Geography Commons^™

Shrine Pilgrimage (Ziyārat) In Turco-Iranian Cultural Regions, Mehdi Ebadi

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Academic studies, dedicated to various aspects of religiously motivated travel have increased steadily, especially in recent years. Despite the huge amount of publications related to tourism and religious pilgrimage, there is still a gap between abstract theory and empirical research. Studies devoted to pilgrimage in the developing countries generally, and Islamic regions in particular are rather few in number in spite of its socio-economic importance and widespread practices. The present work tries to address this relative lack of attention and will shed more light on the tradition of shrine pilgrimage (known as ziyārat) in Turco-Iranian cultural milieu that is almost …

Ritual Journeys In North America: Opening Religious And Ritual Landscapes And Spaces, Daniel H. Olsen

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The religious landscape of North America is different from other regions of the world in that not only is there a lack of a highly visible religious elements, but also the idea and practice of pilgrimage and ritual travel is not as pervasive as in Europe and Asia. However, there are many human-built and natural spaces marked by Roman Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Indigenous peoples, and members of other faiths which are subject to either formal or informal pilgrimage-like travel. Visits to these sacred sites have intensified with the rise and expansion of tourism after World War II, conflating pilgrimage-like travel …

Religious Tourism And Italian Sacred Mounts: Experiences Of Networking And Co-Operation At A Unesco Site, Raffaella Afferni, Carla Ferrario

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

A Sacred Mount is a historical holy site and former pilgrimage attraction. It is a devotional complex located on a mountain, and composed of a series of chapels and shrines in which scenes from the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary or the saints are represented through paintings and sculptures. In 2003 the Sacred Mounts of Piedmont and Lombardy were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List being considered as representative of something that can be understood, in part, through visitor interactions with the areas in which they are located (see Di Giovine, 2009:208).

The visitors to Sacred Mounts are: …

Increasing Accessibility For Map Readers With Acquired And Inherited Color Vision Deficiencies: A Re-Coloring Algorithm For Maps, Gretchen M. Culp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Approximately 8% of the male population suffer from an inherited form of color vision deficiency (CVD). Age, diabetes, macular degeneration, cataracts and glaucoma result in eye defects including an acquired form of CVD. Inherited CVD is marked by a difficulty in discerning red from green, while acquired CVD is marked by a difficulty in discerning blue from green. A recent review of the cartographic literature revealed a deficit in studies on accessible maps for readers with the acquired form of CVD. In addition, research on accessible maps for readers with the inherited form of CVD was restricted to the design …

Beaches, People, And Change: A Political Ecology Of Rockaway Beach After Hurricane Sandy, Bryce B. Dubois

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses restoration practices of Rockaway beach post-Hurricane Sandy as a lens to investigate tensions between nature and society on urban coasts. By focusing on this New York City beach, this dissertation aims to examine the interaction between the beach, residents, city and federal agencies, and local environmental grassroots stewards in their response to coastal flooding and erosion. This is an ethnographic case study of Rockaway Beach during the two years (October 2012-October 2014) following Hurricane Sandy. This case study is based on secondary data analysis of interviews with 52 key informants, field-notes from participant observation at community and …

Evolving Patterns: Conflicting Perceptions Of Cultural Preservation And The State Of Batik’S Cultural Inheritance Among Women Artisans In Guizhou, China, Katherine B. Uram

Lawrence University Honors Projects

My exploration features Miao batik-making in Guizhou Province and explores several sets of overlapping questions. The first set focuses on the status of the craft of Miao batik-making and the perceptions of its future. Is batik-making a dying art form? To what extent is Batik-making a thriving cultural practice today, or do Miao in China (and other ethnic groups involved in batik-making) perceive an inheritance crisis? My next focus is on the role of institutions and the tourism industry. If taught less and less in the domestic sphere (traditions passed from mother to daughter), what role do public domains such …

Surface Permeability Of Natural And Engineered Porous Building Materials, David Grover, Cabot R. Savidge, Laura Townsend, Odanis Rosario, Liang Bo Hu, Donna M. Rizzo, Mandar M. Dewoolkar

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Characterization of surface gas permeability measurements on a variety of natural and engineered building materials using two relatively new, non-destructive surface permeameters is presented. Surface gas permeability measurements were consistent for both laboratory and field applications and correlated well with bulk gas permeability measurements. This research indicates that surface permeability measurements could provide reliable estimates of bulk gas permeability; and due to the non-destructive nature and relative sampling ease of both surface gas permeability tools, it is possible to quantify the range of the spatial autocorrelation, heterogeneity, and anisotropy in porous building materials and their degree of degradation from weathering.

An Automated Approach For Sub-Pixel Registration Of Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (Oli) And Sentinel-2 Multi Spectral Instrument (Msi) Imagery, Lin Yan, David P. Roy, Hankui Zhang, Jian Li, Haiyan Huang

GSCE Faculty Publications

Moderate spatial resolution satellite data from the Landsat-8 OLI and Sentinel-2A MSI sensors together offer 10 m to 30 m multi-spectral reflective wavelength global coverage, providing the opportunity for improved combined sensor mapping and monitoring of the Earth’s surface. However, the standard geolocated Landsat-8 OLI L1T and Sentinel-2A MSI L1C data products are currently found to be misaligned. An approach for automated registration of Landsat-8 OLI L1T and Sentinel-2A MSI L1C data is presented and demonstrated using contemporaneous sensor data. The approach is computationally efficient because it implements feature point detection across four image pyramid levels to identify a sparse …

A Means To An End: Articulations Of Diasporic Blackness, Class And Survival Among Female Afro-Caribbean Service Workers In New York City, Christine A. Pinnock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the oral histories and personal narratives of Afro-Caribbean women who migrated to New York from 1961-2008 and explores how they articulate and negotiate multiple identities surrounding diasporic Blackness, class, and gender. This dissertation studies Afro-Caribbean women in the spaces they live namely, the Northeast Bronx, New York City, and Westchester and takes an interdisciplinary approach to theorize Afro-Caribbean women's experiences. Based on ethnographic research conducted over two and a half years, this study explores the challenges of Afro-Caribbean women working in the service sector who perform as: domestics, healthcare workers, retail workers, and food service workers and …

Planning For Bike Share Connectivity To Rail Transit, Greg P. Griffin, Ipek N. Sener

Journal of Public Transportation

Bike sharing can play a role in providing access to transit stations and then to final destinations, but early implementation of these systems in North America has been opportunistic rather than strategic. This study evaluates local intermodal plan goals using trip data and associated infrastructure such as transit stops and bike share station locations in Austin, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois. Bike sharing use data from both cities suggest a weak relationship with existing rail stations that could be strengthened through collaborative, intermodal planning. The study suggests a planning framework and example language that could be tailored to help address the …

Agriculture On The Brink:Climate Change, Labor And Smallholder Farming In Botswana, William G. Moseley

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Spatial, Temporal Variability And Trends Within The Tributaries Of The Huron River: Effects On The Frequency Of Flooding, Cheyenne India Stewart

Masters Theses

The Huron River, located in the Great Lakes Region, Michigan, USA is a symbol of success, wealth and prosperity to the residents of Southeast Michigan. In the last 20 years, the river has been subject to degradation due to high growth rates of urban cities and often experience the cumulative effects of channelization, pollution from point and nonpoint sources, as well as a decline in wetland area and quality. Urbanization in watersheds of stream channels has intensified many incidences of flooding in metropolitan areas over the past few decades. Causes for the decrease in the capacity of the Huron River …

A Platform For Crowdsourcing The Creation Of Representative, Accurate Landcover Maps, Lyndon Estes, D. Mcritchie, J. Choi, S. Debats, T. Evans, W. Guthe, D. Luo, G. Ragazzo, R. Zempleni, K. K. Caylor

Geography

Accurate landcover maps are fundamental to understanding socio-economic and environmental patterns and processes, but existing datasets contain substantial errors. Crowdsourcing map creation may substantially improve accuracy, particularly for discrete cover types, but the quality and representativeness of crowdsourced data is hard to verify. We present an open-sourced platform, DIYlandcover, that serves representative samples of high resolution imagery to an online job market, where workers delineate individual landcover features of interest. Worker mapping skill is frequently assessed, providing estimates of overall map accuracy and a basis for performance-based payments. A trial of DIYlandcover showed that novice workers delineated South African cropland …

No. 03: Urban Food Deserts And Climate Change In African Cities, Mary Caesar, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

The underlying assumption in much of the Euro-American food deserts literature is that urban food deserts are dynamic spaces, expanding and contracting with the advent and withdrawal of supermarkets. This discussion paper argues that to tie such dynamism purely to the spatial behaviour of formal food retail outlets is both narrow and inappropriate in the African context, where the use of the food deserts concept requires a sophisticated understanding of the multiple market and non-market food sources, of the spatial mobility and dynamism of the informal food economy, of the changing drivers of household food insecurity and the local conditions …

Wildfire Risk As A Socioecological Pathology, A. Paige Fischer, Thomas A. Spies, Toddi A. Steelman, Cassandra Moseley, Bart R. Johnson, John D. Bailey, Alan A. Ager, Patrick Bourgeron, Susan Charnley, Brandon M. Collins, Jeffrey D. Kline, Jessica E. Leahy, Jeremy S. Littell, James D. A. Millington, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Christine S. Olsen, Travis B. Paveglio, Christopher I. Roos, Michelle M. Steen-Adams, Forrest R. Stevens, Jelena Vukomanovic, Eric M. White, David Bowman

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wildfire risk in temperate forests has become a nearly intractable problem that can be characterized as a socioecological “pathology”: that is, a set of complex and problematic interactions among social and ecological systems across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Assessments of wildfire risk could benefit from recognizing and accounting for these interactions in terms of socioecological systems, also known as coupled natural and human systems (CNHS). We characterize the primary social and ecological dimensions of the wildfire risk pathology, paying particular attention to the governance system around wildfire risk, and suggest strategies to mitigate the pathology through innovative planning approaches, …

A 3d Modeling Perspective: The Juxtaposition Between Nature And Technology, Caroline Grace Brustowicz

Honors Theses

For my senior thesis I explore the juxtaposition between nature and technology. There is beauty in the ubiquitous contrast and coexistence between these two entities, which we encounter on a daily basis. My work has been inspired by Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist, naturalist, and artist from the early 1900’s. His artwork includes over 100 detailed drawings, prints, and multi-colored illustrations of animals and sea creatures with a focus on representing the intricate details found in nature. I’ve emulated this attention to detail within nature by modeling (using Cinema 4D software and 3D printing with a MakerBot printer) sculptures that …

Sociodemographic And Geospatial Correlates Of Stillbirths And Neonatal Mortality In Indonesia (1993–2007), Alka Dev

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Little research has focused on the determinants of stillbirth and neonatal mortality in Indonesia despite the fact that the country has one of the highest rates of stillbirths in the world and one of the highest rates of neonatal mortality in Asia. Several areas have not been explored due to data limitations, such as shared risk factors and measurement challenges, which can inform health policy and interventions and guide future research. This dissertation addresses this gap by comparing measurement challenges for stillbirth and neonatal mortality and identifying risk factors for both using Indonesian reproductive health survey data. Differences in estimates …

Can Significant Trends Be Detected In Surface Air Temperature And Precipitation Over South America In Recent Decades?, Daniel De Barros Soares, Huikyo Lee, Paul C. Loikith, Armineh Barkhordarian, Carlos R. Mechoso

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Trends in near-surface air temperature and precipitation over South America are examined for the periods 1975–2004 and 1955–2004, respectively, using multiple observational and climate model data sets. The results for observed near-surface air temperature show an overall warming trend over much of the continent, with the largest magnitudes over central Brazil. These observed trends are found to be statistically significant using pre-industrial control simulations from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) as the baseline to estimate natural climate variability. The observed trends are compared with those obtained in natural-only CMIP5 simulations, in which only natural forcings …

Redistribution Of The Chicago’S Divvy Bike-Share Stations Using Linear Optimization Model: An Equity Perspective, Md Mehedi Hasan

Masters Theses

Public bike-share infrastructure has the potential to play an important role in sustainable transport systems by enhancing environmental, public health and economic outcomes. In this research, the temporal distributive equity of bike-share infrastructure was examined for initial (300) and expanded (477) bike-share stations across the city of Chicago using eleven accessibility indices. The eleven accessibility indices were calculated using counts of bike share stations within neighborhood boundaries, buffered catchment areas and network distances. By examining the accessibility indices, it was recommended to re-distribute the bike share stations for optimal allocation across the different economic hardship categories. In this study, Linear …

Guided Educational Tourism As Informal Science Education: An Empirical Study, Joseph Martin Lane

Dissertations

The scientific research and education communities have long had the goal of advancing the publics’ understanding of science. Informal science education is a powerful mechanism for shaping human conduct, enhancing quality of life, and advancing the publics’ understandings and values regarding science. Guided educational tours (that present science content) provide visitors with unique opportunities to observe and discuss scientific phenomena in the field. Available empirical research related to learning science from guided educational tours is, at best, limited. Research leading to the development of effective guided educational tours that present and interpret scientific information is of interest to both non-profit …