Geography Commons^™

Introduction: Sex And The (Motor) City: Ecologies Of Middlesex, Kaitlin Blanchard, Catriona Sandilands

The Goose

This special cluster consists of twelve short essays, originally presented in two linked roundtables at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) conference in Detroit in June 2017, examining Jeffrey Eugenides' 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Middlesex. Through the novel, these papers explore the historical, intersectional, and ecological understandings of Detroit, exposing an exceptional—indeed, epic—range of social ecologies, concerned with everything from intersex and multispecies bio/geopolitics to transnational economies, to the aesthetics of architecture and decay. Focused on a very particular novel, written about a very particular city and experience of it, these papers bring to light and …

Embodied Ecologies And Metafictional Musings: The Limits Of Writing Intersex In Middlesex, Christopher Breu

The Goose

Breu critiques the limits of the intersex narrative of Middlesex and advocates for a non-reductive, materialist, and “muddled” approach to understanding sex and gender.

Uas-Based Remote Sensing For Weed Identification And Cover Crop Termination Determination, Shailaja Vemula

Student Theses and Dissertations

This project aimed at demonstrating the utility of using unmanned aerial system (UAS) based remote sensing to assess percentage weed coverage and cash crop vegetative coverage development corresponding to cover crop (cereal rye) termination at different growth stages. A UAS equipped with an RGB (visible bands) camera was used to acquire aerial imagery of cover crop integrated soybean plots. The specific objectives were: 1) to discriminate crop and weed vegetation based on (a) spectral information and (b) location relative to the crop rows; (2) to verify optimum timing for cover crop termination using vegetative cover development based on visible spectroscopy …

A Field Guide For Weathering: Embodied Tactics For Collectives Of Two Or More Humans, Jennifer Mae Hamilton, Astrida Neimanis

The Goose

In our inherited meteorological practices and frameworks, weather conditions are managed for us in a range of ways (for example, through architecture, technology, commodity culture, infrastructure, economic rationale). This field guide brings the weather back to the body. A traditional field guide provides tools for the individual sovereign human subject to observe and document nature “over there”. In contrast, through a range of different activities, our field guide not only invites investigation and cataloguing of the field that we also comprise, but also challenges what counts as a noteworthy observation regarding the weather and also climate.

Evolution Of Grain Size Distributions And Bed Mobility During Hydrographs In Gravel-Bed Braided Rivers, Sarah Peirce, Peter Ashmore, Pauline Leduc

Geography & Environment Publications

Evolution of bed material mobility and bedload grain size distributions under a range of discharges is rarely observed in braiding in gravel-bed rivers. Yet, the changing of bedload grain size distributions with discharge is expected to be different from laterally stable, threshold, channels on which most gravel bedload theory and observation are based. Here, simultaneous observations of flow, bedload transport rate, and morphological change were made in a physical model of a gravel-bed braided river to document the evolution of grain size distributions and bed mobility over three experimental event hydrographs. Bedload transport rate and grain size distributions were measured …

Assessing Ppgis Usability And Its Relationship To Spatial Data Production: A Case Study, Timothy Michael Hitchins

Dissertations and Theses

Modern Geoweb-enabled PPGIS methodologies incorporate interactive map applications as the main driver for public engagement and data collection. However, little research explores exactly how the public interact with these applications to produce spatial data, a fact that contributes to criticisms of final data quality. Usability evaluation offers a solution for developing better PPGIS data production systems by identifying problems in the application interface for which the public engage. Drawing on a case study example of a PPGIS application developed to collect socio-spatial data from members of a random public, this paper addresses usability in a three-stage approach. First, controlled experimentation …

Sea Squad, Liam Geary Baulch

The Goose

The Sea Squad is a band of cheerleaders against climate change. Taking action as a team in formation, they gather momentum, inviting all people to cheer with them, mimicking the infinitely expandable nature of the seas' molecular structure. The work was developed and performed as a bilingual project at Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, Canada, and has since been performed and exhibited internationally. The following poems are some of the chants that Sea Squad use to get a crowd cheering together against climate change.

Poems From The Arctic Circle, Diana Woodcock

The Goose

Poetry by Diana Woodcock.

Four Poems, Tanis Macdonald

The Goose

Poetry by Tanis MacDonald.

From Social Marketing To Societal Perversion: History Of Hometown Tax In Japan, Yuichiro Hidaka, Kosuke Mizukoshi

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This paper considers social marketing from a critical perspective. The paper traces the history of the donation system named ‘hometown tax’ that the Japanese government introduced to promote local revitalization of relatively marginal communities. Owing to the lavish reciprocal gifts to “donors” by the administrators of these communities, the system resulted in a quasi-market that allowed donors to avoid paying taxes and to receive special benefits. Our analysis reveals the divergence of the intents and effects of this social marketing intervention. The findings indicate that during social marketing attempts to carry out effective and well-intentioned interventions, which social marketing research …

Obesity And Place: Chronic Disease In The 500 Largest U.S. Cities, Kevin Fitzpatrick, Xuan Shi, Don Edward Willis, Jill Niemeier

Obesity

Objectives. Extant research clearly points to a correlation between place and health, specifically as it pertains to chronic diseases like obesity. The present study examines this relationship among a diverse set of compositional place indicators and obesity rates across census tracts in the 500 largest cities in the United States.

Methods. Using data compiled from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 500 Cities project and the Census’ American Community Survey, the analyses examined aggregate relationships between sociodemographic, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics of census tracts and age adjusted obesity prevalence rates in over 27,000 census tracts located in the 500 largest cities …

Hacking Code/Space: Confounding The Code Of Global Capitalism, Matthew Zook, Mark Graham

Geography Faculty Publications

Information-technologies are essential for global capitalism to function at speed across scale, space and complexity. The importance of software and algorithms in the governance of these systems is reflected in the attention of scholars to the ways digital code and materiality (re)combine to create hybrid digital/material spaces of economic activity, movement and everyday life. This paper extends this work in two key ways: first by emphasising the relational aspect of these code/spaces, and second by showing how the digital algorithms of code/spaces are hackable rather than hegemonic. Using the case study of frequent flyer programmes we demonstrate how networked knowledge-sharing …

Corporate Urbanization: Between The Future And Survival In Lebanon, Deen S. Sharp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you look today at the skyline of downtowns throughout the Middle East and beyond, the joint-stock corporation has transformed the urban landscape. The corporation makes itself present through the proliferation of its urban mega-projects, including skyscrapers, downtown developments and gated communities; retail malls and artificial islands; airports and ports; and highways. Built into these corporate urban structures are edifices of politics, ideology and certain forms of socio-spatial and temporal organization. The corporation, however, has largely escaped critical scholarly analysis in Geography and/or Urban and Middle East Studies. In this thesis, I argue that the corporation is far more than …

We Refugees, Again, Aaron Linas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dramatic shifts in climate have generated a new form of global displacement. These ‘climate migrants’ challenge the notion of state sovereignty by introducing a new paradigm for global responsibility. I seek to address this emerging demand of sovereignty by outlining the normative mechanisms of state institutions when encountering displaced persons. The extreme cases of disappearing island nations creates stateless population incompatible with standard liberal values of humanitarianism and border security. My claim is that current normative institutions and principles of assistance to migrating people are insufficient to manage the international crisis of climate change. To be able to aid migrants …

From Prison To Homeless Shelter: Camp Laguardia And The Political Economy Of An Urban Infrastructure, Christian D. Siener

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At this time of increasing housing insecurity, recent reforms in homeless shelter policy have attracted the attention of scholars and activists. This research sheds light on these changes by placing them in historical and political-geographic perspective, focusing on the role of homeless shelters in stabilizing social displacement by destabilizing solidarity. It demonstrates historical continuity between prisons and homeless shelters in New York City through a case study of conditions surrounding the transition of Camp LaGuardia, a prison that slowly transformed into the city’s largest, and longest lasting, homeless shelter. The case study is an empirical demonstration of some of the …

Smart Earth: A Meta-Review And Implications For Environmental Governance, Karen Bakker, Max Ritts

Geography

Environmental governance has the potential be significantly transformed by Smart Earth technologies, which deploy enhanced environmental monitoring via combinations of information and communication technologies (ICT), conventional monitoring technologies (e.g. remote sensing), and Internet of Things (IoT) applications (e.g. Environmental Sensor Networks (ESNs)). This paper presents a systematic meta-review of Smart Earth scholarship, focusing our analysis on the potential implications and pitfalls of Smart Earth technologies for environmental governance. We present a meta-review of academic research on Smart Earth, covering 3187 across the full range of academic disciplines from 1997 to 2017, ranging from ecological informatics to the digital humanities. We …

Malaya's Greatest Menace? Slow-Onset Disaster And The Muddy Politics Of British Malaya, C. 1900–50, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In 1948, a chilling statement from British Malaya’s Director of Agriculture, F. Burnett, made headline news. According to Burnett, unchecked soil erosion across hillside Malaya would soon render the country’s precious agricultural land infertile. Erosion had worsened considerably after the 1880s due to widespread, indiscriminate agricultural and industrial clearing. By the 1920s, it had become a sizeable socioeconomic and environmental issue, thought also to contribute to the scale and intensity of flooding and the likelihood of dangerous landslips. The British Government raised a series of empire-wide inquiries across the first half of the twentieth century, tied to an emerging global …

Disasters Fast And Slow: The Temporality Of Hazards In Environmental History, Fiona Williamson, Chris Courtney

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Popular representations of disasters tend to focus upon dramatic moments of chaos. They envision panicked communities desperately scrambling for safety as earthquakes reduce cities to rubble or lava turns villages to ashes. Yet disasters actually unfold on numerous temporal scales. Media reports tend to reduce disasters to discrete events, initiated on the shallow causal timescale of a meteorological fluctuation or seismic disruption. Social scientists, by contrast, have often sought to emphasise the processual nature of disasters—embedding causality in the deeper timescale of a community, in which risk and vulnerability build over months or years.2 Environmental historians elongate causality even further, …

Exploring Perceptions Of Creativity And Walkability In Omaha, Ne, Bradley Bereitschaft

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

It has been suggested that vibrant, walkable urban spaces may contribute to enhanced creativity and innovation by facilitating social interaction and physical activity, and serving as a source of inspiration. Using a survey and participant mapping exercise, this paper examines the potential spatial association between walkability and creativity in Omaha, Nebraska. Randomly selected participants were mailed a survey and map, requesting that they identify either three walkable or three creative locations within the Omaha area. The spatial correlation between the two variables was assessed in part using a newly developed spatial point pattern test. In addition to using perceptions of …

Examining The Spatial Characteristics Of Pluvial Flooding Through Citizen Science In Portland, Oregon, Katelyn Rachel Michelson

Dissertations and Theses

Pluvial flooding is caused by rainfall events that overwhelm drainage systems and do not allow excess water to be absorbed by soils or water infrastructure. This type of flooding occurs frequently in urban systems and leads to public inconveniences and infrastructure deterioration, which could cost more than fluvial flooding over time. Increased rainfall intensity, which is projected to increase with climate change, could result in increased pluvial flooding. This study aims to examine the vulnerability of pluvial flooding in Portland, OR (2010-2017) by incorporating an interdisciplinary framework that examines the physical and socioeconomic vulnerability of flooding through citizen-reported flooding data. …

Opencrimemapping.Org: An Online Tool For Visualizing Crime, Michael Crowder, Lauren Darr, Gerardo Garza, Brent Allen

SMU Data Science Review

In this paper we present a method for creating geographic visualizations of criminal incidents using open data and open-source software. The motivation for this method is to provide law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and interested citizens an affordable and relatively easy way to start analyzing geospatial data. The National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a national standard for LEA incident reporting going into effect for all 18,000 U.S. LEAs in 2021. This project uses the Dallas Police Department's publicly available, NIBRS-style, incident data to develop a geovisual analysis tool called opencrimemapping.org.

Rural Sense: Value, Heritage, And Sensory Landscapes: Developing A Design-Oriented Approach To Mapping For Healthier Landscapes, Judith Van Der Elst, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lily Díaz-Kommonen

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Landscape design needs a novel value system centred on human experience of the landscape rather than simply on economic value. Design-oriented research allows us to shift the focus from mechanistic paradigms towards new sensemaking approaches that value both the sensual and the cognitive in human experience. To move in this direction, we investigate cultural and natural aspects of sensory experience in rural landscapes, arguing that: (1) rural (non-urban) regions offer diverse sensory experiences for optimising human health; and (2) spatial interconnectedness between rural and urban areas means that healthy rural regions are critical for urban development. Our key argument is …

Survey And Insights Into Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Detection And Documentation Of Clandestine Graves And Human Remains, Bryce Murray, Derek T. Anderson, Daniel J. Wescott, Robert Moorhead, Melissa F. Anderson

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Numerous biological and archaeological studies have demonstrated the legitimacy of remote sensing in anthropology. Herein, focus is placed on detecting and documenting terrestrial clandestine graves and surface remains (CGSR) of humans using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sensors and automatic processing algorithms. CGSR is a complex decision making under uncertainty problem that requires the identification and intelligent reasoning about direct evidence of human remains and their environmental fingerprints. As such, it is as much an engineering and geospatial problem as it is an anthropology problem. This article is a cross- disciplinary effort to survey existing work across disciplines and to provide …

Environments Past: Nostalgia In Environmental Policy And Governance, Jordan P. Howell, Jennifer L. Kitson, David Clowney

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

A variety of factors shape environmental policy & governance (EPG) processes, from perceptions of physical ecology and profit motives to social justice and landscape aesthetics concerns. Many scholars have examined the role of values in EPG, and demonstrated that attempts to incorporate (especially) nonmarket values into EPG are loaded with both practical and conceptual challenges. Nevertheless, it is clear that nonmarket values of all types play a crucial role in shaping EPG outcomes. In this paper, we explore the role of nostalgia as a factor in EPG. We examine literatures on environmental values, governance, and affect in light of their …

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 …

Pilot Shortage: Sustainability Perspective, Adem Okal, Suzanne Kearns

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

Air transport is recently going through an exponential economic growth (ICAO, 2016). Similarly, industry forecast reports predict an upward trend for the next 20 years (Boeing, 2015). While these forecasts offer many opportunities, there are concerns as to whether or not this growth is sustainable. Defined as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”, sustainable development (SD), also adopted by United Nations (UN), brings more comprehensive approach to the subject (WCED, 1987, p. 43). The SD envisions a “balanced strategy” among economic (profit), social (people) and environmental (planet) domains, also …

Assessing Spatiotemporal Stream Temperature Trends And Drivers Through Integrated Longitudinal Thermal Profiling And Stationary Data Logger Methodology On The Upper Chehalis River, Wa, Whitney Vonada

Dissertations and Theses

This study encompasses 25 kilometers of the Chehalis River in Washington, USA that currently has sections under a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) plan for stream temperature impairments that exceed 18°C, a regulatory standard set at the time of the listing to protect salmonid spawning, rearing, and migration. Using information integrated from stationary data loggers (n=22) that collected stream temperature information from August 4-September 10, 2017, and longitudinal thermal profiling performed on July 29-30, August 4-5, and September 9-10, 2017, this study aimed to quantify the spatial distribution of stream temperature, evaluate relative consistencies of the riverine thermal regime over …

Yardwork: A Biography Of An Urban Place By Daniel Coleman, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Daniel Coleman's Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place.

Translating Global Nature: Territoriality, Environmental Discourses, And Ecocultural Identities, José R. Castro-Sotomayor

Communication ETDs

In this study, I explore environmental discourses circulating among Indigenous transboundary organizations working on environmental initiatives at the border between Ecuador and Colombia. I focus on three global environmental discourses –sustainability, development, and climate change– as they are at the core of the global environmental governance vernacular. La Gran Familia Awá Binacional (GFAB), one of the few transboundary Indigenous organizations working along the binational border, utilizes these global concepts to frame their environmental initiatives and projects. I use a critical and interpretive qualitative approach to investigate, deconstruct, and rearticulate global environmental discourses circulating among and translated by two of the …

The Catalyst Effect Of Historic Preservation: A Spatial Analysis Of The Impact Of Historic District Designation On Housing Renovations In New York City, Ali R. Mostafa

Theses and Dissertations

The constraints on property use along with the economic merits of historic districts are critical points in the debate over preservation policies. Improving the existing housing stock is a substantial economic activity and a significant part of the nation’s overall construction industry. The purpose of this study is to present an empirical analysis of the relationship between historic district designation and renovation decisions. The results of the analysis found that historic preservation does not inhibit the renovation activity of single-family homeowners. However, contrary to the claims made by proponents, it does not give a powerful incentive for owners in undesignated …