Geography Commons^™

Mitigation And Beautification: Placing Rain Gardens In The Keystone Neighborhood Of Rock Island, Illinois, Rosalie K. Starenko

Independent Research Projects

With new stormwater management regulations, cities are looking for strategies to reduce urban runoff, and rain gardens are one of several strategies that capture runoff and encourage infiltration and evaporation. In doing so, pollution from runoff is mitigated and combined sewer systems experience fewer overflow events. I argue as well that the implementation of rain gardens would act as a movement for neighborhood beautification. This research develops a new methodology for placing rain gardens that: 1) maximizes the aesthetic value of the gardens by favoring high-visibility locations and 2) targets locations that would best benefit from reduced stormwater runoff. The …

St. Norbert College As Arboretum: Mapping The Trees On Campus, Jordan A. Mayer, Jason Mills, David Hunnicut

GIS Library

St. Norbert College as Arboretum: Mapping the Trees on Campus - Take a virtual tour of the trees on campus.

The tour is a multimedia ArcGIS Online story map and is available here.

Many of the trees on the St. Norbert Campus were planted by Fr. Anselm Keefe (1895- 1974) in the mid 20th century. It was Fr. Keefe’s vision to beautify the campus by creating gardens that were accessible to the public. This included planting a diverse variety of trees, including one of every tree species native to Wisconsin. It was Keefe’s mission to make St. Norbert College …

Pedestrian Mobility In Denver: A Mixed Methods Approach, Meghan Elizabeth Mooney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is rooted in the bigger issues of climate change, urban sustainability, and the drive to make Denver more pedestrian centered despite sprawled conditions. More specifically, this research is driven by (1) the need for a holistic, multi-dimensional, and mixed geographic perspective of pedestrian mobility, (2) the lack of qualitative data regarding pedestrian mobility and (3) a need for a better understanding of the feedback between physical and perceived space and how this influences walking behavior. Given these motivations, I deploy a multidimensional framework for assessing pedestrian mobility in Denver’s Transit Oriented Development (TOD) sites, whereby there are two …

Integrating Hands-On Undergraduate Research In An Applied Spatial Science Senior Level Capstone Course, David Kulhavy, Daniel R. Unger, I-Kuai Hung, David Douglass

Faculty Publications

A senior within a spatial science Ecological Planning capstone course designed an undergraduate research project to increase his spatial science expertise and to assess the hands-on instruction methodology employed within the Bachelor of Science in Spatial Science program at Stephen F Austin State University. The height of 30 building features estimated remotely with LiDAR data, within the Pictometry remotely sensed web-based interface, and in situ with a laser rangefinder were compared to actual building feature height measurements. A comparison of estimated height with actual height indicated that all three estimation techniques tested were unbiased estimators of height. An ANOVA, conducted …

Procedural Modeling For Ancient Maya Cityscapes: Initial Methodological Challenges And Solutions, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Rachel Plessing

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Digital reconstruction of 3D cityscapes is expensive, time-consuming, and requires significant expertise. We need a 3D modeling approach that streamlines the integration of multiple data types in a time-efficient and low-cost manner. Procedural modeling—rapid proto-typing of 3D models from a set of rules— offers a potential solution to this problem because it allows scholars to create digital reconstructions that can be quickly updated and used to test and formulate alternative hypotheses that are derived from and linked to underlying archaeological data. While procedural modeling is being used to visualize ancient Roman, Etruscan, and Greek cities, in the Maya region the …

Social Space And Social Media: Analyzing Urban Space With Big Data, Ate Poorthuis

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation focuses on the key role that big data can play in minimizing the perceived disconnect between social theory and quantitative methods in the discipline of geography. It takes as its starting point the geographic concept of space, which is conceptualized very differently in social theory versus quantitative methodology. Contrary to this disparity, an examination of the disciplinary history reveals a number of historic precedents and potential pathways for a rapprochement, especially when combined with some of the new possibilities of big data. This dissertation also proposes solutions to two common barriers to the adoption of big data in …

A Cross Comparison Of Spatiotemporally Enhanced Springtime Phenological Measurements From Satellites And Ground In A Northern U.S. Mixed Forest, Liang Liang, Mark D. Schwartz, Zhuosen Wang, Feng Gao, Crystal B. Schaaf, Bin Tan, Jeffrey T. Morisette, Xiaoyang Zhang

GSCE Faculty Publications

Cross comparison of satellite-derived land surface phenology (LSP) and ground measurements is useful to ensure the relevance of detected seasonal vegetation change to the underlying biophysical processes. While standard 16-day and 250-m Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) vegetation index (VI)-based springtime LSP has been evaluated in previous studies, it remains unclear whether LSP with enhanced temporal and spatial resolutions can capture additional details of ground phenology. In this paper, we compared LSP derived from 500-m daily MODIS and 30-m MODIS-Landsat fused VI data with landscape phenology (LP) in a northern U.S. mixed forest. LP was previously developed from intensively observed …

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 …

Overcoming Roadblocks In Introducing Virtual World Technology To High Schools, Casey Dylan Bailey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The EAST (Environmental And Spatial Technology) Initiative is a non-profit educational organization that provides students in over two hundred schools in eight states with access to advanced computing technologies for the purpose of enabling students to develop technical skills early and to produce solutions to local community problems. Although many high-end technologies are available through EAST, they are desktop solutions that individual students use and there are none that enable students within a school or between schools to collaborate.

This thesis is a saga that documents the identification and removal of many roadblocks to introducing a 3D multi-user virtual simulation …

Sensitivity Of Mesoscale Modeling Of Smoke Direct Radiative Effect To The Emission Inventory: A Case Study In Northern Sub-Saharan African Region, Feng Zhang, Jun Wang, Charles Ichoku, Edward J. Hyer, Zhifeng Yang, Cui Ge, Shenjian Su, Xiaoyang Zhang, Shobha Kondragunta, Christine Wiedinmyer, Johannes W. Kaiser, Arlindo Da Silva

GSCE Faculty Publications

An ensemble approach is used to examine the sensitivity of smoke loading and smoke direct radiative effect in the atmosphere to uncertainties in smoke emission estimates. Seven different fire emission inventories are applied independently to WRF-Chem model (v3.5) with the same model configuration (excluding dust and other emission sources) over the northern sub-Saharan African (NSSA) biomass-burning region. Results for November and February 2010 are analyzed, respectively representing the start and end of the biomass burning season in the study region. For February 2010, estimates of total smoke emission vary by a factor of 12, but only differences by factors of …

Interannual Variation In Biomass Burning And Fire Seasonality Derived From Geostationary Satellite Data Across The Contiguous United States From 1995 To 2011, Xiaoyang Zhang, Shobha Kondragunta, David Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Wildfires exhibit a strong seasonality that is driven by climatic factors and human activities. Although the fire seasonality is commonly determined using burned area and fire frequency, it could also be quantified using biomass consumption estimates that directly represent biomass loss (a combination of the area burned and the fuel loading). Therefore, in this study a data set of long-term biomass consumed was derived from geostationary satellite data to explore the interannual variation in the fire seasonality and the possible impacts of climate change and land management practices across the Contiguous United States (CONUS). Specifically, daily biomass consumed data were …

Delineating Firewise Communities/Usa® Developing Self-Mapping Techniques For Communities For Wildland Fire Behavior Modeling, Jennifer Muha

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

In an effort to collect boundaries of Firewise Communities/USA® participants in Colorado for academic and professional research, fire prevention efforts of homeowner’s insurance policy holders, and community-level risk planning, an instructional document for Google Maps Engine to self-define was developed. Ten ‘test communities’ were asked to participate, with a 60% response rate. From these responses, no initial problems or difficulties were noted. One boundary was used to model fire behavior in ArcMap, utilizing Spatial Analyst for fuel mitigation and the Wildland Fire Assessment Tool plugin to run behavior models with raster outputs. In conclusion, when Firewise communities worked in conjunction …

Using Gis To Predict Areas Of Cultural Resources Within The Walnut Canyon Study Area Near Flagstaff, Arizona, Laura Pernice

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Predicting locations of cultural resource in the Walnut Canyon Study Area near Flagstaff, Arizona was accomplished by using geostatistical and spatial analysis techniques of Directional Distribution, Kernel Density, and Average Nearest Neighbor. Known cultural resource sites within Walnut Canyon National Monument were analyzed to identify spatial patterns and densities to apply the results to the study area. Cultural resource sites are predicted to be highly clustered within 200 feet of fresh water sources as well as in woodland and shrub land vegetation types. Results can be used for land-use managers to identify areas to survey with high potential of containing …

A New Approach For The Analysis Of Hyperspectral Data: Theory And Sensitivity Analysis Of The Moment Distance Method, E.A. L. Salas, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

We present the Moment Distance (MD) method to advance spectral analysis in vegetation studies. It was developed to take advantage of the information latent in the shape of the reflectance curve that is not available from other spectral indices. Being mathematically simple but powerful, the approach does not require any curve transformation, such as smoothing or derivatives. Here, we show the formulation of the MD index (MDI) and demonstrate its potential for vegetation studies. We simulated leaf and canopy reflectance samples derived from the combination of the PROSPECT and SAIL models to understand the sensitivity of the new method to …

Meta-Analysis Of Social-Personality Psychological Research, Blair T. Johnson, Alice H. Eagly

CHIP Documents

This publication provides a contemporary treatment of the subject of meta-analysis in relation to social-personality psychology. Meta-analysis literally refers to the statistical pooling of the results of independent studies on a given subject, although in practice it refers as well to other steps of research synthesis, including defining the question under investigation, gathering all available research reports, coding of information about the studies and their effects, and interpretation/dissemination of results. Discussed as well are the hallmarks of high-quality meta-analyses.

Situational Awareness/Triage Tool For Use In A Chemical, Biological, Radiological Nuclear Explosive (Cbrne) Environment, John N. Scarlett, Heather L. Gallup, David A. Smith

AFIT Patents

A method of managing patient care and emergency response following a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, or Nuclear Explosive (CBRNE) attack and maintaining compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The method including identifying each patient with a unique patient identifier, the identifier based upon the geospatial location of the patient, the geospatial location including at least the latitude and longitude of the patient when first treated, the unique patient identifier being part of patient data. Providing a collection point of patient data to form a patient data database where in the patient location data may be used to …

Reflections On Community Planning In San Francisco, Rachel Brahinsky, Miriam Chion, Lisa Feldstein

Politics

This paper builds on a dialogue between barrio planners and municipal planners on spatial and economic changes in San Francisco’s Mission District. The Mission is a predominantly Latino neighborhood with vibrant streets that have reflected and been transformed by the investments and displacement of recent decades. Though the Mission has seen tremendous upheaval with the influx of new capital and communities, this paper contends that efforts of community members shaped the development of the neighborhood with street-level planning expertise. We find that an attempt by community members to define their own development proposals and engage in land use decisions– rather …

Land Surface Phenologies And Seasonalities Using Cool Earthlight In Mid-Latitude Croplands, Woubet G. Alemu, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Phenology deals with timing of biotic phenomena and seasonality concerns temporal patterns of abiotic variables. Studies of land surface phenology (LSP) and land surface seasonality (LSS) have long been limited to visible to near infrared (VNIR) wavelengths, despite degradation by atmospheric effects and solar illumination constraints. Enhanced land surface parameters derived from passive microwave data enable improved temporal monitoring of agricultural land surface dynamics compared to the vegetation index data available from VNIR data. LSPs and LSSs in grain growing regions of the Volga River Basin of Russia and the spring wheat belts of the USA and Canada were characterized …

Identifying Potential Wilderness Areas On The Fremont-Winema National Forest With Arcgis Modelbuilder, Zach Adams

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The Fremont-Winema National Forest administers over two million acres in south central Oregon. Part of managing this landscape includes overseeing existing wilderness areas and identifying new potential wilderness areas. In the past this process has been cumbersome, with little thought given to standardizing the effort across the administrative area. This project was an effort to develop a geospatial model that incorporates U.S. Forest Service spatial datasets ultimately standardizing the potential wilderness identification process during site specific NEPA analysis.

Spacing Units In The Greater Wattenberg Area, Tera Dillon

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Horizontal wells are the most commonly drilled wells in the Wattenberg Field, located in Weld County, Colorado. Petroleum engineers have become interested in determining how many horizontal wells can economically be drilled per section in this vertically, well-developed field. Using the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s spacing unit regulations as a guide, a GIS workflow was developed to create the deliverables required for further analysis. Spacing units were created by applying a buffer to horizontal well surveys, and using this buffer to select intersecting quarter-quarter sections. The selected quarter-quarter sections were simplified using the dissolve tool and then spatially …

Evaluation Of A Coupled Event-Driven Phenology And Evapotranspiration Model For Croplands In The United States Northern Great Plains, V. Kovalskyy, G. M. Henebry, D. P. Roy, B. Adusei, M. Hansen, G. Senay, D. M. Mocko

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

A new model coupling scheme with remote sensing data assimilation was developed for estimation of daily actual evapotranspiration (ET). The scheme consists of the VegET, a model to estimate ET from meteorological and water balance data, and an Event Driven Phenology Model (EDPM), an empirical crop specific model trained on multiple years of flux tower data transformed into six types of environmental forcings that are called “events” to emphasize their temporally discrete character, which has advantages for modeling multiple contingent influences. The EDPM in prognostic mode supplies seasonal trajectories of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI); whereas in diagnostic mode, it …

A Conceptual Model Of Exploration Wayfinding: An Integrated Theoretical Framework And Computational Methodology, Matthew Lee Tenney

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an attempt to integrate contending cognitive approaches to modeling wayfinding behavior. The primary goal is to create a plausible model for exploration tasks within indoor environments. This conceptual model can be extended for practical applications in the design, planning, and Social sciences. Using empirical evidence a cognitive schema is designed that accounts for perceptual and behavioral preferences in pedestrian navigation. Using this created schema, as a guiding framework, the use of network analysis and space syntax act as a computational methods to simulate human exploration wayfinding in unfamiliar indoor environments. The conceptual model provided is then implemented …

Contemporary Problems Of Gis Interoperability: A Review Of Gis Integration With Current Technology, Tim Jones

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This paper examines GIS interoperability with three current technology trends: Open Source, Smart Devices and Web 2.0. It firsts takes a look at both varying definitions of interoperability as well as different types of interoperability. The author samples a variety of GIS formats with examples of each of the said technologies as a way to measure the current state of GIS interoperability with current technological trends. GIS functions such as viewing, editing and analyzing spatial data are used as a scoring matrix to determine the level of interoperability. The methodology of measure focuses on a technical level of interoperability and …

Baseline Study Of The Relationship Between Green Space And Age, Chris Schulze

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Current research on green space and human health is spread among many academic disciplines and is growing. To aid researchers and local governments in understanding the relationship between the two, this study presents a baseline analysis of the spatial relationship between green space and age. It considers how a city’s population is distributed around green space and looks at spatial and statistical patterns related to age and location. This study identifies a gap in current research and looks at green space and age in a geographic manner. The findings of this literature review and analysis provide researchers with another way …

The Global Availability Of Landsat 5 Tm And Landsat 7 Etm+ Land Surface Observations And Implications For Global 30m Landsat Data Product Generation, V. Kovalskyy, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

With the advent of the free U.S. Landsat data policy it is now feasible to consider the generation of global coverage 30 m Landsat data sets with temporal reporting frequency similar to that provided by the monthly Web Enabled Landsat (WELD) products. A statistical Landsat metadata analysis is reported considering more than 800,000 Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM + acquisitions obtained from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center archive. The global monthly probabilities of acquiring a cloud-free land surface observation for December 1998 to November 2001 (2000 epoch) and from December 2008 …

Augmented Realities And Uneven Geographies: Exploring The Geolinguistic Contours Of The Web, Mark Graham, Matthew Zook

Geography Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the digital dimensions of places as represented by online, geocoded references to the economic, social, and political experiences of the city. These digital layers are invisible to the naked eye, but form a central component of the augmentations and mediations of place enabled by hundreds of millions of mobile computing devices and other digital technologies. The analysis highlights how these augmentations of place differ across space and language and highlights both the differences and some of the causal factors behind them. This is performed through a global study of all online content indexed within Google Maps, and …

Mapping The Evolution Of Racially Mixed And Segregated Neighborhoods In Chicago, Jonathan Chipman, Richard Wright, Mark Ellis, Steven R. R. Holloway

Dartmouth Scholarship

The Chicago metropolitan region consists of a spatially complex mosaic of neighborhoods, in which measures of racial and ethnic composition vary dramatically. Understanding these patterns and their evolution has been hindered by ambiguities in the use of terms like ‘diverse’ or ‘segregated’, which are often posited as opposite ends of a one-dimensional scale. Using a new taxonomy of neighborhood composition, we have mapped the evolving patterns of Chicago's neighborhoods in 1990, 2000, and 2010, and tabulated census tracts that have undergone transitions or remained stable. Looking beyond the Chicago metropolitan area, we have developed an interactive atlas of similar maps …

Near-Real-Time Global Biomass Burning Emissions Product From Geostationary Satellite Constellation, Xiaoyang Zhang, Shobha Kondragunta, Jessica Ram, Christopher Schmidt, Ho-Chung Huang

GSCE Faculty Publications

Near-real-time estimates of biomass burning emissions are crucial for air quality monitoring and forecasting. We present here the first near-real-time global biomass burning emission product from geostationary satellites (GBBEP-Geo) produced from satellite-derived fire radiative power (FRP) for individual fire pixels. Specifically, the FRP is retrieved using WF_ABBA V65 (wildfire automated biomass burning algorithm) from a network of multiple geostationary satellites. The network consists of two Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) which are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Meteosat second-generation satellites (Meteosat-09) operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and the Multifunctional Transport …

Access To Recreation In San Francisco, Ca, Robert Graham

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This research presents an assessment of the equity of access to public recreation facilities among communities of San Francisco, California using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), database programming, and open sources of data. Urban parks and the recreation facilities contained therein are valuable public resources that contribute to healthy and well-adjusted citizenry and have significant positive impacts on the shared urban experience. This project utilizes the network analysis and spatial processing capacities of GIS alongside web technologies and open data sources to delineate pedestrian and transit service areas around each of over 300 documented recreation facilities and community centers in the …

Remote Sensing-Based Time Series Models For Malaria Early Warning In The Highlands Of Ethiopia, A. Midekisa, G. Senay, G. M. Henebry, P. Semuniguse, M. C. Wimberly

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Background

Malaria is one of the leading public health problems in most of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. Almost all demographic groups are at risk of malaria because of seasonal and unstable transmission of the disease. Therefore, there is a need to develop malaria early-warning systems to enhance public health decision making for control and prevention of malaria epidemics. Data from orbiting earth-observing sensors can monitor environmental risk factors that trigger malaria epidemics. Remotely sensed environmental indicators were used to examine the influences of climatic and environmental variability on temporal patterns of malaria cases in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. …