Geography Commons^™

Problematizing Florida’S Extended Reading Time Policy: A Critical Investigation Of Place, Demographics, And Curricula, Carrie L. Gentner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate Florida’s extended reading time (ERT) policy as enacted during the 2016-2017 school year. This policy requires elementary schools ranking among the 300 lowest performing in the state, as measured by state assessments, to provide an additional hour of reading instruction beyond the regular school day. Extending upon the work of a pilot study suggesting an overrepresentation of minoritized students within low 300 schools, this study presents the geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic distributions of the ERT mandate for a criterion sample of seven districts. Further, the pilot study indicated an underrepresentation of minoritized …

Using Geospatial Data To Predict The Locations Of Groundwater Discharge To Salmon-Bearing Streams, Alaska, Mary Gerlach

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Identification and protection of groundwater resources are considerations of increasing interest as climate shifts but can be challenging to accomplish in remote areas. To that end, a series of GIS techniques and weight of evidence approach were applied to determine the feasibility of remotely identifying likely areas of ground discharge. Through the confluence of topographic analyses and a novel geologic dataset, these techniques were found to consistently identify areas characterized by either shallow subsurface or aquifer-fed groundwater discharge or evidence of ephemeral surficial water features. Two distinct GIS techniques to build spatial proxies of the effects of topography and geology …

A Sustainability Machine: The Incineration-Based Waste Regime In Tampa, Fl, Usa, Kevin P. Martyn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent history has seen some significant changes in terms of how society thinks about and deals with its wastes. Increasingly troubling indications of the immediacy of ecological concerns, now often described by the Anthropocene concept, have been provocative of a reinvigorated fervor for a sustainability transition. As a result, sustainability has become well-established as both an urgent pursuit and an eminently pliable buzzword. This research describes and explains one key aspect of society’s pursuit of some version of sustainability: our relationship with waste.

The site of this research is Tampa, Florida, a sunbelt city with a unique waste management system. …

On The Importance Of Context: Examining The Applicability Of Infertility Insurance Mandates In The United States Using A Mixed-Methods Study Design, Nathanael B. Stanley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accessibility of infertility services is disproportionately experienced in the United States. Although there exist state-based health insurance mandates for infertility services, these mandates contain language that disqualify people from using them. In order to better understand why these mandates are not able to reduce the financial burden and bridge the income disparity for using infertility services, the purpose of this study is to add context to the applicability of these insurance mandates through qualitative and quantitative inquiry. Using the Glass and McAtee model of risk regulators as an operational paradigm, this research explores the role of environmental context, or “place”, …

The Perceived Usefulness Of A Weather Radar Display By Tampa Bay Residents, Michelle E. Saunders

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A weather radar display is a tool that provides spatially oriented, timely information about an impending weather event. While radar is frequently used by meteorologists, emergency managers, and pilots, this tool is now readily available for individuals to use on a variety of platforms including television, computer/laptop, smartphones and tablets. Most importantly, there are hundreds of mobile weather applications available as well as online sources that provide a weather radar display. However, little is known about how individuals use a weather radar display. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to understand why radar is sought out as a tool …

Assessment Of Land Cover Change In St. Martin’S Marsh Aquatic Preserve, Florida, Usa, Katie Wagner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

St. Martin’s Marsh Aquatic Preserve (SMMAP) is a 28,461 acre (115.18 km2) preserve located on the coast of Citrus County, Florida, USA. There has been no published research that focused on coastal change on this unique coast. This thesis research focuses on coastal land cover change that has occurred within the preserve from 1988 to 2018. Multitemporal Landsat images were classified using a support vector machine (SVM) classification, while changes in vegetation were evaluated using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Field research was conducted to examine nineteen sites for classification training and test data and notes on habitat composition. …

A Method To Analyze Similarities Of Eye Movements: A Giscience Based Spatiotemporal Approach, Mehrdad Vaziri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Similarity analysis is the subject of several studies that primarily collect, process, and analyze movement data of various types, including animals, humans, vehicles, hurricanes, and eye tracking. The movement studies often focus on characteristics of a mobile entity (moving object) over time and space. Such studies usually are interested in tracking the changes to the moving object. Therefore, the size of the object becomes irrelevant. Each mobile object is considered a moving point through time and space. The points have all two attributes in common which are locations and timestamp of those locations. Despite the similarities between the movement datasets, …

Measurement Of Changes In Forest Fragmentation Caused By Road Construction Between 2000 And 2014 Using Gis In St. Johns County, Florida, Ahmet Karatas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Forests play a crucial role in maintaining the natural balance. They have essential features and structures used in the protection of flora and fauna. Human activities such as road construction disrupt ecosystems and negatively impact natural habitats. Roads cause forest fragmentation, and as a result of this, fragmentation has various negative effects on the natural habitat. These effects lead to loss of biological diversity, road mortality, habitat loss, fragmentation, and air pollution. The major goal of this study was to analyze changes in forest area, forest fragmentation, and forest road impacts using GIS for St. Johns County, Florida, between the …

Measuring And Understanding Food Accessibility In The Tampa Bay Area, Bailey I. Glover

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the Tampa Bay region, increasing population and changing demographics have begun to alter the characteristics of established neighborhoods. An increase in suburban growth has triggered a shift in the location and profitability of food establishments in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods. Supermarket closures have garnered attention from public health officials who are concerned with the overall availability of fresh food throughout Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. Unfortunately, there has been little research surrounding the quality of food sold at establishments in both the Tampa Bay region and abroad. Instead, many geographic studies have chosen to group both fresh and prepared food establishments …

Habitat Suitability Index Model Of The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis Pratensis) In West-Central Florida, Courtney E. Buck

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis pratensis) is a state threatened endemic subspecies of the Sandhill Crane (Nesbitt & Tacha, 1997). With a population that was estimated at a maximum of 5,000 individuals in 2003 (Nesbitt & Hatchitt, 2008), it is imperative to identify potentially viable habitats, as Florida is rapidly developing. This research develops a Habitat Suitability Index model to determine unsuitable to optimally suitable habitat locations throughout west-central Florida. To do so, six suitability variables based on the crane’s life history were evaluated: Potential nesting area, immediate nesting area, wetland coverage, foraging area, brooding area, and road proximity. …

Rethinking Map Literacy And An Analysis Of Quantitative Map Literacy, Ming Xie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Maps are increasingly being used in traditional and virtual media, and civic discourse on political, social, and environmental issues, among others, is more and more becoming influenced by them. The often-used expression of a “picture tells a 1000 words” has never been so apt in our progressively more visual world. Despite this increased role and importance of maps, map literacy, as a field of research, remains rather underdeveloped. This is especially so for thematic maps, the very type of map that is finding increasing currency in discourse. As part of this under-developed nature of map literacy, the quantitative skills used …

Assessing Palm Decline In Florida By Using Advanced Remote Sensing With Machine Learning Technologies And Algorithms., Christopher B. Hanni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Native palms, such as the Sabal palmetto, play an important role in maintaining the ecological balance in Florida. As a side-effect of modern globalization, new phytopathogens like Texas Phoenix Palm Decline have been introduced into forest systems that threaten native palms. This presents new challenges for forestry managers and geographers. Advances in remote sensing has assisted the practice of forestry by providing spatial metrics regarding the type, quantity, location, and the state of heath for trees for many years. This study provides spatial details regarding the general palm decline in Florida by taking advantage of the new developments in deep …

Assessing The Cooling Effects Of Urban Vegetation On Urban Heat Mitigation In Selected U.S. Cities, Qiuyan Yu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a growing problem worldwide. Mitigation of UHI is necessary for cities to adapt to climate change and enhance sustainable development at a city scale. Cooling cities with urban vegetation management is a sustainable solution for urban heat mitigation. Urban vegetation influences urban microclimate through the shading effect, surface roughness, and evapotranspiration. The differences in horizontal and vertical structures of urban vegetation determine the shading effect, surface roughness, and evapotranspiration. Enhancing the cooling effect of urban vegetation requires a comprehensive understanding of how vegetation structure affects UHI. The effects of horizontal structure on land surface temperature …

An Investigation Of Habitat Suitability Factors And Their Interactions For Predicting Gopher Tortoise Habitat, Abigail V. Lavallin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates the interaction between four habitat factors vital to the gopher tortoise in Florida. Federally and state listed as threatened throughout its entire range, the gopher tortoise is vital to protect, not only for itself individually but its burrows provide an essential habitat to over 300 species making it a key stone species within its environment. Historic habitat modeling methods are reviewed for the gopher tortoise to highlight the gap on this topic. This research expanded on the methods utilized by Baskaran et al. (2006) evaluating the soil, landcover, percentage of canopy cover and the depth to water …

Access To Safe Water Supply: Management Of Catchment For The Protection Of Source Water In Ghana, Michael K. Eduful

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates provisions made within institutional and regulatory frameworks of water resources management to enhance multi-stakeholder relationships and the challenges of maintaining those relationships, and implications of water resources management for rural communities in the Densu River basin, Ghana. The primary objectives of this study were four fold, these are to: i) review the existing regulatory framework and how it promotes or hinders multi-stakeholder relationships within the catchment area; ii) examine multi-stakeholder relationships to identify challenges in promoting effective collaboration in water resources management; iii) explore the impacts of catchment management on the livelihoods of rural communities; and iv) …

Assessing The Impacts Of Ghana’S Oil And Gas Industry On Ecosystem Services And Smallholder Livelihoods, Michael Acheampong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ghana discovered oil and gas within its shores in commercial quantities in the year, 2007. This discovery was hailed as a potential turn around for the country’s economic destiny. While this optimism may have been well-founded, there has been a relative lack of appreciation of the potential adverse implications of the industry on traditional smallholder livelihoods, and the critical ecosystems that form their basis. In many countries, discovery of natural resources results in negative environmental and social outcomes, due to the loss of local livelihoods and environmental degradation. Deterioration of local livelihoods occurs through several biophysical pathways, both simple and …

A Comparative Study On Coastal Zone Changes And Anthropogenic Impacts Between Tampa Bay, Usa, And Xiangshan Harbor, China, During The Last 30 Years, Qiandong Guo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently, the U.S. and China are the two largest national economic entities in the world. However, it is noticeable that the two countries have considerably different strategies for economic development, environmental protection and land supply in coastal zones. In order to understand the coastline dynamics, land use land cover (LULC) changes and land management policies in the U.S. and China, a case study of the Tampa Bay (TB) watershed, Florida, U.S., and Xiangshan Harbor (XH), Zhejiang Province, China was conducted. The two areas possess similar humid subtropical climate and dense population, but experienced different anthropogenic impacts. TB sat at a …

Remote Sensing And Spatial Metrics For Quantifying Seagrass Landscape Changes: A Study On The 2011 Indian River Lagoon Florida Seagrass Die-Off Event, René Dieter Baumstark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s seagrasses are ecologically important marine environments which have suffered major degradation caused by increasing anthropogenic pressures. A 2011 seagrass die-off event caused by an algal bloom in the Florida Indian River Lagoon (IRL) was particularly severe with a majority of seagrass lost in areas such as the Banana River. An understanding of how this coastal marine environment changed is an important step toward better managing resources for conservation. Modern tools and methods provide new opportunities to study these changes at the landscape scale, a scale that informs on the larger more comprehensive state of a system. Classified satellite imagery …

Operationalizing The Pressure And Release Theoretical Framework Using Risk Ratio Analysis To Measure Vulnerability And Predict Risk From Natural Hazards In The Tampa, Fl Metropolitan Area, Jessica A. Wilder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Significant damage and loss is experienced every year due to natural hazards such as hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, wildfires, volcanoes, and earthquakes. NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) reports that in 2016 the United States experienced more than a dozen climate disaster events with damages and loss in excess of a billion dollars (NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, 2017). Identifying vulnerabilities and risk associated with disaster threats is now a major focus of natural hazards research. Natural hazards research has yielded numerous theoretical frameworks over the last 25 years that have explained important elements of risk and vulnerability …

Reconstructing Historical Hurricane Tracks In The Atlantic Basin: Three Case Studies From The 1840s, Emily L. Cerrito

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Analyzing past tropical cyclone activity enables researchers to recognize patterns of hurricane variability, estimate hurricane return periods, and assess local risk to future storms. This paleotempestology study used original primary data to make the historical record as comprehensive and accurate as possible for three major hurricanes: October 1844, October 1846, and September 1848. This thesis presents the reconstructed storm tracks, assesses the societal impacts, and evaluates the storm intensity of these three major hurricanes for the eastern U.S. and Cuba. The data utilized in this study include ship logbooks, newspapers, diaries, and instrumental meteorological records. A geographic information system (GIS) …

Policing The Riverfront: Urban Revanchism As Sustainability, Jared J. Austin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An unnoticed shift is underway in the revanchist model of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) that is rebranding the neoliberal reorganization of space and economic growth. I call this shift “Urban Revanchism as Sustainability,” following Mike Davis and Daniel Monk (2007). In this study, I describe how Tampa elites, led by Democratic Mayor Bob Buckhorn, use politically popular discourses of ‘sustainability’, ‘walkability’, ‘bike-ability’, among others, to coopt the rhetoric and symbols of social and environmental justice as cover for urban capital accumulation. I describe how in the wake of 2008 which devastated Tampa, and in the context of the subsequent …

A Landscape Of Thermal Inequity: Social Vulnerability To Urban Heat In U.S. Cities, Bruce Coffyn Mitchell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A combination of the urban heat island effect and a rising temperature baseline resulting from global climate change inequitably impacts socially vulnerable populations residing in urban areas. This dissertation examines distributional inequity of exposure to urban heat by socially disadvantaged groups and minorities in the context of climate justice. Using Cutter’s hazards-of-place model, variables indicative of social vulnerability and biophysical vulnerability are statistically tested for their associations. Biophysical vulnerability is conceptualized utilizing a urban heat risk index calculated from summer 2010 LANDSAT imagery to measure land surface temperature , structural density through the normalized difference built-up index, and vegetation abundance …

Reappropriating Public Space In Nanchang, China: A Study Of Informal Street Vendors, Bryan C. Winter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since China's shift to market socialism, many marginalized by this process work as informal street vendors where they reappropriate public space in order to survive―a practice at odds with urban authorities' modernizing agenda. In relation to these competing logics concerning public space's use value versus its exchange value, this dissertation examines the practices, experiences, and agency of informal street vendors working in Sanjingwuwei, an ordinary, yet rapidly gentrifying, neighborhood of Nanchang, capital and largest city of southeastern China's Jiangxi Province. After describing the growth of an informal economy in modern China and providing a history of street vending, I describe …

Identifying Nodes Of Transmission In Disease Diffusion Through Social Media, David Sebastian Lamb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The spread of infectious diseases can be described in terms of three interrelated components: interaction, movement, and scale. Transmission between individuals requires some form of interaction, which is dependent on the pathogen, to occur. Diseases spread through the movement of their hosts; they spread across many spatial scales from local neighborhoods to countries, or temporal scales from days to years, or periodic intervals. Prior research into the spread of disease have examined diffusion processes retrospectively at regional or country levels, or developed differential equation or simulation models of the dynamics of disease transmission. While some of the more recent models …

Potential Impacts Of Accelerated Sea-Level Rise And Hurricane-Induced Storm Surge In Western Pasco County, Florida, Kittiya Harris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sea levels have risen approximately 20 cm since the beginning of the 20th century and more than 3 cm in the past 20 years, suggesting that global sea level rise is accelerating. As sea levels continue to rise and storms become more intense, coastal property and populations become more susceptible to damage. Florida is especially vulnerable to hurricane-induced storm surge (HSS) and the onset of accelerated sea-level rise (ASLR) due to its extensive coastline and high population density along the coast. The main purpose of this research is to assess the potential economic impacts of ASLR and HSS for two …

Characterizing Benthic Habitats Using Multibeam Sonar And Towed Underwater Video In Two Marine Protected Areas On The West Florida Shelf, Usa, Jennifer L. Brizzolara

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates a way to characterize the geology and biology of the seafloor in two Marine Protected Areas on the West Florida Shelf. Characterization of benthic habitats needs to include sufficient detail to represent the complex and heterogeneous bottom types. Characterizations can be interpreted from multiple data sets and displayed as benthic habitat maps. Multibeam sonar bathymetry and backscatter provide full spatial data coverage, but interpretation of such data requires some form of ground truth (to characterize the habitat). Imagery from towed underwater video provides continuous transects of seafloor data, which provide a more efficient method than data from …

Longitudinal Awareness: A Study Of Vulnerability To Flooding In Polk County, Iowa, Kerri A. Dickey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Flooding has become a problem of national proportion and many scholars have started to take note of the human impacts in this area. This study will focus on the social vulnerability framework in tandem with the environmental justice theoretical frameworks being applied to Polk County Iowa so that information can be added to the body of works within a Midwestern U.S. context. This research will contribute to the current geographical knowledge in natural hazards, environmental justice, and vulnerability to flood hazards. Taking into consideration the scarcity of county or sub-county studies in the Midwest U.S. measuring spatial tendencies in hazards …

Multi-Scale Approaches For Evaluating The Success Of Habitat Restoration In Tampa Bay, Florida, Stephanie Thompson Powers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to further the understanding of ecological restoration success in the Tampa Bay, Florida, region. Although over four hundred restoration projects have been completed in the bay area, knowledge of their success has been hindered by the lack of assessment and transfer of information concerning project outcomes. Without comprehensive project assessment, local science will be limited in its ability to inform practice because we lack the advantage of past knowledge.

Using a multi-scaled approach, a diverse set of restoration projects are evaluated, providing information on how the projects are contributing to defined targets established by the Tampa Bay …

Forging Blockchains: Spatial Production And Political Economy Of Decentralized Cryptocurrency Code/Spaces, Joe Blankenship

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are increasingly used, implemented and adapted for numerous purposes; people and businesses are integrating these technologies into their practices and strategies, creating new political economies and spaces in and of everyday life. This thesis seeks to develop a foundation of geographic theory for the study of spatial production within and surrounding blockchain technologies focusing on acute studies of Bitcoin as cryptocurrency, Ethereum as digital marketplace, and their conditions of possibility as decentralized autonomous organizations. Utilizing concepts from Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space, this thesis situates blockchain technologies within the wider discussion about the political economy of …

How Lessons From A Past Disaster Can Influence Resilience And Climate Adaptation In Broward County, Florida, Hannah Rose Torres

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the face of future uncertainties, many places are struggling with decisions about how to prepare for and adapt to climate change. The purpose of this research is to shed light on the concept of resilience, and uncover lessons for resilience-building exposed by a past disaster, Hurricane Wilma.

The dissertation begins with an introduction (Chapter 1) detailing the research problem, key terms and overall research design. The study was conducted in three distinct phases. The first phase (Chapter 2), explored the concept of resilience to understand how it was defined in three South Florida communities. Content analyses of city and …