Digital Commons Network^™

Lower Tropospheric Temperature Variability Over The Usa: A Gis Approach, Souleymane Fall, Dev Niyogi, Gilbert L. Rochon

GIS Day

We use the high resolution North American Regional Analysis (NARR) dataset to build for the United States a Temperature Change Index (TCI) based on four contributing variables derived from the layer-averaged temperature and lapse rate of the 1000mb - 700mb layer (near-surface to 3000 meters) for the 1979-2008 period. The analysis uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methods to identify distinct regional patterns based on aggregate temperature trends and variability scores. The resulting index allows us to identify and compare regions that experience high (low) temperature trends and variability that are referred to as hot spots (cold spots). The upper Midwest …

Predictive Modeling Of Sulfur Flower Buckwheat (Erigonum Umbellatum Torrey) Using Non-Parametric Multiplicative Regression Analysis, David B. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Impacts of humans on ecosystems in western United States have necessitated ecological restoration, which includes the development of native seed that can be used for revegetation efforts. Development of such seed sources are costly and time consuming. This study describes the use of non-parametric multiplicative regression analysis (NPMR) to develop a predictive model for occurrence of sulfur-flower buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum Torrey) population seed collection. This perennial forb species is of interest for seed source development in the western United States. Presence and absence data for E. umbellatum was taken from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Big Game Range …

Redefining The Dust Bowl Region Via Popular Perception And Geotechnology, Jess C. Porter, G. Allen Finchum

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The Dust Bowl is a historical vernacular region that has been delimited by a diverse group of academics, literary authors, and popular cultural voices. However, the general public’s perception of the Dust Bowl region has not been mapped and analyzed. This research queried residents of 93 Great Plains counties in order to ascertain their perceptions and knowledge of the vernacular Dust Bowl region. Analysis of the responses via the application of geographic information system mapping reveals striking differences between respondents of varying age and place of residence. Findings suggest that spatial understanding of the Dust Bowl phenomena is eroding among …

Accessibility In Metropolitan Transportation Planning : Visualizing A Gis-Based Measure For Collaborative Planning, Aditi Sarkar

Dissertations

Passed by the US Congress in 1995, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), requires Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to further the trend of collaboration by employing visualization techniques for Transportation Improvement Programs (TIPs). In the first part of this two-part research, three New Jersey MPOs are investigated to understand how accessibility is considered by their organizations, how TIPs are evaluated, and how collaborative planning and visualization techniques are used to evaluate TIPs. In the second part of this study, a small segment of a MPO's jurisdiction is selected to develop a visualization of …

Visualizing And Modeling Mining-Induced Surface Subsidence, Marcor Gibbons Platt

Theses and Dissertations

Ground subsidence due to underground coal mining is a complex, narrowly-understood phenomenon. Due to the complicated physical processes involved and the lack of a complete knowledge of the characteristics of overlying strata, the reliability of current prediction techniques varies widely. Furthermore, the accuracy of any given prediction technique is largely dependent upon the accuracy of field measurements and surveys which provide input data for the technique. A valuable resource available for predicting and modeling subsidence is aerial survey technology. This technology produces yearly datasets with a high density of survey points. The following study introduces a method wherein these survey …

‘Buried Beneath The Waves’: Using Gis To Examine The Physical And Social Impact Of A Historical Flood, Mathew Novak, Jason Gilliland

Geography & Environment Publications

Natural disasters such as floods can periodically disturb and destroy the built and social fabric of communities. Despite their importance, specific ramifications of natural disasters can be overlooked in local histories due to a paucity of data. In this article we bring together several disparate sources of data within a historical geographic information system (HGIS) to study certain physical and social details of the flood which devastated the Town of London West, Canada on 11 July 1883. The integration of historical and contemporary data sources allow for the construction of a three-dimensional model of where the flood likely occurred. With …

Modeling Potential Native Plant Species Distributions In Rich County, Utah, Kathryn A. Peterson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Georeferenced field data were used to develop logistic regression models of the geographic distribution of 38 frequently common plant species throughout Rich County, Utah, to assist in the future correlation of Natural Resources Conservation Service Ecological Site Descriptions to soil map units. Field data were collected primarily during the summer of 2007, and augmented with previously existing data collected in 2001 and 2006. Several abiotic parameters and Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery were used to stratify the study area into sampling units prior to the 2007 field season.

Models were initially evaluated using an independent dataset extracted from data collected by …

The Reestablishment Of American Ginseng (Panax Quinquefolius), Mary Snow, Richard Snow

Publications

Conservation biology and restoration ecology are concerned not only with protecting fragile ecosystems but also with intervening in an attempt to repair what has been damaged largely through anthropogenic activities. As a result of high demand as a medicinal herb and the failure of harvesters to conserve, the federal government has placed American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) on the list of plants that may be in danger of extinction. Ginseng favors a habitat ranging from 30 to 50 degrees north latitude and minimum cold cycles of 45 days with temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius. Other specific criteria include 20 inches of …

Gis Spatial Analysis Of Multiple Scenes In Criminal Homicides, Casey C. Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anthropological studies of community structures and human relationships of today's societies are becoming increasingly important for crime analysis. Law enforcement agencies are often challenged with the task of connecting multiple locations to persons involved in crimes to solve cases. Using the structures of the target communities and the social relationship between the victim and offender, spatial distributions of crimes can be reconstructed.

Data used in this analysis were collected from Hillsborough County, Florida (n=420) and Lancaster County, Nebraska (n=48) law enforcement agencies within the years 1997-2007. The hypothesis of this paper is: if the social relationship between the victim and …

An Assessment Of The Impacts Of Relocation On Public Housing Youth, Emily Zupo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper will explore the social and economic impacts of public housing revitalization on households with minor children. The research traces the relocations of families from two public housing complexes to other public housing complexes or market housing, using Housing Choice formerly Section 8 vouchers. We contrast and compare the socioeconomic characteristics of the original neighborhoods to the relocation sites from the census tract level, exploring changes in resources available to families.

Using Gis To Locate Areas For Growing Quality Coffee In Honduras, Ellen Mickle

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Abstract Small-scale coffee producers worldwide remain vulnerable to price fluctuations after the 1999-2003 coffee crisis. One way to increase small-scale farmer economic resilience is to produce a more expensive product, such as quality coffee. There is growing demand in coffee-producing and coffee-importing countries for user-friendly tools that facilitate the marketing of quality coffee. The purpose of this study is to develop a prototypical quality coffee marketing tool in the form of a GIS model that identifies regions for producing quality coffee in a country not usually associated with quality coffee, Honduras. Maps of areas for growing quality coffee were produced …

Erratic Monsoon, Growing Water Demand, And Declining Water Table

Journal of Spatial Hydrology

In India, water resources are governed by the southwest monsoon. The water demand is increasing day by day due to population growth, rapid urbanisation, and multiple cropping practices. Due to changing climatic conditions monsoon, the chief controller of rainfall is found to be very irregular. Erratic monsoon with insufficient rainfall in combination with high heat-flow and over-exploitation of ground water imparts stress on the water resources, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. Time-series analysis of water-table fluctuations provides idea about temporal variation of aquifer-recharge and availability of ground-water resources. In the present study, an attempt has been made to assess …

Evaluation Of Total Runoff For The Rio San Pedro Sub-Basin (Nayarit, Mexico) Assessing Their Hydrologic Response Units

Journal of Spatial Hydrology

The Rio San Pedro sub-basin runoff was estimated using the curve number method (NRCS-CN) applied to hydrologic response units (HRU’s), derived from remote sensing and GIS analysis. The sub-basin (around 2900 km²) was delineated from digital elevation models (DEM), that also were used to obtain the slopes in the study area. A landscape characterization (overall accuracy > 80%), based on Landsat ETM+ imagery, was obtained using standard classification methods, and together with a rainfall data series, were the input information for the sub-basin discretization in HRU’s and the runoff calculation. Seventeen HRU’s were obtained, that can be arranged in …

Assessment Of Spatial Patterns Of Sediment Transport And Delivery For Soil And Water Conservation Programs

Journal of Spatial Hydrology

Soil erosion has tremendous impacts on most river systems throughout the United States. Such non-point pollution results from land-use and agricultural practices and leads to sedimentation downstream, a decrease in the transport capacity of streams, an increase in the risk of flooding, filling of reservoirs, and eutrophication. This paper uses a spatially-explicit model to identify the sediment sources and delivery paths to channels and link these sediment supply processes to in- channel sediment transport and storage. The paper analyzes hillslope erosion and deposition rates using the Unit Stream Power Erosion and Deposition model in a GIS to estimate patterns of …

Brownfield Redevelopment In London, Ontario: Developing A Methodology For A Brownfield Database And An Examination Of Policy Initiatives Aimed At Promoting Redevelopment, Michael Hayek

Digitized Theses

Brownfield redevelopment, because of its contributions to urban sustainability and environmental quality, has become a critical issue on cities* policy agendas and in urban development literature of late. There have been no studies examining the issue of brownfield redevelopment in London, Ontario, Canada nor have there been any studies that detail a method to create a city-wide inventory of brownfield sites. This research has three main objectives: to develop a GIS based methodology for creating a brownfield inventory; through interview analysis, indentify the barriers to successful brownfield redevelopment in London; and to determine whether or not the financial incentives in …

Glacier Monitoring In Ladakh And Zanskar, Northwestern India, Martin Edward Byrne

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Glaciers in the Himalaya are often heavily covered with supraglacial debris, making them difficult to study with remotely-sensed imagery alone. Various methods such as band ratios can be used effectively to map clean-ice glaciers; however, a thicker layer of debris often makes it impossible to distinguish between supraglacial debris and the surrounding terrain. Previously, a morphometric approach employing an ASTER-derived digital elevation model (DEM) has been used to map glaciers in the Khumbu Himal and the Tien Shan. This project aims first to test the ability of the morphometric procedure to map small glaciers; second, to use the morphometric approach …

A Remote Sensing And Gis-Assisted Spatial Decision Support System For Hazardous Waste Site Monitoring, John R. Jensen, Michael E. Hodgson, Maria Garcia-Quijano, Jungho Im, Jason A. Tullis

Faculty Publications

Humans produce large amounts of waste that must be processed or stored so that it does not contaminate the environment. When hazardous wastes are stored, waste site monitoring is typically conducted in situ which can lead to a serious time lag between the onset of a problem and detection. A Remote Sensing and GIS-assisted Spatial Decision Support System for Hazardous Waste Site Monitoring was developed to improve hazardous waste site management. The system was designed to be recursive, flexible, and integrative. It is recursive because the system is implemented iteratively until the risk assessment subsystem determines that an event is …

Integration Of Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation (Musle) Into A Gis Framework To Assess Soil Erosion Risk, Yanli Zhang, J. Degroote, Calvin Wolter, Ramanathan Sugumaran

Faculty Publications

Soil erosion is an important economic and environmental concern throughout the world. In order to assess soil erosion risk and conserve water and soil resources, soil erosion modeling at the watershed scale is urgently needed. This study integrated the Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation (MUSLE) in a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework in the form of a tool called ArcMUSLE, an extension of ArcGIS® software, to assist soil and water conservation agencies in soil erosion risk assessment and prioritization of critical areas for soil erosion control practices. With widely available spatial data, this tool can be applied to determine curve …

Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Of Biomes In The Northwestern United States (9000 Ybp To The Present), Christopher Caleb Stump

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The goal of this study was to quantitatively analyze and map the vegetation composition of forest, grassland, and steppe ecosystems in the northwestern United States in the present and through the last 9,000 years. The modern analysis used canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) on pollen percentages from recent sediment cores reflecting modern vegetation assemblages and climates to evaluate the amount of influence of selected environmental variables on present species distributions. The fossil analysis used non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS) on a merged database containing relative pollen percentages from the last 9000 years. A predefined list of environmental parameters and floristically and ecologically …

Development Of A Gis Database For Water Resources Management In Ajman Emirate, Uae., Mohammad Rehan Yusuf

Theses

The lack of freshwater resources represents a major constraint against the sustainable development in arid and semi-arid regions. Because of the scarcity and randomness nature of rainfall in arid regions, surface water resources are almost absent. Groundwater resources are always under stress and in many cases do not suffice the water demands for different sectors. Desalination plants are widely constructed to substitute for the water shortage. The UAE, including Ajman emirate, is witnessing a rapid development in the industrial, commercial, construction and agricultural fields which has led to a tremendous increase in water demands.

Proper management of the limited water …

Incorporating Spatial Data And Gis To Improve Sea Of Land Use Plans: Opportunities And Limitations: Case Studies In The Republic Of Ireland, Ainhoa Gonzalez Del Campo

Doctoral

This research aimed at establishing whether spatial data and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can contribute to Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). To achieve this, an integrated GISEA approach was developed and applied to a number of spatial planning SEAs in the Republic of Ireland. The practical applicability of the approach was examined, evaluating the potential benefits derived from using spatial data and GIS in SEA and assessing the potential barriers to an effective GIS use. The implementation of the SEA Directive incorporated a new dimension into plan-making by calling for the assessment of potential environmental effects that may derive from implementing …

Managing Geographic Data As An Asset: A Case Study In Large Scale Data Management, Clay Smithers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Geographic data is a hallowed element within the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) discipline. As geographic data faces increased usage in distributed and mobile environments, the ability to access and maintain that data can become challenging. Traditional methods of data management through the use of file storage, databases, and data catalog software are valuable in their ability to organize data, but provide little information about how the data was collected, how often the data is updated, and what value the data holds for an organization. By defining geographic data as an asset it becomes a valuable resource that requires acquisition, maintenance …

Linking Health Hazards And Environmental Justice: A Case Study In Houston, Texas, Marilyn Marie Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to extend quantitative research on environmental justice and address methodological limitations of previous studies by: (a) using new indicators of exposure to air pollution and contemporary risk modeling techniques; (b) assessing disparities in human health risks, instead of focusing only on potential exposure or proximity to pollution sources; and (c) using multivariate regression models that consider the effects of spatial dependence. The case study examines racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in the geographic distribution of exposure to airborne toxic emissions from industrial point sources in the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria metropolitan statistical area. Industrial pollution sources for this study comprise facilities …

Application Of Remote Sensing Methods To Assess The Spatial Extent Of The Seagrass Resource In St. Joseph Sound And Clearwater Harbor, Florida, U.S.A., Cynthia A. Meyer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the event of a natural or anthropogenic disturbance, environmental resource managers require a reliable tool to quickly assess the spatial extent of potential damage to the seagrass resource. The temporal availability of the Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery, 16-20 days, provides a suitable option to detect and assess damage to the seagrass resource. In this study, remote sensing Landsat 5 TM imagery is used to map the spatial extent of the seagrass resource. Various classification techniques are applied to delineate the seagrass beds in Clearwater Harbor and St. Joseph Sound, FL. This study aims to determine the most …

Finding A "Disappearing" Nontimber Forest Resource: Using Grounded Visualization To Explore Urbanization Impacts On Sweetgrass Basketmaking In Greater Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, Patrick T. Hurley, Angela C. Halfacre, Norm S. Levine, Marianne K. Burke

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Despite growing interest in urbanization and its social and ecological impacts on formerly rural areas, empirical research remains limited. Extant studies largely focus either on issues of social exclusion and enclosure or ecological change. This article uses the case of sweetgrass basketmaking in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, to explore the implications of urbanization, including gentrification, for the distribution and accessibility of sweetgrass, an economically important nontimber forest product (NTFP) for historically African American communities, in this rapidly growing area. We explore the usefulness of grounded visualization for research efforts that are examining the existence of "fringe ecologies" associated with NTFP. …

The Next Page, Library And Information Technology, Bucknell University

The Next Page

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of Energy Consumption And Emissions From Intermodal Freight Operations On The Eastern Seaboard: A Gis Network Analysis Approach, Aaron Falzarano

Theses

As global trade continues to increase, the energy and environmental impacts of freight movement in the US have become more of a concern. As such, the freight transport system needs to consider opportunities to meet customer objectives, while also meeting social goals. In the US there has been legislation enacted to address the growing impact that freight movement has on the environment, but there are limited tools to assist in the implementation of those polices. This research sets forth a process for creating a geospatial intermodal freight transportation (GIFT) model within ArcGIS that can be used to analyze freight movement …

Multi-Scale Evaluation Of Mechanisms Associated With The Establishment Of A Model Invasive Species In Mississippi: Imperata Cylindrica, D Christopher Holly

Theses and Dissertations

Of concern in this research were the ecological parameters associated with the establishment of a model invasive plant species, Imperata cylindrica, across a scale of ecological organization. Specifically, the study addressed the species’ ability to: differentially respond to abiotic and biotic constraints during seedling establishment, exhibit a novel underground competitive interference mechanism, and alter the decomposition dynamics in newly invaded ecosystems. Finally, the last portion of the research was centered around creating a predictive habitat model that will provide information on the most important variables responsible for creating habitat for this species. The population level seedling study indicated that soil …

Subsidized Housing, Private Developers And Place: A Spatial Analysis Of The Clustering Of Low Income Housing Tax Credit Properties In The 25 Largest U.S. Cities, Tara O'Neill

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program is the primary federal program for producing new units of affordable housing. The program provides financial incentives to private developers to develop and operate affordable rental housing. In recent years, evidence has emerged that the program has led to clusters of subsidized housing in some cities. It is hardly surprising that some clustering would exist in a program in which the housing is constructed and owned by private developers. Despite the significant number of units produced by the program and despite the potential tendency for clustering of units built under this program, the …

Examining 4-H Robotics And Geospatial Technologies In The Learning Of Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics Topics, Bradley S. Barker, Gwen Nugent, Neal Grandgenett

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

The study reported here investigated the use of educational robotics, paired with GPS and GIS geospatial technologies, as a context for learning selected concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics within a 4-H camp setting. The study involved 38 students between the ages of 11 to 15. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used in the study, with a 29-question multiple-choice instrument targeting various academic topics. The results of the study suggest that the 4-H robotics and geospatial summer camp program is a promising approach for supporting STEM-related learning, as represented by a significant increase of means from pretest to posttest.