Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Sea Grant International: Extending The Model Of Applied Research, Extension/Outreach To Foreign Countries, Matthew Wilburn King, Dosoo Jang, Jill Hepp, Janelle Bruce

Matthew Wilburn King PhD

NOAA Research’s Office of International Activities and the National Sea Grant Office are extending the Sea Grant model to other countries. The National Sea Grant College Program is a proven, effective model to engage universities and government agencies acting in partnership to promote research, education and outreach/extension related to marine issues. Through network contacts at 30 universities and research institutes and the NOAA National Sea Grant Office, individual Sea Grant programs stay connected to issues at a national level while being responsive to local level needs. Because the Sea Grant model is inherently flexible — both culturally and administratively — …

Foreign Migration To The Cleveland-Akron-Lorain Metropolitan Area From 1995 To 2000, Mark Salling, Ellen Cyran

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This report is one of a series on migration to and from the region using the five percent Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the 2000 Census of Population and Housing and provides a description of foreign migrants moving to the Cleveland-Akron-Lorain (CAL) Consolidated Metropolitan Area (CMSA) from 1995 to 2000.* The report identifies the countries of origin of migrants and compares the demographic, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics of the foreign migrants to the CAL with other groups, including foreign migrants to Ohio and the nation, and, at times, to domestic migrants to and from the CAL.

Spatio-Temporal Patterns Of Geomorphic Adjustment In Channelized Tributary Streams Of The Lower Hatchie River Basin, West Tennessee, Mary A. Boulton

Doctoral Dissertations

The processes involved in fluvial geomorphic adjustment to human-induced change are not well understood, despite an increasing and global prevalence of human disturbance to rivers. This doctoral dissertation research examines spatial and temporal patterns of geomorphic adjustment processes in three tributary streams of the Lower Hatchie River Basin, in west Tennessee, which are adjusting to historic land clearance and channelization. This dissertation examines (1) the types and spatial pattern of geomorphic adjustment processes in a total of 34 tributary reaches located in Richland, Jeffers, and Dry Creeks, (2) the applicability of an existing model of geomorphic adjustment for use in …

A Watershed Classification System Based On Headwater Catchments In Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee-North Carolina, Martin Dietrich Lafrenz

Doctoral Dissertations

Headwater areas in the southeastern U.S., as well as elsewhere, have received little attention from researchers, even though headwater catchments comprise over 70% of the land area in the southeastern highlands. The small, low-order streams that drain these catchments are greatly affected by hillslope processes within their watersheds. As such, there exists a strong link between upland landscape history and a headwater stream’s condition, including its channel morphology, habitat, and water quality. I employ this tight connection between landscape-scale attributes and reach-scale morphology in order to develop a headwater catchment classification system for Great Smoky Mountains National Park that describes …

Enclave In A Small Town: The Irish In Norwood, Massachusetts, Patricia J. Fanning

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Detecting And Mapping The Michigan Vegetation Tension Zone Using Ecological Indicators, Janice Marie Fulford

Masters Theses

Ecotones are areas of transition between adjacent ecosystems that exist at various geographic scales, and are useful in measuring climatic changes. Ecotones are defined by their length and breadth and the ability to detect and map an ecotone from a specific period in time would be useful in measuring current and future change.

The study focused on a 1880's vegetation ecotone in the center of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. This was achieved by deriving ecological variables from the U.S. public land survey's tree species data. These variables were then used to ascertain the length of the ecotone by finding the boundary …

Spatiotemporal Variations In The Fire Regimes Of Whitebark Pine (Pinus Albicaulis Engelm.) Forests, Western Montana, Usa, And Their Management Implications, Evan Reed Larson

Masters Theses

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a long-lived tree species that exists throughout high elevation forest communities of western North America. It is the foundation of a diminishing ecosystem that supports Clark’s nutcrackers, red squirrels, grizzly bears, and black bears. The decline of this species is directly related to mortality from widespread mountain pine beetle outbreaks and infestation by the invasive white pine blister rust, and may be exacerbated by fire suppression. Prescribed fire will be a primary management tool in efforts to preserve whitebark pine on the landscape. My research used dendrochronology to investigate the fire history of …

A Model Of The Natural Spread Of The Invasive Insect Species Emerald Ash Borer In The Lower Peninsula Of Michigan, Jennifer L. Weller

Masters Theses

More than 8 million ash trees in southeast Michigan have been killed by an infestation of the invasive insect species emerald ash borer (EAB). Since its identification in July 2002, EAB has been found in Ontario (Canada), Ohio, Indiana, and across Michigan. To date, EAB research has concentrated on the entomological classification and no systematic prediction of the pest's diffusion has been made.

This research presents a predictive model for the spread of EAB across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Limited data on ash tree population distribution, ·. infestation distribution, and the dispersal rate of the emerald ash borer required …

Evaluation Of The Federal Government's Human Health Preparedness Plan Developed In Response To The H5n1 Threat., Chiehwen Ed Hsu

Chiehwen Ed Hsu

Dr. Hsu reacted to President Bush's Avian Flu Preparedness and Response Plan in a media briefing panel at the National Press Club, Washington DC.

The Changing Demographic, Legal, And Technological Contexts Of Political Representation, Benjamin Forest

Dartmouth Scholarship

Three developments have created challenges for political representation in the U.S. and particularly for the use of territorially based representation (election by district). First, the demographic complexity of the U.S. population has grown both in absolute terms and in terms of residential patterns. Second, legal developments since the 1960s have recognized an increasing number of groups as eligible for voting rights protection. Third, the growing technical capacities of computer technology, particularly Geographic Information Systems, have allowed political parties and other organizations to create election districts with increasingly precise political and demographic characteristics. Scholars have made considerable progress in measuring and …

Assimilation And Differences Between The Settlement Patterns Of Individual Immigrants And Immigrant Households, Mark Ellis, Richard Wright

Dartmouth Scholarship

Analyses of immigrant settlement patterns typically rely on counts of foreign-born individuals by neighborhood, metropolitan area, state, or region. As an alternative, this study classifies immigrants and their descendents into household types to shift attention from individuals to relationships between individuals. The study uses pooled current population survey data to identify seven household types, six of which have various degrees of immigrant or second-generation presence. The research compares distributions of first- and second-generation immigrants with different types of households that include first- and second-generation immigrants. Our analysis shows that the geography of immigration based on households differs considerably from geographies …

Remotely Sensed Data To Map Forest Age Class By Cover Type In East Texas, Daniel Unger, I-Kuai Hung, Jeffrey M. Williams, James Kroll, Dean W. Coble, Jason Grogan

Faculty Publications

• Remote sensing in conjunction with ground truthing, can accurately quantify forest composition and age distributions in East Texas.
• Method uses standardized and readily available data available to the general public.
• Method was shown to be effective in terms of time and cost.

Historical Land Cover Impacts On Water Quality In The Provo River Watershed, 1975 - 2002, Fredric James Donaldson

Theses and Dissertations

The Provo River watershed has experienced land cover change over the past several decades. Land cover influences water quality inasmuch as land cover determines the type and quantity of non-point source (NPS) pollutants that may enter the water. This study examines the historical impacts of land cover changes on water quality in the Provo River using remote sensing and statistical analysis. Statistical correlations and linear regressions were used to study the relationship between various land cover types and water quality variables for six years between 1975 and 2002. This thesis supports research finding myriad impacts of urban land cover on …

Lost And Found: The Imagined Geographies Of American Studies, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

In the days after September 11th, 2001, and continuing until now, the national guard and other military personnel fanned out around New York City. Automatic rifles slung over their camouflaged shoulders, they "guarded" New York City's transportation stations, vital corners and thoroughfares, marquee buildings, and each and every bridge and tunnel entrance. Their comportment was usually cordial and rarely vigilant. Exuding the antithesis of an urban sensibility, they complemented the beefy boredom of the police who usually stood nearby, with an almost surreal sense of incredulity; not just "Why am I here?" but a sort of bafflement that anyone would …

Cultural Economy: A Critical Review, Chris Gibson, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article reviews work on 'cultural economy', particularly from within geography, and from other disciplines, where there are links to overtly geographical debates. We seek to clarify different interpretations of the term and to steer a course through this multivalency to suggest productive new research agendas. We review and critique work on cultural economy that represents a relatively straightforward economic geography, based on empirical observation while theoretically informed and driven by debates about Fordism and post-Fordism, agglomeration and cluster theory. Some of these ideas about cultural economy have proven attractive to policy-makers and we map a normative script of cultural …

An Assessment Of The Impacts Of Climate Change On The Upper Clackamas River Basin With A Distributed Hydrologic Model, David Graves

Dissertations and Theses

The Pacific Northwest is dependent on seasonal snowmelt for water resources that support a significant portion of its economy. Increased temperatures resulting from higher concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases may cause disruptions to these resources because of reductions in the annual snowpack and variations of the timing of snowmelt. This study reconstructs and applies a GIS-based distributed hydrologic model at a monthly scale to assess the effects of future climate change on runoff from the Upper Clackamas River Basin (located near Portland, Oregon). Historic flow data and snow measurements are used to calibrate and test the performance of the hydro …

Developing A Modular Hydrogeology Ontology Extending The Sweet Ontologies, Ajay Tripathi

Geosciences Theses

Application of ontologies in the environmental science will allow experts in this field to model their domain knowledge for more efficient exchange and reuse. This thesis presents a modular approach in reengineering existing upper-level ontologies to conceptualize specific domain knowledge. The aim of extending these upper-level ontologies is to tailor and transform the existing conceptual models into new ones designed for the use in a specific domain in the earth sciences. This thesis extends the upper-level Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET)ontologies to develop ontologies for part of the hydrogeology domain. The existing SWEET ontologies are developed by …

Sustainable Grassroots Development: A Major Challenge Of Globalization, Salihu Danlami Musa (Phd)

Salihu Danlami Musa (PhD)

No abstract provided.

Temporal Gis Design Of An Extended Time-Geographic Framework For Physical And Virtual Activities, Hongbo Yu

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent rapid developments of information and communication technologies (ICT) enable a virtual space, which allows people to conduct activities remotely through tele-presence rather than through conventional physical presence in physical space. ICT offer people additional freedom in space and time to carry out their activities; this freedom leads to changes in the spatio-temporal distributions of activities. Given that activities are the reasons for travel, these changes will impact transportation systems. Therefore, a better understanding of the spatial and temporal characteristics of human activities in today’s society will help researchers study the impact of ICT on transportation. Using an integrated space-time …

Street Trees In The Urban Forest Canopy: Portland, Oregon, Joseph Poracsky, David Banis

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Attempts to identify the contribution of street trees to the overall urban forest of a city have been rare and lack consensus on how to measure that contribution – percentage of trees, percentage of canopy cover, or percentage of leaf area. The actual numeric values presented in the literature also vary over a broad range and often are based on estimates, extrapolations from aggregated data, or simply stated with no empirical data referenced. This study was undertaken to evaluate the contribution of street trees to canopy in Portland, Oregon. The study involved both visual and digital analysis of multi-band aerial …

Time-Series Analysis Of Clusters In City Size Distributions, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Craig R. Allen, K. Michael Bessey

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Complex systems, such as urban systems, emerge unpredictably without the influence of central control as a result of adaptive behavior by their component, interacting agents. This paper analyses city size distributions, by decade, from the south-western region of the United States for the years 1890–1990. It determines if the distributions were clustered and documents changes in the pattern of clusters over time. Clusters were determined utilizing a kernel density estimator and cluster analysis. The data were clustered as determined by both methods. The analyses identified 4–7 clusters of cities in each of the decades analysed. Cities cluster into size classes, …

Macroscopic Sedimentary Charcoal As A Proxy For Past Fire In Northwestern Costa Rica, Kyle James Schlachter

Masters Theses

Proxy records of fire history offer valuable information on the role fire plays in an ecosystem. Such information can be used to understand the inter-relationships among fire, humans, and the environment. In the past, the forests of Costa Rica were thought to have been spared from significant pre-Columbian forest disturbance; however, paleoecological studies have shown that this notion is false. While the long-term human influence is now recognized in Costa Rica, the nature and extent of human effects in different regions remain poorly documented. Knowledge of pre-Columbian land uses in Costa Rica increases our understanding of the possible impacts of …

Environmental History At Laguna Yaguarú, Bolivia: Evidence From Pollen, Stable Carbon Isotopes, And An Embedded Mineral Facies, Zachary Paul Taylor

Masters Theses

Lowland eastern Bolivia is an important area for paleoenvironmental research because of its location near the climatically controlled boundary between the Amazon basin rain forest and the seasonally dry savannas to the south. I present a multiple proxy study from Laguna Yaguarú (15˚36’S, 63˚13’W, 195 m) a large (250 ha) lake located in the forest-savanna ecotone. A 2.4 m long core recovered in May 2003 spans approximately in the last 5000 years. Chronological control is based on excess 210Pb sedimentation in the uppermost sediments and three AMS dates on plant macrofossils in deeper sediments. I undertook pollen and microscopic charcoal …

Geogdl: A Web-Based Approach To Geography Examination, Ee Peng Lim, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The traditional educational approach with students as passive recipients has been the subject of criticism. A constructivist learner-centered approach towards education has been argued to produce greater internalization and application of knowledge compared to the traditional teacher-centered, transmission-oriented approach. Nevertheless, contemporary instructional design models argue for the use and integration of both approaches especially in complex learning tasks. This paper describes GeogDL, a Web-based application developed above a digital library of geographical resources for Singapore students preparing to take a national examination in geography. GeogDL is unique in that it not only provides an environment for active learning, it also …

Re-Presenting The Religious: Nation, Community And Identity In Museums, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper examines the roles that museums play as 'unofficially sacred' places, underscoring or challenging the religious life of a people and 'nation'. It focuses on three key questions: (1) Do sub-national and transnational religious formations pose a challenge to or present opportunities for nation-building strategies, and what part do museums play in this struggle? (2) In what ways do re-presentations of religion in museums contest or reinforce religious community and identity? and (3) What challenges do museum displays pose to the understanding of religious meanings? This paper explores these three key questions about the intersection of religion with politics …

On Reduction Of Risks In Uxo And Mine Detection Using Remote Sensing Systems And Related Synthetic Image Simulation, Charles R. Bostater

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

It is important to understand remote sensing systems and associated platforms in the context of autonomous or semi-autonomous designs for (robotic & mechatronics) that may be affect the motion control or stabilization aspects of the imagery, scan lines or fixed points scanned. This need can be most easily conceived as being related to the reduction of risks associated with false detection as well as the risks associated with hardware and software failure and risks associated with the actual operation of sensor and platform in dangerous environments. Thus safety is ultimately our concern when it comes to risk assessment. This paper …

Fire-Induced Albedo Change And Its Radative Forcing At The Surface In Northern Austrailia, Y. Jin, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

This paper investigates the impact of fire on surface albedo and the associated radiative forcing over 56% of continental Australia encompassing the fire-prone northern tropical savanna. Fire-affected areas and albedos are derived for the 2003 fire season using daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) surface reflectance data. Near-infrared and total shortwave albedos are observed to generally decrease after fire occurrence. Regionally, the total shortwave albedo drops by an average of 0.024, with increasing reductions as the dry season progresses and larger reductions in grasslands than woody savannas. These fire-induced albedo changes exert a positive forcing at the surface that increases …

Highway Interchanges, Transportation And Land Use: An Exploration Of Changes In Transportation Volumes And Land Use Factors Within Interchange Catchments, Matthew Hampton

Geography Masters Research Papers

Highway interchanges provide the interface for and moderate access to the surface street system and help control congestion. Understanding the relationship between land use and transportation near highway interchanges can help to direct resources where they are most needed to maintain the integrity of the adjacent road system. This paper characterizes and ranks highway interchange areas in the Portland, OR Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) area with respect to changes in traffic volume and determines what factors are associated with these impacts. This study compares the transportation, population and land use patterns around 78 highways and freeway interchanges over two time …

Ambivalent Landscapes: An Historical Geography Of Recreation And Tourism On Mount Hood, Oregon, Ryan Franklin Mitchell

Dissertations and Theses

Mount Hood is an Oregon icon. The mountain has as long and rich a history of recreation and tourism as almost any other place in the American West. But contemporary landscapes on Mount Hood reveal a recreation and tourism industry that has struggled to assert itself, and a distinct geographic divide is evident in the manner in which tourism has been developed. Why? In this study I chronicle the historical geography of recreation and tourism on Mount Hood. I examine the evolution of its character and pattern, and the ways in which various communities have used it to invest meaning …

Visualizing Complexity : A Spatial Analysis Of Decorative Geometric Pattern In The Islamic World, 900-1400 Ad, Tracy Elizabeth Harrison

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores how the use of complex decorative geometric patterns in Islamic architecture spatially relates to advances in the fields of science and philosophy in the Islamic world between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. This project examines hypotheses developed by vario~s scholars on the forces that shaped the use of these patterns (known as the geometric mode) in Islamic architecture. The prevailing assumption that advances in mathematics contributed to the use of the geometric mode is used as a starting point for subsequent analysis.

For this study, two spatial databases were created. One contains over two hundred and twenty …