Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Social Construction Of Tourism In Cuba: A Geographic Analysis Of The Representations Of Gender And Race During The Special Period 1995-1997, Michael W. Cornebise

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to critically examine race and gender as they intersect with tourism development in Cuba during the Special Period in a Time of Peace (Special Period), a government imposed austerity program that followed the loss of important Soviet subsidies in 1989.

I hypothesize that tourism development in Cuba during the Special Period betrays the Revolution in that it reconstitutes discriminatory practices along lines of race and gender and hence does not deliver benefits to average Cubans. Indeed, I argue that tourism as presently constructed may subvert the well being of ordinary Cubans.

I draw from …

Effects Of Urbanization On A Small Perennial Stream: Second Creek In Knoxville, Tennessee, Judith Laing Grable

Doctoral Dissertations

Little is known about the coarse load carried by streams in urban areas or the length of time needed for stream channel adjustments to urban conditions. In this study, I examine the history of urbanization in the basin of Second Creek, the status of the channel, and the sediment load of the creek in recent years.

Second Creek is a small perennial stream whose 18.6 km² drainage basin is almost entirely contained within the City of Knoxville, Tennessee. Almost all of the drainage basin was developed more than 40 years ago, and is now urban and suburban in character. …

Fisheries In Sundarbans: Problems And Prospects, Ganesh Chandra, R L. Sagar

Ganesh Chandra

Sundarbans, the largest delta on the planet earth is famous for its marine and estuarine fish resources. A large population is dependent on fishery activity and capture fisheries is treated as the backbone of Sundarban economy. Sundarban boast around 172 species of fishes, 20 species of prawn and 44 species of crabs including two edible crabs. But fisheries in Sundarbans faces some difficult problems which have an impact on the biodiversity, sustainability and livelihood of fish resources and fisher folk viz. shrinking tiger prawn population, indiscriminate fish seed collection, lack of post harvest and other infrastructures, natural calamities such as …

Classifying Forest Composition Using Fractal Dimension As An Index Of Image Texture, Fitria Latifah Wahid

Masters Theses

In this study, Landsat imagery from June (summer) and October (autumn senescence) 2000 of the area of Fort Custer Training Center in Kalamazoo and Calhoun Counties, Michigan, were analyzed for forest classification accuracies. The use of fractal analysis to improve forest classification, particularly to distinguish among northern hardwood species, was examined. Using moving windows with different sizes, measurement of local fractal dimension and spatial autocorrelation (Moran's I) were performed on the NDVIs and the panchromatic images. The measurement products were combined with Landsat TM bands as additional layers in supervised maximum- Iikelihood multispectral classifications. The accuracy for multispectral classification of …

An Egocentric Spatial Data Model For Intelligent Mobile Geographic Information Systems, Christopher E. Frank

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Individuals in unknown locations, such as utility workers in the field, soldiers on a mission, or sightseeing tourists, share the need for an answer to two basic questions: "Where am I?" and "What is in front of me?Because such information is not readily available in foreign locations, aids in the form of paper maps or mobile GISs, which give individuals an all-inclusive view of the environment, are often used. This panoptic view may hinder the positioning and orienteering process, since people perceive their surroundings perspectively from their current position. In this thesis, I describe a novel framework that resolves this …

Perceptual Sketch Interpretation, Markus Wuersch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sketching is a creative form of describing a spatial scene. People perceive such a scene in a straight forward way and build a mental model of the objects contained in a sketch. Whereas these objects might be regions, a sketch only contains lines and, therefore, developing automated sketch interpretation means outlining a rationale to grouping lines according to the objects they belong to. Automated sketch interpretation allows efficient processing of sketches. Labor intensive manual extraction could be brought to a minimum and, therefore, spatial data in form of sketches and spatial information extracted from sketches would be available more readily. …

Testing The Transfer Of Hydrologic Model Parameters Across Scales: Modeling The Emory River, Daddy’S Creek, And Crooked Fork Watersheds., Benjamin Bryan Arthur

Masters Theses

Modeling the hydrologic response of small watersheds is often hindered by lack of data. We cannot calibrate robust models without ample and sufficiently accurate precipitation and discharge measurements. Limited data prevent the calibration process from estimating parameter values that adequately depict the physical characteristics of the watershed. But physical characteristics change gradually over space and hydrologic processes behave in predictable ways across scales. These factors suggest that the modeling of data-limited small watersheds could be improved by using the physical characteristics of a large, data-rich watershed to estimate the characteristics of a small watershed.

This thesis presents such an application. …

Planificación Estratégica En Tiempos De Crisis. La Necesidad De La Permanente Readecuación Metodológica, Patricia A. Pintos

Patricia Pintos

El objeto de este trabajo es invitar a la reflexión a quienes de algún modo participan en procesos de planificación, acerca de la coherencia entre metodologías participativas y crisis en la argentina de hoy, a modo de encontrar caminos valederos y legítimos hacia los escenarios deseables que vislumbramos de modo tenue y sobre los que es preciso trabajar concertadamente en la construcción de la historia común, rescatando las cuestiones identitarias que definen lo local.

Melting Of Small Arctic Ice Caps Observed From Ers Scatterometer Time Series, Laurence C. Smith, Yongwei Sheng, Richard R. Forster, Konrad Steffen, Karen E. Frey, Douglas E. Alsdorf

Geography

Time series of active microwave backscatter data from the ERS Wind Scatterometers are used to demonstrate (1) the timing of melt onset can be observed over small ice caps, as well as the major ice sheets and multi-year sea ice; add (2) temporally integrated backscatter reduction (R) is strongly correlated with total annual positive-degree-days (PDD), as measured at four automated weather stations on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The latter is particularly interesting because unlike melt onset, R is a measure of melt processes integrated over an entire ablation season. Both methods work owing to the well-known sharp …

The Best "Lied" Plans: Engaging Undergraduate Participation In Fieldwork, Andrew J. Bach

Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper describes a field project from an introductory soils course taught in spring 2001. Looking at soils in the field is a necessity, since the physical details of soils cannot be readily reproduced in a class or lab setting.Convincing students that crawling into a muddy hole will help them learn does not always work. So I conceived a plan to inspire the class about looking at soil in the field. I used geography as a starting point, by selecting an extraordinary environmental setting for the field project. Then I fully developed a research project for the class, including hypotheses …

Winnebago Tribal Council Brief, Hank Lehrer, Brent D. Bowen

Curriculum Development

Native Impact, Native IMAGE: Institute for Managing Applications of Geospatial Extension Little Priest Tribal College - Winnebago Tribal Council Brief - 9/11/2003

2004 Portland Metro Area Arts Atlas, Christopher Ashley, Casey Bentz, Paul Cone, Rennie Dunn, Betty Groth, Mark Larsen, Jason A. Long, Nathan D. Martin, Brian Mcguirk, Michael Morgon, Jessica Troutman

Asset Mapping: Community Geography Project

This atlas was conceptualized and exucuted by RACC and a Senior Capstone class of Portland State University.

"Placing" Health Risks In The Karakoram: Local Perceptions Of Disease, Dependency, And Social Change In Northern Pakistan, Sarah Halvorson

Geography Faculty Publications

This article examines local perceptions of health risks in a mountain community in the Karakoram of Northern Pakistan. Specifically, it aims to show how the tremendous social and economic transformations taking place in this region are experienced and understood by the people most affected by them. The case study draws from ethnographic data collected through a range of methods, including personal narratives, focus groups, interviews, household surveys, conversations, and participant observations. Central to this analysis is the role that social change plays in mediating and shaping residents’ worries, and perceived vulnerabilities within this particular economic and cultural context. Furthermore, the …

Public Commons For Geospatial Data: A Conceptual Model, Chakravarthy Namindi Sharad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A wide variety of spatial data collection efforts are ongoing throughout local, state and federal agencies, private firms and non-profit organizations. Each effort is established for a different purpose but organizations and individuals often collect and maintain the same or similar information. The United States federal government has undertaken many initiatives such as the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, the National Map and Geospatial One-Stop to reduce duplicative spatial data collection and promote the coordinated use, sharing, and dissemination of spatial data nationwide. A key premise in most of these initiatives is that no national government will be able to gather …

User Controlled Privacy Protection In Location-Based Services, Anuket Bhaduri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rapid development of location-determining technologies has enabled tracking of people or objects more accurately than ever before and the volume and extent of tracking has increased dramatically over time. Within the broader domain of tracking technologies, location-based services (LBS) are a subset of capabilities that allow users to access information relative to their own physical location. However, the personal location information generated by such technologies is at risk of being misused or abused unless protection capabilities are built into the design of such systems. These concerns may ultimately prevent society from achieving the broad range of benefits that otherwise …

A Spatial Temporal Analysis Of Infant Mortality In The Midwest Industrial Belt: 1940 And 2000, Julie Macarthur

Masters Theses

This study compares and analyzes the spatial patterns of infant mortality (IM) for 1940 and 2000 using county-level socio-economic variables in the Industrial Belt, assesses the changes in IM as an indicator of the living standards for the population over time and space, and explains the changes. The region was delineated using 1940 employment data. OLS, spatial regression, and exploratory spatial data analysis were used on IM (the dependent variable) and socio-economic variables to study the standard of living in the region. Some important factors were statistically significant in the various models including: minority population, levels of industrialization, and urbanization …

Spatial Aspects Of Metaphors For Information: Implications For Polycentric System Design, Paul Charles Schroeder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents three innovations that suggest an alternative approach to structuring information systems: a multidimensional heuristic workspace, a resonance metaphor for information, and a question-centered approach to structuring information relations. Motivated by the need for space to establish a question-centered learning environment, a heuristic workspace has been designed. Both the question-centered approach to information system design and the workspace have been conceived with the resonance metaphor in mind. This research stemmed from a set of questions aimed at learning how spatial concepts and related factors including geography may play a role in information sharing and public information access. In …

Dissertation Research: The Impact Of Law And Information Policy On The Dissemination And Commercialization Of Spatial Databases: A North American -European Community, Harlan J. Onsrud

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

SBR-9506485 This dissertation-improvement award supports a study into the ways that government scientific-and-technical-information policies affect the dissemination of databases containing spatial data, specifically, transfer and use of the data generated by national mapping agencies to the research community and the commercial information industry. The study will take the form of parallel case studies, with information collected via postal surveys, in-person interviews, and archival research. Spatial-data suppliers and users in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States will be investigated, to allow for international comparisons. The results of the research will be of interest to …

Ucgis Summer Assembly And Retreat: Support For Graduate Student Travel, Harlan J. Onsrud

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

SBR-9617695 This award supports the provision of small travel grants to graduate students from U.S. institutions to assist their attendance and participation in the 1997 Annual Assembly of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science. Students to be so supported will be selected on the basis of a panel review of their 2000-word abstracts of the presentations they plan to make at the assembly. Grants will not be made to students based within 250 miles of the assembly (to be held in Maine). The assembly has two components: the exchange of research findings and progress among researchers and students (their …

Workshop On Access And Participatory Approaches Associated With The Use Of Geographic Information, Rome, Italy, Fall 2001, Harlan J. Onsrud

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

In the Fall of 2001, a workshop with participation by United States and European researchers was held in Spoleto, Italy to assess the current state of research on access to geographic information and on geographic access theory, to evaluate the impact of evolving policy and legal trends in the U.S. and Europe on access to scientific and technical data generally and geographic data specifically, to assess the current state of research on participatory approaches surrounding the use of geographic information, to explore commonalities and differences in U.S. and European directions of research within these arenas, and to develop a joint …

Multi-Modal Spatial Querying, Max J. Egenhofer Editor, Elise H. Turner, Roy M. Turner, Scott Overmyer, Michela Bertolotto

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This project investigates the use of two concurrent communication channels, graphics and speech, to achieve a successful interaction between a person and a geographic information system (GIS). The objective is to construct a multi-modal spatial query language in which users interact with a geographic database by drawing sketches of the desired configuration, while simultaneously talking about the spatial objects and the spatial relations drawn. This study will increase our understanding of multi-modal spatial interactions, and will lead to improved strategies for intelligent integration and processing of such multi-modal spatial queries in a GIS. The key to this interaction is the …

In Defense Of Marine And Coastal Resources, Matthew Wilburn King

Matthew Wilburn King PhD

The presentation covered a case study of the Gulf of Fonseca, a complex region shared by Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. It includes 261 km of coastal land, including mangroves, lagoons, and estuaries, and it is home to more than seventy species of migratory birds and more than twenty-two species of mammals and reptiles. It comprises twenty-two percent of the mangrove coast along the Central Pacific coast of Central America, and it has been directly linked to ninety percent of the fish production in the region. The Gulf serves to stabilize soils, protect the coast, and trap nutrients.

Report Of Animal Bones From Selhagi, Mývatn District, Northern Iceland, Thomas H. Mcgovern, Sophia Perdikaris

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

In 2001 the FSl / NABO project Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland collected animal bones from a stratified midden deposit associated with the abandoned site Selhagi on the property of the modern farm Haganes. Selhagi is located in the lushly vegetated lakeshore zone and its environmental setting presents a strong contrast with the eroded uplands to the S of the lake where the early sites at Sveigakot and Hrísheimur are under excavation. Close to both major migratory waterfowl nesting areas and some of the best trout fishing in Iceland, the site would appear to be optimally located for exploitation …

Ichc 2003 - 20th International Conference On The History Of Cartography (Program, Abstracts, And List Of Participants), International Conference On The History Of Cartography

Osher Map Library Miscellaneous Publications

ICHC 2003 - 20th International Conference on the History of Cartography (Program, Abstracts, and List of Participants). 15-20 June 2003.

Hosted by Harvard Map Collection, Harvard University, and the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine. Text in English and French.

Since 1964, the biennial International Conferences on the History of Cartography have been the leading academic conferences in the field. They have been held in: London (1964 and 1967), Brussels (1969), Edinburgh (1971), Warsaw (1973), Greenwich (1975), Washington DC (1977), Berlin (1979), Pisa-Florence-Rome (1981), Dublin (1983), Ottawa (1985), Paris (1987), Amsterdam (1989), Uppsala-Stockholm …

An Exploratory Data Analysis Approach For Land Use-Transportation Interaction: The Design And Implementation Of Transland Spatio-Temporal Data Model, Xiaohong Xin

Doctoral Dissertations

Land use and transportation interaction is a complex and dynamic process. Many models have been used to study this interaction during the last several decades. Empirical studies suggest that land use and transportation patterns can be highly variable between geographic areas and at different spatial and temporal scales. Identifying these changes presents a major challenge. When we recognize that long-term changes could be affected by other factors such as population growth, economic development, and policy decisions, the challenge becomes even more overwhelming. Most existing land use and transportation interaction models are based on some prior theories and use mathematical or …

An ‘Ation’ Not A ‘Nation’: The Globalisation Of World Politics, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Mapping The Republic - Conflicting Concepts Of The Territory And Character Of The U.S.A., 1790-1900, Osher Map Library And Smith Center For Cartographic Education

Osher Map Library Exhibition Catalogs

Mapping the Republic.

May 13, 2003 to May 29, 2004

Nineteenth-century maps of the U.S.A. embodied a truly important conflict in how Americans understood the republic: is it a collection of sovereign states or an expansive Union?

Curated by Prof. Matthew H. Edney.

Providing Customized Real Time Traffic Information Through The Internet: Implementation Using Gis, Moinak Chatterjee

Masters Theses

For my Masters thesis I implement a web enabled GIS application for presenting personalized real-time traffic condition information. Due to the dynamic nature of traffic condition reporting, often large amounts of data have to be reported. The process of introducing personalization to traffic condition reporting hopes to reduce the amount of such data transmitted to users. The personalization of the presented traffic condition information is achieved by storing geographic definitions of routes and travel zones frequently traveled by the client. Since traffic update areas frequently requested for daily travel routes are often geographically identical, stored routes or zones can be …

Towards Community Without Unity: Thinking Through Dis-Positions And The Meaning Of Community, Jonathan Lepofsky

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.

Citizenship In The Midst Of Transnationalization: Disclosure Interviews Kathryne Mitchell, Marcia England, Vanessa Hudson, Kyonghwan Park

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.