Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Snow-Albedo Feedback In Northern Alaska: How Vegetation Influences Snowmelt, Lucas C. Reckhaus

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates how the snow-albedo feedback mechanism of the arctic is changing in response to rising climate temperatures. Specifically, the interplay of vegetation and snowmelt, and how these two variables can be correlated. This has the potential to refine climate modelling of the spring transition season. Research was conducted at the ecoregion scale in northern Alaska from 2000 to 2020. Each ecoregion is defined by distinct topographic and ecological conditions, allowing for meaningful contrast between the patterns of spring albedo transition across surface conditions and vegetation types. The five most northerly ecoregions of Alaska are chosen as they encompass …

A Modeling Framework For Urban Growth Prediction Using Remote Sensing And Video Prediction Technologies: A Time-Dependent Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture, Ahmed Hassan Jaad

Civil and Environmental Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Studying the growth pattern of cities/urban areas has received considerable attention during the past few decades. The goal is to identify directions and locations of potential growth, assess infrastructure and public service requirements, and ensure the integration of the new developments with the existing city structure. This dissertation presents a novel model for urban growth prediction using a novel machine learning model. The model treats successive historical satellite images of the urban area under consideration as a video for which future frames are predicted. A time-dependent convolutional encoder-decoder architecture is adopted. The model considers as an input a satellite image …

Using Historical Maps For Contaminated Site Identification And Prediction, And Environmental Justice Implications: A Case Study In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dana Heusinkveld

Masters Theses

As the production of synthetic chemicals has grown in the past centuries to increase production, lower costs, and generally make our lives more convenient, detecting and understanding the environmental impacts of these compounds has lagged significantly behind their mass production and wide-spread use. To combat this trend, sources of these contaminants, especially those that have been removed from the landscape, need to be quickly identified to make mitigation and remediation efforts more effective. In this study, historical Sanborn maps are used to extract and digitize historical site/land use in Grand Rapids during the early 1900s through the practical application of …

Learning To Love Bats, Bethany J. Lawson

Honors Theses

Throughout history, bats have often become entangled in various myths and legends that have negatively influenced human perceptions of bats. Media outlets often sensationalize the relationship of bats to novel diseases, which also creates negative perceptions of bats in the human imagination. Bats are beneficial to our ecosystems and provide pollination services, seed dispersal, and insect control. However, bats are currently facing a variety of life-threatening issues, such as habitat destruction, fatalities at wind energy sites, climate change, and most notably, white-nose syndrome – a disease that has killed millions of North American bats in the past decade. With bats …

Race And Urban Development Of Arsenal Hill, Sc, Samira Nematollahi

Senior Theses

This thesis is a study on the Columbia neighborhood Arsenal Hill. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Columbia, but most of the neighborhood’s history is largely erased. In this paper, I studied the progression of change in Arsenal Hill with the goal of assessing who wielded power and to what extent race played a role in the neighborhood’s development. I find that race was the fundamental mover of change and that all other decisions and factors revolved around it. The initial decline of the neighborhood stemmed from its racial heterogeneity which then progressed into developers seeing Arsenal Hill …

Creating A Distribution Model Of Invasive Rusty Crayfish (Faxonius Rusticus) In Michigan Streams Using Publically Accessible Data, Robert C. Homan

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to create a predictive model of habitat suitability for the invasive rusty crayfish (Faxonius rusticus) throughout the state of Michigan. F. rusticus often outcompete and extirpate native crayfish species, so understanding their habitats of success is instrumental in monitoring vulnerable ecosystems. Michigan State University and the Michigan DNR conducted extensive field surveys across 461 streams sites from 2014-2016. This project compares this field data set to data from publicly available national datasets with the purpose of revealing the ecosystems most vulnerable to the introduction of F. rusticus. The pattern of F. rusticus …

Testing A New Photovoice Model: A Meta-Analysis On Participatory Action Research Methodologies In Geographical Research, Nolan Bergstrom

Masters Theses

Photovoice was developed in the early 1990s for use in public health studies evolving from participatory action research (PAR) and photographic methods. It attempts to mitigate the power dynamics between researcher and researched by allowing participants to be the primary knowledge producers. The Photovoice methodology has left open methodological avenues to implement Photovoice as a research tool in many fields. This research aimed to modify the Photovoice methodology to include mobile technology, social media to create a new model of Photovoice.

This research was conducted in K.I. Sawyer, MI, a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan over a …

State Park Selection As Determined By User Health, Connor Phelan

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine whether state park difficulty affected location of travel. This study was conducted at three state park locations within the United States. Surveys and on-site examinations were made at the following locations; Wilson State Park, Kansas, Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, and Kiholo State Park, Hawaii. Park locations were chosen by varying levels of terrain difficulty, as well as a rating from the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum. Participants were asked to report data via iPads on exercise habits, mobility limiting impairments, and frequency of exercise so a ranking of the healthiest participants could be …

Living Rivers, Cosmopolitan Activism, And Environmental Justice In The Bengal Delta, Daniel Adel

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis explores the social movements and civil society activism to protect the rivers that flow through Bangladesh—the cradle and terminal delta floodplain of the transboundary Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna river systems—, as well as ways to build regional cooperation and watershed democracy in South Asia. The research drew on four overarching fields of study: environmental justice, southern environmentalism, ecological nationalism, and environmental governance. These four bodies of scholarship helped address the overarching question: how are civil society organizations analyzing and responding to the water diversions and degradation of Bangladesh’s transboundary rivers? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with civil society organizations …

'Making It' Through Migration: Success (Im)Mobility And 'Development' In The Gambia, Martin J. Aucoin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Contemporary scholarly and journalistic literature consistently represents migration from and through The Gambia using the lens of “crisis”. While these representations normally focus on Gambian migration to European states – a movement that is highly politicized – this thesis presents a case study of Gambian migration to a less-politicized destination, North America, in order to explore the relationship between lived experiences and representations of migration absent the discourse of crisis that pervades other scholarly and journalistic works. Drawing on the mobilities paradigm, feminist geographies of migration, critical race theory, transnationalism, and literatures on bordering, humanitarianism and development, I examine, through …