Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Modeling Debris Flow Hazard Risk Post Wildfire In Northern Colorado: A Spatial Approach, Ashleigh Boyd

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the largest in Colorado’s History, impacted over 200,000 acres of land, including vital watersheds close to population centers in Colorado, such as the towns of Estes Park and Loveland. Runoff and debris flows are a continuous hazard for approximately five years post-fire. This study takes a spatial approach to modeling runoff potential of the Big Thompson Subbasin Watershed, using curve number methodology to approximate runoff potential by combining land cover, soil data, slope, and burn severity. Field work indicated possible uncertainty in the model due to discrepancies with field sample soil hydro groups compared to …

A Gis Look At Woody Plant Encroachment (Wpe): Mapping Grassland Degradation Through Habitat Succession, Brandon M. Wolf

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The grasslands of North America remain at a fraction of their historic range. Estimates of acreage remaining vary between 4% and 13%. Affectionately known as the Great Plains, these grasslands have been converted for agriculture, rangeland, infrastructure, and civilization itself. Woody Plant Encroachment (WPE) on the grasslands is a silent, often overlooked, serious threat. The use of a simple GIS can estimate current acreage of a grassland, its adjacent woodland corridor, riparian buffers, and predict future acreage based on trends and hypothetical management scenarios, or lack thereof. The American prairie, though a remnant of its former self, is still home …

A Lack Of Inclusive Playgrounds And How Gis Can Bridge The Gap: A Case Study In Metro Denver, Brittny N. Wagner

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Inclusive and accessible playgrounds are a vital component to a sustainable and healthy community. These types of playgrounds encourage interactions between children of all abilities, which is a key component of social, emotional, and physical development. Playgrounds are often outdated or built without considering the needs of different types of community members. This is often due to lack of research about what it means to build an accessible playground and lack of awareness of the need for this type of play coming from city officials and park planners. Many parents and caregivers are left wondering where accessible playgrounds are located, …

Understanding Delays And Improving Emergency Response With Gis - Evergreen Fire Department In Evergreen, Colorado, Adrien Hoff

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

It is expected that both the PSAP and the responders in the field react quickly and arrive on the scene to emergency events as soon as possible. Fire agencies have been held to standards set in place reflective of where the emergency occurs and how quickly responders are expected to reach that location. Calls that experience delays in meeting these standards should be carefully examined and learned from for future events. Utilizing National Fire Protection (NFPA) population zone recommendations, population zones previously established with 2010 census data and unknown methods were recreated for Evergreen Fire Protection District. Then, utilizing SQL …

Village Of Grand Ridge Gis Utility Mapping: Effective Decision Making And Cost Benefits, Nick Harsted

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

According to Worldpopualtionreview.com, “As of 2018, there are 19,495 incorporated cities, towns and villages in the United States. Of those, 14,768 have populations below 5,000. Only ten have populations above 1 million and none are above 10 million. There are 310 cities considered at least medium cities with populations of 100,000 or more.” According to the U.S Census Bureau stats, “about 80% of the United States population lives in urban areas.” Within these cities or towns are underground utility infrastructures such as water lines and sewer pipes. For years cities have stored in files and boxes these construction plans explaining …

A Gis Analysis To Identify Historical, Contemporary, And Spatial Housing Discrimination In Denver, Colorado, Ian Sharkey

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This study analyzes the relationship between housing discrimination and equity within the City of Denver. This study creates a discrimination index by combining (1) historical Discrimination, (2) contemporary segregation, and (3) housing inequity data into an index to compare the Denver Department of Health and the Environment (DDPHE) 2020 equity index using a local bivariate analysis. This study found a negative linear relationship between the created and Denver equity indexes. The variables used for the discrimination index can explain some of the relationships, but future studies should use more variables for a discrimination index.

Using Gis To Identify Barriers To Access On The Rtd W Line In Denver, Colorado, Tristan Johnson

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Denver, Colorado has a long history of public transportation usage beginning with horse-drawn streetcars in 1871. As the automobile began to flourish however, the use of public transportation has languished. In 2013, the W light rail line opened serving the West Denver area. As Denver has moved toward a more transit-oriented growth model, this rail line can create a more vibrant future. Using GIS, a better understanding of the barriers to access for light rail travel is obtained and considering key variables outputs are created to assist policy makers in utilizing the W line. By using GIS to address population …

Modeling Vegetation Cover At Mount St Helens Using Highly Correlated Vegetation Indices, Sara Livingston

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 devastated the landscape and obliterated all ground vegetation within a 620 km2 blast zone radius. The destructive forces of the lateral blast, debris avalanche, tephra plume, and lahar flow created a complex mosaic of disturbance zones, that subsequently yielded various rates of landscape recovery. Remote sensing is an efficient method for monitoring landscape-scale changes by recording the distinct spectral reflectance of vegetation. Based on statistically significant correlations between Vegetation Indices and vegetation parameters, an empirical model can be developed for vegetation cover predictions. This capstone analysis found that NDVI holds the strongest …

Analyzing The Production And Use Of Fossil Fuels: A Case For Data Mining And Gis, Alejandro Conde

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

As technology progresses and data grows both larger and more complex, techniques are being developed to keep up with the exponential growth of information. The term “data mining” is a blanket term used to describe an approach to find anomalies and correlations in a large dataset. This approach involves leveraging data mining software to manipulate and prepare data, apply statistics to quantify trends and characteristics in the data from a high level, and potentially apply advanced techniques like machine learning to identify patterns that wouldn’t be apparent otherwise. In this case study, data mining aided a GIS in displaying substantial …

Detecting And Visualizing Observation Hot-Spots In Massive Volunteer-Contributed Geographic Data Across Spatial Scales Using Gpu-Accelerated Kernel Density Estimation, Guiming Zhang

Geography and the Environment: Faculty Scholarship

Volunteer-contributed geographic data (VGI) is an important source of geospatial big data that support research and applications. A major concern on VGI data quality is that the underlying observation processes are inherently biased. Detecting observation hot-spots thus helps better understand the bias. Enabled by the parallel kernel density estimation (KDE) computational tool that can run on multiple GPUs (graphics processing units), this study conducted point pattern analyses on tens of millions of iNaturalist observations to detect and visualize volunteers’ observation hot-spots across spatial scales. It was achieved by setting varying KDE bandwidths in accordance with the spatial scales at which …

Bicycles And Transit: Weather Or Not: A Study On The Effect Of Weather And Air Quality On Bicycle-Transit, Bicycle, Rail Transit Counts In Denver, Christiana M. Fairfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The movement of people and goods within metropolitan areas is critically important to the operational efficiency and functionality of cities. This study explores the influence of local weather conditions and the air quality index on bicycle-transit user in Denver, Colorado. Based on bicycle-transit having two key components, bicycle and transit, the effect of local weather conditions and the air quality index is also explored with bicycle use and rail-transit usage. Key findings include: (1) the most significant variable across all three modes is temperature, (2) for bicycle-transit and bicycle use, there is a steady increase in ridership as temperatures increase …

Exploring Youth Relationships With Nature Using Qualitative Gis, Corey J. Martz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding youth relationships with nature—what nature is, where nature is located, and why nature is meaningful—is important for a range of contemporary issues, from promoting health and well-being to advancing a sustainable future. Relationships with nature are profoundly influenced by the lived experiences of youth, as they form social connections, have fun, learn, and go about their lives across an array of places—residences, schools, trip destinations, and places in between. One key to exploring youth relationships with nature, therefore, is engaging youth to document their experiences of nature in relation to specific places and developing methods that support them to …

Geovisualization And Open-Source Web Mapping Of Big Origin-Destination Data, A Test Case, Joseph Hiebert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Migration plays a key role in determining the health and success of cities, counties, and countries. It also plays a key role in determining the health and wellbeing of the individuals and families that undergo a migration event. This has led many scholars to map and study global migration patterns to understand how and why people move. While migration data are powerful, the origin-destination (O-D), tabular format of the data can be hard to interpret. To make O-D data more powerful, geographers can lean on computer cartography and new geovisualization techniques to help decision makers make sense of large, complex …

Care Infrastructure Accessibility And The Gender Wage Gap – A Way To Improve Women’S Ability To Equitably Engage In The Paid Labor Market?, Julia Schinnenburg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

World-wide, women are less integrated into the labor force than men and if they are, they earn considerably less on average. This unequal treatment of women results in negative consequences for all members of society, as it harms women’s financial realities and also affects women’s care receivers due to a lack of resources that women can spend on their care giving. The research presented analyses how much the institution of better accessible care infrastructure could improve women’s ability to work for pay and decrease their daily workloads. The extent to which improved care infrastructure accessibility affects women’s lives is determined …

Pathways Forward For Onshore Wind Energy In The State Of Maryland: A Gis Multi-Criteria Analysis, George Pisano

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This study examines pathways forward for onshore wind energy in the State of Maryland. To meet its decarbonization goals, Maryland needs to quickly transition its electric grid away from fossil fuels. The state is currently in the process of developing offshore wind farms that have the potential to represent a significant source of renewable energy. However little progress has been made in expanding Maryland’s onshore wind energy production capacity. Using a multi-criteria GIS analysis, this study found that there is a limited but not inconsiderable area in the state that could be suitable for wind farms of varying scales that …

Urban Green Space: Mitigator Or Multiplier Of Inequality In The Denver Metropolitan Area?, Joshua Charles Baldwin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Studies have shown that communities of color and low-income populations are likely to live in neighborhoods that lack access to quality green spaces, unable to directly benefit from the environmental, recreational, and cultural services they provide. The goal of this research was to determine if the green space inequality patterns seen globally and nationally exist in the Denver Metropolitan Area. Using an existing green space dataset, ecosystem services fieldwork, GIS digitizing, and bivariate correlation analysis I uncovered numerous green space inequalities based on proximity, acreage, and quality. Key findings included 1) Lakewood’s Hispanic and less-educated populations have relatively little access …

Rock Glacier Development In The San Juan Mountains, Brandon K. Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rock glaciers are common landform features found in deglaciated alpine areas. They are commonly used in the study of climatic changes throughout the Holocene and the reconstruction of neoglacial chronologies. For this research, Schmidt hammer rebound values, weathering rind thicknesses, and the length of lichen thalli diameters found on rock glacier surfaces are used to investigate their effectiveness as field-based relative age determination techniques. Additionally, the ability to identify periods of neoglacial activity using these methods is assessed in two neighboring cirque basins in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. 41 field sites across three rock glaciers are established with …

Spatial And Temporal Controls On Streamflow Variability In The San Juan Mountains, Colorado, Christopher Lewis Hancock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project characterizes and examines changes to the annual hydroclimatic cycle throughout alpine regions of Colorado with a focus on trends in snowpack and snowmelt hydrology. Datasets analyzed for this research include 79 SNOTEL sites throughout Colorado (24 in the San Juan Mountains) which provide climate metrics for Water Years 1988-2018. Impacts on streamflow are evaluated in the San Juan Region through a network of 11 USGS stream gauges. Correlation matrices and linear regression methods examine the relative controls on the magnitude and timing of discharge, and trend detection using the regional Kendall test quantifies the rate of change within …

Climate Change And Seed Security Among Smallholder Farmers In Northern Ghana, Michael Biwalib Madin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smallholder agriculture is highly susceptible to climate variability and change. According to recent projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this sensitivity would likely increase in the coming decades, with more erratic rainfall, prolonged dry periods, shorter growing seasons, and seed germination failures. In the African context, the mechanisms through which these ecological stressors would affect seed security are poorly understood. Drawing upon a case study of semi-arid Ghana, this study examines climate change impacts on seed security among smallholder farmers. It adopts a mixed-methods approach with intensive fieldwork in two farming communities. Conceptually, the study uses a political …

Using Multi-Source Data To Assess The Dynamics Of Socioeconomic Development In Africa, Xuantong Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Frequent and rapid spatially explicit assessment of socioeconomic development is critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at both national and global levels. In the past decades, scientists have proposed many methods for monitoring human activities on the Earth’s surface on various spatiotemporal scales using Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Line System (DMSP-OLS) nighttime lights (NTL) data. However, the DMSP-OLS NTL data and the associated processing methods have limited their reliability and applicability for systematic measuring and mapping of socioeconomic development. This research utilizes Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) NTL and the Isolation Forest (iForest) machine learning algorithm …

Using Repeat Photography To Examine Change In A U.S. National Park Gateway Community: A Case Study Of Estes Park, Colorado, Caitlin Lebeda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the creation of the National Park Service in the United States, tourists from around the world visiting America's national parks are served by gateway communities. Gateway communities are the towns and cities that border public lands and protected spaces. The impact of our visits on these gateway communities is considerable, with many gateways and their residents relying on consistent and ever-increasing visitation to national parks to spur economic growth and development. To better understand the impacts that national park designations have had on their gateway communities, it is important to determine what changes have occurred both physically and culturally …

An Hgis Approach To Land-Use/Land-Cover Change In The Blanice Watershed, Czech Republic, Kelly J. Measom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the South Bohemian region of the Czech Republic, the landscape is distinguished by a network of long narrow fields bordered by hedgerows clustered in small groups. These unique clusters of hedgerows have been interacting with their environment, effectively mitigating erosion, since they were first established in the High Middle Ages. In this research project I used historical maps to characterize land-use and land-cover (LULC) change relating to hedgerow features in one cadastral territory in the Blanice Watershed. Using georeferenced historical maps from 1837 and 1952, and unreferenced historical maps from 1837 to 1953, I compared the historical LULC to …

Corporate-Community Mining Conflicts In Guatemala: Unsettling Hegemonic Power Relations In Environmental Struggles, Anna Guðbjört Sveinsdóttir

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes corporate-community conflicts around extractive industries in Guatemala with the purpose of better understanding how environmental struggles emerge and take shape. The study uses environmental governance as a framework to analyze the processes, institutions, actors and discourses that shape the conditions of possibility of political action and mobilization in environmental struggles. The dissertation argues that to understand the conditions of possibility of political action and mobilization in environmental struggles we must study the interplay between political actions 'from above' and 'from below', which are seen as dialectically interrelated, with dynamic and contested interactions between actors within and between …

The Changing Role Of Public-Private Partnerships In Urban Transportation: A Case Study Of The Rise Of P3s In Denver, Co, Sylvia Arriaga Brady

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the expanding role of public-private partnerships (PPPs or P3s) in Denver metro transportation projects in three areas: (1) innovative funding and financing of transit infrastructure projects, (2) the partnerships between freight and passenger rail services, and (3) emerging collaborations of local governments, transit agencies, and transportation network companies (TNCs).

The purpose of the first study was to examine the recent use of P3s in the Denver Regional Transportation District's (RTD) FasTracks program, a 2004 voter-approved $4.7 billion transit expansion program. After a shortfall in funding, RTD partnered with several private consortia to enable the FasTracks program to …

The Political Economy Of Sandinismo 2.0: Environmental And Social Implications Of Paradoxical Economic Ideologies In Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua, Sarah Mccall Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the political economy of Nicaragua's development, with specific emphasis on Venezuela and China's influence, energy policy, and environmental and social justice related to the Nicaragua canal. The first section focuses on the political economy of the current Ortega administration in Nicaragua, as part of the return of left-leaning leadership in Latin America since the early 2000s. This study examines the Ortega administration's selective interpretation of the concept of imperialism and its effect on the environment as it pertains to US interests, Venezuelan oil financing and socialist rhetoric, and China's control over a large piece of Nicaraguan territory …

Paleoflood Hydrology And Basin Morphometric Characteristics Related To Flooding In The Colorado Front Range, Natalie Trivino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Flooding hazards are common in the Colorado Front Range due to the steep, complex terrain of the mountains where waters quickly spill out onto the most populated region of Colorado. This region has experienced numerous catastrophic floods, such as the 2013 Front Range Floods, the Fort Collins Flood of 1997, and the Big Thompson Canyon Flood of 1976 to name a few. The objective of this study was to analyze basin morphometric characteristics of several drainage basins throughout the Colorado Front Range South Platte River tributaries and determine how these characteristics relate to extreme flooding. This was done through three …

An Investigation Of The Performance Of Urban Rail Transit Systems On The Corridor Level: A Comparative Analysis In The American West, Daniel Zimny-Schmitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1980s, significant investments have been made in urban rail transit across the United States, particularly using light rail technology. Most of these light rail systems have been built in Sunbelt cities which no longer had legacy rail systems. As a result, they were constructed using a building blocks approach, being funded corridor by corridor. Most research, however, on urban rail performance has taken place at the system-wide level, leaving a significant gap at the level of the transit corridor. This research examined nineteen urban rail corridors in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Portland. A performance score was constructed …

The Response Of High Elevation Wetlands To Past Climate Change, And Implications For The Future, Ian Arthur Slayton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As part of the ongoing investigation of mid-latitude fens in Colorado by University of Denver paleoenvironment researchers, research directed at examining the response of mid-latitude subalpine fens to past climatic events potentially analogous to modern anthropogenic climate change was undertaken. As part of this research, a 4.18 m sediment core was retrieved from Harbison Pond (2651 m elev) near Grand Lake, CO and a 3.12 m peat core was collected from Whiskey Fen (2792 m elev) in the Never Summer Range. Stratigraphic evidence indicates the kettle lake formed shortly after the Last Glacial Maximum, at least 16,201 cal yr BP …

Rock Glacier Hydrology In The San Juan Mountains, Colorado, Emilio Ian Mateo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rock glaciers are unique geomorphological features located in alpine environments and are found in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. There has been little research done on rock glaciers compared to their ice glacier counterparts. Most rock glaciers are located on the northern slope aspect in mountainous areas (Janke 2007), however, there are multiple in southwest Colorado with different aspects. This research project asks how slope aspect influences the hydrological processes of streams sourced from rock glaciers in the San Juan Mountains. This project focused on three basins that are adjacent to each other and share a common peak, Gilpin …

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 …