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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Assessing The Cooling Effects Of Urban Vegetation On Urban Heat Mitigation In Selected U.S. Cities, Qiuyan Yu Nov 2018

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 …


An Investigation Of Habitat Suitability Factors And Their Interactions For Predicting Gopher Tortoise Habitat, Abigail V. Lavallin Oct 2018

An Investigation Of Habitat Suitability Factors And Their Interactions For Predicting Gopher Tortoise Habitat, Abigail V. Lavallin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates the interaction between four habitat factors vital to the gopher tortoise in Florida. Federally and state listed as threatened throughout its entire range, the gopher tortoise is vital to protect, not only for itself individually but its burrows provide an essential habitat to over 300 species making it a key stone species within its environment. Historic habitat modeling methods are reviewed for the gopher tortoise to highlight the gap on this topic. This research expanded on the methods utilized by Baskaran et al. (2006) evaluating the soil, landcover, percentage of canopy cover and the depth to water …


Access To Safe Water Supply: Management Of Catchment For The Protection Of Source Water In Ghana, Michael K. Eduful Oct 2018

Access To Safe Water Supply: Management Of Catchment For The Protection Of Source Water In Ghana, Michael K. Eduful

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates provisions made within institutional and regulatory frameworks of water resources management to enhance multi-stakeholder relationships and the challenges of maintaining those relationships, and implications of water resources management for rural communities in the Densu River basin, Ghana. The primary objectives of this study were four fold, these are to: i) review the existing regulatory framework and how it promotes or hinders multi-stakeholder relationships within the catchment area; ii) examine multi-stakeholder relationships to identify challenges in promoting effective collaboration in water resources management; iii) explore the impacts of catchment management on the livelihoods of rural communities; and iv) …


Assessing The Impacts Of Ghana’S Oil And Gas Industry On Ecosystem Services And Smallholder Livelihoods, Michael Acheampong Aug 2018

Assessing The Impacts Of Ghana’S Oil And Gas Industry On Ecosystem Services And Smallholder Livelihoods, Michael Acheampong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ghana discovered oil and gas within its shores in commercial quantities in the year, 2007. This discovery was hailed as a potential turn around for the country’s economic destiny. While this optimism may have been well-founded, there has been a relative lack of appreciation of the potential adverse implications of the industry on traditional smallholder livelihoods, and the critical ecosystems that form their basis. In many countries, discovery of natural resources results in negative environmental and social outcomes, due to the loss of local livelihoods and environmental degradation. Deterioration of local livelihoods occurs through several biophysical pathways, both simple and …


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 Jun 2018

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 …


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 Mar 2018

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 …


Operationalizing The Pressure And Release Theoretical Framework Using Risk Ratio Analysis To Measure Vulnerability And Predict Risk From Natural Hazards In The Tampa, Fl Metropolitan Area, Jessica A. Wilder Mar 2018

Operationalizing The Pressure And Release Theoretical Framework Using Risk Ratio Analysis To Measure Vulnerability And Predict Risk From Natural Hazards In The Tampa, Fl Metropolitan Area, Jessica A. Wilder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Significant damage and loss is experienced every year due to natural hazards such as hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, wildfires, volcanoes, and earthquakes. NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) reports that in 2016 the United States experienced more than a dozen climate disaster events with damages and loss in excess of a billion dollars (NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, 2017). Identifying vulnerabilities and risk associated with disaster threats is now a major focus of natural hazards research. Natural hazards research has yielded numerous theoretical frameworks over the last 25 years that have explained important elements of risk and vulnerability …


Reconstructing Historical Hurricane Tracks In The Atlantic Basin: Three Case Studies From The 1840s, Emily L. Cerrito Mar 2018

Reconstructing Historical Hurricane Tracks In The Atlantic Basin: Three Case Studies From The 1840s, Emily L. Cerrito

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Analyzing past tropical cyclone activity enables researchers to recognize patterns of hurricane variability, estimate hurricane return periods, and assess local risk to future storms. This paleotempestology study used original primary data to make the historical record as comprehensive and accurate as possible for three major hurricanes: October 1844, October 1846, and September 1848. This thesis presents the reconstructed storm tracks, assesses the societal impacts, and evaluates the storm intensity of these three major hurricanes for the eastern U.S. and Cuba. The data utilized in this study include ship logbooks, newspapers, diaries, and instrumental meteorological records. A geographic information system (GIS) …


Policing The Riverfront: Urban Revanchism As Sustainability, Jared J. Austin Mar 2018

Policing The Riverfront: Urban Revanchism As Sustainability, Jared J. Austin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An unnoticed shift is underway in the revanchist model of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) that is rebranding the neoliberal reorganization of space and economic growth. I call this shift “Urban Revanchism as Sustainability,” following Mike Davis and Daniel Monk (2007). In this study, I describe how Tampa elites, led by Democratic Mayor Bob Buckhorn, use politically popular discourses of ‘sustainability’, ‘walkability’, ‘bike-ability’, among others, to coopt the rhetoric and symbols of social and environmental justice as cover for urban capital accumulation. I describe how in the wake of 2008 which devastated Tampa, and in the context of the subsequent …