Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

The New Normal? Climate Variability And Ecoviolence In Sub-Saharan Africa, Alfonso Sanchez

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Climate change presents a wide range of concerns that can jeopardize international security. Among those concerns are neo-Malthusian worries of diminishing natural resources. Predictive models suggest that rainfall and temperature anomalies have the potential to reduce water basins, crop production, increase land degradation among other perils that threaten human security. This concern is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa given the region’s strong dependence on rain-fed agriculture. Despite strong claims from various world leaders and scientists of a direct climate-conflict nexus, little empirical evidence has been devoted to find a systematic causal pathway of this kind. What is more, the literature …

Solar Urban Planning: Addressing Barriers And Conflicts Specific To Renewable Energy Policy And The Current Field And Practice Of Urban Planning Within The Context Of A Changing Climate, Toryl P. Hanna

Capstone Collection

The world is in a period of rapid urbanization while experiencing unprecedented rise in global temperature as a result of climate change. Questions have been raised as to how strategies for urbanization will be able to address the fetish for energy, while halting carbon emissions produced by traditional energy sources for urban inhabitants around the world. First, this paper seeks to look to cities, at the intersection of solar energy and the field of urban planning, looking into the opportunities and challenges that are currently surfacing. Conflicts and barriers in traditional urban land use patterns emerge as a topic of …

Beyond The Edge Of The Planted Field: Exploring Community-Based Environmental Education, And Invisible Losses In Settler And Indigenous Cultural Contexts, Samantha Da Rosa Holmes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Walpole Island Land Trust and the Sydenham Field Naturalists came together for a focus group at the Walpole Island Heritage Centre and spoke of the relevance environmental education plays in the awareness of a shared history between communities from separate cultural contexts. From the focus group this research is able to contextualize the conversation between a non-Indigenous and an Indigenous community-based environmental organization, and their focus on the relationship between people, place, and history. The context of the conversation being the colonial legacies of land use management and educational practices and how these institutions prolong the effect of invisible …

Probiotic Yoghourt For Health, Nutrition And Women's Empowerment In Kenya: A Community-Based Approach, Ellena Andoniou

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation aims to examine the impacts of probiotic yoghourt on health, nutrition and women’s empowerment within the context of HIV/AIDS in Kenya. Mixed methods that combine quantiative and qualitative approaches are used to understand the effects of probiotic yoghourt on the health, nutrition and quality of life for men and women. Results of the quantiative analysis (n=227) demonstrated that the probiotic yoghourt confers a variety of health benefits – physiological (fewer urogenital conditions and digestive problems; reduced dependence on medical treatment), and psychological (perceived improvements with bodily appearance, felt an increased meaningfulness with life). Results of the qualitative analysis …

Evaluating Lithology As An Erosional Control On A Fluviokarst System In Northeastern Kentucky, Andrew K. Francis

Theses and Dissertations

Longitudinal stream profiles can be used to evaluate landscape evolution. Lithology as a control on a stream profile is especially of interests because fluviokarst systems are characterized by the contact of carbonate and non-carbonate rocks at the surface. Due to the difference in weathering processes between carbonates and non-carbonate rocks, it is likely that there is a difference in their rates of erosion. Cave Branch and its tributary Horn Hollow, are fluviokarst systems located in northeastern Kentucky. This area is primarily comprised of sandstone and limestone. The objectives of this study were to determine if variation in lithology was creating …

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based Structure From Motion Biomass Inventory Estimates, Emily Jane Bedell

Dissertations and Theses

Riparian vegetation restoration efforts demand cost effective, accurate, and replicable impact assessments. In this thesis a method is presented using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) equipped with a GoPro digital camera to collect photogrammetric data of a 2.02-acre riparian restoration. A three-dimensional point cloud was created from the photos using Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques. The point cloud was analyzed and compared to traditional, ground-based monitoring techniques. Ground truth data collected using the status-quo approach was collected on 6.3% of the study site and averaged across the entire site to report stem heights in stems/acre in three height classes, 0-3 …

Examining The Active Transportation - Built Environment Relationship In London, Ontario, Douglas M. Rivet

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Research on the relationship between the built environment and active transportation has accelerated and expanded over the past 20 years. This growth is in large part due to continuing evidence of rising rates in obesity and Type-2 diabetes that coincides with decreasing rates of physical activity across all ages in the post-industrial world. Walking more is a simple solution to increasing rates of physical activity. While for most people walking is possible throughout the day, there has been a decrease in the use of walking as a means of transportation. This study examines environmental determinants of active transportation from two …

Quantifying Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Dynamics With Mechanistically-Based Biogeochemistry Models And In Situ And Remotely Sensed Data, Shaoqing Liu

Open Access Dissertations

Terrestrial ecosystem plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle and climate system. Therefore, it is important to accurately quantify the carbon dynamics of terrestrial ecosystem under future climatic change condition. This dissertation evaluates the regional carbon dynamics by using upscaling approach, mechanistically-based biogeochemistry models and in situ and remotely sensed data.

The upscaling studies based on FLUXNET network has provided us the spatial and temporal pattern of the carbon fluxes but it fails to consider the atmospheric CO2 effect given its important physiological role in carbon assimilation. In the second chapter, we consider the effect of atmospheric CO2 …

Pattern Exploration And Event Detection From Geo-Tagged Tweets, Yugian Huang

Open Access Theses

Twitter is one of the most famous social networking services in the world. With 313 million monthly active users, Twitter can produce around 6,000 tweets per second, which corresponds to around 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year. Besides being a successful company, Twitter provides a great opportunity to scientists from various disciplines. Twitter allows users to tweet with a location tag, which enables the connection of virtual networks to the events happening in real life. Because of the massive amount of valuable geographic information, location-based services, targeted advertising, and social network studies could benefit …

Remote Sensing Of Snow Using Bistatic Radar Reflectometry, Abi Komanduru

Open Access Theses

Snow and ice processes are a critical part of the Earth’s hydrological and climate cycles. These processes can serve as an important source of fresh water as well as a cause of flooding. Various missions have been proposed by NASA and ESA for the purpose of remote sensing of snow. This research looks at applying bistatic radar reflectometry to the remote sensing of snow water equivalent. The resulting phase offset from changes in optical path length due to reflection through snow are the primary measurements made. The research uses data from a field campaign in Fraser, CO, involving an instrument …

Aiddata Gis International Fellowship: Ghana West-Africa, Jason N. Ready

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

My internship, or fellowship as it was commonly referred to, was funded by a non-profit organization out of Williamsburg Virginia called AidData. This fellowship took place in in the country of Ghana, West-Africa beginning in May of 2016 and continued for 14 weeks with 40 hours each week. The objective of this internship was to provide in-depth training on the use of geographic Information Systems to Private and Public sectors within the country to allow for increased efficiency, and transparency through data visualization. In accordance with the requirement of Clark Universities GISDE master’s program this paper will delve into the …

Remediating A Toxic Town: Power, Place, And Justice In Anniston, Alabama, Melanie Ann Barron

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines a struggle for Environmental Justice over the long term to understand the impacts of current state-led strategies for achieving Environmental Justice. Recent geographic scholarship in Environmental Justice literatures suggests that state-centric strategies come with problems scholars have yet to fully comprehend. This dissertation, based on fieldwork and archival research in Anniston, Alabama, supports this claim with three main findings: 1) Corporations produce scaled identities to advantageously empower themselves and weather shifts in their profitability, while ordinary people are limited in their capacity to respond in kind to such unequal power arrangements. 2) Current legal solutions for Environmental …

Reconstructing Late Holocene Fire, Agriculture, And Climate From Sediment Records In Costa Rica And The Dominican Republic, Erik Nicholas Johanson

Doctoral Dissertations

We use multiple proxies from sediment cores to identify periods of climate stress during the late Holocene across the circum-Caribbean region and to determine how fire activity and signals of Pre-Columbian agriculture coincide with these arid periods. We examine evidence of aridity from stable carbon isotope ratios and shifts in elemental composition, along with pollen and microscopic charcoal, at Bao Bog in the highlands of Hispaniola. We infer two major periods of aridity (3600–2300 and 1040–850 cal yr BP), with the later period associated with the late phase of the Terminal Classic Drought. A third, less marked interval of aridity …

A Gis Approach To Modeling Groundwater Levels In The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, Josef Orion Lilly

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Groundwater depletion, a subject of growing concern for a significant portion of Arkansas, may lead to future economic challenges for the Arkansas Delta region. The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer is the uppermost aquifer and features the largest groundwater capacity in the Mississippi Embayment Aquifer System. The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, commonly referred to as the “alluvial aquifer”, spans 53,000〖 km〗^2 underlying portions of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee. As the alluvial aquifer trends southward for approximately 250 miles alongside the Mississippi River, its geographical extent ranges from 50 to 125 miles wide. There is a …

The Relationship Between Lead In Groundwater And Elementary School Students' Academic Performance In Missouri, Lynnette Xiangling Li

MSU Graduate Theses

Lead exposure can come from various sources, e.g., lead mines, industrial areas, and lead based paint. Missouri has more than 4,128 lead mines. Lead is a neurotoxin. The objectives of the study were to investigate i) the spatial relationship between lead mines and lead distribution in groundwater, ii) the statistical impact of lead in groundwater on students' Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) scores, and iii) the geographic variations of lead's impact on students' MAP scores. Geographic Information Science spatial analysis tools were used to analyze the concentration of lead in groundwater within school districts in Missouri. Regression analysis was utilized to …

Fleeing To Fault Zones: Incorporating Syrian Refugees Into Earthquake Risk Analysis Along The East Anatolian And Dead Sea Rift Fault Zones, Bradley Wilson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The influx of millions of Syrian refugees into Turkey has rapidly changed the population distribution along the Dead Sea Rift and East Anatolian Fault zones. In contrast to other countries in the Middle East where refugees are accommodated in camp environments, the majority of displaced individuals in Turkey are integrated into local cities, towns, and villages—placing stress on urban settings and increasing potential exposure to strong earthquake shaking. Yet, displaced populations are not traditionally captured in data sources used in earthquake risk analysis or loss estimations. Accordingly, this study presents a district-level analysis assessing the spatial overlap of earthquake hazards …

Analysis Of Professors’ Perceptions Towards Institutional Redevelopment Of Brownfield Sites In Alabama, Berkley Nathaniel King Jr.

Dissertations

This study was conducted to analyze professors’ perceptions on the institutional redevelopment of brownfield sites into usable greenspaces. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2011) refers to brownfields as sites, (either facility/land) under public law § 107-118 (H.R. 2869), which are contaminated with a substance that is classified as a hazard or a pollutant. Usable greenspaces, however, are open spaces or any open piece of land that is undeveloped, has no buildings or other built structures, and is accessible to the public (EPA, 2015).

Open green spaces provide recreational areas for residents and help to enhance the beauty and environmental quality …

An Integrated Approach For A Better Understanding Of The Paleo-Hydrology And Landscape Evolution In The Sahara During The Previous Wet Climatic Periods, Abotalib Zaki Abotalib Farag

Dissertations

Paleoclimatic regimes over Saharan Africa alternated between dry and wet periods throughout the Pleistocene Epoch, and it is during the wet periods that the Saharan fossil aquifers were recharged. The present study investigates the role of groundwater-related processes in shaping the Saharan landforms (e.g., theater-headed valleys [THV]; depressions, escarpments, playas, and tufa deposits) over areas occupied by the largest of these aquifer systems, the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS). The present study reviews the suggested hypotheses for the origin of these landforms in the Sahara, and in similar settings elsewhere, and presents evidence in support of the following: during the …

Using Gis To Detect Land Use Changes In The Salinas River Valley From 2001 And 2011, Brian Strukan

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to explore, analyze, and interpret our environment is a relatively new technology with exciting new advances emerging each day. GIS can be used along with satellite imagery to detect changes on Earth’s surface (Delavar, 2015). With the human population growing rapidly, it has become very important to monitor when, where, and how we are changing the planet. Using the theory of land economics, coupled with land classification maps from 2001 and 2011, I will explain how cities are changing in the Salinas River Valley, a prime agricultural zone in central California. Are …

A Location Allocation Model For Retention Basin Placement On Vacant Land In Detroit, Mi, Keith Chapman

Masters Theses

The principal objective of this research is to develop a location-allocation model for vacant lots in the City of Detroit, MI, to analyze for the suitability of retention basin placement. The model will place the retention basins in areas that will effectively reduce the amount of stormwater runoff that reaches the surrounding storm drains. Detroit needs stormwater mitigation to relieve the burden that is currently on the outdated combined sewer system (CSS). The Detroit Future City strategic framework suggests the use of blue infrastructure controls to alleviate the sewer system and reduce the number of combined sewer overflows (CSOs). The …

Locally Optimized Mapping Of Slum Conditions In A Sub-Saharan Context: A Case Study Of Bamenda, Cameroon, Julius Anchang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite being an indicator of modernization and macro-economic growth, urbanization in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa is tightly interwoven with poverty and deprivation. This has manifested physically as slums, which represent the worst residential urban areas, marked by lack of access to good quality housing and basic services. To effectively combat the slum phenomenon, local slum conditions must be captured in quantitative and spatial terms. However, there are significant hurdles to this. Slum detection and mapping requires readily available and reliable data, as well as a proper conceptualization of measurement and scale. Using Bamenda, Cameroon, as a test case, this …

Constituting Agricultural And Food Policy In Malawi: The Role Of The State And International Donors In The Farm Input Subsidy Program (Fisp), Peter Rock Nkhoma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies have been undertaken on the political economy of agricultural policies in developing countries. These studies have explained agricultural policies in terms of urban bias, economic reforms, and domestic politics. Recently, the emphasis has been on explanations that reference the existence of a rational-legal and patronage element within the African state. Such explanations tend to underplay the extent to which agricultural policies are devised in a context of power asymmetries between the state and international donors or financial institutions. In the Malawian context specifically, limited attention has been paid to the possibility that policies are a negotiated outcome of …

In Theory, There's Hope: Queer Co-(M)Motions Of Science And Subjectivity, Cordelia Sand

Masters Theses

Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, …

Improving Small Community Flood Resilience: The Multiple Strategies Of Watershed Partnerships, Nicole Gillett

Masters Theses

Flooding in New England is often seen as a coastal concern, but inland, in the mountainous rural communities of New England, river floods present serious threats to communities and livelihoods. Recent large storm events such as Tropical Storm Irene, and rising concerns over climate change, have catalyzed conversations over the vulnerability of communities across inland New England to flooding. This thesis examines two very different watershed organizations in New England; the White River Partnership and Deerfield Creating Resilient Communities. Both are working towards flood resilience in their communities. My approach is not to judge “best practices” or to evaluate what …

How Mature Capitalism Turns Pollution Into Diamonds: Malagnogenesis And The Reverse-Engineering Of Harm Into Risk, Kevin P. Martyn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been a great deal of debate about the pervasiveness and persistence of neoliberal thinking. In the context of the post-2008 ‘great recession’ the resilience of neoliberalism is particularly confounding. To begin to unravel the ways in which neoliberalism is situated relative to risk, this study identifies an increasingly important neoliberal knowledge practice: malagnogenesis. Malagnogenesis is proposed herein as the production of ignorance that normalizes harm for and amongst marginalized populations. To shed light on the phenomena of malagnogenesis, this study investigated the history of leaded gasoline in the U.S. To that end, I …

Coffee Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, And Agrarian Livelihoods In Puerto Rico, Ileana I. Diaz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research investigates whether coffee can play a role in building food sovereignty in Puerto Rico as well as how farmers perceive the effects of growing coffee agroecologically on their livelihoods. The most important contribution of this research is to raise and answer the question of whether a cash crop such as coffee can be part of a food sovereignty strategy. I conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with farmers in Puerto Rico. The findings indicate that agroecological farmers in Puerto Rico believe that growing coffee is an important part of pursuing food sovereignty - which is the framework they used to …

Uncertainty Analysis Of The Performance Of A System Of Best Management Practices For Achieving Phosphorus Load Reduction To Surface Waters, Jason D.M. Igras

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The repeated occurrence of Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms suggests an inadequate phosphorus management system that results in excessive loads to the lake. In response, Canadian and United States’ governments have issued a new management objective, a 40% reduction in total and dissolved reactive phosphorus loads relative to 2008. To provide scientific evidence to guide managers toward achieving their management objective, we used the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) 31010 Bowtie Risk Analysis Tool to analyze the performance of the phosphorus management system. The effectiveness of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) and their adoption were combined into a Bayesian belief …

Merging Volunteered Geographic Information Systems, James Mcandrew

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This project determines how two different systems based on geographic user-generated content can work together to allow the content to be made more accessible. This project’s objective is to determine the technical and social issues involved with allowing information to be transferred between systems.

Specifically, this project works with information from two volunteer systems: 1) The United States Geological Survey’s National Map Corps, 2) A global volunteer mapping project called OpenStreetMap.

This project discusses the history of both systems and how they have dealt with importing data in the past. It reviews what has worked well with previous imports and …

Transnational Indigenous Migration: Racialized Geographies And Power In Southern Highland Ecuador, Victoria Stone-Cadena

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the shifting landscape of social and economic inequalities in the remittance-dominated region of southern highland Ecuador, focusing on the transformations brought about by increased international migration since the early 2000s. The broader question is whether or not transnational migration has facilitated political and social upward mobility among indigenous communities. More specifically I ask: in what ways does indigenous identity figure in contemporary international migration practices, how does transnational indigenous migration complicate bounded notions of rural indigenous life, and how might the strategies employed by indigenous migrants transform social and economic inequalities in two small towns in the …