Geography Commons^™

What Makes Wildfires Destructive In California?, Alexandra D. Syphard, Jon E. Keeley, Mike Gough, Mitchell Lazarz, John Rogan

Geography

As human impacts from wildfires mount, there is a pressing need to understand why structures are lost in destructive fires. Despite growing research on factors contributing to structure loss, fewer studies have focused on why some fires are destructive and others are not. We characterized overall differences between fires that resulted in structure loss (“destructive fires”) and those that did not (“non-destructive wildfires”) across three California regions. Then, we performed statistical analyses on large fires only (≥100 ha) to distinguish the primary differences between large destructive large fires and large non-destructive fires. Overall, destructive fires were at least an order …

Linking Tree Cover Change To Historical Management Practices In Urban Parks, Sabine Nix, Lara A. Roman, Marc Healy, John Rogan, Hamil Pearsall

Geography

Context: Urban tree canopy (UTC) in parks is shaped by complex interactions between social and ecological processes over decades. To understand UTC change in parks, it is critical to identify and characterize the unique set of social processes that drive long-term change. Objectives: We sought to uncover the feedbacks between social processes and long-term UTC changes in parks of a post-industrial city that experienced substantial population loss and park disinvestment. Methods: Our mixed-methods approach involved quantifying spatiotemporal UTC changes and connecting those changes to historical management practices for three parks in Philadelphia, PA (US). We delineated UTC using aerial imagery …

Chinese Neoglobalization In East Africa: Logics, Couplings And Impacts, Pádraig R. Carmody, James T. Murphy

Geography

The most significant case of transnational state capitalism today is China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which seeks to expand/extend the country's geoeconomic and geopolitical integrations globally. We conceptualise the BRI as manifest principally through industrial offshoring, infrastructure investments and exports from China. These vectors articulate with particular places, forming transnational couplings that shape development outcomes. We examine the BRI's couplings and their development implications in the East African countries of Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya where China has engaged significantly. We demonstrate the contingent manner of BRI's variegations; its pragmatism, flexibility, and limitations as a hegemonic or developmental project.

Emerging Hot Spot Analysis To Indicate Forest Conservation Priorities And Efficacy On Regional To Continental Scales: A Study Of Forest Change In Selva Maya 2000-2020, Nicholas Cuba, Laura A. Sauls, Anthony J. Bebbington, Denise Humphreys Bebbington, Avecita Chicchon, Pilar Delpino Marimón, Oscar Diaz, Susanna Hecht, Susan Kandel, Tracey Osborne, Rebecca Ray, Madelyn Rivera, John Rogan, Viviana Zalles

Geography

Despite the importance of preserving contiguous tropical forest areas to maintain biodiversity and terrestrial carbon stocks, methodological challenges continue to hinder broad-scale analysis of threats to these forests. Emerging Hot Spot Analysis (EHSA) is a spatial-statistical method that conveys complex information about the temporal dynamics of deforestation across a range of moderate to coarse spatial scales. Using Global Forest Change (GFC) data as inputs, EHSA produces spatially comprehensive, gridded outputs that represent a standardized, reproduceable way to instantiate contiguous forest tracts as spatial objects. Doing so allows aggregation of other GFC-derived values and analysis of alternative geographic configurations besides sub-national …

Albedo Changes Caused By Future Urbanization Contribute To Global Warming, Zutao Ouyang, Pietro Sciusco, Tong Jiao, Sarah Feron, Cheyenne Lei, Fei Li, Ranjeet John, Peilei Fan, Xia Li, Christopher A. Williams, Guangzhao Chen, Chenghao Wang, Jiquan Chen

Geography

The replacement of natural lands with urban structures has multiple environmental consequences, yet little is known about the magnitude and extent of albedo-induced warming contributions from urbanization at the global scale in the past and future. Here, we apply an empirical approach to quantify the climate effects of past urbanization and future urbanization projected under different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). We find an albedo-induced warming effect of urbanization for both the past and the projected futures under three illustrative scenarios. The albedo decease from urbanization in 2018 relative to 2001 has yielded a 100-year average annual global warming of 0.00014 …

A Modified Vegetation Photosynthesis And Respiration Model (Vprm) For The Eastern Usa And Canada, Evaluated With Comparison To Atmospheric Observations And Other Biospheric Models, Sharon M. Gourdji, Anna Karion, Israel Lopez-Coto, Subhomoy Ghosh, Kimberly L. Mueller, Yu Zhou, Christopher A. Williams, Ian T. Baker, Katharine D. Haynes, James R. Whetstone

Geography

Atmospheric CO2 measurements from a dense surface network can help to evaluate terrestrial biosphere model (TBM) simulations of Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) with two key benefits. First, gridded CO2 flux estimates can be evaluated over regional scales, not possible using flux tower observations at discrete locations for model evaluation. Second, TBM ability to explain atmospheric CO2 fluctuations due to the biosphere can be directly tested, an important objective for anthropogenic emissions monitoring using atmospheric observations. Here, we customize the Vegetation Photosynthesis and Respiration Model (VPRM) for an eastern North American domain with strong biological activity upwind of urban areas. Parameters …

Applying Landscape Fragmentation Analysis To Icescape Environments: Potential Impacts For The Pacific Walrus (Odobenus Rosmarus Divergens), Anthony Himmelberger, K E. Frey, Florencia Sangermano

Geography

Sea-ice cover across the Arctic has declined rapidly over the past several decades owing to amplified climate warming. The Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) relies on sea-ice floes in the St. Lawrence Island (SLI) and Wainwright regions of the Bering and Chukchi seas surrounding Alaska as a platform for rest, feeding and reproduction. Lower concentrations of thick ice floes are generally associated with earlier seasonal fragmentation and shorter annual persistence of sea-ice cover, potentially affecting the life history of the Pacific walrus. In this study, 24 Landsat satellite images were classified into thick ice, thin ice or open water to …

Probabilistic Tracking Of Annual Cropland Changes Over Large, Complex Agricultural Landscapes Using Google Earth Engine, Sitian Xiong, Priscilla Baltezar, Morgan A. Crowley, Michael Cecil, Stefano C. Crema, Eli Baldwin, Jeffrey A. Cardille, Lyndon Estes

Geography

Cropland expansion is expected to increase across sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries in the next thirty years to meet growing food needs across the continent. These land transformations will have cascading social and ecological impacts that can be monitored using novel Earth observation techniques that produce datasets complementary to national cropland surveys. In this study, we present a flexible Bayesian data synthesis workflow on Google Earth Engine (GEE) that can be used to fuse optical and synthetic aperture radar data and demonstrate its ability to track agricultural change at national scales. We adapted the previously developed Bayesian Updating of Land Cover …

Deep Roots In Eroding Soil: Building Decolonial Resilience Amidst Climate Violence And Displacement In A Louisiana Bayou Indigenous Community, Lia Mcgrath Kahan

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Pointe-au-Chien Indigenous community of coastal Louisiana is fighting for survival as climate change and socio-political factors threaten to displace them from their ancestral home. This project takes an ethnographic and historical approach to exploring how colonization and climate change have influenced Pointe-au-Chien tribal members’ ability to stay on their ancestral land. Climate projections estimate that the bayou this community has lived alongside of for generations will soon be unrecognizable, leading to potential displacement and devastating cultural loss. Due to the increasing severity of climate change, it is crucial to look to the experiences of frontline Indigenous communities to support …

Utility Scale Agrivoltaics Development Proximate To Michigan Communities With 100% Renewable Energy Goals, Kabanda Herve Christian Sheja

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This report aims to assess the potential of agrivoltaics (combined solar and agricultural systems) for development geographically proximate to the six Michigan (MI) communities that have set 100% renewable energy (RE) goals. I focus on one major research question: What is the total acreage of low-impact sites available for utility-scale (USS) agrivoltaics development proximate (within county boundaries) to MI communities with 100% RE goals? SAM is used to estimate land acreage required for a 10 MW agrivoltaic system development. ArcGIS Pro is used to determine the total acreage of low-impact sites proximate to MI communities with 100% RE goals.

Proximate …

Three Method Tsunami Vulnerability Analysis Of The United States East Coast, Joshua Knolla

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The East Coast of the United States could be susceptible to tsunamis or even mega tsunamis. With this in mind it becomes essential to answer the question: Where is vulnerability to a tsunami greatest along the East Coast of the United States? To answer this question the following parameters have been set. First, the study will include county level subdivisions along the USEC that have coasts along the Atlantic Ocean. The possible source regions of a tsunami or mega tsunami are also noted. This analysis includes both social and physical factors with nine and five of them considered respectively. Three …

Nation Over State: Analyzing The Condition Of The Nation-State In The 21st Century, Hayley Pierson

Capstone Showcase

The nation-state as a concept is an ever-evolving one throughout history. As we delve deeper into the 21st century, the nation-state is beginning to undergo another evolution as there is an unprecedented rise in secessionist movements globally. This thesis explores the causation of a separatist movement and the complexities of having a competing, subnational identity within a state, embodied by case studies of Catalonia, Spain, and Quebec, Canada.

Comparing Geostatistical Methods On Flood Risk To Infrastructure In Southeast Asia Using Google Street View Imagery: A Master’S Thesis, Christopher S. Aime

Theses and Dissertations

Urban flooding poses a serious challenge to development and the lives of people, particularly the residents of the rapidly expanding towns and cities in developing countries. Floods affect people's livelihood in Southeast (SE) Asia, ranging from death and injury to damaged homes, infrastructures, and agricultural land. In addition, floods expose infrastructure to more risks of structural damage, wearing them out, and aging them quickly, thus increasing maintenance and replacement costs.

Presented study found associations between such infrastructure elements as sill height, floors, building structures (e.g., attached vs. detached), slope, drainage, land-use, and street conditions. The study used Mechanical Turk method …

Development And Disparity In Glasgow: The Desirability Of Urban Water Proximity, Brian Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to examine the possibility that a spatial relationship exists between demographic trends considered to be indicative of gentrification, and ongoing regenerative activity taking place along an urban canal and the adjacent neighborhoods in a northern section of Glasgow, Scotland. Rates of demographic change between the 2001 and 2011 Scottish Census results for the study area were contrasted with the same variables citywide, using the census Output Area (OA) as the aggregate unit. Results were combined to produce an index of gentrification. Positive results towards gentrification were identified in many of the OAs for a significant number …

Geographic Trends Of Terrorist Attacks And Active Shooter Scenarios Perpetrated Inside U.S. Military Installations And Facilities, 1970-2019, Aaron James Ebbenga

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

In recent years, a variety of devastating terrorist attacks have been perpetrated against American military installations, spurring not only national outrage but also global public upheaval. Our public preconception of considering military bases as impenetrable to the dangers of active shooter scenarios and bomb threats has since become widely scrutinized by worldwide media sources. For this reason, the people of the U.S. have expressed concerns about the safety of the nation’s military personnel. The diverse nature of the attacks, committed both by domestic and foreign terrorist organizations, illustrates vulnerabilities of American military installations and support facilities. These types of attacks …

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 47, 2022, Department Of Geography, Geology, And The Environment

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment

Review – Nor Any Drop To Drink: Flint’S Water Crisis, Melissa Heil

Faculty Publications - Geography, Geology, and the Environment

[In lieu of an abstract, the synopsis is presented] Nor Any Drop to Drink: Flint’s Water Crisis (2018) is a 124-minute-long documentary directed by Dr Cedric Taylor, a sociologist with expertise in environmental justice and racial health disparities, with cinematography by Daniel Bracken. Nor Any Drop to Drink examines the causes of the Flint water crisis and documents the crisis’s impacts on city residents years after the initial water contamination. The first half of the film analyses the political roots of the water crisis: the imposition of emergency management in Flint, a system of undemocratic rule in which the governor …

The Politics Of Owing: Accounting, Water Disconnection, And Austerity Urbanism In Detroit, Melissa Heil

Faculty Publications - Geography, Geology, and the Environment

With the rise of austerity urbanism, contemporary urban governance has been described as “rule by accountancy.” Yet the intricacies of accounting practice have been underexplored in the austerity urbanism literature. Drawing on insights from critical accounting studies, I interrogate accounting practices as political exercises that draw people and institutions into ties of obligation (accountability), shape social relations, and structure the conditions of urban life. Through this lens, practices of accounting can be understood not just as a technocratic tool of the financialized state, but as a contested terrain of urban political struggle. Examining the case of austerity-driven water service disconnections …

Bloodshed, Baptism, Beer: Racial Capitalism And Settler Colonialism On The Medieval Baltic, Nicholas Salvato

Geography Honors Projects

Scholarly and popular usage of the term “racial capitalism” has increased exponentially over the past decade, but the validity and implications of its use remain hotly contested. The late Cedric Robinson is the undisputed popularizer of this phrase and is referenced widely by both the slogan’s detractors and proponents. Despite this, little work has been done to engage with the core of his argument about racial capitalism: that capitalism is inalienably racial due to the racialism of the medieval European societies that spawned it. Debates over Robinson’s ideas have thus disregarded the substance of his deployment of the phrase and …

Perspectives On New Wilderness Area Designations In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Olivia Joy D. Ghormley

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Wilderness Act of 1964 designated certain areas denoted as wilderness in the United States of America for the sake of preservation and conservation. In the state of Michigan, 16 designated wilderness areas currently exist, and the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) is advocating for the addition of four new wilderness designations. The addition of these areas would add about 51,000 acres of federally recognized wilderness areas to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This paper aims to understand public attitudes and political support or opposition to these new wilderness designations among residents and visitors of the Upper Peninsula of …

Arctic Greening: Characterizing Tundra Vegetation From In-Situ And Remotely Sensed Observations, Shira Ann Ellenson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As the Arctic has warmed at twice the rate of the global average, vegetation productivity has also been increasing. While satellite remote sensing is useful for summarizing Arctic-wide trends, changes in tundra species heights, densities, composition, and distribution can be missed at coarse resolution. Smaller, plot-scale studies are necessary to better understand vegetation dynamics at fine scales occurring on the ground.

In 1995, high-resolution traditional aerial photographs and in-situ measurements of vegetation characteristics were taken at a series of plots established on the Alaskan North Slope. Repeat field surveys in 2021 revealed increases in plant cover for deciduous shrubs and …

A Process-Model Perspective On Recent Changes In The Carbon Cycle Of North America, Guillermo Murray-Tortarolo, Benjamin Poulter, Rodrigo Vargas, Daniel Hayes, Anna M. Michalak, Christopher A. Williams, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Jonathan A. Wang, Kimberly P. Wickland, David Butman, Hanqin Tian, Stephen Sitch, Pierre Friedlingstein, Mike O’Sullivan, Peter Briggs, Vivek Arora, Danica Lombardozzi, Atul K. Jain, Wenping Yuan, Roland Séférian, Julia Nabel, Andy Wiltshire, Almut Arneth, Sebastian Lienert, Sönke Zaehle, Vladislav Bastrikov, Daniel Goll, Nicolas Vuichard, Anthony Walker, Etsushi Kato, Xu Yue, Zhen Zhang

Geography

Continental North America has been found to be a carbon (C) sink over recent decades by multiple studies employing a variety of estimation approaches. However, several key questions and uncertainties remain with these assessments. Here we used results from an ensemble of 19 state-of-the-art dynamic global vegetation models from the TRENDYv9 project to improve these estimates and study the drivers of its interannual variability. Our results show that North America has been a C sink with a magnitude of 0.37 ± 0.38 (mean and one standard deviation) PgC year−1 for the period 2000–2019 (0.31 and 0.44 PgC year−1 in each …

Pathways Forward For Onshore Wind Energy In The State Of Maryland: A Gis Multi-Criteria Analysis, George Pisano

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This study examines pathways forward for onshore wind energy in the State of Maryland. To meet its decarbonization goals, Maryland needs to quickly transition its electric grid away from fossil fuels. The state is currently in the process of developing offshore wind farms that have the potential to represent a significant source of renewable energy. However little progress has been made in expanding Maryland’s onshore wind energy production capacity. Using a multi-criteria GIS analysis, this study found that there is a limited but not inconsiderable area in the state that could be suitable for wind farms of varying scales that …

Perceived Social And Environmental Impacts Of The Maya Train Project On The Yucatan Peninsula Of Mexico: A Case Study Of Puerto Morelos, Emely Hernandez Yac

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The Maya Train Project (MTP) is a new national megaproject in Mexico, meant to connect the perimeter of the Yucatan Peninsula, and facilitate easier transportation for tourism, industry, and agriculture. Given the region’s dependence on tourism, the train will accelerate the growth, as well as the social and environmental impacts of tourism in the region. Globally, the tourism industry has resulted in inequitable social and environmental impacts for the local communities and there is concern that this new Maya Train Project will serve to accelerate uneven development in the region. This project focused on the coastal tourist city of Puerto …

Quantifying Water Security In West Virginia And The Potomac River Basin, Eric Carl Edvard Sinius Sjostedt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

All healthy ecosystems, communities, and economies are founded on access to clean, adequate water sources to support ecosystem services, provide clean drinking water, and allow the production of water-intensive goods and services. The state of available water resources must be analyzed through the lens of water security, defined as the capability to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for people, the economy, and ecosystems. Mountain regions are sources of freshwater resources for downstream regions, which produce disproportionately higher runoff than downstream regions. As a result, mountain regions are often referred to as natural water towers …

Re-Storying Grant Creek: A Case Study Of Relational Dynamics On A Degraded Montana Stream, Seamus Rucci Land

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration began in 2021, and after a history of contentious ethical debates, ecological restoration is increasingly portrayed as a viable framework for combating environmental degradation and supporting more healthy and stable social-ecological systems. The proposed ecological restoration of Grant Creek, a degraded stream near Missoula, Montana, offers an opportunity to connect a restoration site to the broader, rapidly growing field of restoration practice. It also allows the opportunity to forward the ‘relational turn’ proposed by many in the sustainability sciences as an ontological and methodological means to move beyond positivist portrayals of social-ecological systems, which …

Comparison Of Topsoil Moisture In E3sm Model Simulations And In-Situ Observations Over Illinois, Jacinda Lee Mayer

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Soil moisture stimulates land-atmosphere interactions by modifying energy and water fluxes in the boundary layer and it plays an important role in climate change studies. The objective of this research is to quantify the spatial and temporal variations of the Illinois Climate Network’s (ICN) observed topsoil moisture, as well as evaluate how accurately the new climate model, E3SM, is simulating soil moisture compared to the observed data during 2003-2014. Observed topsoil moisture averaged over growing season during the 12-year period indicates a general dry-north and wet-south pattern in Illinois, and northeast and southwest become drier with the progression of the …

Characterization Of Site-Specific Vegetation Activity In Alaskan Wet And Dry Tundra As Related To Climate And Soil State, Michael Gregory Brown, Kyle C. Mcdonald, Reiner Zimmermann, Nicholas Steiner, Stephanie Devries, Laura Bourgeau-Chavez

Advanced Science Research Center

We present discrete (2-h resolution) multi-year (2008–2017) in situ measurements of seasonal vegetation growth and soil biophysical properties from two sites on Alaska's North Slope, USA, representing dry and wet sedge tundra. We examine measurements of vertical active soil layer temperature and soil moisture profiles (freeze/thaw status), woody shrub vegetation physiological activity, and meteorological site data to assess interrelationships within (and between) these two study sites. Vegetation phenophases (cold de-hardening start, physiological function start, stem growth start, stem growth end, physiological function end, cold hardening completion) were found to have greater interannual day of year (DOY) occurrence variability at the …

Bridging The Gap: Where Indigenous Knowledge And Western Science Come Together To Shape Environmental Stewardship, Bowman Leigh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the era of climate change, humans are grappling with how to ensure that natural resources exist into the future. For millennia, Indigenous people have actively managed the environment, drawing upon deep connections to the land passed down through generations. The Western worldview, on the other hand, sees humans as separate from nature — an attitude that has led to many of the environmental crises we see today.

This portfolio examines places and programs where Western science and Indigenous knowledge (IK) or traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) come together to shape environmental stewardship. Western science and IK/TEK are inherently different ways …

Seeding Resilience: An Examination Of The Impacts Of A Seed Saving Network In Western Montana, Christina Leas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Seed saving, a worldwide practice as old as agriculture, continues even in the context of an increasingly industrialized and globalized agricultural system. While some scholarship has focused on informal seed saving practices that continue to thrive in the global South, few studies have examined the dynamics of these practices in the global North, particularly in the American West. Informal seed saving systems have implications for the resilience of agroecosystems. The concept of resilience has become an important framework for conceptualizing agroecosystems as social-ecological systems, both in scholarship and in policy. However, operationalizing the concept of resilience, particularly in agroecology research, …