Geography Commons^™

Sparse Coding For Hyperspectral Images Using Random Dictionary And Soft Thresholding, Ender Oguslu, Khan Iftekharuddin, Jiang Li, Mark Allen Neifeld (Ed.), Amit Ashok (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Many techniques have been recently developed for classification of hyperspectral images (HSI) including support vector machines (SVMs), neural networks and graph-based methods. To achieve good performances for the classification, a good feature representation of the HSI is essential. A great deal of feature extraction algorithms have been developed such as principal component analysis (PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA). Sparse coding has recently shown state-of-the-art performances in many applications including image classification. In this paper, we present a feature extraction method for HSI data motivated by a recently developed sparse coding based image representation technique. Sparse coding consists of a …

Singapore’S Chinatown: Nation Building And Heritage Tourism In A Multiracial City, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper focuses on the pivotal role played by the state in refashioning the Chinatown landscape as part of both nation-building and heritage tourism projects, and the ensuing cultural politics. After a brief history of the creation of Singapore’s Chinatown, the paper discusses, first, Chinatown’s place in Singapore’s post-independence nation-building project and, second, the reconfiguration of the Chinatown landscape as a tourism asset. The final section reflects on the changing politics of place as Chinatown gains legitimacy in state discourses on heritage, tourism and multiculturalism, as well as in the popular imagination as an ethnic precinct par excellence.

Mangroves, Mudbanks And Seawalls: Political Ecology Of Adaptation To Sea Level Rise In Suriname, Ravic Nijbroek

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to understand how global discourses of sea level rise (SLR) and mangrove ecology influence national climate change adaptation policy to reduce coastal vulnerability in Suriname. A majority of the Surinamese population lives along the low elevation coastal zone and is highly exposed to projected SLR. Failure by the international community to reach agreement on climate change mitigation means that vulnerable coastal communities must adapt. The Suriname coast is predominantly shaped by mudbanks and mangroves which together provide protection against coastal erosion and trap sediments resulting in coastal accretion. Knowledge claims of mangrove ecology and utility in SLR …

The Effect Of Mortgage Liberalization On Housing Patterns In Tampa Bay, Jason Richardson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to determine whether the process of mortgage finance liberalization, manifested in concurrent activities of securitization, deregulation, and neo-liberal policy, have resulted in changes to the tenure of residents in neighborhoods in Tampa Bay. It makes use of existing literature on gentrification and mortgage finance and compares those findings with three sample neighborhoods in and around the city of Tampa. To do so the thesis employs data collected from lenders pursuant to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, court records of sales and mortgages filed with the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Hillsborough County, and interviews with stakeholders …

Mapping And Assessing Urban Impervious Areas Using Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis: A Case Study In The City Of Tampa, Florida, Fenqing Weng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The advance in remote sensing technology helps people more easily assess urban growth. In this study, the utility of multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) is examined in a sub-pixel analysis of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery to map urban physical components in Tampa, FL. The three physical components of urban land cover (LC): impervious surface, vegetation and soil, were compared using the proposed MESMA with a traditional spectral mixture analysis (SMA). MESMA decomposes each pixel to address the heterogeneity of urban LC characteristic by allowing the number and types of endmembers to vary on a per pixel basis. This …

Walking In The Land Of Cars: Automobile-Pedestrian Accidents In Hillsborough County, Florida, Marc Aaron Poling

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Analyses of traffic accidents are often focused on the characteristics of the accident event and hence do not take into account the broader neighborhood contexts in which accidents are located. This thesis seeks to extend empirical analyses of accidents by understanding the link between accidents and their surroundings. The case study for this thesis is Hillsborough County, Florida, within which the city of Tampa is located. The Tampa Bay region ranks very high in terms of accident rates within U.S. metropolitan areas and is also characterized by transport policies which favor private automobiles over mass transit options, making it an …

Environmental Change And Place-Based Identities: Sponge Fishing In Tarpon Springs, Florida, Michael Suver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

As the environmental consequences of urbanization and climate change become apparent in coastal communities, it has become important to understand how residents of these communities experience and approach their changing environments. This becomes especially significant in places where nature-based livelihoods constitute a major part of the economy. This thesis focuses on the city of Tarpon Springs, located along the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, where sea sponge fishing is an important contributor to the local economy while also being central to place-based tourist and ethnic identities. It seeks to understand how environmental changes in the sea sponge economy will …

Assessment Of Climate Change Effect On Water Harvesting Structures In Rainfed Regions: Geospatial Data Mining Approach, Sreedhar Nallan, Leisa Armstrong

Research outputs 2012

Advances in the Information and Technologies (ICT) may assist researchers in the assessment of watershed development programmes by developing better visualization understanding of their impacts. GIS based research studies utilizing remote sensing images can facilitate in identifying the potential zones for watershed development and enable improved ground water resources. Effective watershed management is dependent on a number of factors such as demography, climate, soil, land use and topography and these are affected by changing climatic conditions. For example, changes in rainfall intensity and volume in rain fed areas can influence the effectiveness of the placement of watershed structures. Existing methods …

Impacts Of Urbanisation On The Native Avifauna Of Perth, Western Australia, Robert A. Davis, Cheryl Gole, J Dale Roberts

Research outputs 2013

Urban development either eliminates, or severely fragments, native vegetation, and therefore alters the distribution and abundance of species that depend on it for habitat. We assessed the impact of urban development on bird communities at 121 sites in and around Perth, Western Australia. Based on data from community surveys, at least 83 % of 65 landbirds were found to be dependent, in some way, on the presence of native vegetation. For three groups of species defined by specific patterns of habitat use (bushland birds), there were sufficient data to show that species occurrences declined as the landscape changed from variegated …

Space, History And Law: Rethinking Canadian Territorial Claims In The Arctic, Michael Graham

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The aim of this thesis is to assess the Canadian territorial claims in the Arctic in relation to the UNCLOS III, by linking this contemporary legal framework for managing change in the Arctic region with historical processes pertaining to the "use" of the Arctic space by the Canadian society. Canada has a long history of association with its Arctic territory and recent Russian claims over the rights to extract resources of the North Pole area have stirred new tensions around the region. The receding Arctic ice pack has opened up the possibility of the Northwest Passage becoming a viable trading …