Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Assessing The Cooling Effects Of Urban Vegetation On Urban Heat Mitigation In Selected U.S. Cities, Qiuyan Yu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a growing problem worldwide. Mitigation of UHI is necessary for cities to adapt to climate change and enhance sustainable development at a city scale. Cooling cities with urban vegetation management is a sustainable solution for urban heat mitigation. Urban vegetation influences urban microclimate through the shading effect, surface roughness, and evapotranspiration. The differences in horizontal and vertical structures of urban vegetation determine the shading effect, surface roughness, and evapotranspiration. Enhancing the cooling effect of urban vegetation requires a comprehensive understanding of how vegetation structure affects UHI. The effects of horizontal structure on land surface temperature …

Optical Remote Sensing Of Oil Spills In The Gulf Of Mexico, Shaojie Sun

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Assessment of oil spills in the ocean using passive remote sensing (i.e., reflected sun light) faces two challenges: detect oil presence/absence and quantify oil volume. While the optical properties of oil allow it to be differentiated from the surrounding marine environment, sun glint can facilitate oil presence/absence detection because the oil-water spatial contrast is enhanced due to wave dampening. However, sun glint also modulates the magnitude and shape of the spectral reflectance of surface oil. In addition to this difficulty, the most critical challenge is how to quantify oil volume (or thickness) through remote sensing. To date, such quantifications have …

Enhancement Of Rainfall-Triggered Shallow Landslide Hazard Assessment At Regional And Site Scales Using Remote Sensing And Slope Stability Analysis Coupled With Infiltration Modeling, Thilanki Maneesha Dahigamuwa Rajaguru Mudiyanselage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Landslides cause significant damage to property and human lives throughout the world. Rainfall is the most common triggering factor for the occurrence of landslides. This dissertation presents two novel methodologies for assessment of rainfall-triggered shallow landslide hazard. The first method focuses on using remotely sensed soil moisture and soil surface properties in developing a framework for real-time regional scale landslide hazard assessment while the second method is a deterministic approach to landslide hazard assessment of the specific sites identified during first assessment. In the latter approach, landslide inducing transient seepage in soil during rainfall and its effect on slope stability …

A Review Of Fractals In Karst, Eulogio Pardo-Igúzquiza, Peter A. Dowd, Juan J. Durán, Pedro Robledo-Ardila

International Journal of Speleology

Many features of a karst massif can either be modelled using fractal geometry or have a fractal distribution. For the exokarst, typical examples include the geometry of the landscape and the spatial location and size-distribution of karst depressions. Typical examples for the endokarst are the geometry of the three-dimensional network of karst conduits and the length-distribution of caves. In addition, the hydrogeological parameters of the karst massif, such as hydraulic conductivity, and karst spring hydrographs may also exhibit fractal behaviour. In this work we review the karst features that exhibit fractal behaviour, we review the literature in which they are …

Remote Estimation Of Surface Water PCo2 In The Gulf Of Mexico, Shuangling Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Surface ocean partial pressure of CO₂ (pCO₂) is a critical parameter in the quantification of air-sea CO₂ flux, which further plays an important role in quantifying the global carbon budget and understanding ocean acidification. The demand for a clearer understanding of how, and how fast, the ocean is changing due to atmospheric CO₂ absorption, requires accurate and synoptic estimation of surface pCO₂.

Surface ocean pCO₂ is mainly controlled by four oceanic processes – thermodynamics, ocean mixing, biological activities, and air-sea CO₂ exchange. Surface ocean pCO_{2 …}

Review Of Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards And Risk Reduction In The Modern World, Kira H. Hamman

Numeracy

Timothy H. Dixon. 2017. Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards and Risk Reduction in the Modern World. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) 300 pp. ISBN 978-1108113663.

In Curbing Catastrophe, Timothy H. Dixon explores commonalities among natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the meltdown at Fukushima. He identifies communication failure between scientists and policy makers as a major culprit in the devastation that results from such events and offers strategies for improving that communication. He includes optional in-depth scientific and quantitative examinations of the events and the resulting devastation, making the book appropriate for use …

Spatial And Temporal Distributions Of Pelagic Sargassum In The Intra-Americas Sea And Atlantic Ocean, Mengqiu Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pelagic Sargassum is one type of marine macroalgae that is known to be abundant in the Gulf of Mexico and Sargasso Sea. It is also known to serve as a critical habitat for many marine animals. In the past few years, large amounts of Sargassum have been reported in the Tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea (CS), causing significant environmental and economic problems. The goal of this study is to improve the understanding of Sargassum distributions, quantity, transport pathways, and bloom mechanisms in the CS and Tropic Atlantic through combining a variety of techniques including satellite remote sensing, field and laboratory …

A Comparative Study On Coastal Zone Changes And Anthropogenic Impacts Between Tampa Bay, Usa, And Xiangshan Harbor, China, During The Last 30 Years, Qiandong Guo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently, the U.S. and China are the two largest national economic entities in the world. However, it is noticeable that the two countries have considerably different strategies for economic development, environmental protection and land supply in coastal zones. In order to understand the coastline dynamics, land use land cover (LULC) changes and land management policies in the U.S. and China, a case study of the Tampa Bay (TB) watershed, Florida, U.S., and Xiangshan Harbor (XH), Zhejiang Province, China was conducted. The two areas possess similar humid subtropical climate and dense population, but experienced different anthropogenic impacts. TB sat at a …

Spar Caves As Fossil Hydrothermal Systems: Timing And Origin Of Ore Deposits In The Delaware Basin And Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico And Texas, Usa, David D. Decker, Victor J. Polyak, Yemane Asmerom

International Journal of Speleology

Studies of sulfuric acid hypogene speleogenesis have contributed significantly to understanding the history of the Guadalupe Mountains of southeast New Mexico and west Texas for at least the past 12 Ma. A recently published hypothesis of supercritical CO₂ spar cave genesis provides information that constrains the timing of the start of uplift to between 27 and 16 Ma, and helps to explain landscape evolution of this region for the last 185 Ma. This new speleogenetic model is summarized here and shows that U-Pb dating of crystals from different spar caves reveal different ages, and that a majority of the …

Remote Sensing And Spatial Metrics For Quantifying Seagrass Landscape Changes: A Study On The 2011 Indian River Lagoon Florida Seagrass Die-Off Event, René Dieter Baumstark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s seagrasses are ecologically important marine environments which have suffered major degradation caused by increasing anthropogenic pressures. A 2011 seagrass die-off event caused by an algal bloom in the Florida Indian River Lagoon (IRL) was particularly severe with a majority of seagrass lost in areas such as the Banana River. An understanding of how this coastal marine environment changed is an important step toward better managing resources for conservation. Modern tools and methods provide new opportunities to study these changes at the landscape scale, a scale that informs on the larger more comprehensive state of a system. Classified satellite imagery …