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Articles 151 - 180 of 225

Full-Text Articles in Geography

Cocoa And Carbon: Remedying Forest Governance Through Community Participation In A Redd+Pilot In Ghana, Manali Baruah Jan 2017

Cocoa And Carbon: Remedying Forest Governance Through Community Participation In A Redd+Pilot In Ghana, Manali Baruah

Theses and Dissertations

Global loss and degradation of forests are well documented, and the potential role of forests in climate change mitigation is widely recognized. While forests are key to human well-being, forest resource management in the developing world is fraught with governance challenges. Despite policy discourses that emphasize the importance of local participation in the management of forest resources, it is rarely practiced. Many national governments and non-governmental organizations have set up efforts around the collaborative management of forest resources with local communities to tackle forest loss. However, the operationalization of participatory principles and the effectiveness of these collaborative initiatives are not …


Climate Change (Mal)Adaptation As Governmentality: The Case Of The Ada Sea Defense System In The Volta River Delta Of Ghana, Kwame Ntiri Owusu-Daaku Jan 2017

Climate Change (Mal)Adaptation As Governmentality: The Case Of The Ada Sea Defense System In The Volta River Delta Of Ghana, Kwame Ntiri Owusu-Daaku

Theses and Dissertations

River deltas are complex natural environments that represent a confluence of many physical, biological and human processes vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The likely biophysical impacts of climate change on deltas have received substantial attention. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which the different stakeholders of deltaic environments frame the vulnerability of residents of deltas to climate change. The Volta River Delta (VRD) of Ghana is a compelling site in which to conduct such an examination because of the clear climaterelated changes taking place in the Delta, and the fact that like many …


Spatial Optimization Methods And System For Redistricting Problems, Hai Jin Jan 2017

Spatial Optimization Methods And System For Redistricting Problems, Hai Jin

Theses and Dissertations

Redistricting is the process of dividing space into districts or zones while optimizing a set of spatial criteria under certain constraints. Example applications of redistricting include political redistricting, school redistricting, business service planning, and city management, among many others. Redistricting is a mission-critical component in operating governments and businesses alike. In research fields, redistricting (or region building) are also widely used, such as climate zoning, traffic zone analysis, and complex network analysis. However, as a combinatorial optimization problem, redistricting optimization remains one of the most difficult research challenges. There are currently few automated redistricting methods that have the optimization capability …


Topic Modeling And The Historical Geography Of Scotland, Michael Gavin, Eric Gidal Nov 2016

Topic Modeling And The Historical Geography Of Scotland, Michael Gavin, Eric Gidal

Studies in Scottish Literature

Presents selected findings from a larger project using topic modeling for clusters of keywords from a defined corpus of 18th and 19th century Scottish topographical sources (including the Old and New Statistical Surveys), linked to GIS mapping, to explore such topics as Scottish industry, transport, antiquities, print culture, and religion, with 10 maps included in the article text.


Automatic Scaling Hadoop In The Cloud For Efficient Process Of Big Geospatial Data, Zhenlong Li, Chaoweikai Yang, Kai Liu, Fei Hu, Baoxuan Jin Sep 2016

Automatic Scaling Hadoop In The Cloud For Efficient Process Of Big Geospatial Data, Zhenlong Li, Chaoweikai Yang, Kai Liu, Fei Hu, Baoxuan Jin

Faculty Publications

Efficient processing of big geospatial data is crucial for tackling global and regional challenges such as climate change and natural disasters, but it is challenging not only due to the massive data volume but also due to the intrinsic complexity and high dimensions of the geospatial datasets. While traditional computing infrastructure does not scale well with the rapidly increasing data volume, Hadoop has attracted increasing attention in geoscience communities for handling big geospatial data. Recently, many studies were carried out to investigate adopting Hadoop for processing big geospatial data, but how to adjust the computing resources to efficiently handle the …


Lebanon's Shouf Biosphere Reserve: A Protected Area And Sport Hunting, Robert Watkins Bowdoin Greeley Jun 2016

Lebanon's Shouf Biosphere Reserve: A Protected Area And Sport Hunting, Robert Watkins Bowdoin Greeley

Theses and Dissertations

Fortress conservation, the act of setting aside for conservation goals and protecting them through sanction, coercion, and violence, towards local users has became the paradigmatic understanding of how protected areas are created and maintained. The fortress conservation critique is marked by a preoccupation with the negative livelihood impacts of these areas, portrays animosity and social conflict between local users and the protected areas, is primarily concerned with national parks and clearly defined protected areas, and places state power at the center of the creation and maintenance of protected areas. This dissertation takes the tenants of fortress conservation to task by …


Assessing Individual Transit Vulnerability To Nuisance Flooding In The Charleston, Sc Area, Sumathee Selvaraj Jan 2016

Assessing Individual Transit Vulnerability To Nuisance Flooding In The Charleston, Sc Area, Sumathee Selvaraj

Theses and Dissertations

Minor coastal flooding, also known as nuisance flooding, is projected to be more frequent due to relative sea level rise. Nuisance flood events in Charleston have resulted in various social impacts caused by road closures, traffic disruptions, and economic losses. This thesis presents research conducted to understand the dimensions of individual transit vulnerability to nuisance flooding and how transit vulnerability will be affected by increased extents of nuisance flooding driven by rising sea levels and heavy rainfall. Mixed methods were used to conduct this research in Berkley, Charleston, and Dorchester Counties, South Carolina. An electronic, in-person survey was administered at …


Barriers To Success: Refugee Mobility In The New South Immigrant Gateway City Of Columbia, Sc, Usa, Alysha V. Baratta Jan 2016

Barriers To Success: Refugee Mobility In The New South Immigrant Gateway City Of Columbia, Sc, Usa, Alysha V. Baratta

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores mobility and service access of refugees who have been resettled in a non-traditional smaller-city immigrant destination of Columbia, South Carolina. I show that delivery of basic refugee social services varies based on support from individual states while federal expectations for refugees to reach economic selfsufficiency are applied equally across the US. I argue that mobility is a major challenge in obtaining these goals, further exacerbated in the context of a smaller resettlement site. Although redistribution to smaller metropolitan areas may provide refugees safer and more affordable housing, less spatial distance to traverse (Mott, 2010), they often lack …


Multivariate Analysis And Geographic Modeling Of Archaeological Landscapes, J. Christopher Gillam Jan 2016

Multivariate Analysis And Geographic Modeling Of Archaeological Landscapes, J. Christopher Gillam

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in Geographic Information Science (GISci), archaeological databases and statistics enable the development and refinement of spatial applications of multivariate statistics and other quantitative methods for modeling ancient and historical cultural landscapes. Along the Central Savannah River of South Carolina, this research on prehistoric and historic site distributions, their environmental, temporal and cultural context, and geographic modeling explored methodologies for predicting site locations and modeling cultural landscapes to gain a better understanding of the distant and recent past. Methods for testing extant models, detecting changes in land-use through time, and for developing time-sliced and adaptation-based landscape models were demonstrated using …


Synoptic Climatology Of Extreme Snow And Avalanche Events In Southern Alaska, Kristy C. Carter Jan 2016

Synoptic Climatology Of Extreme Snow And Avalanche Events In Southern Alaska, Kristy C. Carter

Theses and Dissertations

Snowfall distribution in southern Alaska during large snowfall events (>12 inches/day) is complex and dependent on several small-scale factors. Output from highresolution WRF simulations was used to provide further insight into factors that contribute to differences in precipitation patterns. Common synoptic patterns among large snowfall events and cities were studied to create a snow climatology for seven cities in southern Alaska based on the predominant wind flow at the surface and aloft and the location of the surface low and 500 mb height field. Results aid in understanding the synoptic set-up for large snowfall events in each city and …


Hydrologic Modeling Scenarios In A South Carolina Piedmont Drainage Basin, Parker Douglas Leslie Jan 2016

Hydrologic Modeling Scenarios In A South Carolina Piedmont Drainage Basin, Parker Douglas Leslie

Theses and Dissertations

Changing land cover can drastically alter the hydrologic processes of a drainage basin. At the same time, the hydrologic processes that occur are governed by weather and climate of the region. The Southeastern United States, and more specifically the Piedmont region of South Carolina, is experiencing significant changes to the landscape and highly variable weather and climate conditions. Few modern hydrologic studies that investigate the impact from these dynamic variables on streamflow and the water balance within the region have taken place and further study is warranted because of the drastic change likely to occur. One objective of this thesis …


Geospatial Modeling And Assessment Of The Environmentally Sensitive Lands In The Midwestern U.S., William M. Soohoo Jan 2016

Geospatial Modeling And Assessment Of The Environmentally Sensitive Lands In The Midwestern U.S., William M. Soohoo

Theses and Dissertations

Agricultural land-use change, especially corn expansion, has been accelerating since the 2000s to meet the growing bioenergy demand in the United States. This study identifies the environmentally sensitive lands (ESLs) in the U.S. Midwest and explores the environmental implications of land-use changes in this vital agricultural region. A new distance factor is introduced to a soil erodibility model to take wetlands and waterbodies into account. With a GIS-Ranking Model, the ESLs in 2008 and 2011 (two representative years of corn expansion) in the study region are ranked based on their soil erosion severity. Under various scenarios of bioenergy land-use change …


Object-Based Crop Classification With Landsat-Modis Enhanced Time-Series Data, Qingting Li, Cuizhen Wang, Bing Zhang, Linlin Lu Dec 2015

Object-Based Crop Classification With Landsat-Modis Enhanced Time-Series Data, Qingting Li, Cuizhen Wang, Bing Zhang, Linlin Lu

Faculty Publications

Cropland mapping via remote sensing can provide crucial information for agri-ecological studies. Time series of remote sensing imagery is particularly useful for agricultural land classification. This study investigated the synergistic use of feature selection, Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) segmentation and decision tree classification for cropland mapping using a finer temporal-resolution Landsat-MODIS Enhanced time series in 2007. The enhanced time series extracted 26 layers of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and five NDVI Time Series Indices (TSI) in a subset of agricultural land of Southwest Missouri. A feature selection procedure using the Stepwise Discriminant Analysis (SDA) was performed, and 10 optimal …


Modis-Derived Spatiotemporal Changes Of Major Lake Surface Areas In Arid Xinjiang, China, 2000–2014, Qingting Li, Linlin Lu, Cuizhen Wang, Yingkui Li, Yue Sui, Huadong Guo Oct 2015

Modis-Derived Spatiotemporal Changes Of Major Lake Surface Areas In Arid Xinjiang, China, 2000–2014, Qingting Li, Linlin Lu, Cuizhen Wang, Yingkui Li, Yue Sui, Huadong Guo

Faculty Publications

Inland water bodies, which are critical freshwater resources for arid and semi-arid areas, are very sensitive to climate change and human disturbance. In this paper, we derived a time series of major lake surface areas across Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China, based on an eight-day MODIS time series in 500 m resolution from 2000 to 2014. A classification approach based on water index and dynamic threshold selection was first developed to accommodate varied spectral features of water pixels at different temporal steps. The overall classification accuracy for a MODIS-derived water body is 97% compared to a water body derived …


A Collection Of Sub-Daily Pressure And Temperature Observations For The Early Instrumental Period With A Focus On The “Year Without A Summer” 1816, Y. Brugnara, R. Auchmann, S. Brönnimann, R. J. Allan, I. Auer, M. Barriendos, H. Bergström, J. Bhend, R. Brázdil, G. P. Compo, R. C. Cornes, F. Dominguez-Castro, A. F.V. Van Engelen, J. Filipiak, J. Holopainen, S. Jourdain, M. Kunz, J. Luterbacher, M. Maugeri, L. Mercalli, A. Moberg, Cary J. Mock, G. Pichard, L. Åezníčková, G. Van Der Schrier, V. Slonosky, Z. Ustrnul, M. A. Valente, A. Wypych, X. Yin Aug 2015

A Collection Of Sub-Daily Pressure And Temperature Observations For The Early Instrumental Period With A Focus On The “Year Without A Summer” 1816, Y. Brugnara, R. Auchmann, S. Brönnimann, R. J. Allan, I. Auer, M. Barriendos, H. Bergström, J. Bhend, R. Brázdil, G. P. Compo, R. C. Cornes, F. Dominguez-Castro, A. F.V. Van Engelen, J. Filipiak, J. Holopainen, S. Jourdain, M. Kunz, J. Luterbacher, M. Maugeri, L. Mercalli, A. Moberg, Cary J. Mock, G. Pichard, L. Åezníčková, G. Van Der Schrier, V. Slonosky, Z. Ustrnul, M. A. Valente, A. Wypych, X. Yin

Faculty Publications

The eruption of Mount Tambora (Indonesia) in April 1815 is the largest documented volcanic eruption in history. It is associated with a large global cooling during the following year, felt particularly in parts of Europe and North America, where the year 1816 became known as the "year without a summer". This paper describes an effort made to collect surface meteorological observations from the early instrumental period, with a focus on the years of and immediately following the eruption (1815-1817). Although the collection aimed in particular at pressure observations, correspondent temperature observations were also recovered. Some of the series had already …


The International Surface Pressure Databank Version 2, Thomas A. Cram, Gilbert P. Compo, Xungang Yin, Robert J. Allan, Chesley Mccoll, Russell S. Vose, Jeffrey S. Whitaker, Nobuki Matsui, Linden Ashcroft, Renate Auchmann, Pierre Bessemoulin, Theo Brandsma, Philip Brohan, Manola Brunet, Joseph Comeaux, Richard Crouthamel, Byron E. Gleason, Pavel Y. Groisman, Hans Hersbach, Philip D. Jones, Trausti Jónsson, Sylvie Jourdain, Gail Kelly, Kenneth R. Knapp, Andries Kruger, Hisayuki Kubota, Gianluca Lentini, Andrew Lorrey, Neal Lott, Sandra J. Lubker, Jürg Luterbacher, Gareth J. Marshall, Maurizio Maugeri, Cary J. Mock, Et. Al. Jul 2015

The International Surface Pressure Databank Version 2, Thomas A. Cram, Gilbert P. Compo, Xungang Yin, Robert J. Allan, Chesley Mccoll, Russell S. Vose, Jeffrey S. Whitaker, Nobuki Matsui, Linden Ashcroft, Renate Auchmann, Pierre Bessemoulin, Theo Brandsma, Philip Brohan, Manola Brunet, Joseph Comeaux, Richard Crouthamel, Byron E. Gleason, Pavel Y. Groisman, Hans Hersbach, Philip D. Jones, Trausti Jónsson, Sylvie Jourdain, Gail Kelly, Kenneth R. Knapp, Andries Kruger, Hisayuki Kubota, Gianluca Lentini, Andrew Lorrey, Neal Lott, Sandra J. Lubker, Jürg Luterbacher, Gareth J. Marshall, Maurizio Maugeri, Cary J. Mock, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

The International Surface Pressure Databank (ISPD) is the world's largest collection of global surface and sea-level pressure observations. It was developed by extracting observations from established international archives, through international cooperation with data recovery facilitated by the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative, and directly by contributing universities, organizations, and countries. The dataset period is currently 1768–2012 and consists of three data components: observations from land stations, marine observing systems, and tropical cyclone best track pressure reports. Version 2 of the ISPD (ISPDv2) was created to be observational input for the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project (20CR) and contains …


Evaluation Of Three Modis-Derived Vegetation Index Time Series For Dryland Vegetation Dynamics Monitoring, Linlin Lu, Claudia Kuenzer, Cuizhen Wang, Huadong Guo, Qingting Li Jun 2015

Evaluation Of Three Modis-Derived Vegetation Index Time Series For Dryland Vegetation Dynamics Monitoring, Linlin Lu, Claudia Kuenzer, Cuizhen Wang, Huadong Guo, Qingting Li

Faculty Publications

Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of vegetation is essential in drylands. In this paper, we evaluated three vegetation indices, namely the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) and the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Surface-Reflectance Product in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China (XUAR), to assess index time series’ suitability for monitoring vegetation dynamics in a dryland environment. The mean annual VI and its variability were generated and analyzed from the three VI time series for the period 2001–2012 across XUAR. Two phenological metrics, start of the season …


Improved Polsar Image Classification By The Use Of Multi-Feature Combination, Lei Deng, Ya-Nan Yan, Cuizhen Wang Apr 2015

Improved Polsar Image Classification By The Use Of Multi-Feature Combination, Lei Deng, Ya-Nan Yan, Cuizhen Wang

Faculty Publications

Polarimetric SAR (POLSAR) provides a rich set of information about objects on land surfaces. However, not all information works on land surface classification. This study proposes a new, integrated algorithm for optimal urban classification using POLSAR data. Both polarimetric decomposition and time-frequency (TF) decomposition were used to mine the hidden information of objects in POLSAR data, which was then applied in the C5.0 decision tree algorithm for optimal feature selection and classification. Using a NASA/JPL AIRSAR POLSAR scene as an example, the overall accuracy and kappa coefficient of the proposed method reached 91.17% and 0.90 in the L-band, much higher …


Modis-Based Fractional Crop Mapping In The U.S. Midwest With Spatially Constrained Phenological Mixture Analysis, Cheng Zhong, Cuizhen Wang, Changshan Wu Jan 2015

Modis-Based Fractional Crop Mapping In The U.S. Midwest With Spatially Constrained Phenological Mixture Analysis, Cheng Zhong, Cuizhen Wang, Changshan Wu

Faculty Publications

Since the 2000s, bioenergy land use has been rapidly expanded in U.S. agricultural lands. Monitoring this change with limited acquisition of remote sensing imagery is difficult because of the similar spectral properties of crops. While phenology-assisted crop mapping is promising, relying on frequently observed images, the accuracies are often low, with mixed pixels in coarse-resolution imagery. In this paper, we used the eight-day, 500 m MODIS products (MOD09A1) to test the feasibility of crop unmixing in the U.S. Midwest, an important bioenergy land use region. With all MODIS images acquired in 2007, the 46-point Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time …


Mobile Home Resident Perspectives On Preparedness, Protective Action, And Evacuation For Tornado Hazards, Kevin D. Ash Jan 2015

Mobile Home Resident Perspectives On Preparedness, Protective Action, And Evacuation For Tornado Hazards, Kevin D. Ash

Theses and Dissertations

More than 1,000 tornadoes strike the United States each year, and no population segment has been impacted to a greater degree than those who live in mobile homes. Despite being only about 7% of the total population, mobile home residents have comprised 40% to 50% of all tornado deaths over the past fifty years. Inhabitants of mobile homes must therefore act quickly to protect themselves when they are threatened by tornadoes. Warning messages instruct mobile home occupants to move to a sturdier building until the storm passes, but what are the residents’ perspectives on this recommended behavior? It is unknown …


Economic Losses And Extreme Tornado Events, Rachel Reeves Jan 2015

Economic Losses And Extreme Tornado Events, Rachel Reeves

Theses and Dissertations

Research on tornado impacts has previously focused mainly on analyzing the deaths and injuries associated with tornadoes. While economic loss from multiple hazards is a well-researched field, little has been done to assess the economic losses sustained during tornado events. Additionally, the literature regarding the Enhanced Fujita scale’s comparability to the Fujita scale is limited. This research aims to add to the literature by statistically analyzing the two tornado scales, determining the movement of tornadoes over time using a cluster analysis, comparing the location of extreme tornadoes to those which produce extreme loss, and looking at the statistical relationship between …


The Meaning Of Place Recovery On The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Ronald L. Schumann, Iii Jan 2015

The Meaning Of Place Recovery On The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Ronald L. Schumann, Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Recovery is a post-disaster period of adjustment when individuals, households, neighborhoods, and communities work to overcome the effects of a disaster and regain functionality. Recovery is a multi-scalar process whose outcomes are manifested in the physical landscape; however, assessments of the meaning, progress, and outcomes of recovery are specific to individuals who view the landscape from an embodied perspective within the local social hierarchy. Common recovery measurement techniques used by emergency managers, planners, local leaders, and hazards scholars approximate recovery with reconstruction of physical infrastructure or repopulation of residences. These longitudinal quantitative proxies may claim to represent the status of …


Institutional Resilience Along The Mississippi Gulf Coast In The Context Of Pre- And Post-Hurricane Katrina, Khai Hoan Nguyen Jan 2015

Institutional Resilience Along The Mississippi Gulf Coast In The Context Of Pre- And Post-Hurricane Katrina, Khai Hoan Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

Building resilience to disasters helps reduce loss of life and property, allowing communities to recover more quickly from shocks and disruptions. Governing institutions are tasked with tremendous responsibility in terms of mitigating risks and enhancing resilience of local communities through proactive planning and policies. It is important to examine how institutional policies have changed pre- and post-disaster to determine their contribution to community resilience. Metrics and indicators can be used to quantitatively assess, establish baseline, track, and monitor resilience at the community level. Few studies have attempted to measure institutional resilience using a set of indicators and metrics, and even …


A Tale Of Two Landscapes: Examining Alienation And Non-Visitation Among Local African American Fishers At Congaree National Park, Janae Davis Jan 2015

A Tale Of Two Landscapes: Examining Alienation And Non-Visitation Among Local African American Fishers At Congaree National Park, Janae Davis

Theses and Dissertations

The Wilderness Act of 1964 limits acceptable activities in federally designated wilderness areas to those associated with leisure, scenic viewing, education and scientific inquiry. These stipulations, which privileged the interests of the early environmental movement’s elite white leaders and disregarded uses valued by racial/ethnic minorities and working class groups, continue to inform wilderness management in national parks. This legacy of exclusion is evidenced by national park visitation statistics showing overrepresentation1 of whites and underrepresentation of African Americans (Meeker, Woods, & Lucas, 1973; P. A. Taylor, Grandjean, & Gramann, 2011). The purpose of this study is to understand how wilderness management …


Institutional Adaptation And Drought Management In The Carolinas, Kirsten Lackstrom Jan 2015

Institutional Adaptation And Drought Management In The Carolinas, Kirsten Lackstrom

Theses and Dissertations

Drought is one of the costliest hazards faced by the United States, having caused billions of dollars in damage and affected all regions of the country over the past two decades. There have been many efforts to strengthen society’s technical and managerial capacity to respond to drought, mitigate risks, and adopt proactive planning and management strategies. Advances entail the adoption of drought plans, improvements to data collection and monitoring systems, and development of networks to disseminate information and foster communications. Despite recent progress, response remains reactive and crisis-oriented. Management is often uncoordinated across the multiple sectors and fragmented jurisdictions affected …


Tree-Sway Frequency And The Turbulent Co-Spectral Gap In A Dense Canopy Environment, Katherine L. Ertell Jan 2015

Tree-Sway Frequency And The Turbulent Co-Spectral Gap In A Dense Canopy Environment, Katherine L. Ertell

Theses and Dissertations

Today, knowledge of canopy turbulence comes solely from field observations. However, measurements or field observations that are taken at a specific location within the canopy cannot accurately capture the interaction of the wind and the canopy it crosses. Without this complete picture of the atmosphere, the temporal fluctuations that exist in turbulent flows cannot be understood. From an atmospheric perspective, the complex structure of forests significantly influences turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layers (ABL) by consistently imposing both mechanical and thermal forces. This study explores the temporal and spatial characteristics of tree-sway motions and their aerodynamic interactions with coherent turbulence …


Ammonium Concentrations Above A Louisiana Sugarcane Field, Wesley Robert Skeeter Jan 2015

Ammonium Concentrations Above A Louisiana Sugarcane Field, Wesley Robert Skeeter

Theses and Dissertations

High concentrations of ammonium (NH4+) aerosols can lead to acidification of soils, forest decline, and eutrophication of water ways (Aneja et al. 2003). NH4+ along with its precursor ammonia (NH3) forms a complicated gas aerosol system that is poorly understood and requires further research. Rotating annular denuder systems actively sampled NH4+ from the northern corner of a sugarcane field at 2.89 m and 5.18 m above the northern corner of a sugarcane field in St. Gabriel, Louisiana over 31 days and 31 nights between May 25th and July 27th of 2011. These data were used to calculate the average NH4+ …


Pattern Extraction From Spatial Data - Statistical And Modeling Approches, Hu Wang Dec 2014

Pattern Extraction From Spatial Data - Statistical And Modeling Approches, Hu Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Exploratory and statistical spatial data analyses are commonly used in a wide range of research fields, such as epidemiology, disease surveillance and crime analysis. Spatial epidemiology, for example, needs to detect significant spatial clusters of disease incidents to help epidemiologists identify environmental factors and spreading patterns associated with certain diseases. Existing spatial analysis approaches mostly focus on the analysis of spatial lattice data, i.e., observations organized by locations such as county or census tract. With the wide spread of location-aware technologies such as GPS and smart phones, spatial interaction data have become increasingly available, e.g., human daily mobility, traveling and …


Understanding Geo-Social Network Patterns: Computation, Visualization, And Usability, Caglar Koylu Dec 2014

Understanding Geo-Social Network Patterns: Computation, Visualization, And Usability, Caglar Koylu

Theses and Dissertations

Geo-social networks are formed by flows of physical entities (e.g., humans, vehicles, sensors, animals), and communication (e.g., information, ideas, innovation) that connect places to places and individuals to individuals. Several major problems remain to be addressed for understanding the complex patterns in geo-social networks. This dissertation makes the following contributions to the theory and methodologies that aim at understanding complex geo-social data by integrating methods of computation, visualization and usability evaluation. Chapter 2 introduces a novel network-based smoothing approach that addresses the size-difference and small area problem in calculating and mapping locational (graph) measures in spatial interaction networks. The new …


Situating Belonging Through Multi-Sited Identities: Community Building Among Middle Eastern Christians In Upstate South Carolina, Amelia Ayoob Dec 2014

Situating Belonging Through Multi-Sited Identities: Community Building Among Middle Eastern Christians In Upstate South Carolina, Amelia Ayoob

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a Human Geography perspective on immigrant identity and integration. Using the case of a diverse, multigenerational Middle Eastern Christian population in the Upstate region of South Carolina, I explore how Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants have negotiated belonging and identity in the United States by simultaneously building new social networks in the Upstate and maintaining ties to the Middle East. The focus on a single case allowed for an in-depth exploration of how geographic and historical contexts have shaped the present-day dynamics of the community (broadly defined) constructed around two Catholic churches, one Latin and one …