Geography Commons^™

Carnivore Population Structure Across An Urbanization Gradient: A Regional Genetic Analysis Of Bobcats In Southern California, Julia G. Smith, Megan K. Jennings, Erin E. Boydston, Kevin R. Crooks, Holly B. Ernest, Seth Riley, Laurel E. K. Serleys, Shaelynn Sleater-Squires, Rebecca L. Lewison

United States National Park Service: Publications

Context In human-dominated landscapes, habitat fragmentation and barriers to movement can interrupt gene flow. While often considered at a local extent, regional analyses are also needed to reveal broader landscape-mediated population processes.

Objectives To explore the relationship between patterns of gene flow and fragmentation resulting from urbanization across southern California, we used the bobcat as an indicator species. We assembled data for a landscape level genetic analysis across southern California from both archived and new samples, including two northern Californian populations for comparison, to identify local and regional areas affected by isolation.

Methods Our regional analyses focused on a dataset …

Asynchronous Carbon Sink Saturation In African And Amazonian Tropical Forests, Wannes Hubau, Simon L. Lewis, Et. Al. Authors

United States National Park Service: Publications

Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 percent of 1–3 anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Climate-driven vegetation models 4,5 typically predict that this tropical forest ‘carbon sink’ will continue for decades . Here we assess trends in the carbon sink using 244 structurally intact African tropical forests spanning 11 countries, compare them with 321 published plots from Amazonia and investigate the underlying drivers of the trends. The carbon sink in live aboveground biomass in intact African tropical forests has been stable for the three decades to …

No.08: Improving The Profitability Of Wet Market Food Vendors In China, Xinxian Qi, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Xianjin Huang

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ The characteristics of individual vendors and their business operations have a more significant impact on business profits than more general socioeconomic factors. Policy interventions need to prioritize the former.

■ The profits of wet market vendors vary spatially in Nanjing, China. The average profit level in central urban districts is higher than in peri-urban districts.

■ Almost all determinants have more significant impacts on vendor profitability in peri-urban than urban areas. Measures should therefore be taken to improve the profitability of wet market vendors in peri-urban areas.

No.09: Enhancing Food Security Through Urban Agriculture In Kingston, Jamaica, Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Robert Kinlocke, Therese Ferguson

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Much focus has been accorded rural agriculture, both in the literature and in practice. Yet urban agriculture is both a viable and necessary area of focus as it pertains to food security in Jamaica.

■ An education and communication strategy is required to ensure that attitudes towards nutrition and poor food choices are changed (within the range of affordability) in efforts to achieve food security.

■ Given the threats posed by climate change, the development of urban agriculture should incorporate not only previously designated sites through zoning for small-scale livestock and produce rearing; it also should incorporate backyard farming/gardening, …

No.06: Gender Inequality And Food Security Policy Responses, Mary Caesar

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Gender inequality and the legacy of racial discrimination operate alongside poverty and economic inequality to shape the household food security experience in low-income areas in South African cities.

■ In Cape Town, male-headed households are more likely to be food secure than female-headed households, although both experience high levels of severe food insecurity.

■ National food security policy and local government do not recognize the systemic nature of gender inequality and food insecurity; a gap that needs to be addressed.

Problematic Plant Monitoring In Homestead National Monument Of America, 2006–2017, Craig C. Young

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

Managers are challenged with the impact of problematic plants, including exotic, invasive, and pest plant species. Information on the abundance, distribution, and location of these plants is essential for developing risk-based approaches to managing these species. Based on surveys conducted in 2006, 2009, 2013, and 2017, Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network staff and contractors identified a cumulative total of 20 potentially problematic plant species in Homestead National Monument of America (NMA). Of the 13 species found in 2017, we characterized 4 as very low frequency, 4 as low frequency, 2 as medium frequency, and 3 as high frequency. Only …

Mult-Spectral Imaging Of Vegetation With A Diffractive Plenoptic Camera, Tristan R. Naranjo

Theses and Dissertations

Snapshot multi-spectral sensors allow for object detection based on its spectrum for remote sensing applications in air or space. By making these types of sensors more compact and lightweight, it allows drones to dwell longer on targets or the reduction of transport costs for satellites. To address this need, I designed and built a diffractive plenoptic camera (DPC) which utilized a Fresnel zone plate and a light field camera in order to detect vegetation via a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). This thesis derives design equations by relating DPC system parameters to its expected performance and evaluates its multi-spectral performance. …

Problematic Plant Monitoring In Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, 2006–2018, Craig C. Young

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

Managers are challenged with the impact of problematic plants, including exotic, invasive, and pest plant species. Information on the abundance, distribution, and location of these plants is essential for developing risk-based approaches to managing these species. Based on surveys conducted in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018, Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network staff and contractors identified a cumulative total of 33 problematic plant species in Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Of the 27 species found in 2018, we characterized 14 as very low frequency, 9 as low frequency, 4 as medium frequency, and 0 as high frequency. Only 4 (14.8%) of …

North Atlantic Hurricane Winds In Warmer Than Normal Seas, Jill C. Trepanier

Faculty Publications

Tropical cyclones devastate coastlines around the world. The United States and surrounding areas experienced catastrophic extreme events in recent hurricane seasons. Understanding extreme hurricanes and how they change in a warming ocean environment is of the utmost importance. This study makes use of the historical, positive relationship between average summer sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and maximum hurricane wind speeds across the North Atlantic Basin from 1854-2018. Geographically weighted regression shows how the relationship between hurricane winds and SSTs varies across space. Each localized slope is used to increase historical wind speeds to represent winds in a three-degree Celsius warmer-than-average sea …

Climatology And Spatiotemporal Analysis Of North Atlantic Rapidly Intensifying Hurricanes (1851-2017), Kathleen M. Benedetto, Jill C. Trepanier

Faculty Publications

In recent decades, the scientific ability to project tropical cyclone (TC) intensities and tracks has improved. Hurricanes undergoing the process of rapid intensification (RI) have created new barriers in formulating predictions of TC paths and peak velocities. Current research suggests the warming climate may produce more intense TCs with a higher probability of undergoing RI during their life cycle. The increased likelihood of rapidly intensifying TCs necessitates the development of an RI climatology spanning the current North Atlantic record. A time series count analysis suggests a significant increasing trend of RI events in the Atlantic basin by 29.1% (17%-45%) from …

Trend Analysis Of Multiple Extreme Hourly Precipitation Time Series In The Southeastern United States, Vincent M. Brown, Barry D. Keim, Alan W. Black

Faculty Publications

Annual trends in extreme hourly precipitation time series were examined at 50 first-order weather stations across the southeastern United States from 1960 to 2017. Results indicated that the magnitude of annual maximum 1-, 3-, 6-, 12-, and 18-h periods did not broadly change at the sites analyzed; however, the numerical value that defines a (station specific) 90th-percentile hourly accumulation significantly (p ≤ 0.05) increased at 36% (18/50) of the stations. No station had a significant decreasing trend in annual 90th-percentile hourly event magnitude. Stations in Texas observed the largest increase in annual 90th-percentile hourly event magnitude, where parameter estimates showed …

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, March 2020, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 1. Issue 2

In this issue:

Dean’s Update P.1
Awards & Recognition P.2
Club Spotlight | Academic Tips P.3
Research | Interest in Science P.4

Modeling Quality Of Urban Life Using A Geospatial Approach, Helena Merschdorf, Michael E. Hodgson, Thomas Blaschke

Faculty Publications

The rapid global urbanization of the past century poses several challenges for planners and policy makers. In particular, the conflation of social and urban issues must be understood to create sustainable and livable urban places. In this regard, it was our aim to model and understand the relationship between urban characteristics and peoples’ perceived quality of urban life (QoUL) using statistical analysis and geospatial modeling. We selected objective variables representing urban characteristics based on literature and used principal components analysis to develop uncorrelated components. These components served as the independent variables in a multiple linear regression analysis. The subjective, dependent …

The Geographical Distribution Of The Latino Population Of The New York City Metropolitan Area, 2018 - A Statistical And Map Data Base, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report investigates where all Latinos lived in the New York City Metropolitan area, including the Northern Suburbs, Long Island, and selected New Jersey counties. The six largest Latino nationalities are mapped by census tract for a very precise visualization of the data.

Methods:

This report uses one-year sample data for 2018 from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, and the 2014 – 2018 five-year sample data at the census-census tract level. The ACS dataset is reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota and is available at IPUMS USA (https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V10.0) and …

Global Pattern And Change Of Cropland Soil Organic Carbon During 1901-2010: Roles Of Climate, Atmospheric Chemistry, Land Use And Management, Wei Ren, Kamaljit Banger, Bo Tao, Jia Yang, Yawen Huang, Hanqin Tian

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Soil organic carbon (SOC) in croplands is a key property of soil quality for ensuring food security and agricultural sustainability, and also plays a central role in the global carbon (C) budget. When managed sustainably, soils may play a critical role in mitigating climate change by sequestering C and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. However, the magnitude and spatio-temporal patterns of global cropland SOC are far from well constrained due to high land surface heterogeneity, complicated mechanisms, and multiple influencing factors. Here, we use a process-based agroecosystem model (DLEM-Ag) in combination with diverse spatially-explicit gridded environmental data to …

Geographies Of Transition—From Topical Concerns To Theoretical Engagement: A Commentary On The Transitions Research Agenda, Christian Binz, Lars Coenen, James T. Murphy, Bernhard Truffer

Geography

This viewpoint takes stock with the ‘geography of sustainability transitions’ (GOST) as it is presented in the transitions research agenda. GOST has been a relatively recent addition to transition theorizing, addressing the need for greater sensitivity and attention to the scales, spatialities, and context-specific factors that shape transitions. In our view, the agenda represents a rather narrow perspective on GOST, which is geared to two empirical themes, namely urban transitions and transitions in developing countries. While these are relevant and topical issues, the section lacks sufficient acknowledgement of the increasing engagement of geographers with transitions studies and the theoretical approaches …

Bayesian Calibration At The Urban Scale: A Case Study On A Large Residential Heating Demand Application In Amsterdam, Cheng-Kai Wang, Simon Tindemans, Clayton Miller, Giorgio Agugiaro, Jantien Stoter

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

A bottom-up building energy modelling at the urban scale based on Geographic Information System and semantic 3D city models can provide quantitative insights to tackle critical urban energy challenges. Nevertheless, incomplete information is a common obstacle to produce reliable modelling results. The residential building heating demand simulation performance gap caused by input uncertainties is discussed in this study. We present a data-driven urban scale energy modelling framework from open-source data harmonization, sensitivity analysis, heating demand simulation at the postcode level to Bayesian calibration with six years of training data and two years of validation data. Comparing the baseline and the …

Population Sustainability In Rural Nebraska Towns, Andrew Husa

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

After beginning with an introduction to rural population trends and population sustainability in rural towns, this dissertation gives an overview of population change in rural Nebraska towns between 1950 and 2010. Following a series of maps depicting the changes in rural Nebraska towns between these two censuses, six case studies are used to explore the growth of individual towns. A discussion on the characteristics of growing rural towns in Nebraska follows these case studies.

The dissertation then continues by discussing statewide rural residential decision making and place attachment based on data collected by the Nebraska Roots Migration Survey. Following a …

Is It Possible To Discern Striga Weed (Striga Hermonthica) Infestation Levels In Maize Agro-Ecological Systems Using In-Situ Spectroscopy?, Bester Tawona Mudereri, Timothy Dube, Saliou Niassy, Emily Kimathi, Tobias Landmann, Zeyaur Khan, Elfatih M. Abdel-Rahman

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The invasion by Striga in most cereal crop fields in Africa has posed a significant threat to food security and has caused substantial socioeconomic losses. Hyperspectral remote sensing is an effective means to discriminate plant species, providing possibilities to track such weed invasions and improve precision agriculture. However, essential baseline information using remotely sensed data is missing, specifically for the Striga weed in Africa. In this study, we investigated the spectral uniqueness of Striga compared to other co-occurring maize crops and weeds. We used the in-situ FieldSpec® Handheld 2™ analytical spectral device (ASD), hyperspectral data and their respective narrow-band indices …

Predicting The Spatial Suitability Distribution Of Moringa Oleifera Cultivation Using Analytical Hierarchical Process Modelling, T. Tshabalala, B. Ncube, H. P. Moyo, E. M. Abdel-Rahman, O. Mutanga, A. R. Ndhlala

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Moringa oleifera Lam, often grows well under cultivation in the tropics and sub-tropics. It does well in sandy to clayey soils and tolerates low rainfall. The plant is well-known for its nutritional and medicinal properties, hence it is fast gaining popularity in South Africa and the rest of the world. The objective of this study was to predict the suitable areas for cultivating M. oleifera in South Africa using climate and edaphic variables that significantly affect its growth and development. We used an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and Geographic Information System (GIS) weight function to assign suitability weights to criteria …

Experimental Approaches In Development And Poverty Alleviation, Yana Van Der Meulen Rodgers, Anthony J. Bebbington, Catherine Boone, Jampel Dell'angelo, Jean Philippe Platteau, Arun Agrawal

Geography

This inaugural World Development Symposium on Development and Poverty Alleviation brings together contributions from a range of disciplines, scholars, practitioners, and countries to mark the recognition of Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer (BDK) through the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Contributors examine how BDK's work has changed the methods and study of Development Economics, and their extended impact in other social science and interdisciplinary fields. Although experimental evaluation has had a profound impact on the conduct of much research and policy making, further development of RCT approaches, and collaboration across methods …

Legal Geographies And Political Ecologies Of Water Allocation In Maui, Hawai'i, Alida Cantor, Kelly Kay, Chris Knudson

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Throughout the Hawaiian Islands, sugar plantations have controlled a large proportion of water resources for over a century, often leaving little water in streams to support ecosystems or Native Hawaiian cultural and agricultural practices. Recently, in Maui, Hawai‘i, community activists and lawyers representing Native Hawaiian and environmental interests have successfully reclaimed water resources for instream flow utilizing legal processes and tools such as Hawai‘i’s public trust doctrine, which has plural roots in both Hawaiian and Western legal traditions. In this paper, we use qualitative fieldwork, including interviews, participant observation, and archival data collection, to explore two recent and ongoing legal …

Population Collapse And Retreat To Fire Refugia Of The Tasmanian Endemic Conifer Athrotaxis Selaginoides Following The Transition From Aboriginal To European Fire Management, Andres Holz, Samuel W. Wood, Carly Ward, Thomas T. Veblen, David M.J.S. Bowman

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Untangling the nuanced relationships between landscape, fire disturbance, human agency, and climate is key to understanding rapid population declines of fire‐sensitive plant species. Using multiple lines of evidence across temporal and spatial scales (vegetation survey, stand structure analysis, dendrochronology, and fire history reconstruction), we document landscape‐scale population collapse of the long‐lived, endemic Tasmanian conifer Athrotaxis selaginoides in remote montane catchments in southern Tasmania. We contextualized the findings of this field‐based study with a Tasmanian‐wide geospatial analysis of fire‐killed and unburned populations of the species. Population declines followed European colonization commencing in 1802 ad that disrupted Aboriginal landscape burning. Prior to …

Assessing Boreal Peat Fire Severity And Vulnerability Of Peatlands To Early Season Wildland Fire, Laura Bourgeau-Chavez, Sarah L. Grelik, Michael Billmire, Liza K. Jenkins, Eric S. Kasischke, Merritt R. Turetsky

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Globally peatlands store large amounts of carbon belowground with 80% distributed in boreal regions of the northern hemisphere. Climate warming and drying of the boreal region has been documented as affecting fire regimes, with increased fire frequency, severity and extent. While much research is dedicated to assessing changes in boreal uplands, few research efforts are focused on the vulnerability of boreal peatlands to wildfire. In this case study, an integration of field data collection, land cover mapping of peatland types and Landsat-based fire severity mapping was conducted for four early season (May to mid-June) wildfires where peatlands are abundant in …

Mitochondrial Dna Diversity And Evolutionary History Of Native Human Populations Of Northwest Patagonia (Argentina), María Bárbara Postillone, Virginia Agustina Cobos, Celmira Urrutia, Cristina Beatriz Dejean, Paula N. Gonzalez, Sergio Ivan Perez, Valeria Bernal

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The genetic composition of Amerindian descendants from Patagonia has long been a focus of interest, although the information available is still scarce for many geographic areas. Here, we report the first analysis of the variation in the mtDNA control region for an area of northwestern Patagonia, the North of Neuquén, with the aim of studying the processes and historical events that modeled the evolutionary history of these human groups. We analyzed 113 individuals from two localities of northern Neuquén, along with 6 from southern Neuquén and 223 mtDNA sequences previously published from neighboring areas from Argentina and Chile. We estimated …

Estimation Of Available Epinephrine Dose In Expired And Discolored Autoinjectors Via Quantitative Smartphone Imaging, Amirus Saleheen, Bill M. Campbell, Rebecca A. Prosser, Christopher A. Baker

United States National Park Service: Publications

Epinephrine autoinjectors (EAIs) are important first aid medications for treating anaphylaxis. A 10-fold price increase over the past 12 years and evidence that expired EAIs may still contain significant doses of available epinephrine have motivated interest in the efficacy of expired EAIs as treatments of last resort. Degradation of expired EAIs, which can be caused by improper storage conditions, results in various degrees of discoloration of the epinephrine solution. Previous studies have determined that significant epinephrine remains available in expired EAIs, but these have only considered EAIs that show no discoloration. Here, we investigate the potential for colorimetric estimation of …

Assessment Of Land Cover Change In St. Martin’S Marsh Aquatic Preserve, Florida, Usa, Katie Wagner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

St. Martin’s Marsh Aquatic Preserve (SMMAP) is a 28,461 acre (115.18 km2) preserve located on the coast of Citrus County, Florida, USA. There has been no published research that focused on coastal change on this unique coast. This thesis research focuses on coastal land cover change that has occurred within the preserve from 1988 to 2018. Multitemporal Landsat images were classified using a support vector machine (SVM) classification, while changes in vegetation were evaluated using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Field research was conducted to examine nineteen sites for classification training and test data and notes on habitat composition. …

Effects Of Culling White-Tailed Deer On Tree Regeneration And Microstegium Vimineum, An Invasive Grass, John Paul Schmit, Elizabeth R. Matthews, Andrejs Brolis

United States National Park Service: Publications

Reduction of forest regeneration due to overbrowsing by white-tailed deer is a growing concern for land managers. Abundant deer can impede forest regeneration through direct predation on tree seedlings. Additionally high deer density can facilitate the establishment of a dense understory of browse tolerant plant species that shades seedlings and persists even in the absence of deer. In response to these challenges, land managers have sought to reduce deer herds to restore tree regeneration, but few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of this management. Our study took place in Catoctin Mountain Park, a US National Park Service unit with a …

Nurse Rock Microclimates Significantly Buffer Exposure To Freezing T Temperature And Moderate Summer Temperature, Joshua L. Conver, Elliott Yarwood, Lucas D. Hetherington, Don E. Swann

United States National Park Service: Publications

Nurse tree canopies mitigate exposure to freezing temperatures that could result in injury or mortality to the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea). Abiotic objects have been hypothesized to provide similar beneficial microclimates. We used data loggers at 11 nurse rock sites to record daily daytime summer maximum and winter nighttime minimum temperatures at Saguaro National Park, Arizona, to examine the effectiveness of rocks to moderate seasonal temperature extremes in the microclimate. Temperatures at rock sites averaged 2 °C warmer than exposed open control sites in winter. We found that the efficiency of rocks to act as insulators significantly increased as temperature …

Beryllium-7 Elucidate Sediment Dynamics Of The Branford River Estuary, Connecticut, Usa, Gaboury Benoit, Matthew Hirschbeck, Beth Bisson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Berrylium-7 elucidates sediment dynamics (i.e., sources, sinks, deposition, and resuspension) in a Connecticut estuary. Average 7 −2−1 annual atmospheric deposition of Be is 290 mBq cm year. Sediment samples from 43 locations within the estuary show that 7Be deposition is spatially complex, but were statistically indistinguishable a year apart. Weekly time series of sediments indicate 7 that levels are nearly constant on this shorter time scale on ceradio active decay is taken into account. Be levels in sediments area balance between steady losses through radioactive decay and periodic pulse inputs following rainstorms. The water column was measured intensively during three …