Geography Commons^™

Impacts Of Agricultural Expansion (1910s-2010s) On Water Cycle In The Songneng Plain, Northeast China, Lijuan Zhang, Cuizhen Wang, Xiaxiang Li, Hongwen Zhang, Wenliang Li, Lanqi Jiang

Faculty Publications

Agricultural expansion is one of the primary land use changes on the Earth’s surface. The Songnen Plain in Northeast China is renowned for its Black Soil and is one of the most important agricultural regions of this country. In the last century, its population increased 20-fold and excessive areas of grassland were cultivated. Based on a series of decadal land use/land cover data sets in the plain (1910s–2010s), this study simulated the water balance in each decade using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and assessed the water effects of centurial agricultural expansion. Six variables were simulated to explain …

Spatial Assessment Of Water Quality With Urbanization In 2007-2015, Shanghai, China, Huixuan Li, Cuizhen Wang, Xiao Huang, Andrew Hug

Faculty Publications

Shanghai, as one of the megacities and economic centers of China, is facing critical water quality challenges. This study analyzed the impact of urbanization on the water quality in Shanghai, from 2007 to 2015, using remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) techniques. Five measurements of water quality were employed: total discharged wastewater volume, general water quality levels, dissolved oxygen (DO), permanganate, and ammonia nitrogen. The impacts of urban land-use changes on water quality were examined. An urban index was extracted from satellite image classification and was used to quantify the anthropogenic activities. In the watershed level, unit watersheds …

Remote Sensing Of Soil Alkalinity And Salinity In The Wuyu’Er-Shuangyang River Basin, Northeast China, Lin Bai, Cuizhen Wang, Shuying Zang, Yuhong Zhang, Qiannan Hao, Yuexiang Wu

Faculty Publications

The Songnen Plain of the Northeast China is one of the three largest soda saline-alkali regions worldwide. To better understand soil alkalinization and salinization in this important agricultural region, it is vital to explore the distribution and variation of soil alkalinity and salinity in space and time. This study examined soil properties and identified the variables to extract soil alkalinity and salinity via physico-chemical, statistical, spectral, and image analysis. The physico-chemical and statistical results suggested that alkaline soils, coming from the main solute Na₂CO₃ and NaHCO₃ in parent rocks, characterized the study area. The pH and …

Urban Social Landscapes And Urban Places: Processes Of Making And Informing Maronite Identity In Beirut, Divin Boutros

Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at the Maronites of Beirut and examines, from their perspective, the role of belonging, imagined geographies, and memories of place in the processes of making and informing Maronite identity in Beirut after the civil war of 1975. The civil war of 1975 allows me to examine the city’s change in demographics in relation to the Green Line that divided the city between a Muslim West Beirut, and a Christian Eastern Beirut during the civil war. The thesis approaches Beirut’s homogenous neighborhoods, a result of the city’s cantonization during the civil war, as problematic for the future of …

Measuring Agricultural Drought And Uncertainty In Future Drought Projections, Junyu Lu

Theses and Dissertations

Drought is a devastating, recurring, and widespread natural hazard that affects natural habitats, ecosystems, and economic and social sectors. Within the agricultural sector, droughts can reduce soil-water availability, affect water and soil quality, contribute to crop failures and pasture losses, and severely reduce crop yield. Effective drought quantification and early warning are critical for drought risk adaptation. Moreover, future drought risks could be exacerbated due to climate change. Modeling how climate change might influence future drought risks is of great importance in natural resources and water resources planning management. This dissertation has three parts. 1) The first part compares and …

Everyday Occupations: Traffic, Hazards, And Mobility In The West Bank, Alice Arnold

Theses and Dissertations

Mobility in the West Bank is inherently tied to the Israeli military occupation. Each new stage of the decades old conflict comes with new implications for the way Palestinians move around the West Bank. The past years have seen a transition during which the severe mobility restrictions that constituted the closure policy of the second intifada eased and intercity travel has increased. In this study I examine day-to-day experiences of mobility in the West Bank in the post-closure period. In doing so I highlight the ways in which routine experiences of mobility, those with traffic, road hazards, and infrastructure, bring …

Internal Gravity Wave Detection During The 21 August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse, Michael J.W. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Total solar eclipses supply both visual captivation and a controlled meteorological experiment through a sudden decrease in solar radiation. However, along with commonly expected changes in weather conditions, prior research suggests an adjustment of atmospheric dynamics caused by both a decrease in local incident solar radiation and the Moon’s sweeping shadow across the Earth at supersonic speed. The result is the potential production of internal gravity waves, which transfer both energy and momentum vertically to and from the upper levels of the atmosphere. A series of radiosondes were launched before, during, and after the 21 August 2017 eclipse in Batesburg, …

Multi-Scale Flow Mapping And Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Origin-Destination Mobility Data, Xi Zhu

Theses and Dissertations

Data on spatial mobility have become increasingly available with the wide use of location-aware technologies such as GPS and smart phones. The analysis of movements is involved in a wide range of domains such as demography, migration, public health, urban study, transportation and biology.

A movement data set consists of a set of moving objects, each having a sequence of sampled locations as the object moves across space. The locations (points) in different trajectories are usually sampled independently and trajectory data can become very big such as billions of geotagged tweets, mobile phone records, floating vehicles, millions of migrants, etc. …

Analysis Of Evacuation Behaviors And Departure Timing For October 2016’S Hurricane Matthew, Erika O. Pham

Theses and Dissertations

During a hurricane, an individual’s risk perception does not remain static. Spatial and temporal variations of a hurricane will shift perceptions of risk, and complicating this dynamic are information-seeking processes increasingly reliant on the individual’s self-motivated interpretation of information sources. Initial evacuation resistance or willingness could change even after evacuations are ordered, affecting evacuation preferences and departure times. Because Hurricane Matthew’s continually shifting track had virtually nonstop coverage, evacuation decisions were also being modified as residents either grew more or less certain of their safety.

This research investigates the evacuation behaviors associated with Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016. It …

Anthropogenic Influences On Sedimentation In The Chicken Creek Watershed Of South Carolina, Tyler L. Dearman

Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogeomorphic changes in response to destructive agricultural practices followed the arrival of European settlers into the Americas. The southeastern Piedmont physiographic region of the USA was severely affected by erosion and sedimentation following settlement in the 1700s and farming up through the 1930s. Deep floodplain aggradation formed uninterrupted alluvial deposits that extended many km. This research examines anthropogenic impacts of land-use change on valley bottom sedimentation in the Chicken Creek Watershed of South Carolina. Abrupt contacts between pre-settlement floodplain soils and a thick overburden of legacy sediment are common throughout the two-km study reach and provide clear evidence of extensive …

Catchment Hydrology In The Anthropocene: Impacts Of Land-Use And Climate Change On Stormwater Runoff, Chen-Ling Jenny Hung

Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization and climate change are associated with extreme changes to hydrologic processes that alter the amount and timing of runoff delivery in the Anthropocene. This dissertation research examined the degree of urbanization, climate change, and hydrologic responses in Rocky Branch Watershed (RBW), a small, highly urbanized catchment with dense vegetation canopy in Columbia, South Carolina. This dissertation is composed of three parts: (1) an automated algorithm for mapping building impervious areas (BIA) from remote sensing data for estimating percent impervious area (PIA), (2) a paired watershed study contrasting a forested with an urban watershed, and (3) a hydrologic simulation model …

Comparison Of Sentinel-2 And Landsat 8 Oli In The Mapping Of Soil Salinity In Hyde County, North Carolina, Eleanor Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This study presents the first comparison of Landsat 8 OLI and Sentinel-2A MSI imagery in identifying soil salinity using soil physiochemical, spectral, statistical, and image analysis techniques. By the end of the century, intermediate sea level rise scenarios project approximately 1.3 meters (4.2 feet) of sea level rise along the coast of the southeastern United States. One of the most vulnerable areas is Hyde County, North Carolina, where 440 square miles of agricultural lands are being salinized, endangering 4,200 people and 40 million dollars of property. To determine the best multispectral sensor to map the extent of salinization, this study …

Tweets About Tornado Warnings: A Spatiotemporal And Content Analysis, Raelene C. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the United States, tornadoes frequently occur throughout the entire year. With each tornado there is a tornado warning that the National Weather Service (NWS) issues with a goal of protecting life and property. By using social media, these messages quickly reach the public. By analyzing Twitter data, this study aims to gain a spatiotemporal understanding of tweets, including when and where they most frequently occur. Most tweets occur within the warning time (temporal) and inside the warning polygon (spatial). To gain a better understanding of the information the tweet contains, a content analysis shows key warning characteristics such as …

Why Is No One Getting A Weave Of An Afro: Examining Culture, Economy, And Domestic Human Hair Consumption By African American Women, Brittani Young

Theses and Dissertations

The market for human hair, in the form of wigs and hair weaves, has grown exponentially, with African American women comprising a significant portion of consumers in the United States. Similar to other markets, the structure and patterns of hair consumption by African American women is the result of a variety of historical and geographical factors. In this thesis I investigate the role of African American women in the global human hair trade, and consider the implications of contemporary discourses around ‘good’ and ‘black’ hair in order to better understand trade in human hair. In particular, I use a combination …

From Rhetoric To Response: Climate Change, Conflict, And Development In Karamoja, Uganda, Daniel Abrahams

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the broad question: How do the discourses of climate change and conflict travel across time and space to become policy, programming, and ultimately a development initiative that exist on the ground? To answer this question, I broke the research into three separate papers. The first examines how the US policy community approaches, understands and seeks to address the discourses of climatesecurity. The second examines the ways in which climate change affects conflict outcomes in Karamoja, Uganda. And the third, using the efforts of Mercy Corps in Karamoja as a case study, examines the realities and opportunities in …

Investigation Of Hydrologic Change In The South Fork Edisto Basin 1981-2016, Alexander Preston Butler

Theses and Dissertations

Increased demands on water resources coupled with an increased awareness of the need to preserve environmental flows have led to a need to understand how anthropogenic activities may have impacted water resources in South Carolina. The South Fork of the Edisto River has been facing increasing demands for both surface water and groundwater. This research investigated if and why hydrologic change, as indicated by a change in the rainfall/ stream discharge relationship, occurred in the South Fork Edisto Basin, in South Carolina, between the years 1980-2016. A double-mass curve analysis, which is corroborated by runoff coefficients, indicates that a fundamental …

Climatic History Of The Northeastern United States During The Past 3000 Years, Jennifer R. Marlon, Neil Pederson, Connor Nolan, Simon Goring, Bryan Shuman, Ann Robertson, Robert Booth, Patrick J. Bartlein, Melissa A. Berke, Michael Clifford, Edward Cook, Ann Dieffenbacher-Krall, Michael C. Dietze, Amy Hessl, J. Bradford Hubeny, Stephen T. Jackson, Jeremiah Marsicek, Jason Mclachlan, Cary J. Mock, David J.P. Moore, Jonathan Nichols, Dorothy Peteet, Kevin Schaefer, Valerie Trouet, Charles Umbanhowar, John W. Williams, Zicheng Yu

Faculty Publications

Many ecosystem processes that influence Earth system feedbacks - vegetation growth, water and nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes - are strongly influenced by multidecadal- to millennial-scale climate variations that cannot be directly observed. Paleoclimate records provide information about these variations, forming the basis of our understanding and modeling of them. Fossil pollen records are abundant in the NE US, but cannot simultaneously provide information about paleoclimate and past vegetation in a modeling context because this leads to circular logic. If pollen data are used to constrain past vegetation changes, then the remaining paleoclimate archives in the northeastern US (NE US) are …

Environmental Influences On Forest Fire Regime In The Greater Hinggan Mountains, Northeast China, Qian Fan, Cuizhen Wang, Dongyou Zhang, Shuying Zang

Faculty Publications

Fires are the major disturbances in the Greater Hinggan Mountains, the only boreal forest in Northeast China. A comprehensive understanding of the fire regimes and influencing environmental parameters driving them from small to large fires is critical for effective forest fire prevention and management. Assisted with satellite imagery, topographic data, and climatic records in this region, this study examines its fire regimes in terms of ignition causes, frequencies, seasonality, and burned sizes in the period of 1980–2005. We found an upward trend for fire occurrences and burned areas and an elongated fire season over the three decades. The dates of …

A Modified Normalized Difference Impervious Surface Index (Mndisi) For Automatic Urban Mapping From Landsat Imagery, Zhongchang Sun, Cuizhen Wang, Huadong Guo, Ranran Shang

Faculty Publications

Impervious surface area (ISA) is a key factor for monitoring urban environment and land development. Automatic mapping of impervious surfaces has attracted growing attention in recent years. Spectral built-up indices are considered promising to map ISA distributions due to their easy, parameter-free implementations. This study explores the potentials of impervious surface indices for ISA mapping from Landsat imagery using a case study area in Boston, USA. A modified normalized difference impervious surface index (MNDISI) is proposed, and a Gaussian-based automatic threshold selection method is used to identify the optimal MNDISI threshold for delineating impervious surfaces from background features. To evaluate …

Lack Of Spatial Resilience In A Recovery Process: Case L'Aquila, Italy, Diana Contreras, Thomas Blaschke, Michael E. Hodgson

Faculty Publications

The lack of coordination between government agencies, involvement of the collaboration networks existing in the community, and incorporation of spatial planning in the location of the new settlements around L'Aquila (Italy) after the 2009 earthquake has delayed reconstruction of the city centre. The displaced population was relocated to 19 new settlements. These new settlements are characterized by a lack of urban facilities. The aim of this paper was to analyze the relationship between urban facilities, collaboration networks and lack of spatial resilience in the recovery process in L'Aquila. Specifically, we focused on the preferences of inhabitants to search for alternative …

Mapping Typical Urban Lulc From Landsat Imagery Without Training Samples Or Self-Defined Parameters, Hui Li, Cuizhen Wang, Cheng Zhong, Zhi Zhang, Qingbin Liu

Faculty Publications

Land use/land cover (LULC) change is one of the most important indicators in understanding the interactions between humans and the environment. Traditionally, when LULC maps are produced yearly, most existing remote-sensing methods have to collect ground reference data annually, as the classifiers have to be trained individually in each corresponding year. This study presented a novel strategy to map LULC classes without training samples or assigning parameters. First of all, several novel indices were carefully selected from the index pool, which were able to highlight certain LULC very well. Following this, a common unsupervised classifier was employed to extract the …

Assessing Re-Composition Of Xing’An Larch In Boreal Forests After The 1987 Fire, Northeast China, Junjie Wang, Cuizhen Wang, Shuying Zang

Faculty Publications

Xing’an larch, a deciduous coniferous species, is the zonal tree of the Greater Xing’an Mountains in Northeast China. In May 1987, a catastrophic fire broke out in the mountains and burned 1.3 million hectares of forests in 26 days. While studies have shown that forest greenness has come back to normal in certain years, the re-composition of this zonal species has not been studied after the 1987 fire. With a series of Landsat 8 OLI images acquired in 2013–2015, this study builds the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Green Vegetation Index (GVI) time series in a complete growing cycle. …

Repairing The Relationship Between Trains And Traffic In Columbia, South Carolina, Andrea Esselman

Senior Theses

My intention with this paper is to inform readers of the history and complexity of the issues with the trains and other traffic in Columbia, South Carolina. While it may not offer specific solutions to the problems, it does examine solutions that have been proposed and reasons why these solutions have not been pursued. The reader should take away a deeper understanding of why things are in their current state in relation to the trains and the automobile traffic in Columbia. Ultimately this information can keep the public informed so that better decisions can be made in the future.

Representing The Relationships Between Field Collected Carbon Exchanges And Surface Reflectance Using Geospatial And Satellite-Based Techniques, Alexandria G. Mccombs

Theses and Dissertations

Carbon exchanges between the atmosphere and the land surface vary in space and time, and are highly dependent on land cover type. It is important to quantify these exchanges to understand how landscapes affect the carbon budget, which will have a significant impact on future climate change and will inform climate change projections. However, how do you represent regional carbon exchanges from a single meteorological station? A single observing station will represent a limited area around the station, but each individual observation will sample a different physical land area in time due to varying wind speeds, wind direction, and atmospheric …

The Community Rating System: Assessing Indicators Of Community Participation, A Dasymetric And Sovi Approach, Zachary P. Landis

Theses and Dissertations

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was established to provide affordable insurance to property owners and encourage communities to adopt and enforce floodplain management, primarily through the Community Rating System (CRS). The CRS awards points to communities for adopting a variety of activities in support of floodplain management. One area of interest in the CRS program is understanding differences in the types of communities participating and the degree of their participation. Research on the NFIP’s CRS tends to focus on community program participation in reducing flood losses and indicators of participation. Much of this research was performed prior to 2013 …

Mapping Urban Bare Land Automatically From Landsat Imagery With A Simple Index, Hui Li, Cuizhen Wang, Cheng Zhong, Aijun Su, Chengren Xiong, Jinge Wang, Junqi Liu

Faculty Publications

In recent years, hundreds of Earth observation satellites have been launched to collect massive amounts of remote sensing images. However, the considerable cost and time to process the significant amount of data have become the greatest obstacle between data and knowledge. In order to accelerate the transformation from remote sensing images to urban thematic maps, a strategy to map the bare land automatically from Landsat imagery was developed and assessed in this study. First, a normalized difference bare land index (NBLI) was presented to maximally differentiate bare land from other land types in Wuhan City, China. Then, an unsupervised classifier …

Mapping Urban Bare Land Automatically From Landsat Imagery With A Simple Index, Hui Li, Cuizhen Wang, Cheng Zhong, Aijun Su, Chengren Xiong, Jinge Wang, Junqi Liu

Faculty Publications

In recent years, hundreds of Earth observation satellites have been launched to collect massive amounts of remote sensing images. However, the considerable cost and time to process the significant amount of data have become the greatest obstacle between data and knowledge. In order to accelerate the transformation from remote sensing images to urban thematic maps, a strategy to map the bare land automatically from Landsat imagery was developed and assessed in this study. First, a normalized difference bare land index (NBLI) was presented to maximally differentiate bare land from other land types in Wuhan City, China. Then, an unsupervised classifier …

Contesting The Generic Refugee: Siv Identity, Community, And Agency During Resettlement, Benjamin J. Sylvester

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the complexity of identity and community formation by Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders during resettlement in Columbia, South Carolina. It explores the ways in which identities coalesce around various themes, such as religion, gender, and military service, how these identities serve to create, expand, and claim membership in communities, and how SIVs exercise agency throughout these processes. Through semi-structured interviews with 9 SIVs in Columbia, SC, this qualitative study highlights the unique, highly individualized ways in which a select group of refugees experience resettlement, how they negotiate their placement within socio-economic hierarchies, and exercise agency to obtain …

Urban Accessibility Measurement And Visualization — A Big Data Approach, Yuqin Jiang

Theses and Dissertations

Accessibility measurement has always been an important question in different areas including transportation, urban planning, politics, and sociology. However, how to measure transportation accessibility in different areas have been limited to data availability and technology. Recently, with increasing availability in public transportation data, we found a gap between current methods and large volume of data now available. This thesis developed a new method to measure multi-mode transportation data, including taxi, bus, and subway. Based on this measurement, we can visualize and understand the spatiotemporal patterns of accessibility in New York City (NYC). With historical travel records and public transit schedule, …

The Role Of Weather In The Social And Economic Lives Of Plantation Owners In Antebellum Beaufort District, South Carolina, Jennifer A. Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

Weather can determine social, agricultural, and economic impacts on a society. There has been a lot of contemporary research on adaptation and experiences in severe weather events. However, there is a lack of historical research. This study uses primary sources, such as journals, newspapers, and maps, to look into the impact that weather has on people during a study time. Primary sources, like Thomas Chaplin’s Tombee Plantation Journal, provide more than a physical description of the event that occurred. These historical sources present various perspectives, such as personal and emotional, of people in South Carolina’s Beaufort District and its sea …