Geography Commons^™

Potable Water Leakage Prediction And Detection Using Geospatial Analysis, Jacob Tittle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to increasing water treatment costs and conservation needs, traditional water loss analysis and acoustic leak detection methods are becoming heavily scrutinized by water utilities. This study explores water loss in Johnson City, Tennessee and how geospatial data analysis techniques improve water loss mitigation. This project uses sample water system pressure data and ordinary kriging spatial interpolation methods to identify leakage areas for further investigation. Analysis of existing geographic information system (GIS) water utility datasets with interpolated hydraulic grade values at sample water pressure points produce manageable survey areas that pinpoint areas with possible water leakage. Field detection methods, including …

Unlocking Pre-1850 Instrumental Meteorological Records: A Global Inventory, Stefan Bronnimann, Rob Allan, Linden Ashcroft, Saba Baer, Mariano Barriendos, Fiona Williamson, Et Al

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A global inventory of early instrumental meteorological measurements is compiled. It comprises thousands of series, many of which have not been digitized, pointing to the potential of weather data rescue.Instrumental meteorological measurements from periods prior to the start of national weather services are designated “early instrumental data”. They have played an important role in climate research as they allow daily-to-decadal variability and changes of temperature, pressure, and precipitation, including extremes, to be addressed. Early instrumental data can also help place 21st century climatic changes into a historical context such as to define pre-industrial climate and its variability. Until recently, the …

“Daughter” As A Positionality And The Gendered Politics Of Taking Parents Into The Field, Menusha De Silva, Kanchan Gandhi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research on gendered politics of the field has delved into the practices of accompaniment and its implications on research and knowledge production, particularly through the case of researchers’ children and partners. In comparison, the tendency to seek assistance from parents is neglected within the scholarship. Drawing on the PhD fieldwork experiences of two researchers in their “native” country, specifically a Sri Lankan researcher conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka and a North Indian scholar researching in South India, the paper reveals parents’ contribution to the research process, in terms of enhancing researcher credibility, facilitating contact‐making and access, and providing emotional and …

Dry Heat Among The Red Rocks: Risk Perceptions And Behavioral Responses To Extreme Heat Among Outdoor Recreationists In Southeastern Utah, Kirsten M. Goldstein

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Communicating the risks related to extreme heat is important and essential for saving lives. This study looks at how tourists think about extreme heat in a hot and dry environment. It looks at relationships between an individual’s local climate, their thoughts about the current weather conditions, and demographics. The results from this study are intended to help tourist agencies, emergency managers and emergency planners, and policymakers in creating and carrying out communication strategies for extreme heat.

Thoughts about and physical responses to weather are different for everyone and shaped by personal experiences. How one thinks and feels about the weather …

Material And Seismic Assessment Of The Great House At Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Arizona, Douglas W. Porter, Anjali Mehrotra, Matthew J. Dejong, Angelyn Bass, Matthew Guebard, John Ochsendorf

United States National Park Service: Publications

The authors characterized earthen wall materials and plasters in a mid-fourteenth-century Hohokam great house at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument (Arizona) and assessed the seismic susceptibility of its puddled earth walls. Characterization included determining the microstructure, microcomposition, porosity, aggregate mineralogy, and identification of phases in the binding matrix for each of 36 samples and reconstructing plaster technologies, including material selection, preparation, and application sequences. Findings support the ideas that earthen materials were manipulated to optimize their performance to suit the unique site conditions and needs of the ancient people using the structure and included finishes that were unusual in southwestern …

Exposure And Potential Effects Of Pesticides And Pharmaceuticals In Protected Streams Of The Us National Park Service Southeast Region, Paul M. Bradley, Kristin M. Romanok, Jeffrey R. Duncan, William A. Battaglin, Jimmy M. Clark, Michelle L. Hladik, Bradley J. Huffman, Luke R. Iwanowicz, Celeste A. Journey, Kelly L. Smalling

United States National Park Service: Publications

Globally, protected areas offer refugia for a broad range of taxa including threatened and endangered species. In the United States (US), the National Park Service (NPS) manages public lands to preserve biodiversity, but increasing park visitation and development of surrounding landscapes increase exposure to and effects from bioactive contaminants. The risk (exposure and hazard) to NPS protected-stream ecosystems within the highly urbanized southeast region (SER) from bioactive contaminants was assessed in five systems based on 334 pesticide and pharmaceutical analytes in water and 119 pesticides in sediment. Contaminant mixtures were common across all sampled systems, with approximately 24% of the …

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Jorge Baron, Maria Kolby-Wolfe, Kristen Smith Dayley, Twila Bird, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Program has been around for 35 years, started in 1984 specifically to help Central American refugees during the mid-1980s, when they were fleeing civil wars. A pro-bono group of attorneys performing "direct legal representation", helping low income community members who are navigating different aspects of the immigration system. NWIRP also engages in "systemic advocacy" which attempts to change systems and policies revolving around asylum and immigration rights.

Jungle Gyms Of Justice: Understanding The Urban Park Accessibility Problem, Victoria Holmes

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Urban parks and green spaces have the potential to provide outstanding benefits to both children and adults. However, increased urbanization and the disproportionate placement of urban parks and green spaces can make these benefits elusive. Case studies focused on Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago have found that access to urban parks and green spaces is more challenging for non-white and low-socioeconomic status populations. The present study, focused on the much smaller, much less populated city of Harrisonburg, Virginia, builds on this work using geographic information system (GIS) buffer analysis to find that all socioeconomic groups face access issues to some …

The Future Of Reef Ecosystems In The Gulf Of Mexico: Insights From Coupled Climate Model Simulations And Ancient Hot-House Reefs, Kristine L. Delong

Faculty Publications

emperatures (SST), salinity, carbonate chemistry, and acidity. Over the last half-century, some reef communities have been disappearing at an alarming pace. This study focuses on the Gulf of Mexico, where the majority of shallow coral reefs are reported to be in poor or fair condition. We analyze the RCP8.5 ensemble of the Community Earth System Model v1.2 to identify monthly-to-decadal trends in Gulf of Mexico SST. Secondly, we examine projected changes in ocean pH, carbonate saturation state, and salinity in the same coupled model simulations. We find that the joint impacts of predicted higher temperatures and changes in ocean acidification …

Commercials As Social Studies Curriculum: Bridging Content & Media Literacy, Shanedra D. Nowell

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This essay explores ways television commercials can teach both media literacy skills and social studies content knowledge. Because of their brevity and concise messages, commercials offer teachers a wide assortment of engaging, content focused lesson topics that can be used to introduce new ideas, as writing or discussion prompts to further explore concepts, or as creative media projects to assess the content and media literacy knowledge. I examine different approaches to integrate commercials into social studies classes and include resources to guide students through deconstructing commercials, understanding advertisers’ creative techniques and appeals, and creating their own commercials.

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, …

Online Mapping Tools For Geolocating Amish Settlements, Andrew Wilson, Brian Lonabocker, Megan Zagorski

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This technical note demonstrates the value of using online mapping tools as a method of geolocating Amish settlements. Primarily using freely available Bing and Google maps and published lists of the addresses of Amish ministers, we geolocated 1,362 Amish households in Ohio and 1,203 in Pennsylvania, representing about 10% of Amish households in those states. From these data we were able to derive a population density map of the Amish across Ohio and Pennsylvania. We caution that our map is merely a model and based on several assumptions, but the product is a finer resolution map of Amish distribution than …

How Unique Is Milwaukee’S 53206? An Examination Of Disaggregated Socioeconomic Characteristics Across The City And Beyond, Scott W. Hegerty

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Symposium

Milwaukee’s 53206 ZIP code, located on the city’s near North Side, has drawn considerable attention for its poverty and incarceration rates, as well as for its large proportion of vacant properties. As a result, it has been the subject of academic studies, considerable news reporting, and even a documentary; it has benefited from targeted policies at the city level. Targeting specific ZIP codes, rather than other types of geographic area can raise certain issues, however. In particular, these areas were created for mail delivery rather than to facilitate socieoeconomic analysis, and they often aggregate diverse urban areas that sometimes cover …

Gis And Cartography Supporting Neiu, Erick Howenstine

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Symposium

Geographers study place and location and these are critical to the success of an institution like ours with a (mainly) commuting student body. Our employees also often travel long distances to campus, and our 80,000 alumni are dispersed around the world but mainly still reside in the Chicago region. Many classes use the City and surrounding areas for field trips, internships and more. Our satellite campuses – El Centro, CCICS, Lake County College – add an additional dimension to our spatial challenges and opportunities. Underlying all this is a mosaic of neighborhoods, distinct socioeconomic and demographic areas, dense transportation infrastructure, …

Decolonizing The Barrio: The Spatial Politics Of Culture In Chicago’S Paseo Boricua, Dennis Grammenos

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Symposium

In the current neoliberal climate that has stoked an intense intercity competition for internationally footloose capital, many cities with global aspirations are encouraging urban redevelopment projects that brand and promote heterogeneous cultural enclaves as destinations for leisure and tourism consumption. Oftentimes, such enclaves emerge as "ethnoscapes" that ostensibly express the cultural identity of its residents, usually immigrant populations. In Chicago, municipal policies aimed at enhancing a visitor economy have been instrumental in the creation of the Paseo Boricua, a Puerto Rican "ethnoscape". This study examines the intersection of Chicago's urban redevelopment policies and the spatial politics of culture that unfold …

The Guns Of Fort Monroe, Chris Fox

Student Posters: GIS Day

The objective of this research project is to analyze the interlocking fields of fire from the field artillery positions around the Bastion known as Fort Monroe located in Hampton Virginia. The research project will allow for the visualization of the artillery positions around the fort in one overview, as well as line of sight analysis from each artillery position within the moat. An analysis and line of sight for the artillery positions outside of the fort was also conducted. The 12 Inch M1895 and M1900 disappearing guns were the largest guns used at the fort and fired a projectile that …

City Of Norfolk Underground Storage Tank Analysis, Jake Hall

Student Posters: GIS Day

According to The Norfolk Environmental Commission, the City of Norfolk may contain thousands of abandoned Underground Storage Tanks (USTs), most often used for storing petroleum at filling stations or for fuel oils (such as kerosene) for homes and businesses, which represent a hazard to the City of Norfolk and its surrounding environment (Norfolk Environmental Commission , 2018)....

The focus of this project is to create a database of USTs, maps to more easily track tank locations, provide analysis of areas where leaks are more likely to occur and the possible environmental concerns surrounding those areas, and create a web map …

Category 4 Storm Surge City Of Norfolk, James Mclees

Student Posters: GIS Day

Map displays the type and number of structures impacted by flood water from a Category 4 hurricane.

Satellite-Based Decadal Change Assessments Of Pan-Arctic Environments, Liza K. Jenkins, Tom Barry, Karl R. Bosse, William S. Currie, Tom Christensen, Sara Longan, Robert A. Shuchman, Danielle Tanzer, Jason J. Taylor

United States National Park Service: Publications

Remote sensing can advance the work of the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program through monitoring of satellite-derived terrestrial and marine physical and ecological variables. Standardized data facilitate an unbiased comparison across variables and environments. Using MODIS standard products of land surface temperature, percent snow-covered area, NDVI, EVI, phenology, burned area, marine chlorophyll, CDOM, sea surface temperature, and marine primary productivity, significant trends were observed in almost all variables between 2000 and 2017. Analysis of seasonal data revealed significant breakpoints in temporal trends. Within the terrestrial environment, data showed significant increasing trends in land surface temperature and NDVI. In the marine environment, …

Sustainable Solutions, Fall/Winter 2020, Issue 41

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Lake Water Quality Indicators On Small Lakes, Lake Bloomington And Evergreen Lake In Central Illinois, Using Satellite Remote Sensing, Gare Ambrose-Igho

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the use of Sentinel-2 satellite to determine the spatiotemporal patterns of lake water quality indicators (e.g. chlorophyll a) in Lake Bloomington and Evergreen Lake. Lake water quality issues related to algal blooms is a serious problem in basins with abundant agricultural lands causing harmful effects to freshwater ecosystems such as pollution of beaches, taste and odor problems in drinking water, depletion of oxygen levels causing fish kills and the issue of water exceeding safe drinking water standards. Developing monitoring techniques using various water quality indicators of algal blooms is crucial. In this project, remote sensing and field …

Vegetation Classification And Mapping, Niobrara National Scenic River, Tom Baldvins, Matt Ley, Joe Stevens, David Jones, Hannah Pilkington

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

The vegetation inventory project at Niobrara National Scenic River (NIOB) classified and mapped vegetation within the park administrative boundary and estimated thematic map accuracy quantitatively. The project was conducted over a four year period from the summer of 2015 to the winter of 2019. Located in north-central Nebraska, approximately 76 miles of the park is designated as a wild and scenic river. The vast majority of land within the NIOB administrative boundary is private or state-owned.

The project follows guidance provided by the National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Mapping Inventory (VMI) Program. The overall process includes initial planning …

Integrating Geochronologic And Instrumental Approaches Across The Bengal Basin, Elizabeth L. Chamberlain, Steven L. Goodbred, Richard Hale, Michael S. Steckler, Jakob Willinga, Carol Wilson

OES Faculty Publications

Constraining time is of critical importance to evaluating the rates and relative contributions of processes driving landscape change in sedimentary basins. The geomorphic character of the field setting guides the application of geochronologic or instrumental tools to this problem, because the viability of methods can be highly influenced by geomorphic attributes. For example, sediment yield and the linked potential for organic preservation may govern the usefulness of radiocarbon dating. Similarly, the rate of sediment transport from source to sink may determine the maturity and/or light exposure of mineral grains arriving in the delta and thus the feasibility of luminescence dating. …

A New 30 Meter Resolution Global Shoreline Vector And Associated Global Islands Database For The Development Of Standardized Ecological Coastal Units, Roger Sayre, Suzanne Noble, Sharon Hamann, Rebecca Smith, Dawn Wright, Sean Breyer, Kevin Butler, Keith Van Graafeiland, Charlie Frye, Deniz Karagulle, Dabney Hopkins, Drew Stephens, Kevin Kelly, Zeenatul Basher, Devon Burton, Jill Cress, Karina Atkins, D. Paco Van Sistine, Beverly Friesen, Revecca Allee, Tom Allen, Peter Aniello, Irawan Asaad, Mark John Costello, Kathy Goodin, Peter Harris, Maria Kavanaugh, Helen Lillis, Elonora Manca, Frank Muller-Karger, Bjorn Nyberg, Rost Parsons, Jusrin Saarinen, Jack Steiner, Adam Reed

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

A new 30-m spatial resolution global shoreline vector (GSV) was developed from annual composites of 2014 Landsat satellite imagery. The semi-automated classification of the imagery was accomplished by manual selection of training points representing water and non-water classes along the entire global coastline. Polygon topology was applied to the GSV, resulting in a new characterisation of the number and size of global islands. Three size classes of islands were mapped: continental mainlands (5), islands greater than 1 km² (21,818), and islands smaller than 1 km² (318,868). The GSV represents the shore zone land and water interface boundary, and …

Natural Resource Condition Assessment, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, David S. Jones, Roy Cook, John Sovell, Christopher Herron, Jay Benner, Karin Decker, Andrew Beavers, Johannes Beebee, David Weinzimmer, Rob Schorr

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

The National Park Service (NPS) Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) Program administered by the NPS Water Resources Division evaluates current conditions for important natural resources and resource indicators using primarily existing information and data. NRCAs also report on trends in resource condition when possible, identify critical data gaps, and characterize a general level of confidence for study findings. This NRCA complements historic resource assessments, is multi-disciplinary in scope, employs a hierarchical indicator framework, identifies and develops reference conditions/values for comparison against current conditions, and emphasizes spatial evaluation of conditions and GIS products.

Created in 1996, Tallgrass Prairie National …

Beyond Europeanization: The Politics Of Scale And Positionality In Lithuania’S Alternative Food Networks, Renata Blumberg, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

This article brings geographical insights to understanding the Europeanization of agri-food politics in new European Union member states. Most literature on agri-food policy and law in the European Union has conceptualized policy making and implementation as an institutional process involving multiple levels of governance. In this perspective, Europeanization is understood as a process through which stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and implement legal principles and procedures across various institutions at different levels of governance. By employing the conceptual tools developed in geographical research, we contribute a spatial and historical dimension to these studies. Our analysis shows how the politics of scale and …

An Extensible Geospatial Data Framework (Geoedf) For Fair Science, Carol Song, Rajesh Kalyanam, Lan Zhao

Purdue GIS Day

The growing urgency in dealing with the 21st century’s grand challenges associated with increasing population, food and water security, frequently occurring natural disasters, and changing climate demands innovative, collaborative, and multidisciplinary solutions for sustainability and resilience. However, scientific data, especially geospatial data, presents significant barriers to the effective access, use and sharing of data as they come in large volumes, from different sources, and with widely varying formats, resolutions, or annotation schemas that can differ among disciplines or even research groups. This presentation describes a recently funded NSF CSSI project to develop an open source, extensible geospatial data framework (GeoEDF), …

Soil Erosion Analysis Of The Monroe County’S Watersheds In Indiana, Danielli De Melo Moura, Jie Shan

Purdue GIS Day

This study was carried out to spatially predict the amount of soil loss (tons/ha/year ) of Monroe County’s watersheds using Geographic Information System (GIS). Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was used to estimate potential soil losses by using information such as rainfall data for calculating the rainfall erosivity (R) , soil map for calculating the soil erodibility (K), digital elevation model for obtaining the topography factor (LS) and vegetation/cropland cover for calculating the cover management factor (C) and support practice factor (P). The result of the analysis depicted that the soil loss rate in Moroe’s watersheds ranges from 0 …

Effects Of Removing Background Soil Reflectance Pixels From Vegetative Index Maps For Characterization Of Corn Responses To Experimental Treatments, Ana Morales, Robert L. Nielsen, James J. Camberato

Purdue GIS Day

In contrast to traditional data collection methods that require manual sampling, vegetative index (VI) maps derived from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) imagery are a potential tool to characterize temporal and spatial treatment effects in a more efficient and non-destructive way. Remotely-sensed reflectance data from a growing corn crop contains pixel values associated with the above-ground plant tissue (e.g., leaves, stalks, tassels) and the underlying soil features. Background soil reflectance data potentially reduces the effectiveness of VI for characterizing crop responses to experimental treatments. Removing background soil image pixels from the larger image dataset should improve that effectiveness. The objective of …

Seeing A Better World From Space, Carly Sakumura

Purdue GIS Day

Understanding change is essential to addressing our most pressing global challenges. Organizations need actionable insight to make critical decisions that affect communities, economies, and national security. As a global leader of advanced geospatial and space-based technology solutions, Maxar has an unprecedented ability to observe, analyze, and monitor these global changes. In this talk, I’ll discuss the cutting-edge research, technological capabilities, and imagery products and analytics we develop at Maxar to unlock the power of geospatial data to understand and navigate our changing world.