Geography Commons^™

Translating Ecocriticism: Dialoguing With Michel Serres, Stephanie Posthumus

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Since its humble beginnings in the Western United States, ecocriticism has grown under the banner of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment into an organization of over 1000 members with international affiliates in Australia-New Zealand, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Koria and the UK. At first sight, it would seem that ecocriticism has achieved global status. But as Ursula Heise remarks in her assessment of ecocriticism, this process of globalisation has been mainly a process of becoming known internationally. In truth, ecocriticism has remained strongly rooted in Anglophone literary studies even as it has been exported to …

Thinking Like A God: Nature Imagery In Advertising, Catherine M. Roach

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This essay examines selected recent imagery from American advertising that evinces a "negative" sense of nature as hostile other - often portrayed as a persecuting and conquered female - and of humans as its/her master. Examples to be examined of nature as this "Bad Mother" include TV commercials, print advertisements, and a comic strip. I argue that these images spring from a fundamental ambivalence toward nature and that they assuage the anxiety aroused by such ambivalence through a fantasy that casts humans as gods. More specifically, I use the medieval Christian scholastic concept of 'aseity' to suggest that these media …

Can Nature's Language Be Written, Spoken, And Heard? Mahasweta Devi's "Pterodactyl" And Marlene Nourbese Philip's Looking For Livingstone, Lori Martindale

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

How do traditional western epistemologies affect natures' subjectivity? This essay deconstructs the status of nature as silent Other. I argue Mahasweta Devi's The Pterodactyl and Marlene Nourbese Philip's epic Looking for Dr. Livingstone translate nature, or the radical Other, as subject. Scientific, xenophobic, and imperial behaviors have affected the status of natures' subjectivity in the naming, mapping, and exploitation of land, during colonial and commodity enterprise. As a result, nature’s language has become increasingly radical and is one to be translated for an awareness and avoidance of imposition; nature is a language yet to be understood.

Bird Watching: Global-Natural Worlds And The Popular Reception Of Winged Migration, Lisa Uddin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper examines the contemporary visual cultures of economic globalization and natural history by considering the popular French wildlife film, Winged Migration (dir. Perrin 2001). Through the small-scale of a single film's reception, the paper offers a critique of the Euro-American tendency to conceptualize the global world and the natural world in totalizing and mutually constitutive terms. How have images of a timeless and universal global world become a way of imagining the natural world, and vice versa? How has Winged Migration's circulation amongst an American popular audience reproduced, but also undermined, these joint constructions? Analyzing the film's central theme …

Nature In Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, Anand Silodia

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Half a century ago the novelist Ayn Rand [1], a Russian refugee who settled in America, gave us one of the most original and influential philosophies of individualism namely objectivism, which she advanced as 'a philosophy for living on earth.' First propounded through her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism has surpassed the test of time. In her objectivist philosophy, human-nature relationships are an important (indirect) concern although rarely discussed in an explicit manner in her humongous novels.

The World Is White And Slow And Infinitely Flat, Rob Baum

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Eco-feminism, cultural study and the environment coalesce in the form of poetic cultural commentary, originally fieldnotes. I draw exclusively from my years in the Alaskan Arctic among the Iñupiat Eskimo, who call themselves "the People of the Whale." The striking and severe natural environment, a landscape of endless ice, is central to the poetry, which richly portrays a vision of the Arctic absent from tourist travel guides, National Geographic and anthropological volumes. These magazines vend the Far North's beautiful austerity, including at times the physical beauty of its animal inhabitants, including humans, while disregarding human specificity and violence …

Geospatial Informational Security Risks And Concerns Of The U.S. Air Force Geobase Program, Scott A. Bryant

Theses and Dissertations

Technological advancements such as Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and the Internet have made it easier and affordable to share information, which enables complex and time sensitive decisions to be made with higher confidence. Further, advancements in information technology have dramatically increased the ability to store, manage, integrate, and correlate larger amounts of data to improve operational efficiency. However, the same technologies that enable increased productivity also provide increased capabilities to those wishing to do harm. Today’s military leaders are faced with the challenge of deciding how to make geospatial information collected on military installations and organizations available to authorized communities …

Internet Protocol Geolocation: Development Of A Delay-Based Hybrid Methodology For Locating The Geographic Location Of A Network Node, John M. Roehl

Theses and Dissertations

Internet Protocol Geolocation (IP Geolocation), the process of determining the approximate geographic location of an IP addressable node, has proven useful in a wide variety of commercial applications. Commercial applications of IP Geolocation include market research, redirection for performance enhancement, restricting content, and combating fraud. The potential for military applications include securing remote access via geographic authentication, intelligence collection, and cyber attack attribution. IP Geolocation methods can be divided into three basic categories based upon what information is used to determine the geographic location of the given IP address: 1) Information contained in databases, 2) information that is leaked during …

Large Seasonal Swings In Leaf Area Of Amazon Rainforests, Ranga B. Myneni, Wenze Yang, Ramakrishna R. Nemani, Alfredo R. Huete, Robert E. Dickinson, Yuri Knyazikhin, Kamel Didan, Rong Fu, Robinson I. Negron Juarez, Sasan S. Saatchi, Hirofumi Hashimoto, Kazuhito Ichii, Nikolay V. Shabanov, Bin Tan, Piyachat Ratana, Jeffrey L. Privette, Jeffrey T. Morisette, Eric F. Vermote, David P. Roy, Robert E. Wolfe, Mark A. Friedl, Steven W. Running, Petr Votava, Nazmi El-Saleous, Sadashiva Devadiga, Yin Su, Vincent V. Salomonson

GSCE Faculty Publications

Despite early speculation to the contrary, all tropical forests studied to date display seasonal variations in the presence of new leaves, flowers, and fruits. Past studies were focused on the timing of phenological events and their cues but not on the accompanying changes in leaf area that regulate vegetation–atmosphere exchanges of energy, momentum, and mass. Here we report, from analysis of 5 years of recent satellite data, seasonal swings in green leaf area of ~25% in a majority of the Amazon rainforests. This seasonal cycle is timed to the seasonality of solar radiation in a manner that is suggestive of …

Africa And The Global Carbon Cycle, Christopher A. Williams, Niall P. Hanan, Jason C. Neff, Robert J. Scholes, Joseph A. Berry, A. Scott Denning, David F. Baker

Geography

The African continent has a large and growing role in the global carbon cycle, with potentially important climate change implications. However, the sparse observation network in and around the African continent means that Africa is one of the weakest links in our understanding of the global carbon cycle. Here, we combine data from regional and global inventories as well as forward and inverse model analyses to appraise what is known about Africa's continental-scale carbon dynamics. With low fossil emissions and productivity that largely compensates respiration, land conversion is Africa's primary net carbon release, much of it through burning of forests. …

Hydrologic Impacts Of Climate Change In The Upper Clackamas River Basin, Oregon, Usa, David Graves, Heejun Chang

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Pacific Northwest of the USA is dependent on seasonal snowmelt for water resources that support its economy and aquatic ecosystems. Increased temperatures resulting from higher concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases may cause disruptions to these resources because of reductions in the annual snowpack and the earlier occurrence of seasonal snowmelt. We applied a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based distributed hydrologic model at a monthly scale to assess the effects of future climate change on runoff from the Upper Clackamas River Basin (UCB; located near Portland, Oregon, USA). Once validated using historic flow data, the model was run for 2 future …

Marketing The Chinese Dream Home: Gated Communities And Representations Of The Good Life In (Post-)Socialist Shanghai, Choon-Piew Pow, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper examines the advertising themes and rhetoric that have been assembled in the place-marketing of Shanghai's newly built gated communities. We demonstrate how place-marketing strategies, in this case selling the Chinese dream home, draws upon specific landscape meanings and values that are embedded in Chinese/ Shanghainese history, even as symbolic and cultural capital from the contemporary scene also exert their influences. Collectively, these representations of the good life both reflect and reinforce the exclusivist housing aspirations and privatist visions of middle-class residents of gated communities in contemporary Shanghai. While advertisements do not always achieve the outcomes that property developers …

Review Of Disputed Territories: Land, Culture And Identity In Settler Societies, Edited By D. Trigger And G. Griffiths, Christina E. Dando

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

The phrase “disputed territories” can represent a great many things, from actual land to the metaphor of academic turf. The landscapes of Australasia and southern Africa have long been, and continue to be, disputed territories. This volume developed out of a year-long program of interdisciplinary seminars entitled “Land, Place, Culture, Identity” at the University of Western Australia, which explored the intersection of history, representation, and identity in Australasia and southern Africa. The volume’s ten essays explore the “imaginative possession” of the land (p. 3), and cover a range of topics in both historical and contemporary settings. The contributions roam widely, …

Tackling Biocomplexity With Meta-Models For Species Risk Assessment, Philip J. Nyhus, Robert C. Lacy, Francis R. Westley, Philip S. Miller, Harrie Harrie Vredenburg, Paul C. Paquet, John Pollak

Faculty Scholarship

We describe results of a multi-year effort to strengthen consideration of the human dimension into endangered species risk assessments and to strengthen research capacity to understand biodiversity risk assessment in the context of coupled human-natural systems. A core group of social and biological scientists have worked with a network of more than 50 individuals from four countries to develop a conceptual framework illustrating how human-mediated processes influence biological systems and to develop tools to gather, translate, and incorporate these data into existing simulation models. A central theme of our research focused on (1) the difficulties often encountered in identifying and …

Merging Gps Data With High Spatial Resolution Multispectral Imagery: An Urban Recreation Case Study, Daniel Unger, David Kulhavy, Jerome E. Benson Ii

Faculty Publications

In 1992 a disc golf course was created by Alpha Phi Omega, Nu Sigma Chapter of Stephen F. Austin State University within Pecan Park in the c ity of Nacogdoches, Texas. Using constructs from Landscape Ecology, in cluding structure, function and change within a land mosaic provided the basis for establishment of the course. The addition of the disc golf cour se modified the use of the park promoting cultural cohesion among the disc golf enthusiasts. To aid the recreational enjoyment of golf participants, vector m aps of each fairway were created when the disc course was developed and loca …

A Historical Geography Of Lake Kampeska In The City Of Watertown, South Dakota, Joanita M. Kant

Geography Faculty Publications

Many alterations in the hydrology of Lake Kampeska began with the arrival of masses of Anglo settlers in the 1870s. Why the lake has been altered is a complex issue linked to various natural physical processes which would have occurred even without the introduction of those settlers into the ecosystem. Those processes include weather, climate, sedimentation rates, lakebank erosion, chemical and mineral transport from soils, and flooding, among others. Besides those natural physical processes, mankind’s cultural processes have been at work. Disturbances in the lake’s hydrology are linked to land use changes associated with cultural values, such as the introduction …

Atmospheric Smog Modeling, Using Eos Satellite Aster Image Sensor, With Feature Extraction For Pattern Recognition Techniques And Its Correlation With In-Situ Ground Sensor Data, Parthasarathi Roy

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Atmospheric pollution was previously considered as a 'Brown Cloud’ phenomenon restricted to industrialized urban regions. Studies in field stations and satellite observations made since the last decade revealed that it now spans continents and ocean basins world wide. The objective of this research investigation is to assess atmospheric pollutants in the troposphere and their spectral characteristic signatures by using highspectral and spatial resolution Earth Observation System (EOS) satellite imaging sensor Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) data and to find correlations with ground sensor observations. Ground sensor data are imported into a geodatabase for spatial reference. Raw ASTER …

The Effects Of Access To Childcare On The Labor Force Participation Of Women In The Huntington-Ashland Metropolitan Statistical Area And West Virginia, Kristi Stephens

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This paper examines the connection between access to childcare and labor force participation of women in the Huntington-Ashland MSA and in West Virginia by evaluating the connection between the number of daycare slots available and several socio-economic factors. Based on data gathered from daycare resource groups and the U.S. Census Bureau, access to childcare is connected with the ability of women with children to participate in the labor force. This effect is seen more strongly in rural West Virginia than the more urbanized Huntington- Ashland MSA and the number of childcare slots available may be influenced by, or is influencing, …

Estimation Of The Effects Of Vegetation On Local Climate Using Gis And Remote Sensing Data, Won Hoi Hwang

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

As one of the effective methods to control urban temperatures, the effects of trees and other vegetation have come into focus. Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing data, Digital Orthophoto Quarter-Quadrangle (DOQQ) and Landsat Thematic Mapper (Landsat TM), have been applied in this study to analyze the UHI. The effect of road-side trees on local micro-climate was examined with in-situ temperature measurement and simulated shade. Regression analyses revealed significant negative slopes for all time periods. This trend continued throughout the entire night until sunrise the next morning. The relationship between thermal patterns and vegetation distributions was investigated using the …

Spatial And Temporal Expression Of Vegetation And Atmospheric Variability From Stable Carbon And Nitrogen Isotope Analysis Of Bat Guano In The Southern United States, Christopher M. Wurster, Donald A. Mcfarlane, Michael I. Bird

WM Keck Science Faculty Papers

Stable isotopes of faeces contain information related to the animals feeding ecology. The use of stable isotope values from subfossil faeces as a palaeoenvironmental indicator depends on how faithfully the animal records their local environment. Here we present insectivorous bat guano δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values from a precipitation gradient across the southern United States and northern Mexico to compare with local vegetation and climate. We find δ¹³C values to be an excellent predictor of expected C₄/CAM vegetation, indicating that the bats are non-selective in their diet. Moreover, we find bat guano δ …

Webs Of Power: Multiple Ownership In Tourism Destinations, Ziene Mottiar, Hazel Tucker

Articles

It has been widely noted in the tourism small business literature that collaboration between groups of businesses operating within clusters contributes both to business development and the success of destinations and regions. This paper aims to contribute to the research on tourism destination networks by focusing on multiple ownership, or portfolio entrepreneurship, when more than one small or micro business within a specific destination are owned by the same entrepreneur. Courtown, in Ireland and Göreme in Turkey are presented as two case studies in which the existence of multiple owners was identified. The implications of multiple ownership on tourism operation …

Free-Roaming Dogs In Developing Countries: The Benefits Of Capture, Neuter, And Return Programs, Jennifer Jackman, Andrew N. Rowan

State of the Animals 2007

This chapter provides an overview of animal welfare and public health problems associated with free-roaming dog populations and strategies to resolve these problems. Placing CNR programs in the context of earlier dog and rabies control methods, the chapter explores CNR’s potential to overcome some of the shortcomings of earlier approaches and to improve animal welfare, reduce dog population growth, and prevent the spread of rabies and other canine-transmitted diseases. Constraints and current debates on current implementation of CNR programs are also examined.

Wild Neighbors : The Humane Approach To Living With Wildlife, John Hadidian

Wild Neighbors provides practical, humane, and effective advice on how to share living space with 35 of the most common species, from alligators to woodpeckers, found in the lower 48 states. Advice focuses on how to: properly and accurately define a wildlife problem; determine what type of animal is causing it; identify the damage; effectively take action for a humane and permanent solution; and proactively avoid future conflicts. This long-awaited, new and expanded edition provides invaluable information to any homeowner who seeks to live in harmony with the wildlife in his backyard and in his community.

Espacios, Poblamiento Y Conflicto En El Noreste Mexicano Y Texas [People, Places And Conflicts In Northeastern Mexico And Texas], Ruth Arboleyda, John B. Hawthorne, Gerardo Lara Cisneros, Gustavo A. Ramirez Castilla

Digital Books

1. Areas de actividad y contextos en el Noreste Mexicano: caracterización de sitios de recolectores - cazadores mediante el uso de la Tipología Espacial / Gustavo A. Ramirez Castilla -- 2. Ubicación espacial de sitios arqueológicos en el municipio de Dr. Gonzalez Nuevo Leon / Efrain Flores Lopez -- 3. Sedentarismo en las adaptaciones de los cazadores y recolectores del bajo Rio Bravo / Martin Salinas -- 4. Permanencia de grupos cazadores - recolectores en respuesta a condiciones topográficas y naturales / Iran Roxana Dominguez Rodriguez -- 5. Un campamento-taller a la orilla del río Salado / Victor Hugo Valdovinos …

Notable Environmental Features In Some Historical Aerial Photographs From Ashley County, Arkansas, Don C. Bragg, Robert C. Weir Jr.

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

A collection of 1939 aerial photographs from Ashley County, Arkansas was analyzed for its environmental information. Taken by the US Department of Defense (USDOD), these images show a number of features now either obscured or completely eliminated over the passage of time. One notable feature is the widespread coverage of "sand blows" in the eastern quarter of the county, suggesting a major soil liquefaction field consistent with strong seismic activity (magnitude 6.0 on the Richter Scale). Also seen in these photographs are the vestiges of the large prairies once found on the Pleistocene terraces of southern and eastern Arkansas. The …

No. 2: The Prospects For Migration Data Harmonization In The Sadc, Vincent Williams, Tiffany Tsang

Southern African Migration Programme

No abstract provided.

No. 3: A Migration Audit Of Poverty Reduction Strategies In Southern Africa, Benjamin Roberts

Southern African Migration Programme

Southern Africa is characterized by long-established patterns of intra-regional migration, with countries sending and receiving labour migrants especially for employment in mines and on commercial farms and plantations since the late nineteenth century. However, these pat­terns and processes have undergone notable change in recent decades, the outcome being a progressive intensification of mobility in the region. The underlying determinants of this trend include increased and new opportunities for internal and cross-border movement follow­ing the end of apartheid, the region’s increasing engagement with the global economy, persistently high and worsening levels of poverty and unemployment, the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, …

Gender And Remittances: Creating Gender-Responsive Local Development: The Case Of Lesotho, Jonathan Crush, Belinda Dodson, John Gay, Clement Leduka

Southern African Migration Programme

The number of international migrants passed 200 million in 2008, more than double the figure in 1965. As the number of migrants continues to grow, the character of international migration has been transformed. South-South migration, as it is now commonly referred to, is acquiring ever-greater significance in contemporary migration configurations. South-South movements of international migrants are highly gendered. In particular, the feminization of international migration has meant that the absolute numbers and proportion of women migrants is increasingly rapidly. More and more women are also migrating for work in other countries in their own right. The gender dynamics behind this …

Morphology, Reproduction And Mortality Of Equus Hemionus Hemionus In Mongolia, Annegret Stubbe, Michael Stubbe, Nyamsuren Batsaikhan

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

There are collected materials on morphology, reproduction rate, and mortality of Dschiggetajs Equus h. hemionus between 2001 and 2006 in the South Gobi of Mongolia. It were found 794 skeletons of wild asses, 95% of these were pouched, ⅔ of them in winter coat. Pouching was also located in the protected areas of this region. The main living resources of Equus hemionus are registered in the South eastern Gobi. For the first time statistical data on morphology measurements of body length, tail and tuft, ear length, and hoofs are given. There are no significant differences between the sexes. The reproduction …

Up-Date On The Behaviour And Status Of The Critically Endangered Onager, Equus Hemionus Onager, From Iran, Laurent Tatin, Bijan F. Darreh-Shoori, Christophe Tourenq, David Tatin, Bijan Azmayesh

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

The onager, Equus hemionus onager, an Asiatic wild ass endemic to Iran, is categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Its biology and conservation requirements are poorly documented. We report some observations made in 1997 and 2000 on the behavior and ecology of the two remaining populations, located in the Touran Protected Area and the Bahram-e-Goor Reserve. Recent population counts by the Department of Environment of Iran (471 in the Protected Area, and 96 in the Reserve) are markedly lower than the count of 600-770 made in the 1970s in the Touran Protected Area. We observed social …