor’s awareness of PPAs and how it influences …

Wildfire Risk Governance From The Bottom Up: Linking Local Planning Processes In Fragmented Landscapes, Matthew Hamilton, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Cody Evers

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The growing scale of natural hazards highlights the need for models of governance capable of addressing risk across administrative boundaries. However, risk governance systems are often fragmented, decentralized, and sustained by informal linkages among local-level risk mitigation planning processes. Improving resilience to the effects of environmental change requires a better understanding of factors that contribute to these linkages. Using data on the patterns of participation of 10,199 individual stakeholders in 837 community wildfire protection plans (CWPPs) within the western U.S., we document the emergence of a locally clustered but spatially extensive wildfire risk governance network. Our evaluation of factors that …

Analyzing The Adoption, Cropping Rotation, And Impact Of Winter Cover Crops In The Mississippi Alluvial Plain (Map) Region Through Remote Sensing Technologies, Zobaer Ahmed

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the application of remote sensing technologies in conservation agriculture, specifically focusing on identifying and mapping winter cover crops and assessing voluntary cover crop adoption and cropping patterns in the Arkansas portion of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (MAP). In the first chapter, a systematic review using the PRISMA methodology examines the last 30 years of thematic research, development, and trends in remote sensing applied to conservation agriculture from a global perspective. The review uncovers a growing interest in remote sensing-based research in conservation agriculture and emphasizes the necessity for further studies dedicated to conservation practices. Among the 68 …

Quantifying Damages To Soil Health And Emissions From Land Development In The State Of Illinois (Usa), Elena A. Mikhailova, Hamdi A. Zurqani, Zhenbang Hao, Mark A. Schlautman, Gregory C. Post, George B. Shepherd, Christopher C. Post, Renee M. Dixon

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The concept of soil health is increasingly being used as an indicator for sustainable soil management and even includes legislative actions. Current applications of soil health often lack geospatial and monetary analyses of damages (e.g., land development), which can degrade soil health through loss of carbon (C) and productive soils. This study aims to evaluate the damages to soil health (e.g., soil C, the primary soil health indicator) attributed to land developments within the state of Illinois (IL) in the United States of America (USA). All land developments in IL can be associated with damages to soil health, with 13,361.0 …