Geography Commons^™

Lima And Hanif, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

In Afghanistan, Lima worked as a teacher, and her husband worked (and continues to work) for the government as an agricultural manager. She has a fourteen-year-old son who is deaf and has related speech problems; he could not be treated for them properly in Afghanistan. Because her uncle was very wealthy, Lima received daily threats that her son would be kidnapped and held for ransom. Her uncle went to Germany with his own children and her son to protect them from the kidnapping threats.

Although Lima’s son was safer in Germany, she still faced threats because of her work as …

A Generalized Computer Vision Approach To Mapping Crop Fields In Heterogeneous Agricultural Landscapes, Stephanie R. Debats, Dee Luo, Lyndon Estes, Thomas J. Fuchs, Kelly K. Caylor

Geography

Smallholder farms dominate in many parts of the world, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. These systems are characterized by small, heterogeneous, and often indistinct field patterns, requiring a specialized methodology to map agricultural land cover. Using a variety of sites in South Africa, we present a new approach to mapping agricultural fields, based on efficient extraction of a vast set of simple, highly correlated, and interdependent features, followed by a random forest classifier. We achieved similar high performance across agricultural types, including the spectrally indistinct smallholder fields as well as the more easily distinguishable commercial fields, and demonstrated the ability to generalize …

Agriculture On The Brink:Climate Change, Labor And Smallholder Farming In Botswana, William G. Moseley

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Crops Or Crafts? Changes In Land Use In The Imbabura Valley Of Ecuador, Christopher Richard Hair

Master's Theses

In rural societies where urbanization and modernization are contributing to rapid growth, changes in land use can both reflect and bring about broader changes within a community. This study seeks to investigate changes in land use in the Imbabura valley of Ecuador from the perspective of the local inhabitants. To accomplish this, three data collection techniques were employed: repeat photography, ethnographic interviews, and archival research. Repeat photography involves re-photographing historic photographs from the original site. A combination of 35 historic photographs taken in the 1950s were re-photographed during the summer of 2015. The resulting repeat photo pairs were used in …

Conterminous United States Crop Field Size Quantification From Multi-Temporal Landsat Data, Lin Yan Dr., David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Agricultural field size is indicative of the degree of agricultural capital investment, mechanization and labor intensity, and it is ecologically important. A recently published automated computational methodology to extract agricultural crop fields from weekly 30 m Web Enabled Landsat data (WELD) time series was refined and applied to a year of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhance Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) acquisitions for all of the conterminous United States (CONUS). For the first time, spatially explicit CONUS field size maps and derived information are presented. A total of 4,182,777 fields were extracted with mean and median …

The Feasibility, Practicality And Uses Of Detecting Crop Water Stress In Southern Ontario Apple Orchards With A Uas, Thomas S. Tiidus Mr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) are becoming more common place in agricultural sites around the world. While the accuracy of achieving NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) from a UAS is well understood, few studies have attempted to acquire other plant health attributes such as CWSI (Crop Water Stress Index), particularly in horticulture such as apple orchards. In addition, no academic studies up to the time of this writing have explored the perceived usefulness of data obtained from a UAS for the average farmer. This study explored the practicality and feasibility of using UAS for apple orchards in Southern Ontario. This study …

Using Food Flow Data To Assess Sustainability: Land Use Displacement And Regional Decoupling In Quintana Roo, Mexico, Marco Millones, Benoit Parmentier, John Rogan, Birgit Schmook

Geography

Food flow data provide unique insights into the debates surrounding the sustainability of land based production and consumption at multiple scales. Trade flows disguise the spatial correspondence of production and consumption and make their connection to land difficult. Two key components of this spatial disjuncture are land use displacement and economic regional decoupling. By displacing the environmental impact associated with food production from one region to another, environmental trajectories can falsely appear to be sustainable at a particular site or scale. When regional coupling is strong, peripheral areas where land based production occurs are strongly linked and proximate to consumption …

Characterizing And Mapping The Field Scale Spatial Variability Of Surface Horizon Soil Properties And Water Content With Noninvasive Em38, Ryan W.R. Schroeder, Robert Austin, Joshua Heitman, Adam Howard

Purdue GIS Day

The spatial variability of physical soil properties at the field scale is increasingly important in agriculture and natural resource management. Changes in topography, parent material, management practices, erosion/deposition rates, etc. can influence the variability of the soil’s physical properties and help guide management and land use plans. The Geonics EM38 is a noninvasive geophysical sensor which is used to measure the apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) of the soil through electromagnetic induction – primarily influenced by clay content, soil moisture content, and salinity. Soil moisture has been found to be a significant contributor to ECa and is therefore useful in determining …

September 2013, Colorado Front Range Flooding, And Impacts On Agriculture And Irrigation Infrastructure: A Case Study In The Left Hand Ditch System, Boulder County, Colorado, Nick Ludolph

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Flooding can cause massive harm to the agricultural sector by flooding fields and damaging the infrastructure that is essential for agricultural activities. Crops are often lost and repairs may be necessary to restore irrigation systems to functional status. This research aims to quantify the damages and losses experienced from the unprecedented September 2013 flooding event in Boulder County Colorado’s Left Hand Ditch Company service area. Damages are cataloged and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies were used to estimate economic impact and determine the landscape characteristics of lands where the highest rates of flooding occurred. Alfalfa and non-alfalfa hays experienced the …

Grains. Monsanto Contre Schmeiser D'Annabel Soutar, Mariève Isabel

The Goose

Compte-rendu de Grains. Monsanto contre Schmeiser d'Annabel Soutar.

A Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of Sorghum In The United States, Chris Laingen

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Sorghum is a type of grain, forage, and sugar crop that has been grown in warm, arid climates around the world for 10,000 years. It is a drought-tolerant crop, and is among the most efficient crops in the conversion of solar energy and use of water. In the United States, South America, and Australia, sorghum grain is used primarily for livestock feed and ethanol production and is becoming popular in the human food sector because of its use in gluten-free food products. The U.S. sorghum belt stretches from South Dakota to southern Texas. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, sorghum …

(Re)Localizing Finland’S Foodshed: Grassroots Movements In Food Distribution And Urban Agriculture, Sophia E. Albov

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Finland’s agricultural landscape and food production systems have deep societal roots and intimate connections to the Finnish cultural identity. The thesis explores this cultural heritage through an examination of grassroots food distribution networks rapidly diffusing across Finland and an examination of urban agricultural practices in the capital city of Helsinki. This thesis aims to address the following questions: (1) What is the role of grassroots food distribution networks in Finland, and to what extent are they creating alternative farmer-consumer linkages that support eating local? (2) How is urban agriculture structured and organized in Helsinki and within the broader context of …

Mapping Cropland In Smallholder-Dominated Savannas: Integrating Remote Sensing Techniques And Probabilistic Modeling, Sean Sweeney, Tatyana Ruseva, Lyndon Estes, Tom Evans

Geography

Traditional smallholder farming systems dominate the savanna range countries of sub-Saharan Africa and provide the foundation for the region's food security. Despite continued expansion of smallholder farming into the surrounding savanna landscapes, food insecurity in the region persists. Central to the monitoring of food security in these countries, and to understanding the processes behind it, are reliable, high-quality datasets of cultivated land. Remote sensing has been frequently used for this purpose but distinguishing crops under certain stages of growth from savanna woodlands has remained a major challenge. Yet, crop production in dryland ecosystems is most vulnerable to seasonal climate variability, …

Applications Of Satellite Remote Sensing In The Environment, Rajee Olaganathan, Muhammad Ihsan Bin Ibrahim, Huang Meitong, Tan Yong Jie Shawn, Wilson Tok Wei Sheng, Et Al.

Publications

Since its inception, satellite remote sensing has enabled observations of environmental changes at inaccessible locations in meteorology, disaster control, oceanography, agriculture, glaciology, geology etc. Using the information gathered from satellite remote sensing, changes in the physical environment can be measured and the information are utilized to predict future patterns and achieve better environmental outcomes in different areas. This paper serves to highlight some of the areas in which satellite remote sensing has been applied. In meteorology, Earth’s solar radiation intensity, geothermal energy and wind velocity are measured by satellite remote sensing. Satellite imageries are also used for forecasting natural disasters …

Using Census Bureau Data For Current And Historical Gis Research, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides examples of how geographic information system (GIS) data can be used to conduct historical and contemporary research using Census Bureau data and mapping and other resources. Such data and mapping can enhance understanding of historical and contemporary subjects in a multidisciplinary variety of topics.

Extractive Industries, Livelihoods And Natural Resource Competition: Mapping Overlapping Claims In Peru And Ghana, Nicholas Cuba, Anthony J. Bebbington, John Rogan, Marco Millones

Geography

Taking the cases of Perú and Ghana, this paper examines overlaps between the extraction of minerals, oil and gas on the one hand, and river basins, agricultural land use, and protected areas on the other hand. In particular the paper considers how far such overlaps can be revealed and analyzed on the basis of (relatively) accessible and affordable data, without having to use more expensive data generated by remote sensing or fieldwork. We use concessions as our indicator of the presence of extractive industry activity, focusing on both mineral and hydrocarbon concessions, and areas of exploration and of active resource …

Reducing The Cost Of Soil Mapping In Precision Agriculture, Elizabeth Gillins, Dr. Ruth Kerry

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Using electrical conductivity data (ECa) in soil survey is related to several soil properties. Particular use has been made of ECa data in precision agriculture because it is related to properties that could affect crop yield. Although theoretically sound reasons exist to explain these relationships, they vary spatially, making ECa data interpretation difficult, even within fields.

Enhancing Remote Sensing For Agriculture Using Small Unmanned Aerial Systems: San Diego, Ca, As A Test Case, Colin Kubera

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The development of small Global Positioning System (GPS) antennas and microprocessors has propelled the advancement of affordable Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUASs), which will dramatically expand the remote sensing field, making timely, high-resolution imagery readily available. The low cost and simple operation of SUASs makes them an attractive option for agriculture. Flying a SUAS 400 ft above ground level (AGL) in a flight path that allows for significant image overlap can yield sub- 5cm resolution imagery, which in turn can be mosaicked and used for multispectral imagery analysis. With results rivaling the most advanced commercial imaging sensors, SUASs can be …

Science, Sentience, And Animal Welfare, Robert C. Jones

Ethics and Animal Welfare Collection

I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on …

Energy In The Corn Belt: Is Maize Production Sustainable?, Matthew Bernau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Technological and scientific innovation has transformed agricultural production. Corn production methods changed from a sustainable, nutrient recycling production system to one reliant on imported fossil energy inputs. Located in the Western Corn Belt, Union County, South Dakota was chosen as the study area. Changes in production methods are represented by four technological epochs: 1) The Draft Horse Epoch, 1890-1920; 2) The Tractor Epoch, 1920-1950; 3) The Fertilizer Epoch, 1950-1980; and 4) The Biotechnology and Precision Agriculture Epoch, 1980-2010. The energy budget method was used to measure the energy sustainability of corn production. The findings show that the volume of corn …

An Assessment Of Technology Adoptability In Sugarcane Burning Smoke Plume Mitigation, Sara Flecher

Theses and Dissertations

The adverse health effects of sugarcane burning emissions on surrounding communities are well documented. Sugarcane farmers in Louisiana, a major sugarcane producing state with 385,000 acres dedicated to sugarcane farming throughout, attempt to mitigate the effects of burn emissions by estimating the characteristics of the resultant smoke plume using meteorological variables as parameters. The current mitigation method designed by the LSU AgCenter, the American Sugar Cane League, and the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry is a manual process requiring the tedious look-up of atmospheric variables from multiple sources and physically drawing a predicted smoke plume on a paper map, …

Agriculture, Influence, And Instability Under The Ancien Régime: 1708-1768, Adam J. Polk

Masters Theses

The French Revolution has been studied from myriad perspectives. The majority of scholarship focuses on the political and urban chaos of the times. Agricultural conditions and the influence of onerous taxation and stagnant agricultural options are given only a cursory examination in most research. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between agronomic and environmental conditions and the eruption of violence in urban centers during the French Revolution and the years leading up to it (1708-1768). This period prior to the French Revolution serves as a template to investigate the nature of the rural-agricultural influences, with a particular focus paid …

The Management Of Feral Pig Socio-Ecological Systems In Far North Queensland, Australia, Gabriela Shuster

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The development of management programs for socio-ecological systems that include multiple stakeholders is a complex process and requires careful evaluation and planning. This is particularly a challenge in the presence of intractable conflict. The feral pig (Sus scrofa) in Australia is part of one such socio-ecological system. There is a large and heterogeneous group of stakeholders interested in pig management. Pigs have diverse effects on wildlife and plant ecology, economic, health, and social sectors. This study used the feral pig management system as a vehicle to examine intractable conflict in socio-ecological systems. The purpose of the study was …

A Landscape Approach To Late Prehistoric Settlement And Subsistence Patterns In The Mojave Sink, Tiffany Ann Thomas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The environment of the Late Prehistoric period (1200 A.D. to Historic Contact) Mojave Sink was wetter than modern conditions. The settlement and subsistence patterns of the occupants of the region during this period were driven by the availability of water, subsistence resources, raw material sources, and tradition. These people utilized the regional landscape based upon the seasonal availability of these resources. Supplemental agricultural production has been proposed for the Mojave River Delta due to the more favorable environmental conditions of this period. If agriculture was being practiced it would have affected the regional land-use patterns. For this thesis I propose …

College Food Systems Comparison, Courtney Fearon

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Land Use As It Relates To Land Slope, James D. Plourde, Bryan C. Pijanowski

GIS Day

The goal of this project is to analyze the relationship between the slope of land and agricultural land use. The output was analyzed to determine a threshold point at which agriculture practices drop off in relation to higher slope values. Slope of the land is important to agricultural practices because it impacts drainage and net crop primary production. Agricultural land was extracted from the 2001 National Land Cover Dataset using reclassification tools in ArcGIS 9.3. The slope of the contiguous United States was derived from the United States Geological Survey National Elevation Dataset by using the slope tool in the …

Random Forests Applied As A Soil Spatial Predictive Model In Arid Utah, Alexander Knell Stum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Initial soil surveys are incomplete for large tracts of public land in the western USA. Digital soil mapping offers a quantitative approach as an alternative to traditional soil mapping. I sought to predict soil classes across an arid to semiarid watershed of western Utah by applying random forests (RF) and using environmental covariates derived from Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and digital elevation models (DEM). Random forests are similar to classification and regression trees (CART). However, RF is doubly random. Many (e.g., 500) weak trees are grown (trained) independently because each tree is trained with a new randomly …

Long-Term Agricultural Land-Use Trends In Nebraska, 1866–2007, Tim L. Hiller, Larkin A. Powell, Tim D. Mccoy, Jeffrey J. Lusk

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Although landscape changes from anthropogenic causes occur at much faster rates than those from natural processes (e.g., geological, vegetation succession), human perception of such changes is often subjective, inaccurate, or nonexistent. Given the large-scale land-use changes that have occurred throughout the Great Plains, the potential impacts of land-use changes on ecological systems, and the insight gained from knowledge of land-use trends (e.g., to compare to wildlife population trends), we synthesized information related to land-use trends in Nebraska during 1866–2007. We discussed and interpreted known and potential causes of short- and long-term land-use trends based on agricultural and weather data; farm …

Land Resources Series No 21 - Tambellup-Borden Area Land Resources Survey, Angela Stuart-Street, Rohan Marold

Natural resources published reports

AGDEX 526

Land Resources Series No. 21

This report presents results from soil-landscape mapping at a scale of 1: 100,000 in the Tambellup- Borden area of Western Australia. It is accompanied by a soil-landscape map covering almost 511,000 hectares.

Most of the survey occurs within the upper Frankland-Gordon, Kent, North Stirlings Basin and upper reaches of the Pallinup and Kalgan River catchments. The survey falls within the Katanning and Albany Department of Agriculture and Food advisory districts.

Seventeen soil-landscape systems have been identified and are represented on the map on the accompanying CD-ROM. These systems have been further divided into …

Gregory Veeck, Margaret Von Steinen

International Faculty Researchers

Dr. Gregory Veeck, professor of geography, has completed extensive international research specializing in economic geography, agriculture, rural development and rural environmental/ecological issues in the United States, China, Japan, and Korea. Veeck has been conducting field research for 29 years.

Gregory Veeck's website