Geography Commons^™

Sustainable Solutions, Fall/Winter 2020, Issue 41

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

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

Theses and Dissertations

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

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

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

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

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

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

OES Faculty Publications

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

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

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

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

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

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

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

Created in 1996, Tallgrass Prairie National …

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

Publications and Research

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

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

Purdue GIS Day

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

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

Purdue GIS Day

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

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

Purdue GIS Day

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

Seeing A Better World From Space, Carly Sakumura

Purdue GIS Day

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

Photogrammetric Measurement Of Hardwood Species At A Stand Level Using Rgb Images From Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav), Aishwarya Chandrasekaran

Purdue GIS Day

Nowadays, for many remote sensing applications, drones are employed for gathering data, as it provides low cost image acquisition with minimal human intervention. Drone remote sensing has an extensive use in forestry for maintaining inventories, mapping canopy structure and monitoring forest fires. Maintaining a Forest inventory database is a crucial task as it is the only means of keeping a record of the trees. This study aims to explore UAV based image acquisition (consumer-grade sensor) and analysis for forest studies using structure from motion technique.The main objective is to derive a methodology for computing tree parameters such as tree height, …

Mapping Postcolonial Literature, Matthew Hannah, Yiqui Yan

Purdue GIS Day

Matthew Hannah (Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities) Yiqiu Yan (Undergraduate Researcher) Space and place are incredibly important features of the postcolonial novel and, for writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries who are living in former colonies, geography plays an incredibly significant role in navigating issues of identity, language, and nationality. Because the land is such a contested concept in postcolonial writing, we believe that attending to the localities described in literary representations of the land will provide a rich resource for theorizing the relationship between people and places, between colonies and nations. “Mapping Postcolonial Literature” will showcase an interactive …

Growth, Sprawl, And The Contradictions Of Capitalism: San Diego Suburbs And The Speculative Frenzy, 1970-1991, Richard Hogan

Purdue GIS Day

San Diego has become the most beautiful place where nobody can afford to live because speculative growth drives housing prices regardless of the level of supply or demand. How this happened in San Diego County is fairly clear. Marx explained that ground rents (and thereby land prices) increase when capital and labor are invested in the most valuable land and when investment is intensive, with vast amounts of labor and capital focused on the high yield properties to the virtual exclusion of less productive or less valuable lands. In fact, speculative growth between 1960 and 1980 conformed to what Marx …

Quantifying Four Decades Of Arid-Region Agricultural Development In Arequipa, Peru Using Landsat, Zachary S. Brecheisen, Nicholas Hamp-Adams, Edwin Bocardo Delgado, Martin Villalta Soto, Timothy Filley, Darrell G. Schulze

Purdue GIS Day

The Arequipa Nexus Institute for Food, Energy and the Environment (Nexus Institute) is located in Southwestern Peru, generally bounded by the city of Arequipa to the east, the Majes River to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the south, and the Andes mountains to the north. Though agriculture has been practiced in parts of this cool desert region (MAT~15°C, MAP

Visualizing Election Results With Arcgis, Ryan Day

Purdue GIS Day

In 2018, Porter County, Indiana held its municipal elections concurrent with the national midterm elections. Using ArcGIS, the election results for the fourway race for the Duneland School Board at-large seat are mapped. These results are compared to other area election results, voter characteristics, and previous election results to try to visualize the correlation between factors affecting the race, including candidate ideology, geographic base, area demographics, turnout, and national electoral trends. This project serves as a demonstration of how GIS software can improve the understanding of what influences voters and election outcomes.

The Value Of Open Gis In Higher Education, Christina Hupy

Purdue GIS Day

Open source software has become increasingly popular in geospatial research and industry. Despite this trend, higher education has less readily adopted open source in GIS curriculum which has been dominated by proprietary systems for decades. This presentation will discuss the value of bringing open source into GIS curriculum. The discussion will focus on several aspects including GIS curricular standards and competencies, employer demand, generational interest (millennials), pedagogical benefits, and general societal benefits. Strategies for encouraging the adoption of open source in GIS curriculum will be identified.

Investigation Of Late Roman Settlement On Dana Island, Bogsak Archaelogical Survey Project, Nicholas K. Rauh, Ayman Habib, Evan Flatt, Angus Moore, Gunder Varinlioglu

Purdue GIS Day

Purdue researchers participated in the 2019 season of the Bogsak Archaeological Survey Project in south coastal Turkey. Prof. Ayman Habib and Evan Flatt of CE used a drone to conduct LIDAR and camera mapping of the Late Roman harbor remains of Dana Island (approximately 250-800 AD). The remains, including vast quarry trenches and terraces of houses, cisterns, and churches, are covered in dense, nearly impenetrable garrigue brush, making standard architectural mapping laborious, inaccurate, and hazardous. The results of the LIDAR mapping should reveal a detailed map of obscured remains in real world coordinates, making it possible to map the remains …

Opmaps - Data And Narratives In Military History And Beyond, Sorin Matei, Robert Kirchubel

Purdue GIS Day

Opmaps is mapping and analytics toolkit for operational military history. The toolkit employs statistical analysis to create operational datamaps, which present processes, trends, and developments in time and space. It connects quantities, such military forces, firepower, or civilians impacted, statistically with the narratives, which will be used for historical analysis and teaching. Target audiences are scholars and students. The toolkit will include a database, analytic and statistical scripts, and a visualization interface. It will also include four datasets, which can be used in scholarly research and as tutorials for future users of the toolkit. The toolkit provides military historians open-source …

Spatial Distribution Of Religious Sites In China: A Web-Based Data-Rich Application Using Esri, Guojun Han

Purdue GIS Day

The Online Spiritual Atlas of China (OSAC), created by the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue, was constructed as a complement to the print volume, Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts, by Fenggang Yang (Brill, 2018), as a way to visually demonstrate the extent and distribution of religious sites in China. OSAC is power by ArcGIS online, and some features were developed with ArcGIS JavaScript SDK. The site allows users to visualize the spatial distribution of individual religious sites in China, as well as see how provinces, prefectures, and counties compare with each other in …

Measurement Of Changes In Forest Fragmentation Caused By Road Construction Between 2000 And 2014 Using Gis In St. Johns County, Florida, Ahmet Karatas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Forests play a crucial role in maintaining the natural balance. They have essential features and structures used in the protection of flora and fauna. Human activities such as road construction disrupt ecosystems and negatively impact natural habitats. Roads cause forest fragmentation, and as a result of this, fragmentation has various negative effects on the natural habitat. These effects lead to loss of biological diversity, road mortality, habitat loss, fragmentation, and air pollution. The major goal of this study was to analyze changes in forest area, forest fragmentation, and forest road impacts using GIS for St. Johns County, Florida, between the …

The Paradox Of Urban Greening: Does It Harm The Very People Who Need It The Most?, Juliana Maantay

Sustainability Seminar Series

Urban greening and sustainability approaches are well accepted methods for improving the urban environment and combating the climate crisis. Cleaning up potentially contaminated lands and bringing them back into constructive public use is one of the benefits of greening. However, greening efforts may have unintended consequences, resulting in adverse social and economic impacts to the existing residents, who are often the most vulnerable urban populations. Spatial analyses of case study examples show that greening can spur “green gentrification.” Measures can be taken to integrate social equity objectives into urban sustainability planning, to mitigate gentrification, and to improve equitable distribution of …

Relationships Between Soil Macroinvertebrates And Nonnative Feral Pigs (Sus Scrofa) In Hawaiian Tropical Montane Wet Forests, Nathaniel H. Wehr, Creighton M. Litton, Noa K. Lincoln, Steven C. Hess

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract Nonnative feral pigs (Sus scrofa) are recognized throughout the New World as a highly significant introduced species in terms of ecosystem alteration. Similarly, nonnative soil macroinvertebrates (e.g. earthworms, ground beetles) invade and alter the structure and function of native habitats globally. However, the relationship between feral pigs and soil macroinvertebrates remains largely unknown. This study analyzed relationships between these taxa using nine sites located inside and outside of feral pig management units representing a * 25 year chronosequence of removal in tropical montane wet forests in Hawai‘i. Soil macroinvertebrates were sampled from plots categorized as: actively trampled by feral …

Residential Land Use Change In The Wissahickon Creek Watershed: Profitability And Sustainability?, John Sorrentino, Mahbubur Meenar, Donald Wargo

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

The Wissahickon Creek Watershed is one of five major watersheds in the Philadelphia metro region. The main objective of the work in this paper was to determine and compare the energy and environmental impacts of placing housing in the Watershed according to profitability and environmental sustainability criteria, respectively, in the context of increasing urbanization. Future population and employment for the Watershed have been projected by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. Housing requirements for the projected populations in each municipality were computed, and their location was influenced by the local zoning ordinances. Suitability analysis using ArcGIS 10.6 generated areas for …

Use Of Hyperspectral Remote Sensing To Estimate Water Quality, Mbongowo J. Mbuh

Geography & Geographic Information Science Faculty Publications

Approximating and forecasting water variables like phosphorus, nitrogen, chlorophyll, dissolved organic matter, and turbidity are of supreme importance due to their strong influence on water resource quality. This chapter is aimed at showing the practicability of merging water quality observations from remote sensing with water quality modeling for efficient and effective monitoring of water quality. We examine the spatial dynamics of water quality with hyperspectral remote sensing and present approaches that can be used to estimate water quality using hyperspectral images. The methods presented here have been embraced because the bluegreen and green algae peak wavelengths reflectance are close together …

Amish Settlements Across America: 2013, Joseph Donnermeyer, David Luthy

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This short research report is based upon previous editions of “Amish Settlements across North America,” which was published periodically in Family Life. It accounts for new settlements founded since the last edition (2008), as well as settlements which are recently extinct. The information is presented in a series of six tables, including a list of all Amish settlements as of September 30, 2013 (Table 1). Table 2 summarizes the number of settlements and church districts in each state, while Tables 3 and 4 shows trends in settlement increases, decade by decade, since 1900. Table 5 is a list of settlements …

Occupation Patterns Of Amish Settlements In Wisconsin, John Cross

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This article explores occupation patterns of Amish households and settlements in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has seen dramatic growth in Amish settlements over the past 50 years. Using household occupation data reported in Amish directories, dairy producer license listings, and surveys of Amish leaders in 2012 and 2015, this article describes primary household economic activities. Key findings include (1) a rate of 58 percent of Wisconsin’s Amish households are employed in some type of farming, (2) 37.4 percent of all Wisconsin Amish households have dairy herds, and (3) in 32 percent of Amish settlements, woodworking jobs dominated. Maps visualize the proportion of …

Mapping Positive Change In Manitoba, Chihuahua, Mexico, Gracia Schlabach

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

While working in Manitoba Colony, Mexico, as teacher under Old Colony Mennonite Support from 2009 to 2014, I gathered data about the community from conversations and periodicals such as Kurze Nachrichten aus Mexico, Deutsch-Mexikanische Rundshau, Das Blatt, and Die Mennonitische Post. This information shows both changing demographics and positive growth that stems from improved literacy.

Hutterite Colonies And The Cultural Landscape: An Inventory Of Selected Site Characteristics, Simon Evans

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Hutterite colonies are a growing and sustainable element in the cultural landscape of the Canadian Prairies and Northern Great Plains of the United States. Their increasing numbers do something to offset the disappearance of the smallest service centers on the plains. While the diffusion of these communities has been well documented, the morphology of the settlements has been less well studied. New technology makes it possible to remotely evaluate selected characteristics of almost all Hutterite colonies. This paper describes the differences, with respect to orientation, layout and housing types, both between the four clan groups and within the Dariusleut and …

The Growth Of Amish And Plain Anabaptist Communities In Kentucky, Joseph Donnermeyer, Cory Anderson

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This article examines the growth of Amish and plain Anabaptist communities and population in Kentucky, one of the few southern states with a sizeable plain Anabaptist presence across much of its rural areas. Within the Amish religious tradition, this study focuses on both the broadly defined Old Order Amish, namely, those who prohibit ownership of motor vehicles for transportation, and the Amish-Mennonites, those who allow ownership. We provide an overview of their community formation and present a county-based estimate of their population. There are now 53 Amish communities in Kentucky, and a population of nearly 10,000. Over half (27) of …