Geography Commons^™

Effect Of Lateral Outflow On Three-Dimensional Flow Structure In A River Delta, M. Kifayath Chowdhury, Kory M. Konsoer, Matthew Hiatt

Faculty Publications

Spatial and temporal patterns in three-dimensional flow structure are linked to channel processes and morphology in many environments. However, there is not yet an understanding of how the flow structure is influenced by channelized and gradually distributed lateral outflows that are often prevalent in river deltas. This study presents an analysis of three-dimensional flow structure data collected from Wax Lake Delta, a naturally developing river-dominated delta in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Three hydrographic surveys were conducted using a boat-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler at two sites: a channelized outflow zone and a distributary channel experiencing unchannelized lateral outflow. The …

Between Two Rivers: Environmental Justice And The Politics Of Ecological Improvement In Puget Sound, Grant M. Gutierrez

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Environmental justice (EJ) has become a central framework for historically marginalized communities in the United States to identify unequal exposure to environmental harm. Yet, what once began as a radical social movement challenge to different forms of environmental racism has been taken-up by a wide swathe of civil society across diverse political, cultural, and ecological landscapes. In particular, river restoration efforts – and the many communities they implicate – are emerging as key sites of political-ecological interventions that are central to EJ. However, not all river restoration efforts employ EJ as a guiding framework. Through this dissertation, I ask: how …

Rates Of Future Climate Change In The Gulf Of Mexico And The Caribbean Sea: Implications For Coral Reef Ecosystems, A. E. Lawman, S. G. Dee, K. L. Delong, A. M.S. Correa

Faculty Publications

Rising temperatures and ocean acidification due to anthropogenic climate change pose ominous threats to coral reef ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and the western Caribbean Sea. Unfortunately, the once structurally complex coral reefs in the GoM and Caribbean have dramatically declined since the 1970s; relatively few coral reefs still exhibit a mean live coral cover of >10%. Additional work is needed to characterize future climate stressors on coral reefs in the GoM and the Caribbean Sea. Here, we use climate model simulations spanning the period of 2015–2100 to partition and assess the individual impacts of climate stressors on …

Rural-Urban Differences In Breast Cancer Surgical Delays In Medicare Beneficiaries, Ronnie J. Zipkin, Andrew Schaefer, Changzhen Wang, Andrew P. Loehrer, Nirav S. Kapadia, Gabriel A. Brooks, Tracy Onega, Fahui Wang, Alistair J. O’Malley, Erika L. Moen

Faculty Publications

Background: Delays between breast cancer diagnosis and surgery are associated with worsened survival. Delays are more common in urban-residing patients, although factors specific to surgical delays among rural and urban patients are not well understood. Methods: We used a 100% sample of fee-for-service Medicare claims during 2007–2014 to identify 238,491 women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer undergoing initial surgery and assessed whether they experienced biopsy-to-surgery intervals > 90 days. We employed multilevel regression to identify associations between delays and patient, regional, and surgeon characteristics, both in combined analyses and stratified by rurality of patient residence. Results: Delays were more prevalent among …

El Poder De Las Tierras Estatales: Conflictos De Propiedad, Formaciones Estatales Y La Construcción De Los Llanos En Colombia, Julio Arias Vanegas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work examines different conflicts over the definition, delimitation, and use of state lands in Colombia. It focuses on the conflicts over three places, which have been produced as state properties and “baldíos” (public, untitled lands) from the 1940s to the 2010s in Los Llanos region. This dissertation departs from two premises. First, the making and unmaking of state lands are unique windows to examine how the limits between state and non-state properties, actors, and spaces are defined and disputed. Second, state lands, and especially baldíos, have been a key form of state territorialization and appropriation of marginalized regions. Thus, …

Centers Of Community: A Spatial Analysis Of The Mid-19th Century Populaton Residing On Beacon Hill, Boston, Ma, Justin Malcolm

Graduate Masters Theses

The first Black church constructed in Boston, and the oldest extant Black church building in America, the African Meeting House was located on the North Slope of Beacon Hill; the predominant residence of Boston’s Black population during the nineteenth century. The African Meeting House has been the subject of several important archaeological investigations. In 1840, a schism within the African Meeting House congregation resulted in the establishment of the Twelfth Baptist Church. Historical contexts suggest that this neighborhood was highly segregated. A geographic and statistical analysis of the unique 1850 Boston City Census, which was made to yield spatial contexts …

Changes In Sociocultural Stressors, Protective Factors, And Mental Health For Us Latina Mothers In A Shifting Political Climate, Amy L. Non, Elizabeth S. Clausing, Kimberly L. D’Anna Hernandez

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Background To investigate changes in sociocultural stressors and protective factors, and mental health in Latina mothers before and after the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Methods We examined changes in sociocultural stressors, protective factors, and mental health from two prospective cohorts of Latina mothers from interior and border US cities (Nashville, TN, n = 39 and San Diego, CA, ns range = 78–83; 2013–2020).

Results We identified significant longitudinal increases in depression, anxiety, and perceived stress in the border city, and reductions in protective factors (e.g., optimism, social support, and familism) across sites. Discrimination varied by location, and was associated with …

Changes In Sociocultural Stressors, Protective Factors, And Mental Health For Us Latina Mothers In A Shifting Political Climate, Amy L. Non, Elizabeth S. Clausing, Kimberly L. D’Anna Hernandez

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Background To investigate changes in sociocultural stressors and protective factors, and mental health in Latina mothers before and after the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Methods We examined changes in sociocultural stressors, protective factors, and mental health from two prospective cohorts of Latina mothers from interior and border US cities (Nashville, TN, n = 39 and San Diego, CA, ns range = 78–83; 2013–2020).

Results We identified significant longitudinal increases in depression, anxiety, and perceived stress in the border city, and reductions in protective factors (e.g., optimism, social support, and familism) across sites. Discrimination varied by location, and was associated with …

Impacts Of Ocean-Atmosphere Teleconnection Patterns On The South-Central United States, Robert V. Rohli, Gregg A. Snedden, Elinor R. Martin, Kristine L. Delong

Faculty Publications

Recent research has linked the climate variability associated with ocean-atmosphere teleconnections to impacts rippling throughout environmental, economic, and social systems. This research reviews recent literature through 2021 in which we identify linkages among the major modes of climate variability, in the form of ocean-atmosphere teleconnections, and the impacts to temperature and precipitation of the South-Central United States (SCUSA), consisting of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. The SCUSA is an important areal focus for this analysis because it straddles the ecotone between humid and arid climates in the United States and has a growing population, diverse ecosystems, robust agricultural …

(Re)Constructing Homescapes: “Archaeological Remote Sensing” And Ground-Truthing Of The Walker Place Homestead At Spirit Hill Farm, Tate County, Mississippi, Gabriel Griffin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on an early nineteenth-century homestead known as the Walker Place homestead at Spirit Hill Farm in northern Mississippi. The goal of this thesis is to conduct a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and shovel test survey to explore how changing landscapes simultaneously (re)create and destroy senses of place or Homescapes. Homescapes have received little attention in the field of archaeology and have not been applied to Euro-American Homescapes. I apply this theoretical construct in a novel way as a venture to further develop an avenue in archaeology to be collaborative and understand the past in a way that accurately …

Using Multidisciplinary Analysis To Develop Adaptation Options Against Extreme Coastal Floods, Xinmeng Shan, Jun Wang, Jiahong Wen, Hengzhi Hu, Lei Wang, Jie Yin, Mengya Li

Faculty Publications

Long-term flood risk adaptation and decision making are complex because the future is full of deep uncertainties. Flexibility and robustness can be used to deal with future uncertainty. This study developed an integrated modeling framework that extends previous studies to the spatial domain to assess the future flood risks and the cost and benefit of three adaptation measures for four types of buildings in Shanghai. Real options analysis (ROA) and dynamic adaptive policy pathways (DAPP) were integrated to develop a dynamic adaptation pathway and identify robust adaptation options. The results show that: (1) Sea level rise and land subsidence will …

Wak'as, Mallkis, And The Inca Afterlife: The Hydrological Connection Between The Incan Empirical And Nonempirical Worlds, Marius C. Vold

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The ruling elite amongst the indigenous groups of the Andes region, often referred to as the Incas, were, before European contact, a non-literal society. Therefore, our understanding of their religious beliefs pertaining to the relationship between life and death, and the intricate relationship between this belief system and the environment surrounding the Inca is heavily influenced by post-European contact, often clouded by European propaganda and a lack of cultural relativism. This project aims at exploring the relationship between the hydrological cycle and the Incan empirical and nonempirical worlds by comparing and synthesizing post-European contact written records, ethnohistorical records, archeological evidence, …

Climate Disasters, Mass Violence, And Human Mobility In South Sudan: Through A Gender Lens, Marisa O. Ensor

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines the links between gender, mass violence, climate change, and displacement in South Sudan. I argue for risk-informed gender-sensitive strategies that incorporate local capacities and sources of resilience. When civil war engulfed South Sudan again in 2013, egregious human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence, were perpetrated with near complete impunity. As the national army was divided along Dinka-Nuer ethnic lines, soldiers from each faction turned against each other in a deadly pattern of revenge and counter-revenge attacks that soon spread across the national territory. Inter-communal conflicts also intensified, often centering on competition over land for pasture, …

Planetary-Scale Change To The Biosphere Signalled By Global Species Translocations Can Be Used To Identify The Anthropocene, Mark Williams, Reinhold Leinfelder, Anthony D. Barnosky, Martin J. Head, Francine M.G. Mccarthy, Alejandro Cearreta, Stephen Himson, Rachael Holmes, Colin N. Waters, Jan Zalasiewicz, Simon Turner, Mary Mcgann, Elizabeth A. Hadly, M. Allison Stegner, Paul Michael Pilkington, Jérôme Kaiser, Juan Carlos Berrio, Ian P. Wilkinson, Jens Zinke, Kristine L. Delong

Faculty Publications

We examine three distinctive biostratigraphic signatures of humans associated with hunting and gathering, landscape domestication and globalization. All three signatures have significant fossil records of regional importance that can be correlated inter-regionally and help describe the developing pattern of human expansion and appropriation of resources. While none have individual first or last appearances that provide a globally isochronous marker, all three signatures overlap stratigraphically, in that they are part of a continuum of change, with complex regional patterns. Here we show that during the later stages of globalization, late nineteenth to twentieth century records of species translocations can be used …

Southwest Pacific Tropical Cyclone Development Classification Utilizing Machine Learning And Synoptic Composites, Rupsa Bhowmick, Jill C. Trepanier, Alex M. Haberlie

Faculty Publications

This study evaluates the ability of machine learning algorithms to classify tropical depressions (TDs) and tropical storms (TSs) in the western region of the southwest Pacific Ocean (SWPO). Decision rules are generated to predict the environment required for a depression to fully develop into a mature storm, and the most influential predictors in the classification decision are ranked. TD and TS are discriminated based on a maximum sustained wind speed threshold (≥17 ms−1). Various aerosol, thermodynamic, and dynamic parameters are extracted closest to the initiation point of each non-developing and developing sample. The covariates associated with each labelled sample are …

Borders: A Story Of Political Imagination, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

This article traces three different political imaginaries about borders, suggesting that the dominant imaginary—the one of border walls, driven by a fear of invasion—is only one way to live in the world. The goal is to make space in our political imaginations to rethink how we live together, including thinking beyond nation-states as containers that keep people in or out. By first showing how the vision of invasion is built and maintained with intersecting transnational technologies and ideologies, I open the way to thinking otherwise. Second, I trace the counterpolitics of borders developed by artists and activists, resisting borders and …

Intersecting Mobilities: Beyond The Autonomy Of Movement And Power Of Place, Miriam Ticktin, Rafi Youatt

Publications and Research

It is widely understood that we live in a world where people, goods, species, and things of all sorts are on the move, and that the politics around mobility and its regulation and meaning are critical to contemporary political and social life. Human migration has been globally intensive for well over a century; industrial economic production, consumption, and trade move goods around the world; transportation infrastructure moves all sorts of cargo around, human and nonhuman; regular and irregular ecological processes and changes are creating new patterns of nonhuman movement; variants of viruses race around the world; even geological elements are …

An Assessment Of The Extremes And Impacts Of The February 2021 South-Central U.S. Arctic Outbreak, And How Climate Services Can Help, Rebecca A. Bolinger, Vincent M. Brown, Christopher M. Fuhrmann, Karin L. Gleason, T. Andrew Joyner, Barry D. Keim, Amanda Lewis, John W. Nielsen-Gammon, Crystal J. Stiles, William Tollefson, Hannah E. Attard, Alicia M. Bentley

Faculty Publications

In February 2021, a widespread cold-air outbreak, with two associated winter storm systems, impacted the South-Central United States. After a comprehensive summary of the synoptic setup and a day-by-day analysis of the event, we assess the significance of the storm from a climatological perspective. Concerning winter precipitation, there were isolated instances of record snowfall accumulations. While freezing rain and freezing drizzle both occurred, total freezing precipitation accumulations did not exceed a one-in-50 year event. The duration of the cold was notable — many stations across the region broke records for the highest number of consecutive days below freezing. When analyzing …

Building The Revolution: Ideology, Affect And Gender In Bolivarian Caracas, Andreina I. Torres A.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Building the Revolution: Ideology, Affect and Gender in Bolivarian Caracas,” examines the Bolivarian Revolution (1998-present) as a heterogenous shifting political process, and terrain of struggle in which a multiplicity of actors disputed the meanings and direction of socialism in Venezuela. During three years of ethnographic and archival research in Caracas (between 2014 and 2017) I researched one of the many Campamentos de Pioneros (Pioneer Camps) that was part of the Movimiento de Pobladores y Pobladoras de Venezuela (Venezuela’s Settlers’ Movement). The pioneers sought to “rescue” and occupy centrally located land in the national capital in order to build housing for …

Why, New York City? Gauging The Quality Of Life Through The Thoughts Of Tweeters, Sheryl Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a resource for social data, Twitter’s platform has been used to measure the quality of life through sentiment analysis. This capstone project explores another methodological technique—querying Twitter data around specific keyword terms to determine dominant topics, word patterns, and sentiment leanings in a geographical area. Focusing on New York City and Los Angeles for comparative analysis, the keyword term “why” will be used to build a Python analysis around topic modeling and sentiment analysis. Using this approach, the analysis reveals social and cultural differences, the overall sentiment of tweets, and subjects of interest to tweeters.

GitHub Repository for all …

The Demotechnic Index Of Nations, 1980-2018, Camden Rainwater

Geosciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Demotechnic Index (DI) is a non-dimensional metric that is the scalar multiple of energy consumption over and above that required for mere subsistence of a national population. Thus, the DI is a measure of energy efficiency that scales a country’s industrial energy consumption (called the total technological energy) and the energy required to meet the metabolic demand of the population (called the total metabolic energy). The DI was created by scientist John Vallentyne in 1982, refined in 1994, but never gained popularity or wide use as a sustainability metric. The objective of this thesis was to re-evaluate the DI …

Delineation Of Cancer Service Areas Anchored By Major Cancer Centers In The United States, Changzhen Wang, Fahui Wang, Tracy Onega

Faculty Publications

Defining a reliable geographic unit pertaining to cancer care is essential in its assessment, planning, and management. This study aims to delineate and characterize the cancer service areas (CSA) accounting for the presence of major cancer centers in the United States. We used the Medicare enrollment and claims from January 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015 to build a spatial network from patients with cancer to cancer care facilities that provided inpatient and outpatient care of cancer-directed surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. After excluding those without clinical care or outside of the United States, we identified 94 NCI-designated and other academic …

Step By Step: Understanding Perceptions Of Time And Space In Nepal, Lillian Norton-Brainerd

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Time and space are part of everyone’s daily life; however, these concepts are rarely explicitly discussed. Hegemonic interpretations of time and space are part of capitalist, colonialist structures, thus understanding alternative perceptions is important to resisting these structures. To understand perceptions of time in Nepal, I spent a month in Gre, a small village near Langtang National Park. I interviewed villagers and spent time observing how people spend their time, talk about time, and give directions to physical places. While there is not one perception of time and space, I learned how time and space influence each other. Geography and …

In Place/Out Of Place Assignment, Peter Kabachnik

Open Educational Resources

This Geography assignment, ideal for Political Geography, Cultural Geography, Urban Geography, and so forth (and of course other related disciplines like Anthropology and Sociology), undergraduate courses, explores the concepts of in place and out of place. Based on a reading of the introduction of Tim Cresswell's 1996 book In Place/out of Place Geography, Ideology, and Transgression, this assignment is a great way to get students to think about these issues and connect them to their own experiences.

Coming To Know The Local Environment: Children's Experiences In Rautamai Gaunpalika, Nepal, Elsie Nicole Love

Dissertations and Theses

This qualitative research, conducted over three months from late monsoon season into early fall of 2018 with twenty-six children and thirteen adults, explores how children in the hills of Rautamai Gaunpalika, Province 1, Nepal come to know their local environment. Semi-structured interviews with children, their family members, and teachers, and participant observation with children as they worked and played in forests, fields, and streams, suggest that outside of school, children come to know their local environment in the following ways: through participation in and application of knowledge to subsistence practices; through collaborative learning and teaching in mixed-age groups; through relationships …

Past-Futures Of Harlem: Black Urban Space At The Limits Of Spatial Justice, Dane C. Ruffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The racial capitalist development of the U.S. metropolitan landscape has been shaped by the involuntary displacement and dispersal of Black communities. From the dispossession of the Half-Free Negro Lots around the Fresh Collect pond in the seventeenth century to the clearing of Seneca Village to build Central Park in the nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth-century police-facilitated “race riot” in the Tenderloin district of Manhattan, which fueled the move to Harlem, the four-hundred year history of Black Manhattan alone provides substantial evidence of this and is in no way unique in this regard. Incomplete, yet ongoing, is what …

The Glorious Past And The Ecologically Modern: A Guided Journey Through Reconstructions Of China In Rural Shanxi, Melinda Herrold-Menzies

EnviroLab Asia

The article traces an EnviroLab Asia research trip designed to learn how “traditional” music and “folk” dance had been used to transform a loose configuration of farms into an integrated organic agricultural cooperative. This trip was second part of a multi-pronged case-study project looking at music, agriculture and sustainability in Indonesia and China. The importance of this research trip was to build collaborative relationships with our colleagues in Shanxi so that we will be able to produce interdisciplinary research with multinational partners in the future.

Accessing 3d Data, Francesca Albrezzi, John Bonnett, Tassie Gniady, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lisa Snyder

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The issue of access and discoverability is not simply a matter of permissions and availability. To identify, locate, retrieve, and reuse 3D materials requires consideration of a multiplicity of content types, as well as community and financial investment to resolve challenges related to usability, interoperability, sustainability, and equity. This chapter will cover modes, audiences, assets and decision points, technology requirements, and limitations impacting access, as well as providing recommendations for next steps.

Population Sustainability In Rural Great Plains Towns, Andrew Husa

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

As researchers look to define a narrative of population decline throughout the region, the rural Great Plains towns that have been able to sustain their populations and attract new residents have seemingly gone unnoticed. This article features case studies from six rural Nebraska towns that address key questions regarding the population sustainability of rural Great Plains towns. Along with a discussion on the significance of geographic location in population growth or decline, this study includes several examples of how rural towns have used their locations to their advantage, created more job opportunities, enticed new residents to move in, and/or dealt …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …