Geography Commons^™

A Playful Life Cycle Assessment Of The Environmental Impact Of Children's Toys, Madeline R. Robertson, Christie Klimas

DePaul Discoveries

Toys aid in children’s progression through developmental stages, yet toy production has an environmental impact. This study is the first comparative life cycle assessment of three children’s toys. A life cycle assessment quantifies the impact of an item in comparable impact categories (i.e. global warming potential in kg CO2 equivalents). In this study, we use open LCA to compare toy impact from production to use. The results indicate that the plastic polybutylene carried the highest impact in terms of global warming potential for our predominantly plastic toy. The addition of a battery to the plush dog increased the toy’s eutrophication …

Politics In The San Clemente Dam Removal, Aylan Matthew Lee

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the role of politics in the removal of the 106-foot tall San Clemente Dam. The removal project and negotiations provide a case study of the contemporary phenomenon of dam removal. My analysis joins a growing body of social science literature on the social, political, and human dimensions of removal. The San Clemente Dam, which impounded the Carmel River near Monterey, California, was removed in 2015, the largest such project completed in California. Drawing on political ecology and science and technology studies, and using a mixed qualitative approach, I assess both the role of politics in shaping the …

Forest Structure, Composition, And Regeneration After High-Severity And Rapidly Repeated Wildfires In The Central Cascade Range, Sebastian Upton Busby

Dissertations and Theses

Within mid-to-high elevation conifer forests in the Cascade Range, wildfire extent, severity, and frequency are expected to rise due to increasingly drier forest fuels under climate change. Considering dominant species composition, existing forests may be poorly adapted to absorb stress and recover following altered wildfire patterns. We tested the hypothesis that increased fire activity may disrupt the recovery of upper-montane and subalpine forest types by quantifying post-fire forest structure and conifer regeneration after spatially large, severe, and rapidly repeated wildfires in the Central Cascade Range. A stratified random sampling design was used to select field plots (n=122) and drivers of …

Wyoming Wildlife: A Natural History, Paul Johnsgard, Thomas D. Mangelsen

Zea E-Books Collection

This book surveys Wyoming’s mammal, bird, reptile, and amphibian faunas. In addition to introducing the state’s geography, geology, climate, and major ecosystems, it provides 65 biological profiles of 72 mammal species, 195 profiles of 196 birds, 9 profiles of 12 reptiles, and 6 profiles of 9 amphibians. There are also species lists of Wyoming’s 117 mammals, 445 birds, 22 reptiles, and 12 amphibians. Also included are descriptions of nearly 50 national and state properties, including parks, forests, preserves, and other public-access natural areas in Wyoming. The book includes a text of more than 150,000 words, nearly 700 references, a glossary …

Hydrologic Trends And Spatial Relationships Of Stream Temperature And Discharge In Urbanizing Watersheds In The Portland Metropolitan Area Of The Pacific Northwest, Emma Lee Brenneman

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores various relationships of streamflow and stream temperature over the Portland Metropolitan area in two urbanizing watersheds. Four stream temperature and discharge metrics were derived from USGS stream gauges in the Tualatin River and Johnson Creek watersheds and were analyzed for monotonic trends. Additionally, this study explored the sensitivity of stream temperature to air temperature and streamflow to assess where locations throughout the watershed may be more sensitive to these changes. Relationships among stream temperature, air temperature, and streamflow were assessed using linear and nonlinear bivariate regression for yearly values and summer months. Additionally, this study seeks to …

Campus As A Living Lab: Community Centered Environmental Service Learning, Jennifer Braswell Alford

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

During the Fall Quarter of 2018, California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB) students (GEOG 390) partnered with the Inland Empire Resources Conservation District (IERCD) to assists the CSUSB Housing and Residence Life program to develop educational programs aimed at promoting sustainable agriculture and water resource management. The purpose of this initiative was for students to learn how collaborative partnerships and shared expertise and resources can assist with educating the public through environmental stewardship and service based learning activities that collectively aim to reduce human impacts to Earth systems and related resources. This is an important component of supporting campus and …

Public, Private And Tribal Lands In Humboldt And Trinity Counties, Nate A. Douglass

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This map titled “Public, Private and Tribal Lands in Humboldt and Trinity Counties” was a commissioned project by Dr. Yvonne Everett in the Environmental Science and Management Department at Humboldt State University. The purpose of the map was to depict the overlap in land ownership and native, pre-European territories. The most challenging part of the project was finding a way to successfully represent multiple land ownership layers while also distinctly calling out former aboriginal territories, all in one map. For this, bold dotted lines with soft concentric halos seemed to do the trick. These aboriginal territories were manually digitized from …

Yosemite & Zion National Park, Sean Flemming

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This map displays exciting color gradients representing the variation of the elevation in both Yosemite and Zion National Parks. It was created utilizing United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Map 3DEP 1/3rd arc-second Digital Elevation Models and Adobe Photoshop.

Hobet Mine Mountaintop Removal, Brian Murphy

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The Hobet Coal Mine is located in West Virginia, and was an active mining site for 41 years. At the time, it was one of the largest surface coal mines in the United States. The impacts of this particular mine are especially pronounced because of the sheer scale of alteration to the landscape caused by removing the peaks of mountains to retrieve the coal. The once verdant and biodiverse mountains have been obliterated, and when the coal is removed, the remaining earth is filled into nearby valleys, creating a flat plateau. This terrain has been destroyed, poisoned, and exploited by …

Northern Appalachian Land Cover, Joshua Shindelbower

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This map was created using a combination of GIS, photo editing, and graphic design software after an inspiring road trip through the area. It shows the wide diversity of land cover across the region, and a key weak point in the Appalachian Mountains, known as “The Gaps of the Allegheny,” which allowed European immigrants to move toward fertile land deposited by millions of years of erosion. The reader can see that there is very little unused space in the region. Nearly every non-urban inch of land has been occupied for agricultural purposes, down to the thinnest sliver valleys. This map …

Ball Court Map, Adam Wall

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This is a composite map of Structure 30 (STR 30), an ancient Mesoamerican ballcourt in Belize, excavated and documented as an archaeological site by Humboldt State University students and alumni. Each demarcated square or rectangle corresponds to a separate excavation map; field notes were consolidated and digitized individually, then pieced together based on alignment and overlaid atop an outline of the entire structure. Satellite imagery of the site was used as a reference to ensure accuracy. By this method, the previously isolated pockets of data, inherent to individual field notes, instead become parts of a greater whole, allowing a fuller …

Dos Hambres To Gran Cacao Archaeological Mapping, Michael Mcdermott

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This map displays the spatial relationships and distribution of residential features throughout a portion of the Maya hinterlands near the site of Dos Hombres in Northwest Belize. Combining high resolution LiDAR data with detailed archaeology field data has allowed for accurate mapping of the features in this Mayan landscape. A unique aspect of this particular site is the presence of a causeway or “sacbe” which was used by the ancient Mayan people to distribute resources and move throughout their environment. The background terrain was created by manipulating the LiDAR data to generate a unique visualization that displays the human modified …

The Southern California Coast, Gilbert Trejo

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The purpose of this map was to create a landscape view of my home region of Southern California that adequately displayed the complexity of it’s natural and man-made terrain. One of the challenges I faced was the amount of labeling in the greater Los Angeles (LA) area. I decided to not include any city borders because moving around LA feels more like moving across various neighborhoods and regions than crossing from one city to another. Slanting the text provided more space without making it too difficult to read. The orientation creates a more interesting layout than the usual north-up orientation, …

Salmon Of The Klamath, Melissa Collin

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The Klamath is a diverse bioregion widely known for its abundant population of salmon. It extends through the states of Oregon and California, and has a drainage basin of over 15,000 square miles that flows into the Klamath River. The three most prevalent species of salmon in the region (Coho, Steelhead, and Chinook) have all experienced sharp declines in populations since the mid-20th century. This is due to human activity such as commercial fishing, logging, dams, and urban development that has altered the salmon’s historic migration. This map aims to visualize the various waterways and water bodies that flow throughout …

Conflicts On The Klamath, Massimo Lambert-Mullen, Hop Norris

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Conflicts on the Klamath is a collaboration between Massimo Lambert-Mullen, a Humboldt State University Geography alumnus, and Hop Norris, a local artist, activist, and water protector based out of Crescent City, California. The inspiration behind this infographic is the complex and rich contemporary history of the Klamath river, including the establishment of reservations and the construction of dams, roads, and monuments that disrupt the flow of salmon and disrespect sacred sites. It is a politically motivated piece that means to convey the cultural and ecological importance of salmon and criticize government and settler actions to disenfranchise local Yurok, Hoopa, and …

Historic Landmarks And Points Of Interest In Mendocino Ca, Jeremy Mcfarland

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The Earth’s ocean ties all people together in more ways than one. For centuries, people have been drawn to the ocean for its vast openness and array of resources. Maritime heritage is the protection and preservation of humankind’s past and century old stories of cultures’ use of the ocean. By understanding individual connections to the ocean, more may be inspired to care for it. This map was developed to visualize the unique transition between land and sea, and capture the historic connection of this seascape town.

Book Review, Stanton Morse

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Overall, Making Spatial Decisions Using ArcGIS Pro: a Workbook is an excellent text for college-level students who have had a formalized introduction to ArcGIS Pro. The authors expertly provide an expansive list of methods and applicable knowledge yet to be had from previous versions. Surely, the text is not perfect, but what it lacks can be remedied by knowledgeable instruction. Kathryn Keranen and Robert Kolvoord succeed in offering a new lens to view the bright future of ArcGIS Pro to those of us still reluctant to entirely switch.

Cartographies Of Debt: Auto Title Loans And Spatial Inequality, Michihiro C. Sugata

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Despite being a decade removed from the 2008 Financial Crisis, an alarming number of Americans are turning to alternative finance service providers (AFSP) for “short term” loans. These loans typically carry triple digit interest rates and can contribute to exacerbating the financial precarity of the borrowers. This article investigates the relationship between the spatial distribution of the AFSP industry and considers the impacts of this saturated presence on the individuals who live in these neighborhoods. Using the Phoenix metropolitan area as a site of exploration, I examine where the industry has pooled and look at the descriptive characteristics of those …

A Geographic Account Of Economic, Health, And Educational Disparities In Hartford’S Sheff Region, Casey D. Cobb

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In the current study, I use geographic techniques to examine the distribution of key housing, economic, health, and educational indicators in metropolitan Hartford. I focus in particular on factors that bear upon the lives of children in this area, also known as the Sheff region—a reference to the long-standing Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation lawsuit. The results reveal substantial disparities in the geographic distribution of important resources and outcomes across the racially and economically stratified region. Despite earnest school desegregation efforts, the opportunities, access, and resources available to children in municipalities across the metro Hartford region remain starkly different. Children …

Mapping Maya Hinterlands: Lidar Derived Visualization To Identify Small Scale Features In Northwestern Belize, Jeremy Mcfarland, Marisol Cortes-Rincon Ph.D.

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This paper will discuss the processes and methods of relief visualization of LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEM’s) and classification of secondary data to identify archaeological remains on the ancient Maya landscape in northwestern Belize. The basis of the research explores various Geographic Information System (GIS) and cartographic techniques to visualize topographical relief. Graphic terrain maps assist archaeologists with predictive settlement patterns. The Relief Visualization Toolbox (RVT 1.3) aids to visualize raster DEM datasets in the predictive identification and interpretation of small-scale archaeological features. This dataset and methodology can be utilized to answer questions of population estimates, mobility costs, and effectiveness …

Agent-Based Models In Supporting Pedestrian Transportation Planning And Design, Nicholas A. Perdue

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Agent-based models offer a new approach to understanding human-urban interactions in transportation systems, allowing individual entities within a system to be characterized with cognitive and behavioral properties. This paper discussed the role of agent-based representations of pedestrian transportation systems, detailing the underlying assumptions and techniques behind different types of pedestrian models and illustrating the differences between aggregate and individual agent representations. It then turns attention to the case study and the development of a cognitive pedestrian model as a way to illustrate the spectrum of potential spatial behaviors that are enabled by material changes to the transportation network. The paper …

A Geospatial Recipe For Identifying Social Values And Fragmentation Issues Of The Friends Of The Dunes Land Trust, Buddhika Madurapperuma, Jess Barger, Melissa Collin, Christine Emerson, Sean Fleming, Brian Murphy

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The beach and coastal sand dunes comprise a dynamic and fragile ecosystem that provides a bounty of ecological services. These lands provide protection from coastal erosion and sea level rise, and are home to a rich biodiversity of plant and animal species in addition to their recreational value. The Humboldt Coastal Nature Center and the surrounding coastal dunes (HCNC) are man-aged as a land trust by Friends of the Dunes (FOD). FOD prioritize the restoration of dune habitats and encourages public involvement through community supported education and stewardship programs, guided nature tours, and naturalist training programs. The faculty, students, and …

Introduction, Marisol Cortes-Rincon, Nicholas Perdue

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The purpose of this special issue is to highlight the myriad of applications of geographic information systems within the social sciences. As access to geospatial technologies continues to increase, we are seeing new forms of research that highlight how different approaches to spatial analysis can answer complex questions on topics ranging from contemporary urban policy to ancient civilizations.

Full Journal

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) engages with a variety of important policy issues through linking social science data with spatial analysis and by demonstrating the importance of applied GIS in both the public and private sector. GIS, though commonly used in the realms of city planning and natural resource analysis, have a far broader range of applications ranging from analysis of ancient community interactions to modern social media data.

Mapping Soil Moisture From Remotely Sensed And In-Situ Data With Statistical Methods, Yaping Xu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Soil moisture is an important factor for accurate prediction of agricultural productivity and rainfall runoff with hydrological models. Remote sensing satellites such as Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) offer synoptic views of soil moisture distribution at a regional-to-global scale. To use the soil moisture product from these satellites, however, requires a downscaling of the data from an usually large instantaneous field of view (i.e. 36 km) to the watershed analysis scales ranging from 30 m to 1 km. In addition, validation of the soil moisture products using the ground station observations without an upscaling treatment would lead to cross-level fallacy. …

Dynamics Of Wet-Season Turbidity In Relations To Precipitation, Discharge, And Land Cover In Three Urbanizing Watersheds, Oregon, Junjie Chen

Dissertations and Theses

Frequent intense precipitation events can mobilize and carry sediment and pollutants into rivers, degrading water quality. However, how seasonal rainfall and land cover affect the complex relationship between discharge and turbidity in urban watersheds is still under investigation. Using hourly discharge, rainfall, and turbidity data collected from six stations in three adjacent watersheds between 2008 and 2017, we examined the temporal variability of the discharge-turbidity relationship along an urban-rural gradient. We quantified hysteresis between normalized discharge and turbidity by a Hysteresis Index (HI) and classified hysteresis loops during 377 storm events in early, mid, and late wet season. Hysteresis loop …

A Comparative Analysis Of Planetscope And Sentinel Sentinel-2 Space-Borne Sensors In Mapping Striga Weed Using Guided Regularised Random Forest Classification Ensemble, B. T. Mudereri, T. Dube, E. M. Adel-Rahman, S. Niassy, E. Kimathi, Z. Khan, T. Landmann

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Weeds are one of the major restrictions to sustaining crop productivity. Weeds often outcompete crops for nutrients, soil moisture, solar radiation, space and provide platforms for breeding of pests and diseases. The ever-growing global food insecurity triggers the need for spatially explicit innovative geospatial technologies that can deliver timely detection of weeds within agro-ecological systems. This will help pinpoint maize fields to be prioritized for weed control. Satellite remote sensing offers incomparable opportunities for precision agriculture, ecological applications and vegetation characterisation, with vast socioeconomic benefits. This work compares and evaluates the strength of Sentinel-2 (S2) satellite with the constellation of …

Tree Canopy Cover And Potential In Portland, Or: A Spatial Analysis Of The Urban Forest And Capacity For Growth, Jeff Ramsey

Dissertations and Theses

Urban forests have positive impacts on human and ecosystem health, reduce stress on aging stormwater infrastructure, increase property values, and reduce energy consumption. The scale of these benefits ranges from the hyper-local to the global. While the benefits of urban forests can extend well beyond the boundaries of cities, they often do not reach all residents of the city equally. Urban forest policies do not adequately address environmental equity or employ planting strategies with knowledge of the social and political factors that determine the spatial variations of tree canopy extent in cities. Chapter I analyzes the determinants of current canopy …

Any Port In A Storm: Vessel Activity And The Risk Of Iuu-Caught Fish Passing Through The World’S Most Important Fishing Ports, Gilles Hosch, Bradley Soule, Max Schofield, Trevor Thomas, Charles Kilgour, Tim Huntington

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

This study assesses the risk of fish from illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) sources passing through the world’s most important fishing ports and explores the drivers of this risk.

Like previous studies it has attempted to rank ports and States based on landings and vessel visits reported by governments by using Automatic Identification System (AIS) positional data transmitted by fishing and fish carrier vessels to identify the locations of ports and rank them based on the frequency of visits by foreign-flagged and domestic-flagged vessels. It advances our thinking in that (i) the analysis includes an estimation of the hold capacity …

Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions Of Social Cartography, By Laura Vaughan, Christina E. Dando

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Laura Vaughan, in Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography, suggests that social maps can be ‘records of social enquiry in relation to the role of urban configuration in shaping social patterns over time’ and that, through their analysis, scholars can better understand ‘the power of space in shaping society over time’. To Vaughan, a professor of Urban Form and Society at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, social maps capture a moment in time and can be read to consider life at that moment: ‘does it capture data in sufficient detail that we can learn from …