Digital Commons Network^™

An Exploratory Study Of Ukrainian Refugee Resettlement Patterns And Education Resource Needs In Poland, Marta Gintowt

West Chester University Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Final Projects

The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in late February 2022 triggered a refugee crisis that reverberated throughout Europe. During the onset of the invasion, an estimated five million Ukrainian refugees, mostly women, children, and the elderly, fled to countries in Europe and beyond. Countries were not prepared for the magnitude of the initial influx of refugees, who are a vulnerable population who require specific immediate and long-term supports. As three years have passed since the start of the war, the needs of refugees have evolved, and resources providing educational support to refugee children have taken on increased importance. …

Potential 2050 Distributions Of World Terrestrial Ecosystems From Projections Of Changes In World Climate Regions And Global Land Cover, Roger Sayre, Charlie Frye, Sean Breyer, Patrick R. Roehrdanz, Paul R. Elsen, Kevin Butler, Clint Brown, Jill Cress, Deniz Karagulle, Madeline Martin, Florencia Sangermano, Regan L. Smyth, Terry L. Sohl, Nicholas H. Wolff, Dawn J. Wright, Zhouting Wu

Geography

The urgency to address ecosystem loss is paramount, as both land use change and climate change will continue to rapidly alter and degrade natural ecosystems and reduce the many services they provide. To support conservation actions that mitigate impacts from these dual threats, we have developed potential World Terrestrial Ecosystem (WTE) distributions for 2050 following IPCC best practice guidelines. This projection of ecosystem distributions builds on the previously released 2015 WTEs, a snapshot of the distribution and conservation status of 431 terrestrial ecosystem types defined as distinct combinations of 18 global climate regions, 4 global landform classes, and 8 global …

He's A Builder, But Does Trump Have An Urban Agenda?, Mark Davidson

Geography

For 20 years, turbulence has defined American urbanism. In the late noughties, a global financial crisis pushed many US cities to the brink of bankruptcy. Austerity followed, with belt-tightening squeezing city services. Then came Trump, then came COVID. The pandemic would, unpredictably, make US cities cash rich thanks to the Federal government's largesse. And now we await Trump 2.0. For US cities the prospect of radical change seems real. But what type of reform will Trump bring? Herein lies the difficulty. Trump 2.0 is as hard to predict as the first version was. Immigration, tariff reform and government efficiency are …

Spatial Temporal Patterns Of Us Landslides In Recent Decades And Climate Change, Karissa Duff

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events are on the rise in recent decades around the world due to climate change and the trend is projected to continue. Intensified rainfall is a well-known trigger for landslide hazards. The impact of climate change on landslide hazards is a research question of practical importance, as landslides can cause billions of dollars in damage and significant loss of human lives annually. However, previous studies have often focused on specific events with limited spatial and temporal scales. Here we report our preliminary results of leveraging modern geospatial statistical tools in GIS using both …

Workable Seams, Jackson Mills Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In Jackson Mills Smith’s Workable Seams, readers encounter the stories, landscapes, and lives of rural Knox County, Indiana, from the oscillating vantage of a Hoosier boy raised with a Cajun sensibility. After relocating from Louisiana to the river bottoms of the crossroad state at a young age, the speaker gradually uncovers a local history only previously understood in fragmentary shards and fading glimpses.

Alternating between semi-lyrical embodied experiences and memories, documentary pieces in conversation with the state’s historical archive, and the retelling of exaggerated local yarns, poetry is a means of inquiry in Workable Seams. Topics range from …

Indigenous Access And Use On Private Land: A Toolkit For Heart Of The Rockies Land Trust Members, Ian James Craighead

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Remote Sensing - Based Mapping And Analysis Of Winter Cover Crop Adoption For Sustainable Agriculture, Minnehaha County, Belinda Buechler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Winter cover crops planted by farmers such as cereal rye, crimson clover, radishes, hairy vetch, and winter wheat are used to conserve and protect the soil during winter. These crops offer numerous benefits such as improving soil health, reducing erosion, fixing nitrogen, increasing carbon sequestration, and weed suppression. Over time, winter cover cropping has been recognized as a sustainable agricultural practice and has gained attention from Federal and State conservation programs, farmers, and non-governmental organizations. Due to their vital benefits, agencies such as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Natural Resources Conversation Services (NRCS) have partnered with cost-share programs …

Shifting Waters: A 41-Year Time-Series Analysis Of Surface Water Change In The Prairie Pothole Region, Madison Dejarlais

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Prairie Pothole Region (PRR) is a landscape defined by a dynamic surface water system, with wetlands, lakes, and rivers playing critical roles in supporting biodiversity, regulating floods, and maintaining hydrological balance. This study conducts a time-series analysis of surface water change in the PPR from 1984 to 2024, using remote sensing tools including Google Earth Engine, ArcGIS Pro, and ENVI. 41 annual surface water presence rasters were compiled into a cumulative dataset, allowing for both year-to-year comparisons and broader trend analysis. Results indicate that the presence of surface water in the PPR has not followed a simple linear trend. …

Family Roots And Research Journal Unm Emeritus Professor José A. Rivera, José A. Rivera Ph.D

Faculty Publications

This article is an abbreviated life narrative of UNM Emeritus Professor of Community and Regional Planning, José A. Rivera. It begins with highlights of his family ancestry and continues with an account of his educational experiences K-12 and into a decade of university life as a student while earning a bachelor’s, two master’s and a doctorate. He taught at UNM for 35 years while also conducting research in his areas of interest, mostly in community irrigation studies, mutual aid societies, and rural development. The main body in the article focuses on positions he held at UNM and on publications that …

Human-Bear Conflicts In Western Montana: Mapping Attractants And Prevention Efforts, Jessica Nichole Reyes

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Human-bear conflicts (conflicts) are rising across North America, largely due to the expansion of the wildland-urban interface into bear habitat. These conflicts are driven by ecological and human factors, including habitat fragmentation, loss of natural food sources and the widespread availability of human-related attractants such as garbage, fruit trees, and bird feeders. While studies increasingly examine the ecological and spatial predictors of conflicts, fewer have explored how attractant types, land cover changes, and local geography shape conflict trends. Montana communities have long managed bear conflicts, but recent increases in incidents and human-caused bear mortalities—alongside expanding grizzly bear populations—have prompted growing …

Earth Observations Reveal Impacts Of Climate Variability On Maize Cropping Systems In Sub-Saharan Africa, Adomas Liepa, Michael Thiel, Hannes Taubenböck, Doris Klein, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Marcell K. Peters, Sarah Schönbrodt-Stitt, Insa Otte, Tobias Landmann, Zeyaur R. Khan, Michael Ochieng Obondo, Frank Chidawanyika, Emily A. Martin, Tobias Ullmann

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

In Kenya, climate variability and change threaten smallholder, rainfed farms, with crop failures, yield reductions, and pest infestations. Efficient agroecological strategies, such as Push-Pull intercropping, offer documented benefits including pest control, improved soil fertility, and water conservation compared to traditional maize monocropping. To date, no studies exist comparing traditional maize monocropping and Push-Pull intercropping using earth observation tools over several growing seasons in East Africa. Our research addresses this by harmonizing Landsat 7, 8, 9 with Sentinel-2 remote sensing time series from 2016 to 2023. Phenological metrics of 15 growing seasons are extracted based on a threshold method using the …

Slum Area Detection In Dhaka City, Bangladesh, Using Satellite Remote Sensing And Deep Learning, Soubhoon Sadeq Shinjini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dhaka City, a rapidly growing megacity and high-density developing area in Bangladesh, faces numerous urbanization challenges. Among these, informal settlements or slum areas pose serious concerns for authorities and policymakers striving to improve living conditions for slum dwellers. Dhaka City’s slums are characterized by high-density, one- or two-story structures made of low-cost materials, often located adjacent to natural water bodies and lacking basic public infrastructure (Ahmed 2014; Iqbal 2014; Jahan 2012). The need for accurate and up-to-date data on these settlements is crucial for researchers and policymakers, particularly for implementing slum upgradation and resettlement programs. However, traditional field surveys for …

Assessing Repetitive Loss Factors In Miami-Dade And Broward Counties, Fl, Rebecca Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This dissertation examines repetitive loss factors in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, Florida. It focuses on physical building characteristics and socioeconomic characteristics in an historic analysis of claims data from 1977 through 2014. Later, the focus is on predicted areas, or “hotspots” where climate-change induced sea level rise in conjunction with increased storm activity may cause increased flooding in the future. The study employs various statistical models, including Poisson and negative binomial regression modeling, spatial regression modeling and hot spot analysis to analyze FEMA property claims data and socioeconomic indicators.

The first part investigates the relationship between building characteristics and flooding …

Social Susceptibility-Driven Longitudinal Tornado Reconnaissance Methodology: 2021 Midwest Quad-State Tornado Outbreak, John W. Van De Lindt, Wanting "Lisa" Wang, Blythe Johnston, P. Shane Crawford, Guirong Yan, Thang Dao, Trung Do, Katie Skakel, Mojtaba Harati, Tu Nguyen, Robinson Umeike, Silvana Croope

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

With the impact of climate change, the intensity and frequency of tornado events have been increasing. Enhancing tornado reconnaissance methods can comprehensively capture building damage and recovery data following tornado events and outbreaks, thereby strengthening community resilience against the threat of future tornado events. Advancements in tornado data reconnaissance research have embraced remote sensing techniques to assess building damage after tornado events, supplanting traditional reconnaissance methods relying on handheld cameras with GIS mapping. Community resilience research offers a groundbreaking perspective, stressing the importance of assessing buildings throughout their recovery cycle-from damage and functionality to recovery-and considering their socioeconomic stability in …

Ensemble Machine Learning Approaches For Bathymetry Estimation In Multi-Spectral Images, Kazi A. Islam, Omar Abdul-Hassan, Hongfang Zhang, Victoria Hill, Blake Schaeffer, Richard Zimmerman, Jiang Li

OES Faculty Publications

Traditional bathymetry measures require a large number of human hours, and many bathymetry records are obsolete or missing. Automated measures of bathymetry would reduce costs and increase accessibility for research and applications. In this paper, we optimized a recent machine learning model, named CatBoostOpt, to estimate bathymetry based on high-resolution WorldView-2 (WV-2) multi-spectral optical satellite images. CatBoostOpt was demonstrated across the Florida Big Bend coastline, where the model learned correlations between in situ sound Navigation and Ranging (Sonar) bathymetry measurements and the corresponding multi-spectral reflectance values in WV-2 images to map bathymetry. We evaluated three different feature transformations as inputs …

High Antarctic Coastal Productivity In Polynyas Revealed By Considering Remote Sensing Ice-Adjacency Effects, Hilde Oliver, Jessica S. Turner, Alexandre Castagna, Henry Houskeeper, Heidi Dierssen

OES Faculty Publications

Ocean color-based estimates of Antarctic net primary productivity (NPP) have indicated low nearshore productivity in ice-adjacent waters, contrasting with coupled physical–biogeochemical models. To understand this discrepancy, we assessed satellite records of polynya NPP by comparing field data with two satellite imagery datasets derived using different processing schemes. Our results indicate historical underestimation of chlorophyll a for imagery obtained using default atmospheric correction processing within approximately 100 km of ice-covered coastlines due to adjacency effects. Using radiative transfer modeling, we find that biases in ocean color polynya observations due to adjacency effects correspond to the high albedo of ice and snow. …

Landscapes Of State Capitalism: Reconciling The Vernacular, National Development Imaginaries, And Green Capital Accumulation, Sol Andrew Stokols

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This article theorizes ‘state capitalist landscapes’ as a unique spatial form shaped by state-owned developers that reconcile economic goals with national development imperatives and symbolic national imaginaries. State capitalist landscapes, I argue, integrate economically productive spaces with natural spaces to symbolize imaginaries of the nation. Through an inductive case study methodology, this article surveys three industrial zones developed and/or under development by state owned developers: Singapore's Jurong, China's Xiong’an New Area, and Thailand's Wangchan Valley. In each of these cases, natural landscapes are integrated into new economic zones in order to construct specific symbolic and/or political imaginaries of the nation: …

Integrating Indigenous Values And Community Strengths To Achieve Indigenous Food Sovereignty And Community Well-Being In The Ka’A’Gee Tu First Nation, Northwest Territories, Jennifer K. Temmer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northern Indigenous communities face disproportionate impacts from interconnected challenges related to climate change, food security, health, and cultural preservation, that threaten traditional food systems and practices. While there is a growing recognition of the importance of community-driven solutions, existing frameworks fail to integrate Indigenous values and local priorities effectively. This research addresses this gap by exploring how the Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation (KTFN) is responding to these crises through climate change adaptation efforts focused on food system sustainability as a pathway to self-sufficiency and community well-being. To contribute to these efforts, this dissertation uses Participatory Action Research to facilitate community-driven …

Co-Creation, Interpretations And Engagement With A Movement-Based Symbol For Climate Justice: A Qualitative Inquiry, Kai Reimer-Watts

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The climate crisis demonstrates with complete clarity the need for massive systems-level changes towards far more sustainable societies. Global and local emissions need to decline rapidly to mitigate intensifying climate breakdown, accompanied by climate and sustainability solutions, to secure a far more stable, safe, and just future for all people and all life. Within these changes, engaging in our communities is essential to support and co-create broader solutions to help advance more sustainable societies, reduce negative impacts of a changing climate, and to move towards cultures and systems that recognize natural limits and centre care for people and planet.

‘Climate …

From The Intimate, Regional To The Global: Examining The Indian International Student Migration To Canada, Neil Amber Judge

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines Indian international student migration to Canada focusing on students from the north Indian state of Punjab, a region with extensive history of migration and transnational social ties to Canada. Punjab has historically been the predominant sending region within India to Canada, and which continues to dominate in the present phase of international student migration to Canada. The pursuit of higher education has become particularly popular in Punjab. Furthermore, Canada has recently emerged as a significant international study destination following its international education strategy aimed to attract and increase the number of international students. The study employs qualitative …

Operationalizing Intersectionality Analysis For Urban Agriculture In Quito, Ecuador, Laine N. Young

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis outlines the results of a case study in Quito, Ecuador with the municipally led participatory urban agriculture project, AGRUPAR, an internationally recognized project that promotes women’s empowerment, traditional knowledge, agroecology, and livelihoods. It works to improve the lives of those experiencing high levels of poverty in Quito. This dissertation applies an intersectional analysis to urban agriculture research to enhance attention to power relations, social justice, and equity within its scholarly and practical realms. Intersectionality is an understanding that people have unique experiences of oppression based on their unique social location (what intersecting social categories they belong to) and …

Art, Economy, And Society: The Influence Of The Savannah College Of Art And Design On Savannah, Ga, Rebecca Neely

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This mixed-methods study examines the relationship between the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and neighborhood change in Savannah’s historic districts. It combines GIS analysis of census data from 2000, 2010, and 2020, regression models, and a community survey (n = 60). The qualitative analysis findings suggest that areas near SCAD properties saw disproportionate increases in college-aged residents, White and Asian populations, higher educational attainment, income levels, and housing costs. Survey responses revealed concerns among long-term residents about rising affordability pressures, cultural displacement, and whether revitalization efforts benefit the broader community. Many respondents questioned the balance between the city …

Evaluating Spatiotemporal Vegetation Index Variation To Detect Salt Marsh Dieback On The Georgia Coast, Emmanuella Bosompemaa Obeng

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Salt marshes, essential for coastal protection and carbon sequestration, are increasingly vulnerable to dieback events, threatening ecosystem resilience and vital services. Detecting these shifts early is essential for timely intervention. However, few studies have applied Early Warning Signals (EWS) to coastal marsh systems. Most EWS research has focused on lakes, forests, or climate tipping points, with limited application to salt marsh dieback in the southeastern U.S. Site-specific, long-term spatial analyses are also lacking, as prior work often examines short time frames or single disturbance events. This study investigates the spatiotemporal patterns of salt marsh dieback on the Georgia coast from …

Booklet Of Green Prompts, Fatima Iqbal, Ali Fayyaz

Institute for Educational Development Pakistan (IED-PK) Archives

This short stories book is an outcome of the Climate Action Fellowship carried out by the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED) and funded by the U.S. Mission in Pakistan.

How Much Antisemitism Is There In The United States? Incidences Vs. Impacts, Ira Sheskin

FIU Law Review

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (www.adl.org), founded in 1913, is one of the nation's premier civil rights organizations and was formed to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all. Every year since 1979, the ADL has published an Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in the US (https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2023). The Audit receives significant publicity and is important in communicating the problem of serious antisemitic incidents and the year-to-year increases in such incidents. But, based on surveys of American Jews, the Audit underestimates the extent to which American Jews are being impacted by antisemitism. Survey data …

Annual Diversity Of Honey Bee Pollen Sources In Two Pumpkin Growing Landscapes, Machakos County, Kenya, Marystella W. Nang’Oni, Muo Kasina, Rebecca Karanja, Mary M. Guantai, Rahab N. Kinyanjui, Evanson R. Omuse, Michael H.G. Lattorff, Elfatih M. Abdel-Rahman, Marian Adan, Samira A. Mohamed, Thomas Dubois

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Multi-floral foraging sources for honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) have been threatened by landscape changes and unsustainable farming practices. In East Africa, the biodiversity of forage resources that could support honey bees, especially in agricultural lands, remains least explored. This study investigated pollen diversity for honey bees in Yatta and Masinga Sub-counties in Machakos County, Kenya. Honey bee hives were installed on eight pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima Duchesne ex Lam) farms (one hive per farm) in two varying landscape vegetation classes (low and medium) based on normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Pollen traps were installed at the hive entrance and pollen …

Mission And Editorial Policy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 28, Issue 1 Full Contents

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Exploring Characteristics Of Indiana's Local Park And Recreation Leaders, Amy L. Gregg, James A. Jones, Halyn Ferris

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

This was an exploratory study about the characteristics of Indiana’s local leaders in parks and recreation. Results of a statewide survey showed different roles of employees and volunteers in local agencies. In managing the supply side of recreation, they reported vast differences in scale of levels of populations served and natural resources managed, such as acres and trails. The Northern, Central and Southern regions were compared for types of local government, communities of different sizes, and nonprofit collaboration. Local leaders represented municipal, township and county providers collaborating with other local community organizations. Results showed that size of community served affected …

Author Biographical Notes

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.