Geography Commons^™

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, …

Examining The Spatial Relationship Between Maternal Morbidity, Access To Health Care, And Community Characteristics In West Virginia, Sarah E. Woolard

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Maternal-related morbidity rates in the United States have risen almost three fold since the early 1990’s. Issues related to rurality, socioeconomic disparities, and pre-existing health conditions increase the risk of poor pregnancy outcomes and introduce barriers to accessing advanced maternal health care. West Virginia (WV) has higher maternal morbidity rates than many other states in the United States (US), and is considered to be driven by all 55 counties being classified as Appalachian, possessing the highest prenatal smoking rate in the US, and having disparities in access to health care. Despite this, no previous studies have evaluated maternal morbidity in …

Critical Perspectives On Produce Prescription Programs & Us Federal Nutrition Policy, Alanna K. Higgins

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Produce prescription programs, interventions operating at the intersection of food access and public health, are steadily increasing in number across the United States since 2010. I leverage key informant interviews, participant observations, and event ethnographies to form a four-year institutional ethnography of the implementation of produce prescriptions within West Virginia alongside a legal-policy archaeology methodology to understand how produce prescriptions have been institutionalized and funded within the US Farm Bill. While much of produce prescription program growth is attributed to an expansion of federal funding starting in 2014, this dissertation demonstrates that these programs and the federal legislation which has …

Embodied Energy Geographies: An Exploration Of Fracked Landscapes In The Ohio River Valley, Rachael L. Hood

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Methane gas production has boomed across the United States as a result of the development of fracking technology and its associated infrastructures, including pipelines. This production has provoked resistance over a litany of environmental and social concerns at both global and local scales. These concerns are compounded by a history of extractive economies and degradation in the Marcellus shale region of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley. To date, there has been limited research at the intersection of extractive industry and emotional geography, especially around pipelines. This research draws on feminist, emotional, and energy geographies and uses semi-structured interviews and …

New Political Ecologies Of Renewable Energy, Sarah Knuth, Ingrid Behrsin, Anthony Levenda, James Mccarthy

Geography

The critique of fossil fuel regimes has been a foundational concern for the field of political ecology, in its drives to expose the injustices and harms of energy extractivism and its early warnings of the climate crisis. However, it is increasingly evident that renewable energy sources and their infrastructures will carry their own costs and trade-offs, and that critique, resistance and alternative movement-building are needed to forge a truly just renewable energy transition. This theme issue underlines the many ways in which political ecology is well-positioned to lead critical and engaged scholarship in support of energy/climate justice. In this introduction …

Application Of Uas Remote Sensing For Cultural Heritage Preservation And Archaeology, Nickolas D. "Dan" Macchiarella, Kevin A. Adkins

Publications

Using small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) to gain aerial perspectives for remote sensing with cameras and LiDAR is truly benefiting cultural heritage preservation and archaeological work. Photogrammetric products derived from sUAS captured images are providing precise and detailed data. LiDAR- equipped sUAS are also making precise and detailed data available for analysis. Rapid technological gains associated with all UAS are bringing these remote sensing technologies to bear in exciting ways. Novoberda fortress in the Republic of Kosovo and Creekside Village, Tularosa Basin, New Mexico provide excellent examples of photogrammetric work and LiDAR derived analysis products resulting from the use of …

Arithfusion: An Arithmetic Deep Model For Temporal Remote Sensing Image Fusion, Md Reshad Ul Hoque, Jian Wu, Chiman Kwan, Krzysztof Koperski, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Different satellite images may consist of variable numbers of channels which have different resolutions, and each satellite has a unique revisit period. For example, the Landsat-8 satellite images have 30 m resolution in their multispectral channels, the Sentinel-2 satellite images have 10 m resolution in the pan-sharp channel, and the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) aerial images have 1 m resolution. In this study, we propose a simple yet effective arithmetic deep model for multimodal temporal remote sensing image fusion. The proposed model takes both low- and high-resolution remote sensing images at t₁ together with low-resolution images at a …

การจำลองการเกิดน้ำท่วมในพื้นที่ลุ่มน้ำเจ้าพระยาตอนกลางด้วยแบบจำลอง Hec-Ras, ปัญชิกา มูลรังษี

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

งานวิจัยนี้ประยุกต์ใช้แบบจำลองชลศาสตร์ HEC-RAS เพื่อการจำลองและคาดการณ์การเกิดน้ำท่วม ในลุ่มน้ำเจ้าพระยาบริเวณตั้งแต่ท้ายเขื่อนเจ้าพระยา จ.ชัยนาท จนกระทั่งถึง อ.เมือง จ.อ่างทอง โดยทำการจำลองการไหลในลำน้ำแบบหนึ่งมิติ (1D) และการหลากของน้ำล้นตลิ่งในลักษณะสองมิติ (2D) ในการจำลองการไหลแบบหนึ่งมิติ ผู้วิจัยทำการเทียบมาตรฐานแบบจำลอง โดยใช้ข้อมูลอัตราการไหล ในลำน้ำที่สถานีตรวจวัด C.13 และระดับน้ำที่ C.7A พ.ศ. 2553 และ พ.ศ. 2555 เพื่อกำหนดค่าสัมประสิทธิ์ความขรุขระแมนนิ่ง (Manning’s n) ของพื้นท้องน้ำที่เหมาะสมในการจำลองการไหลแบบไม่คงที่ในลำน้ำ สำหรับการจำลองการไหลแบบ 2 มิติ ทำการเทียบมาตรฐานแบบจำลองกับขอบเขตพื้นที่น้ำท่วมจากภาพถ่ายดาวเทียมรายวัน และระดับน้ำท่วมจากจุดสำรวจ 4 ตำแหน่ง เพื่อปรับค่าการระบายน้ำออกจากพื้นที่ศึกษาด้วยค่าสัมประสิทธิ์ปรับแก้การเปิด-ปิดประตูระบายน้ำและการกักเก็บปริมาณน้ำท่วมส่วนเกิน จากนั้นจึงทดสอบความสมเหตุสมผลของแบบจำลอง โดยใช้ข้อมูลอัตราการไหลในลำน้ำและขอบเขตพื้นที่น้ำท่วม พ.ศ.2551 และ พ.ศ.2552 รวมถึงระดับน้ำท่วมจากจุดสำรวจ 3 ตำแหน่งในพื้นที่ศึกษา ผลการศึกษาพบว่า ค่า Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) ของอัตราการไหลในลำน้ำอยู่ระหว่าง 0.95-0.99 และค่า root-mean-squared error (RMSE) ของความลึกน้ำท่วม 3 ตำแหน่ง อยู่ระหว่าง 0.67-0.68 เมตร เมื่อเพิ่มโครงสร้างบรรเทาการเกิดอุทกภัยในแบบจำลอง สามารถลดพื้นที่น้ำท่วม พ.ศ. 2548 และ พ.ศ. 2550 ได้ 41.27 และ 51.49 ตารางกิโลเมตร ตามลำดับ โดยการเพิ่มพื้นที่แก้มลิงสามารถบรรเทาอุทกภัยได้มากที่สุด ในขณะที่การเพิ่มความสูงคันกั้นน้ำและการขุดลอกลำน้ำ ไม่สามารถลดพื้นที่ที่เกิดน้ำท่วมขังได้มากนัก ในนอกจากนี้ยังพบว่าการเพิ่มโครงสร้างบรรเทาน้ำท่วมทั้ง 3 ประเภท ทำให้พื้นที่ที่ยังคงมีน้ำท่วมขัง มีระดับความลึกน้ำท่วมลดลง 0.1-0.15 เซนติเมตร

A Harbour In The Country, A City In The Sea: Infrastructural Conduits, Territorial Inversions And The Slippages Of Sovereignty In Sino-Sri Lankan Development Narratives, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper adopts infrastructure as a lens through which new understandings of the inter-relationships between territory and sovereignty can be advanced. It argues that inverting the terrestrial assumption of territory can lead to “slippages” of sovereignty in which territorial sovereignty is indirectly claimed through the assertion of governance rights. For the purposes of this paper, I explore these inversions through the reclaiming of land from the ocean, and the removal of land by the ocean. Drawing on ethnographic research exploring the effects of China-backed infrastructure megaprojects in Sri Lanka, these territorial inversions are explored, respectively, through the Port City Colombo …

Changes In Reproductive Behavior And Birth Patterns During The Covid-19 Pandemic In Sakartvelo (The Republic Georgia) [რეპროდუქციული ქცევასა და შობადობის ცვლილებები კოვიდ-19 პანდემიის დროს საქართველოში], Nino Mateshvili

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Because of the increased frequency and extent of large-scale disasters, including health events, there is a need to better understand the impacts of these disasters on key demographic processes. In particular, in the European countries, including the Republic of Georgia (Sakartvelo), which already face demographic problems, such as aging population and decreasing birth rates, researchers and policymakers are concerned with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on demographic indicators and processes, such as birth rates and reproductive behavior. That is why it is very timely to collect and analyze initial evidence establishing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as a …

Political Culture: An Unexplored Factor In Climate Change Diplomacy, Alexander Suen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As climate change continues to ravage the world, mitigation efforts continue to be insufficient to rise to the challenge. Inaction on climate change has been traditionally explained by economic incentives, but some of the variability in climate policies cannot be explained by economics alone. Some variations could be accounted for by the deeply rooted national political culture of Anglo-settler colonies. This political culture may inhibit the willingness of such states to cooperate on climate change. In this dissertation, I describe the political philosophy of the Anglo-settler colony, and the histories of domination of its white settlers over the indigenous peoples …

Exploring Visitor Perceptions And Behaviours Related To Ticks And Lyme Disease Risk In An Ontario Protected Area, Ryan Brady

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne zoonosis in North America and over the past decade, reported cases of the disease have been rapidly increasing in many regions throughout Canada. The relative novelty of this public health threat presents nature-based tourism and recreation organizations with a range of policy and management challenges. Currently, there is a limited understanding of public perceptions and behaviours associated with tick and Lyme disease risk, especially within a Canadian parks and protected areas visitation and visitor experience context. To address this practical and scholarly knowledge gap, this study utilized in-situ surveys to explore visitor perceptions, …

Does Air Pollution Cause Residents Of New Delhi, India To Migrate Internationally?, Snigdha Basu

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Delhi, India, and the surrounding cities of Noida, Gurugram, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad consistently rank among the world's most polluted cities. For many parts of the year, air pollution levels are so high as to cause significant harm to human health, economy and the environment. Despite overwhelming evidence of the severity and consequences of air pollution, institutional measures to control it remain insufficient.

There is growing evidence that environmental degradation has the potential to generate migration of people out of affected areas. However, the links between environmental factors and migration are complex, with migration often being a result of interactions between …

'Indirect Pathways Into Practice': Philippine Internationally Educated Nurses And Their Entry Into Ontario's Nursing Profession, Lualhati Marcelino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

While there are several studies that highlight the quantitative and statistical profiles of internationally educated nurses (IENs) from the Philippines who migrate to countries throughout Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the United States and Canada, there is little research that delves deeply into the qualitative review and analysis of their experiences in their own words. This study addresses that gap by applying the transnational feminist concept of “global care chains” in a single case study design that explores the experience of nurses who migrated to Ontario through permanent and temporary immigration streams and were interviewed in 2011 to 2012 to …

Adaptive Capacity And Mobility In The Bahamas: Examining The Social Costs Of Displacement In Response To Hurricane Dorian, Kearney Coupland

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In 2021, over 30 million people were displaced by disasters, most of which were weather related and nearly half of which were the result of storms. While research on disaster displacement has provided broad observations of post-hurricane human mobility and the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics that influence displacement, few studies examine the factors that influence household mobility decisions after a disaster. My dissertation uses a primarily qualitative research approach to empirically investigate the relationship between mobility and the capacity of displaced households to cope and adapt to the impacts of hurricanes through a detailed examination of Hurricane Dorian displacement in …

Agent-Based Modelling And Big Data: Applications For Maritime Traffic Analysis, Marc Sirizzotti

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Agent based modeling (ABM) is a powerful tool for examining complex systems in many scientific applications, including maritime transport systems. Growing demands for freight transport and increased industry emphasis on reducing environmental impacts have heightened the focus on vessel and port efficiency. This research aimed to create a maritime route planning model to simulate vessel movement in all waterways. The goal of the ship routing model developed in this research was to develop a simulation tool capable of reproducing real world shipping routes useful for navigation planning, with emphasis on port scheduling and potential application for further use and exploration. …

Lake Huron Shoreline Analysis, Shubham Satish Nandanwar

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Lake Huron is a popular tourist destination and is home to several businesses and residents. Since the shoreline is dynamic and is subject to change over the years due to several factors such as a change in water level, soil type, human encroachment, etc., these locations tend to encounter floods due to increased water levels and wind speed. This causes erosion and loss to the properties along the shoreline.

This study is based on two areas of interest named Pinery Provincial Park and Sauble Beach which are located on the shoreline of Lake Huron where Pinery Provincial Park is a …

Exploring The Relationship Between Drought And Population Change On The North American Great Plains, 1970-2010, George Heath

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Through the second half of the 20th century, the North American Great Plains saw widespread rural out-migration, a continuation of trends that began with the Dust Bowl crisis during the Great Depression of the 1930s. As part of a wider academic focus on the roles climate and environmental changes have on migration, this research project sought to understand the relationship between drought conditions and rural population decline on the Great Plains. In this explorative research, census population data for Canada and the US from 1970-2010 were analyzed along with temperature, precipitation, and Palmer Drought Severity Index data for the same …

Bee Cities And More-Than-Human Communities: Protecting Pollinators In The Anthropocene, Jennifer Marshman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Grounded in political ecology and the ecological humanities, the aim of this research is to examine the Bee City movement as a conservation engagement strategy at the municipal level. While pollinator research occurs from a variety of perspectives – biology, entomology, phylogeny, ecology, and agricultural sciences - social engagement strategies and the human dimensions of pollinator conservation have yet to be widely investigated. This research questions if these strategies put in place, and contribute to, important political and socio-ecological mechanisms in the local context. Through a collective case study methodology, this research points to the Bee City movement as a …

Tales From A Placeholder: A Relational Journey With Land, Place, People And Self, Kalle O. Fox

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The proposed thesis is a collection of place-based, long- and-short-form creative nonfiction essays. The places of interest are where the author spent different amounts of time in during her twenties, including Iceland, Miami and Seaside, Florida, Butte and Missoula, Montana, and a series of National Parks on the western side of the Continental Divide. This thesis is informed what cultural geographer Yi Fu Tuan coined as topophilia: the affective bond between people and place. “Place” and “sense of place,” while each having their own array of definitions in environmental scholarship, are considered interchangeable in the context of my work. A …

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 …