Geography Commons^™

Sacred And Mortuary Landscapes In Iron Age Cyprus: A Gis Analysis, James P. Torpy

Senior Independent Study Theses

During the Archaic period (750-480 BC) the island of Cyprus underwent a dramatic transformation as new city-kingdoms rose to dominate the political landscape of the island. This shift resulted in increased competition for resources, establishment of political boundaries, and emergence of a pronounced social hierarchy within the new polities. While many of the large settlements that became centers of power during this time have been thoroughly studied, the manifestation of the large scale changes of the Archaic in the periphery have not been as fully investigated. The rural site of Athienou-Malloura, surveyed and excavated by the Athienou Archaeological Project …

An Analysis Of Quality For Volunteered Geographic Information, Joel C H Meier

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In recent years there has been a growing number of online user communities engaged in the creation, visualization, and use of volunteered geographic information (VGI). These data may represent an untapped resource for researchers analyzing large-area geographic phenomena such as species distributions patterns or land and resource management issues. However very few studies have used VGI for analytic research questions as little is known about the quality of these data. An understanding of the validity of VGI is a prerequisite for further exploitation of these novel data sources in research contexts. This paper looks to identify key issues related to …

Geography Standard Posters: Places And Regions, Center For Spatial Analysis And Research. Portland State University

Instructional Materials

The poster looks at the physical and human characteristics of place, how people create regions, and the culture influences people's perceptions.

Patterns Of Consumption: Ceramic Residue Analysis At Liangchengzhen, Shandong, China, Rheta E. Lanehart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to identify the different patterns of food consumption across space and time at Liangchengzhen, a Longshan (ca. 2600-1900 B.C.) site located in Shandong Province, China. The primary hypothesis of the research contended that evidence of increasing social inequality with respect to food consumption would be found from early to late phases at Liangchengzhen. In addition, rice and meat from mammals, especially pigs, were hypothesized as the most likely types of prestigious foods for daily and ritual activities. Fish and marine foods in general were hypothesized to be foods that average households could obtain since …

Quantifying The Interaction Of Wildlife And Roads: A Habitat And Movement Approach, Rebecca Whitehead Loraamm

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing need to address the effects of roadway presence on wildlife. Not only do roads directly impact gene dispersal from a movement perspective, but they limit movement of the individual animal from a habitat perspective by presenting an artificial barrier between one area of viable habitat and another. For this reason it is becoming increasingly important to quantify contact between humans and wildlife and to develop better methods for mitigating these types of conflicts. Studying habitat connectivity and animal mobility in the context of roads can provide actionable information on how, where, and when these encounters might …

Geo-Based Technologies, Tourists And Bushfires In Northern Australia, Donnell Holloway, David Holloway, Lelia Green

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper analyses how the use of geo-based technologies can play a role in the safety of tourism operations and tourist travel — especially in the case of bushfires. The study uses data from 42 qualitative interviews with tourists, tourism operators and other stakeholders in the remote Kununurra area of Western Australia carried out in 2012 and 2013. We contend that the spatiotemporal nature of tourism has stimulated considerable development in a range of geo - based technologies. The paper argues that geo-based technologies are an integral part of fire suppression and mitigation practices, and that tourists’ familiarity with geo-based …

Land Surface Anomalies Preceding The 2010 Russian Heat Wave And A Link To The North Atlantic Oscillation, C. K. Wright, K. M. De Beurs, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

The Eurasian wheat belt (EWB) spans a region across Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia, and Northern Kazakhstan; accounting for nearly 15% of global wheat production. We assessed land surface conditions across the EWB during the early growing season (April–May–June; AMJ) leading up to the 2010 Russian heat wave, and over a longer-term period from 2000 to 2010. A substantial reduction in early season values of the normalized difference vegetation index occurred prior to the Russian heat wave, continuing a decadal decline in early season primary production in the region. In 2010, an anomalously cold winter followed by an abrupt shift to …

Mitigating The Effects Of Climate Change With Wind Energy And Gis, Rachael Isphording, Richard Snow, Mary Snow

Publications

The climate is changing, and humans are heavily exacerbating these changes. As the effects of climate change are being felt across the planet, scientists and policy makers are uniting to increase mitigation efforts and are researching renewable, clean energy sources to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere during energy production. Of the different renewable energy technologies, wind energy is one of the most researched and implemented. Over the past twenty years, researchers have been applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to their climate change studies. GIS allows the user to spatially view, manipulate, and analyze data …

Improved Time Series Land Cover Classification By Missing-Observation-Adaptive Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction, David P. Roy, L. Yan

GSCE Faculty Publications

Dimensionality reduction (DR) is a widely used technique to address the curse of dimensionality when high-dimensional remotely sensed data, such as multi-temporal or hyperspectral imagery, are analyzed. Nonlinear DR algorithms, also referred to as manifold learning algorithms, have been successfully applied to hyperspectral data and provide improved performance compared with linear DR algorithms. However, DR algorithms cannot handle missing data that are common in multi-temporal imagery. In this paper, the Laplacian Eigenmaps (LE) nonlinear DR algorithm was refined for application to multi-temporal satellite data with large proportions of missing data. Refined LE algorithms were applied to 52-week Landsat time series …

Station Exposure And Resulting Bias In Temperature Observations: A Comparison Of He Kentucky Mesonet And Asos Data, James Kyle Thompson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Station siting, exposure, instrumentation, and time of observations influence longterm climatic records. This thesis compared and analyzed temperature data from four Kentucky Mesonet stations located in Fayette (LXGN), Franklin (LSML), Clark (WNCH), and Bullitt (CRMT) counties to two nearby Automated Surface Observation Systems (ASOS) stations in Kentucky. The ASOS stations are located at Louisville International Airport (Standiford Field - KSDF) and at Lexington Airport (Blue Grass Field - KLEX). The null hypothesis states that there is no significant difference in temperature measurements between the two types of stations. To quantify the differences in temperature measurements, geoprofiles and the following statistical …

Structure, Aboveground Biomass, And Soil Characterization Of Avicennia Marina In Eastern Mangrove Lagoon National Park, Abu Dhabi, Tareefa Alsumaiti

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mangrove forests are national treasures of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other arid countries with limited forested areas. Mangroves form a crucial part of the coastal ecosystem and provide numerous benefits to society, economy, and especially the environment. Mangrove trees, specifically Avicennia marina, are studied in their native habitat in order to characterize their population structure, aboveground biomass, and soil properties. This study focused on Eastern Mangrove Lagoon National Park in Abu Dhabi, which was the first mangrove protected area to be designated in UAE. In situ measurements were collected to estimate Avicennia marina status, mortality rate (%), …

Local Planning And High-Speed Rail: Responses And Perceptions In A Developing Amtrak Corridor, John-Luke D'Ambrosio

Masters Theses

Incremental speed increases have been a main focus of Amtrak in recent years. Now operating at 110 mph within three different service lines in the United States, Amtrak is making progress toward achieving maximum speeds within rail corridors. This study focuses on Amtrak’s Wolverine service line which operates daily passenger rail service between Chicago, Illinois and Detroit/Pontiac, Michigan. Specifically, this study will look at six cities connected by this service that are east of Chicago. The six cities examined in this research are Hammond, Indiana, Michigan City, Indiana, New Buffalo, Michigan, Niles, Michigan, Dowagiac, Michigan, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. This segment …

A Vegetation Analysis On Horn Island, Mississippi, Ca. 1940 Using Characteristic Dimensions Derived From Historical Aerial Photography, Guy Wilburn Jeter Jr.

Master's Theses

Horn Island is part of the MS/AL barrier island chain in the northern Gulf of Mexico located approximately 18kn off the coast of Mississippi. This island’s habitats have undergone many transitions over the last several decades. The goal of this study was to quantify habitat change over a seventy year period using historical black and white photography from 1940. Using present NAIP imagery from the USDA, habitat structure was estimated by using geo-statistics, and second order statistics, from a co-occurrence matrix, to characterize texture for habitat classification. Percent land cover was then calculated to determine overall land cover change over …

Applications Of A New Geodata Crawler For Landscape Ecology: From Mapping Natural Stream Hydrology To Monitoring Endangered Beetles, Douglas Ryan Leasure

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An investigation of endangered American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) ecology led to development of a Geodata Crawler with applications in eco-hydrology. Geodata Crawler includes a national GIS (geospatial information systems) database with layers that quantify climate, land cover, soils, human development, and other attributes of the biosphere. For user-locations in the continental United States, Geodata Crawler can rapidly tabulate site-specific statistics within automatically delineated sample areas: points, site radii, watersheds, and riparian zones, among others. Geodata Crawler supported a multi-scale analysis of N. americanus habitat at a military installation in western Arkansas to produce a Landsat-based monitoring tool. Royle's N-mixture …

Gis Framework For Spatiotemporal Mapping Of Urban Flooding And Analyze Watershed Hydrological Response To Land Cover Change, Sayed Joinal Hossain Abedin

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Urban flooding is a manmade disaster, and a recurrent problem in cities around the globe. Increased surface imperviousness due to urbanization along with inadequate drainage infrastructure system are the chief culprits for urban flooding. Flooding in an urban area brings about severe economic, structural, and environmental damages, and can be associated with casualties too. In order to evade flooding, an efficient flood model is imperative to study current flooding, and analyze flooding behavior to urban surface characteristics.

This research aims to develop a framework using Geographic Information System (GIS) to perform modeling and mapping of flood spatiotemporal variation in urban …

Spatial Analysis Of Chipped Stone At The Cypro-Ppnb Site Of Krittou Marottou Ais Giorkis: A Gis-Assisted Study, Levi Lowell Keach

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Krittou Marottou Ais Giorkis (`Ais Giorkis) is an Aceramic Neolithic site, occupied approximately 9,500 cal B.P., and located in the western foothills of the Troodos Mountains on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. This thesis is an intra-site spatial analysis of the chipped stone assemblage recovered between 1997 and 2013 from the site using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. Previous work on the assemblage from 1997 through 2004 had attempted spatial analysis using traditional statistical methods and found no patterning (O'Horo 2008). Using the expanded database and GIS this thesis identifies multiple spatial patterns in the assemblage with implications on the …

An Lntegrated Approach (Remote Sensing, Gls, Engineering, Datamining) For Modeling, Assessing And Mitigating Slope Stability Hazards In Mountainous Environments, Racha El Kadiri

Dissertations

Mountainous areas are quite often subjected to hazards related to their steep relief and intense precipitation events. These hazards (e.g., debris flows, mudflows, rockfalls) pose serious threats to settlements and structures that support transportation, agriculture, tourism, and other economic activities.

This study applies and develops a wide range of methodologies and tools that take advantage of readily available remote-sensing datasets, geographic information system technologies, and artificial intelligence techniques. The developed approaches allow the characterization of both spatial and temporal conditions that controlled mass movement occurrences and use these characteristics to model and mitigate future occurrences. The Jazan area in the …

Using Gis To Prioritize Green Infrastructure Installation Strategies In An Urban Watershed, Lauren Owen

All Theses

This study seeks to quantify runoff volume generation and peak flow rates from the urban Sand River Headwaters to determine the most effective placement of additional green infrastructure in Aiken, SC. ArcMap 10.1, HEC-GeoHMS, and HEC-HMS were used to delineate a total outlet watershed along with subwatershed(s) for urban stormwater infrastructure system by 'burning' the stormwater system at an artificial elevation below the existing topologically-based Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The result was a higher resolution DEM that allowed for storm routing and subsequent volume and flow predictions compared to that based on the original DEM created by using Light Detecting …

Recreational Risk Assessment Using Geospatial Analyses On Beaver Lake, Arkansas, Laura Ahrens

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accidents and deaths occur regularly on lakes and waterways due to natural phenomena as well as human error and recreation. People use lakes and waterways as sources of recreation, but do not always act responsibly on the water. During summer 2013 and winter 2014, over 100 surveys were administered in Beaver Lake, Arkansas to local and federal agencies regarding their knowledge and perception on accident locations and causes. These surveys were conducted in English and approved by the university after being tested on peers. The surveys included demographic data sex, income, education, as well as Likert-scaled responses. Research was also …

A Positive Latitude - Georeferencing And Archives, Tom Belton

Western Libraries Presentations

A presentation regarding a proposed research agenda to determine the advantages and feasibility of using georeferencing and maps to provide access to, or visualize, resources in archival institutions and databases.

High-Resolution Digital 3d Models Of Algar Do Penico Chamber: Limitations, Challenges, And Potential, Ivo Silvestre M.Sc., José I. Rodrigues Phd, Mauro Figueiredo Phd, Cristina Veiga-Pires Phd

International Journal of Speleology

The study of karst and its geomorphological structures is important for understanding the relationships between hydrology and climate over geological time. In that context, we conducted a terrestrial laser-scan survey to map geomorphological structures in the karst cave of Algar do Penico in southern Portugal. The point cloud data set obtained was used to generate 3D meshes with different levels of detail, allowing the limitations of mapping capabilities to be explored.

In addition to cave mapping, the study focuses on 3D-mesh analysis, including the development of two algorithms for determination of stalactite extremities and contour lines, and on the interactive …

Spatial Analysis Of Foreclosures In Hillsborough County, Brian Arthur Sandrock

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the spatial impact various socio-demographic and housing factors might have in the foreclosure lis pendens rate within various Hillsborough County, Florida tracts as well as comparing those results with past research. Hopefully the techniques used in this study can be implemented elsewhere in order to better study the foreclosure crisis. The methods used within this research were chosen carefully in order to best understand what is being observed. One method is OLS regression which helps see the impact of each variable and if that impact has a negative or positive effect on the rate of foreclosure. Bivariate …

Estimation Of Forest Interior Condition In Southern Appalachian Mountains Using Airborne Lidar Data, Gang Shao, Songlin Fei, Buddhika D. Madurapperuma, Guofan Shao

Purdue GIS Day

Sustainability of forest ecosystem requires maintenance of forest cover and forest interior conditions. Sustaining forest cover supplies ecosystem goods and services and maintains biomass and carbon and nitrogen storage. Forest interior supports ecosystem functioning and provides particular physical and biological environments for plant and animal species that depend on a type of habitat isolated from non-forest land cover areas and prohibit the infestation of invasive species. Land cover maps derived from satellite imagery were broadly applied to assess spatial patterns of forest ecosystem and its dynamic. However, existing land cover maps at landscape scale are insufficient to provide information of …

Python Tool For Managing Hydrologic Soil Data, Ilyas Orazbek

Purdue GIS Day

As a water runoff crosses different kinds of soil, it collects chemicals from those lands. We've designed a python-based tool that estimates the amount of chemicals that get collected into the water stream. This could help us determine the impact of construction on the water quality of streams in the area.

Geospatialtools / Data Provided By Itap/Rcac, Larry Biehl

Purdue GIS Day

No abstract provided.

Core Forest Analysis Along The Wildcat Creek For Niches Land Trust, Ryan W.R. Schroeder

Purdue GIS Day

A number of the properties that Niches Land Trust owns and manages are along the length of the Wildcat Creek, a waterway classified under the Rivers Preservation Act of 1973 as a “Natural, Scenic, and Recreational River System” in Indiana that flows through the counties of Tippecanoe, Carroll, Howard, and Clinton (with minor segments in Madison and Grant). The proper management of the land around the Wildcat Creek is crucial to the continued health of the waterway and the terrestrial ecosystems along its banks. Part of my volunteer work with Niches Land Trust involves the establishment of baseline data of …

Great Lakes Basin Analysis Using L-Thia, Ibrahim D. Hinds, Larry Theller

Purdue GIS Day

The objective of this project is to provide a scientific estimate of the surface runoff and water quality within the Great Lakes watershed. A “Big Data” Long-term Hydrologic Impact (L-THIA) model was used for the analysis inside an ArcMAP user interface.

Tablet-Based Mobile Gis Approaches To Archaeological Data Collection, Ian Lindsay

Purdue GIS Day

Over the past 15 years, archaeological research in northern Armenia has documented the unique evolution of prehistoric complex societies in the South Caucasus, where complex, fortress-centered institutions emerged during the Late Bronze Age (c.1500-1150 BC) not from settled farming villages—as is more typical of archaic states—but from mobile herding communities. As the costs of archaeological fieldwork continue to rise, resulting in shorter and more intensive field seasons, researchers are leveraging new technologies to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data collection in the field. An increasingly popular solution in archaeology is the use of “paperless” site recording strategies that enhance …

Development Of Simulation Of Short Rotation Woody Crops - Hybrid Populars In Swat Model, Tian Guo, Bernard Engel

Purdue GIS Day

The objective of this study is to establish growth parameters of hybrid poplar in SWAT model. Energy security and sustainable require a suite of biomass crops, including woody species. Selected hybrid poplar is expected as bioenergy feedstock for the capability of rapid growth. The quality of water and soils will be a concern when hybrid poplars are planted at wide geographic and latitudinal rang as a biomass feedstock. In this study, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) modeling was employed to simulate the water and soil impacts of the hybrid poplar. In SWAT, fast growing tree growth parameters for hybrid …

From Social Media Data To Human Behavior Patterns: Analyzing Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Of Tweets In Midwest College Towns, Yue Li, Jie Shan

Purdue GIS Day

Twitter, the most popular micro-blogging site, having over 500 million registered users as of 2012 and creating over 340 million tweets per day, has caught the attention of socio-geographic researchers. With its availability from mobile phones, Twitter allows users to send messages with their geographic coordinates. Thus, with respect to the huge quantity and large diversity of crowds publishing tweets, massive valuable geosocial knowledge can be extracted, which can provide important implications for various applications, such as human geography, urban science, location-based services, targeted advertising, content delivery networks, and social media research. This study aims to uncover human behavior patterns, …