Geography Commons^™

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, January 2021, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 2. Issue 1

Contents:

[Page] 1 Dean's Message
[Page] 2 -3 Awards & Recognition
[Page] 4 Student Club Spotlight: BMGSA
[Page] 5 Open PRAIRIE Data
[Page] 6 Research Spotlight: Dr. Michael Hildreth
[Page] 7 Celebrating the Life of Dr. Auger

Assessing The Climate Water Balance Model’S Ability To Predict Soil Moisture Variability And Species Distribution Of A Forested Watershed In The Northern Cumberland Plateau, Katherine J. Love

Theses and Dissertations--Forestry and Natural Resources

Spatial patterns of moisture and tree species have been studied using environmental gradients, often represented by terrain attributes in GIS. With climate change, GIS terrain variables, which are static as long as the elevation remains unchanged, will not reflect alterations in temperature, water cycle, and atmospheric conditions. In this thesis, the commonly used terrain variables and climate water balance variables were evaluated and compared for their ability to explain soil moisture and tree species distributions in a forested watershed in the Northern Cumberland Plateau. The results suggest that GIS terrain variables generally perform better than climate water balance variables, however, …

A Karst Feature Predictability Model Within Barber County, Kansas, Gary M. Kelner

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This research consisted of two topics: 1) geographic predictive models of karst features and 2), a petrographic study examining the lithology of the study area. The study area is a privately owned ranch in the Gypsum Hills of Barber County, Kansas and is known to have karst features. Two predictive models for karst features were utilized. Previously identified features, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery aided in the creation of these predictive models. These predictability models also used the ESRI ArcMap software platform. The data for these models consists of slope, …

Bridging The Food Gap: Founding And Sustaining A Food Recovery Network Chapter At Wku, Elaine Losekamp

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Food waste is a pervasive global issue with many environmental and social repercussions. While about one-third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, many people in the United States and the world are affected by food insecurity. Food recovery, the process of rescuing edible food that would otherwise go to waste and delivering to hungry people, is an effective solution for both food waste and food insecurity. The author of this capstone created a food recovery program at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in January 2019 and has grown the program’s scope and impact since that time. This …

Estimating Free-Flow Speed With Lidar And Overhead Imagery, Armin Hadzic

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Understanding free-flow speed is fundamental to transportation engineering in order to improve traffic flow, control, and planning. The free-flow speed of a road segment is the average speed of automobiles unaffected by traffic congestion or delay. Collecting speed data across a state is both expensive and time consuming. Some approaches have been presented to estimate speed using geometric road features for certain types of roads in limited environments. However, estimating speed at state scale for varying landscapes, environments, and road qualities has been relegated to manual engineering and expensive sensor networks. This thesis proposes an automated approach for estimating free-flow …

Sampling The Local Fare: Fishes At The Sam Israel House Pit (45gr76), Soap Lake, Washington, Adam Fruge

All Master's Theses

The Sam Israel site is a precontact archaeological complex with numerous fish bones at the north end of Soap Lake, Washington. Excavated in 1976, the fish remains recovered from there were never fully analyzed prior to this research. Since this inland Columbia Plateau site had thousands of fish bones, it contained untapped potential for our understanding of ancient local fish procurement. As such, I conducted a detailed analysis of 2,862 fish bone specimens from the Sam Israel House Pit locus to: study a larger sample of fish bones in greater detail than was done before; compare the distribution of fishes …

Comparing Rusle Ls Calculation Methods Across Varying Dem Resolutions, Amanda Moody

All Master's Theses

Soil erosion is a global problem that reduces land productivity and causes environmental degradation. Soil erosion models, such as the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), are used to estimate the severity and distribution of erosion. The topographic factor (LS), which combines slope length and angle, is an important part of RUSLE. This work compared two methods of L calculation, the grid cumulation (GC) and the contributing area (CA) methods, and two methods of S calculation, the neighborhood (NBR) and maximum downhill slope (MDS) methods. These were compared across digital elevation models (DEMs) of 1, 5, 10, and 30m resolutions. …

Prioritizing Parcels For Conservation Easements Using Least-Cost Path Analyses Of Land Ownership: Case Study Within Theorized Grizzly Bear Migration Corridors Of Western Montana, Joseph H. Offer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As the world’s human population has grown and converted large natural habitats to human dominated landscapes, the planet’s biodiversity has decreased. To combat the loss of biodiversity from human development, many conservation professionals champion the concept of conservation corridors between intact habitats. Conservation corridors, made up of protected land, serve as a connection for wildlife populations to intermix genetics and, subsequently, help reduce the risk of extinction. The ideal geographic location of corridors is generally determined through geographic information system modeling using biophysical conditions and theorized animal movement. However, the resulting corridors are often expansive and protecting entire corridors is …

Water For Fish And Farms: An Examination Of Instream Flow Programs In Montana Using Spatially-Explicit Water Rights Data, Anna Leigh Crockett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The state-level institutions governing water use in the western United States have increasingly come under pressure and scrutiny related to their inability to navigate water use conflicts in recent decades. Rapid population growth and shifting public values towards leaving water instream for recreational and environmental purposes pose challenges to Montana water supplies which are predominantly allocated for irrigated agriculture. Additionally, while water scarcity and unpredictable availability are not new dilemmas in Montana, the rate at which climate change is driving shifts in the distribution, timing, and availability of water supplies is unprecedented. Current water policies may not be nimble enough …

A Photometric Study Of The South Polar Terrain Of Enceladus, Bereket Daniel Mamo

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Saturn's moon, Enceladus, is a unique body in the Solar System. It is an icy world with ongoing geologic activity that spews out jets of ice particles, water vapor, and other gases from active tectonic fractures (called sulci) near its south pole. Emission from these jets is the dominant source of particles for Saturn's diffuse E ring, which envelops other icy satellites. The south polar fractures are also sources of tidally generated high heat flow. Accurate determination of this endogenic thermal output requires knowledge of the thermophysical properties of the surface, which are reliably estimated by modeling the photometric behavior …

Deep Learning For Overhead Imagery: Algorithms And Applications, Anthony Manuel Ortiz Cepeda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Remote sensing using overhead imagery has critical impact to the way we understand our environment and offers crucial information for scene understanding, climate change research, disaster response, urban planning, forest management, and many other applications. At present, deep learning is increasingly used in remote sensing, but mostly borrowing algorithms developed for natural images in the computer vision community. Specific challenges arise while applying deep learning to remote sensing. These challenges include issues related to the high dimensionality and limited labeled data, security and robustness to adversarial attacks, and model generalization. In this Thesis we focus on tackling these key challenges. …

Glacier Segmentation In Satellite Images For Hindu Kush Himalaya Region, Bibek Aryal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Climate change poses a risk to individuals whose livelihoods depend on the health of glacier ecosystems. Monitoring glaciers in the Himalayan Hindu Kush (HKH) region is of high importance especially when we consider the impact of recent climate change on them. Our work aims to provide an automated method to outline glaciers using machine learning techniques and publicly available remote sensing imagery.In this work, we present ways to delineate glaciers from Landsat-7 imagery using various machine learning and computer vision techniques. The multi-step methodology that we present in this work is generalizable across different types of satellite and overhead imagery, …

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 45, 2020, Department Of Geography, Geology, And The Environment

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment

The Impacts Of Accessibility On Vulnerability Of Place In Comfort Castle, Jamaica, Heather Thole

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Jamaica experiences meteorological, hydrological, and geological natural hazards that can produce island-wide impacts. The island’s exposure to multiple hazard types requires effective and sustainable mitigation and disaster risk management to lessen potential impacts, especially for vulnerable populations and communities. Comfort Castle, a small rural farming community, sits in the upper Rio Grande Valley of Portland parish and experiences earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, heavy rainfall, and floods. Steep terrain and remoteness due to geographic location affect the community’s geophysical vulnerability. Their social vulnerability results from a lack of employment, health, educational, and livelihood resources within the community. Together, geophysical, and social factors …

Change Points Detected In Decadal And Seasonal Trends Of Outlet Glacier Terminus Positions Across West Greenland, Ashley V. York, Karen E. Frey, Sadegh Jamali, Sarah B. Das

Geography

We investigated the change in terminus position between 1985 and 2015 of 17 marine-terminating glaciers that drain into Disko and Uummannaq Bays, West Greenland, by manually digitizing over 5000 individual frontal positions from over 1200 Landsat images. We find that 15 of 17 glacier termini retreated over the study period, with ~80% of this retreat occurring since 2000. Increased frequency of Landsat observations since 2000 allowed for further investigation of the seasonal variability in terminus position. We identified 10 actively retreating glaciers based on a significant positive relationship between glaciers with cumulative retreat >300 m since 2000 and their average …

Burning With Potential: Understanding The Relationship Between Biochar And Agriculture Of The Northern Glaciated Plains Ecoregion, Kaitlyn Abrahamson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Achieving global sustainable agriculture is one of the most incredible challenges of this century, yet many continue to try to solve this problem through the development of precision technologies. Biotechnologies, such as biochar, can perform like a precision technology while protecting agricultural land from soil erosion and fertility loss. The Northern Glaciated Plains ecoregion of the United States is little researched in the benefits from the use of biochar through improved soil nutrient capture and water retention, crop health improvements, and yield increases. The study plot has four sections of corn stover biochar and eight sections of control sections. This …

Biophysical And Socioeconomic Impacts Of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration In Burkina Faso, Basnewende Brice Fulgence Zoungrana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human actions such as overgrazing, the development of cities at the expense of forests, high intensity and poor agricultural management, and so forth, reduce the resources available for future generations. Because Earth has limited resources, it is important to judiciously use and manage natural resources. Human actions towards nature are the focus of my research in Africa. Increased demands for grazing, agriculture, and ecosystem services led some farmers in developing countries to use unsustainable practices, which may lead to low incomes and poor food nutrition for households. Farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) may be a solution to these issues. FMNR …

Comparing Fence Modeling And Mapping Approaches To Support Wildlife Management And Research In Southwest Montana, Simon Albert Buzzard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fences pose significant challenges to wildlife movement, but their effects are difficult to quantify because fence location and fence type data are lacking on a global scale. We developed a fence location and density model in southwest Montana, USA to provide data to researchers and managers, and test whether previous models could be applied to a new region and retain suitable levels of statistical accuracy. Our model used local expert opinion to inform how road, land cover, and ownership spatial layers interacted to predict fence locations. We validated the model against fence data collected on random 3.2 km road transects …

Mapping Surficial Geology In The New River Gorge National River And Bluestone National Scenic River, West Virginia, Using Lidar-Derived Digital Elevation Data, Marla K. Denicola

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this thesis was to determine if the surficial geology of Bluestone National Scenic River (BLUE) and New River Gorge National River (NERI), two areas of similar geology, can be mapped using visual interpretation methods applied to digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data. Surficial geology in BLUE was field mapped using GPS, following definitions and characterizations for surficial geology units established with the guidance of Dr. J. Steven Kite. A 2m x 2m LiDAR-derived DEM was used for BLUE and most of NERI using US Army Corps of Engineers (USCOE) LiDAR data, …

Spatial Multi-Objective Land Use Optimization Toward Livability Based On Boundary-Based Genetic Algorithm: A Case Study In Singapore, Kai Cao, Muyang Liu, Shu Wang, Mengqi Liu, Wenting Zhang, Qiang Meng, Bo Huang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this research, the concept of livability has been quantitatively and comprehensively reviewed and interpreted to contribute to spatial multi-objective land use optimization modelling. In addition, a multi-objective land use optimization model was constructed using goal programming and a weighted-sum approach, followed by a boundary-based genetic algorithm adapted to help address the spatial multi-objective land use optimization problem. Furthermore, the model is successfully and effectively applied to the case study in the Central Region of Queenstown Planning Area of Singapore towards livability. In the case study, the experiments based on equal weights and experiments based on different weights combination have …

Environmental Discriminators For Significant Tornadoes And Hail In The U.S. Using Proximity Soundings, Cody Michael Converse

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Over the last 50 years, the United States has experienced an increase in severe storm events that produced $1 billion in damages or greater. Much of this loss is attributed to significant tornadoes and hail associated with deep, moist convection. Improving forecasts for these significant events assist in mitigating the impacts of these events. Previous work has identified statistically significant environmental parameters associated with severe thunderstorms, but more research is needed in identifying statistically significant ingredients associated with environments that produce significant tornadoes and hail.

This thesis aims to answer the following question: “Can diagnostics commonly used to forecast for …

Understanding And Measuring Net Positive Business Strategies, Luke Ruffner Robinson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite their attempts to mitigate ecological impacts through sustainability initiatives, businesses are a major cause of the world's ecological problems. Some progressive businesses are attempting to move beyond “net zero” in terms of achieving neutral environmental impacts and instead are now pursuing a goal of net positive. Net positive refers to the idea that business activities could contribute value-added benefits to earth’s ecological systems, for example, by using technologies that sequester and store carbon. However, except for a handful of high-profile corporate case studies, little is known about how companies are developing their strategies to become net positive and …

Predictive Geohazard Mapping Using Lidar And Satellite Imagery In Missouri And Oklahoma, Usa, Olufeyisayo B. Ososami

Doctoral Dissertations

”Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and satellite imagery have become the most utilized remote sensing technologies for compiling inventories of surficial geologic conditions. Point cloud data obtained from multi-spectral remote sensing methods provide a detailed characterization of the surface features, in particular, the detailed surface manifestations of underlying geologic structures. When combined, point clouds eliminate bias from visual inconsistencies and/or statistical values. This research explores the competence of point clouds derived from LiDAR and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) as a predictive tool in evaluating various geohazards. It combines these data sets with other remote sensing techniques to evaluate the sensitivity …

Coal Mining Sector Contribution To Environmental Conditions And Human Development Index In East Kalimantan Province, Kunny Izza Indah Afkarina, Sindhung Wardana, Poerborini Damayanti

Journal of Environmental Science and Sustainable Development

Coal mining has been one of the issues that led to pros and cons in Indonesia. Research shows that mining activities are one of the factors that affect people’s incomes and local and national economic development. However, mining is a lucrative activity that leads to construction booms that attract population growth and lead to deforestation, thus affecting the environmental conditions of a region. The coal mining industry of Indonesian province of East Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, provides most of the economic base needed to build the infrastructure and provide energy of the country. Kalimantan Province accounts for approximately …

Recent Disruptions In The Timing And Intensity Of Precipitation In Calakmul, Mexico, Sofia Mardero, Birgit Schmook, Zachary Christman, Sarah E. Metcalfe, Betsabé De La Barreda-Bautista

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

This study addresses changes in the timing and intensity of precipitation from 1982 to 2016 from three meteorological stations around Calakmul, Mexico, a landscape balancing biodiversity conservation and smallholder agricultural production. Five methods were used to assess changes in precipitation: the Mann-Kendall test of annual and wet season trends; a fuzzy-logic approach to determine the onset of the rainy season; the Gini Index and Precipitation Concentration Index (PCI) to evaluate the temporal distribution of precipitation; Simple Precipitation Intensity Index (SDII) to evaluate precipitation intensity; and the Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) to identify the deficit or surplus of rainfall compared with …

Agronomic Or Contentious Land Change? A Longitudinal Analysis From The Eastern Brazilian Amazon, Stephen Aldrich, Cynthia S. Simmons, Eugenio Arima, Robert T. Walker, Fernando Michelotti, Edna Castro

Department of Earth and Environmental Systems

Since 1984, nearly 1,000 people have been killed in the Brazilian Amazon due to land conflicts stemming from unequal distribution of land, land tenure insecurity, and lawlessness. During this same period, the region experienced almost complete deforestation (< 8% forest cover by 2010). Land conflict exacts a human toll, but it also affects agents’ decisions about land use, the subject of this article. Using a property-level panel dataset covering the period of redemocratization in Brazil (1984) until the privatization of long-term leases in the eastern Amazon (2010), we show that deforestation is affected by land conflict, particularly in cases of expropriation of property for agrarian reform settlement formation. Deforestation on these settlements is much greater when soils are poor for agriculture and when the land has been the object of past conflict. Deforestation and conflict are episodic, and both agronomic drivers and contentious drivers of land change are active in the region. Ultimately, the outcome of these processes of contentious and agronomic land change is substantial deforestation, regardless of who was in possession and control of the land.

Direct And Indirect Effects Of Temperature And Prey Abundance On Bald Eagle Reproductive Dynamics, Joshua H. Schmidt, Judy Putera, Tammy L. Wilson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Understanding the mechanisms by which populations are regulated is critical for predicting the effects of large-scale perturbations. While discrete mortality events provide clear evidence of direct impacts, indirect pathways are more difficult to assess but may play important roles in population and ecosystem dynamics. Here, we use multi-state occupancy models to analyze a long-term dataset on nesting bald eagles in south-central Alaska with the goal of identifying both direct and indirect mechanisms influencing reproductive output in this apex predator. We found that the probabilities of both nest occupancy and success were higher in the portion of the study area where …

A Feasibility Study On The Application Of Tvdi On Accessing Wildfire Danger In The Korean Peninsula, Kwang Nyun Kim, Seung Hee Kim, Myoung Soo Won, Keun Chang Jang, Won Jun Choi, Yun Gon Lee

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Wildfire is a major natural disaster affecting socioeconomics and ecology. Remote sensing data have been widely used to estimate the wildfire danger with an advantage of higher spatial resolution. Among the several wildfire related indices using remote sensing data, Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) assesses wildfire danger based on both Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST). Although TVDI has physical advantages by considering both weather and vegetation condition, previous studies have shown TVDI does not performed well compare to other wildfire related indices over the Korean Peninsula. In this study we have attempted multiple modification to …

Implications Of The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem For Wildfire Analyses, Timothy P. Nagle-Mcnaughton, Xi Gong, Jose A. Constantine

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Wildfires pose a danger to both ecologies and communities. To this end, many large-scale analyses of wildfire patterns and behavior rely on the aggregation of point data to polygons, typically those based on distinct disparate ecological areas. However, the sizes, shapes, andorientations of the polygons to which data are aggregated are not neutral factors in the resulting analysis. The influence of the aggregation polygons on calculated results is known as the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), which is well-documented in the spatial statistics literature. Despite the documentation of the MAUP, relatively few wildfire studies consider the effects of the MAUP …

Late Jurassic Dinosaurs On The Move, Gastroliths And Long-Distance Migration, Josh Malone

Geography: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The Jurassic Morrison Formation of the Rocky Mountain and Colorado Plateau regions is famous for its dinosaur fossils. The Morrison Formation (150-157 Ma) is comprised mostly of sandstone and mudstone that was deposited in a terrestrial deposition system that included fluvial, paludal, and lacustrine environments. Paleocurrent data indicates that Morrison sediment was transported to the north and east. Within the Morrison Formation, we find exotic pebble and cobble-size durable clasts of quartzite, chert and vein quartz weathering out of the mudstone paleosols. We interpret these exotic clasts as gastroliths, carried within the gastric mills of dinosaurs. For this study, we …