Geography Commons^™

A Geographic Account Of Economic, Health, And Educational Disparities In Hartford’S Sheff Region, Casey D. Cobb

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In the current study, I use geographic techniques to examine the distribution of key housing, economic, health, and educational indicators in metropolitan Hartford. I focus in particular on factors that bear upon the lives of children in this area, also known as the Sheff region—a reference to the long-standing Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation lawsuit. The results reveal substantial disparities in the geographic distribution of important resources and outcomes across the racially and economically stratified region. Despite earnest school desegregation efforts, the opportunities, access, and resources available to children in municipalities across the metro Hartford region remain starkly different. Children …

Mapping Maya Hinterlands: Lidar Derived Visualization To Identify Small Scale Features In Northwestern Belize, Jeremy Mcfarland, Marisol Cortes-Rincon Ph.D.

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This paper will discuss the processes and methods of relief visualization of LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEM’s) and classification of secondary data to identify archaeological remains on the ancient Maya landscape in northwestern Belize. The basis of the research explores various Geographic Information System (GIS) and cartographic techniques to visualize topographical relief. Graphic terrain maps assist archaeologists with predictive settlement patterns. The Relief Visualization Toolbox (RVT 1.3) aids to visualize raster DEM datasets in the predictive identification and interpretation of small-scale archaeological features. This dataset and methodology can be utilized to answer questions of population estimates, mobility costs, and effectiveness …

Agent-Based Models In Supporting Pedestrian Transportation Planning And Design, Nicholas A. Perdue

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Agent-based models offer a new approach to understanding human-urban interactions in transportation systems, allowing individual entities within a system to be characterized with cognitive and behavioral properties. This paper discussed the role of agent-based representations of pedestrian transportation systems, detailing the underlying assumptions and techniques behind different types of pedestrian models and illustrating the differences between aggregate and individual agent representations. It then turns attention to the case study and the development of a cognitive pedestrian model as a way to illustrate the spectrum of potential spatial behaviors that are enabled by material changes to the transportation network. The paper …

A Geospatial Recipe For Identifying Social Values And Fragmentation Issues Of The Friends Of The Dunes Land Trust, Buddhika Madurapperuma, Jess Barger, Melissa Collin, Christine Emerson, Sean Fleming, Brian Murphy

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The beach and coastal sand dunes comprise a dynamic and fragile ecosystem that provides a bounty of ecological services. These lands provide protection from coastal erosion and sea level rise, and are home to a rich biodiversity of plant and animal species in addition to their recreational value. The Humboldt Coastal Nature Center and the surrounding coastal dunes (HCNC) are man-aged as a land trust by Friends of the Dunes (FOD). FOD prioritize the restoration of dune habitats and encourages public involvement through community supported education and stewardship programs, guided nature tours, and naturalist training programs. The faculty, students, and …

Introduction, Marisol Cortes-Rincon, Nicholas Perdue

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The purpose of this special issue is to highlight the myriad of applications of geographic information systems within the social sciences. As access to geospatial technologies continues to increase, we are seeing new forms of research that highlight how different approaches to spatial analysis can answer complex questions on topics ranging from contemporary urban policy to ancient civilizations.

Full Journal

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) engages with a variety of important policy issues through linking social science data with spatial analysis and by demonstrating the importance of applied GIS in both the public and private sector. GIS, though commonly used in the realms of city planning and natural resource analysis, have a far broader range of applications ranging from analysis of ancient community interactions to modern social media data.

Mapping Soil Moisture From Remotely Sensed And In-Situ Data With Statistical Methods, Yaping Xu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Soil moisture is an important factor for accurate prediction of agricultural productivity and rainfall runoff with hydrological models. Remote sensing satellites such as Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) offer synoptic views of soil moisture distribution at a regional-to-global scale. To use the soil moisture product from these satellites, however, requires a downscaling of the data from an usually large instantaneous field of view (i.e. 36 km) to the watershed analysis scales ranging from 30 m to 1 km. In addition, validation of the soil moisture products using the ground station observations without an upscaling treatment would lead to cross-level fallacy. …

Dynamics Of Wet-Season Turbidity In Relations To Precipitation, Discharge, And Land Cover In Three Urbanizing Watersheds, Oregon, Junjie Chen

Dissertations and Theses

Frequent intense precipitation events can mobilize and carry sediment and pollutants into rivers, degrading water quality. However, how seasonal rainfall and land cover affect the complex relationship between discharge and turbidity in urban watersheds is still under investigation. Using hourly discharge, rainfall, and turbidity data collected from six stations in three adjacent watersheds between 2008 and 2017, we examined the temporal variability of the discharge-turbidity relationship along an urban-rural gradient. We quantified hysteresis between normalized discharge and turbidity by a Hysteresis Index (HI) and classified hysteresis loops during 377 storm events in early, mid, and late wet season. Hysteresis loop …

A Comparative Analysis Of Planetscope And Sentinel Sentinel-2 Space-Borne Sensors In Mapping Striga Weed Using Guided Regularised Random Forest Classification Ensemble, B. T. Mudereri, T. Dube, E. M. Adel-Rahman, S. Niassy, E. Kimathi, Z. Khan, T. Landmann

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Weeds are one of the major restrictions to sustaining crop productivity. Weeds often outcompete crops for nutrients, soil moisture, solar radiation, space and provide platforms for breeding of pests and diseases. The ever-growing global food insecurity triggers the need for spatially explicit innovative geospatial technologies that can deliver timely detection of weeds within agro-ecological systems. This will help pinpoint maize fields to be prioritized for weed control. Satellite remote sensing offers incomparable opportunities for precision agriculture, ecological applications and vegetation characterisation, with vast socioeconomic benefits. This work compares and evaluates the strength of Sentinel-2 (S2) satellite with the constellation of …

Tree Canopy Cover And Potential In Portland, Or: A Spatial Analysis Of The Urban Forest And Capacity For Growth, Jeff Ramsey

Dissertations and Theses

Urban forests have positive impacts on human and ecosystem health, reduce stress on aging stormwater infrastructure, increase property values, and reduce energy consumption. The scale of these benefits ranges from the hyper-local to the global. While the benefits of urban forests can extend well beyond the boundaries of cities, they often do not reach all residents of the city equally. Urban forest policies do not adequately address environmental equity or employ planting strategies with knowledge of the social and political factors that determine the spatial variations of tree canopy extent in cities. Chapter I analyzes the determinants of current canopy …

Any Port In A Storm: Vessel Activity And The Risk Of Iuu-Caught Fish Passing Through The World’S Most Important Fishing Ports, Gilles Hosch, Bradley Soule, Max Schofield, Trevor Thomas, Charles Kilgour, Tim Huntington

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

This study assesses the risk of fish from illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) sources passing through the world’s most important fishing ports and explores the drivers of this risk.

Like previous studies it has attempted to rank ports and States based on landings and vessel visits reported by governments by using Automatic Identification System (AIS) positional data transmitted by fishing and fish carrier vessels to identify the locations of ports and rank them based on the frequency of visits by foreign-flagged and domestic-flagged vessels. It advances our thinking in that (i) the analysis includes an estimation of the hold capacity …

Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions Of Social Cartography, By Laura Vaughan, Christina E. Dando

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Laura Vaughan, in Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography, suggests that social maps can be ‘records of social enquiry in relation to the role of urban configuration in shaping social patterns over time’ and that, through their analysis, scholars can better understand ‘the power of space in shaping society over time’. To Vaughan, a professor of Urban Form and Society at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, social maps capture a moment in time and can be read to consider life at that moment: ‘does it capture data in sufficient detail that we can learn from …

Marta, Marta, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Marta is a member of the support community for Central American refugees arriving in the southwest US. In this interview, Marta shares her own story of crossing the border at a young age with her daughter and her life in the US. Marta was self-employed for many years and later went on to serve in the US Army in Iraq. For the last 9 months, she and her husband Israel and son Josue have worked tirelessly to help make sure the current refugees arriving are cared for after they are released from detention centers and begin their lives in the …

Bird Monitoring At Homestead National Monument Of America, Nebraska, Status Report 2009–2017, David G. Peitz, Lloyd W. Morrison, Kristen L. Mecke

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

In 2009, the Heartland Inventory Monitoring Network initiated breeding bird surveys on Homestead National Monument of America, Nebraska, to address two objectives: (1) to monitor changes in bird community composition and abundance, and (2) to improve our understanding of relationships between breeding birds and habitat, and the effects of management actions on those relationships. This report evaluates trends in the park’s breeding bird populations in the context of trends observed within the North American Bird Conservation Initiative’s (NABCI) Central Mixed Grass Prairie Bird Conservation Region, the region in which the park is located. By doing so, we can …

Bird Monitoring At Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, Iowa, Status Report 2005–2017, David G. Peitz, Lloyd W. Morrison, Kristen L. Mecke

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

In 2005, the Heartland Inventory & Monitoring Network initiated breeding bird surveys on Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, Iowa, to address two objectives: (1) to monitor changes in bird community composition and abundance, and (2) to improve our understanding of relationships between breeding birds and habitat, and the effects of management actions on those relationships. This report evaluates trends in the park’s breeding bird populations in the context of trends observed within the North American Bird Conservation Initiative’s (NABCI) Eastern Tallgrass Prairie Bird Conservation Region , the region in which the park is located. By doing so, we …

Aesthetic Perception Of Urban Spaces: New York, Timur Pozhidaev

Theses and Dissertations

Aesthetic perception is an important field of interest in many aspects of everyday human life. It affects individual and social unconscious behavior and is strongly related to the decision-making processes in the human mind. The current study can serve as an important prototype for planning purposes and social and environmental justice among the regional units of New York City. With the current scientific sphere lacking a comprehensive methodology for assessing social superstructure, an aesthetic framework has the potential for success in evaluating the aspects of sustainable and resilient urban development.

Spatial Variation Of Low Birth Weight And Its Association With Socioeconomic Status, Housing Types, And Accessibility In Kalamazoo County, Eugene Kojo Opare Ahwireng

Masters Theses

Infants with low birth weight due to early delivery or fetal growth restriction face an increased risk of health conditions and deaths. These risk factors and the cost associated with healthcare for infants makes low birth weight a major public health problem. Understanding early precursor challenges expectant mothers face before delivery would help in planning interventions to reduce low birth weight among infants.

This study investigated and evaluated the spatial variation of low birth weight incidence with respect to socioeconomic status, housing types and accessibility in Kalamazoo County. In a broader scope, this research study examined the geographic patterns of …

Planning For A Sustainable Future: Rethinking The Role Of Bicycle Parking At Western Michigan University, Gregory J. Carlton

Masters Theses

Sustainable transportation planning focuses on addressing the needs of current users, without jeopardizing the needs of future users (Black 1997, Richardson 1999, Balsas 2003). A popular mode of sustainable transportation is the bicycle, which is frequently used by college students. One aspect of bicycle transportation that remains underexplored within the United States and on university campuses, is bicycle parking. By using rack conditioning assessments, bicycle theft density analysis, bicycle parking counts and a formative stakeholder survey of the bicycle parking at Western Michigan University’s campus, recommendations were able to be created for campus officials for use in their planning efforts. …

Gentrification In Upper Manhattan? Demographic And Socioeconomic Transformations In Washington Heights/Inwood, 1990-2015, Lawrence Cappello

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines the impact and extent of gentrification in the Washington Heights/Inwood area – traditionally one of Manhattan’s most quintessential Latino neighborhoods.

Methods: This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml).

Results: The Latino community of Washington Heights/Inwood is not being displaced in any meaningful way. While there has certainly been an increase in the number of wealthy non-Hispanic Whites over the last decade, as of 2015 Latinos maintained the …

A New Long Island: Demographic, Economic, And Social Transformations In New York City's Historic Suburbs, 1990 - 2016 (Revised), Lawrence Cappello

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines key socioeconomic and demographic trends in New York City and Long Island from 1990 to 2016.

Methods: The findings reported here are based on data collected by the Census Bureau IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series), available at http://www.usa.ipums.org for the corresponding years and the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Results: The Long Island suburbs have grown significantly more diverse in the early twenty-first century. The total number of non-Hispanic Whites in both Nassau and Suffolk Counties is in steady decline, as is their share of Long Island’s total population. Latinos and Asians, on the …

Real Time Habs Mapping Using Nasa Glenn Hyperspectral Imager, Reid W. Sawtell, Robert Anderson, Roger Tokars, John D. Lekki, Robert Shuchman, Karl Bosse, Michael Sayers

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The hyperspectral imaging system (HSI) developed by the NASA Glenn Research Center was used from 2015 to 2017 to collect high spatial resolution data over Lake Erie and the Ohio River. Paired with a vicarious correction approach implemented by the Michigan Tech Research Institute, radiance data collected by the HSI system can be converted to high quality reflectance data which can be used to generate near-real time (within 24 h) products for the monitoring of harmful algal blooms using existing algorithms. The vicarious correction method relies on imaging a spectrally constant target to normalize HSI data for atmospheric and instrument …

Determining Remote Sensing Spatial Resolution Requirements For The Monitoring Of Harmful Algal Blooms In The Great Lakes, John Lekki, Eric Deutsch, Michael Sayers, Karl Bosse, Robert Anderson, Roger Tokars, Reid W. Sawtell

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) have become a major health and environmental concern in the Great Lakes. In 2014, severe HABs prompted the State of Ohio to request NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) to assist with monitoring algal blooms in Lake Erie. The most notable species of HAB is Microcystis aeruginosa, a hepatotoxin producing cyanobacteria that is responsible for liver complications for humans and other fauna that come in contact with these blooms. NASA GRC conducts semiweekly flights in order to gather up-to-date imagery regarding the blooms' spatial extents and concentrations. Airborne hyperspectral imagery is collected using two hyperspectral imagers, HSI-2 …

Aligning Endangered Species Management With Fire-Dependent Ecosystem Restoration: Manager Perspectives On Red-Cockaded Woodpecker And Longleaf Pine Management Actions, Shelby A. Weiss, Eric L. Toman, R. Gregory Corace Iii

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Endangered species management has been criticized as emphasizing a single-species approach to conservation and, in some cases, diverting resources from broad-based, land management objectives important for overall biodiversity maintenance. Herein we examine perceptions on management for an endangered species whose habitat requirements largely depend on frequent fire, the red-cockaded woodpecker (Leuconotopicus borealis Vieillot). In doing so, we consider the alignment between species-specific population recovery actions and broader ecosystem restoration goals. Through semi-structured interviews with natural resource professionals (n = 32) in the Southeast Coastal Plain of the United States, we examined manager perspectives on the evolution of recovery …

Commoning Mobility: Towards A New Politics Of Mobility Transitions, Anna Nikolaeva, Peter Adey, Tim Cresswell, Jane Yeonjae Lee, Andre Nóvoa, Cristina Temenos

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Scholars have argued that transitions to more sustainable and just mobilities require moving beyond technocentrism to rethink the very meaning of mobility in cities, communities, and societies. This paper demonstrates that such rethinking is inherently political. In particular, we focus on recent theorisations of commoning practices that have gained traction in geographic literatures. Drawing on our global comparative research of low‐carbon mobility transitions, we argue that critical mobilities scholars can rethink and expand the understanding of mobility through engagement with commons–enclosure thinking. We present a new concept, “commoning mobility,” a theorisation that both envisions and shapes practices that develop fairer …

Toward A Normative Land Systems Science, Jonas Nielsen, Ariane De Bremond, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Cecilie Friis, Graciela Metternicht, Patrick Meyfroidt, Darla Munroe, Unai Pascual, Allison Thomson

Geography

Science should provide solutions for societal transformations toward sustainability in the face of global environmental change. Land system science, as a systemic science focused on complex socio-ecological interactions around land use and associated trade-offs and synergies, is well placed to contribute to this agenda. This goal requires a stronger engagement with the normative implications of scientific practice, research topics, questions and results. We identify concerns as well as three concrete steps for land system science to more deeply contribute in normative issues. In particular, we encourage land system scientists to discuss explicitly the normative questions, values, perspectives and assumptions already …

Spatial And Temporal Variability Of Inherent And Apparent Optical Properties In Western Lake Erie: Implications For Water Quality Remote Sensing, Michael Sayers, Karl Bosse, Robert Shuchman, Steven A. Ruberg, Gary L. Fahnenstiel, George Leshkevich, Et Al.

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Lake Erie has experienced dramatic changes in water quality over the past several decades requiring extensive monitoring to assess effectiveness of adaptive management strategies. Remote sensing offers a unique potential to provide synoptic monitoring at daily time scales complementing in-situ sampling activities occurring in Lake Erie. Bio-optical remote sensing algorithms require knowledge about the inherent optical properties (IOPs) of the water for parameterization to produce robust water quality products. This study reports new IOP and apparent optical property (AOP) datasets for western Lake Erie that encapsulate the May–October period for 2015 and 2016 at weekly sampling intervals. Previously reported IOP …

Evaluating Visible Derivative Spectroscopy By Varimax-Rotated, Principal Component Analysis Of Aerial Hyperspectral Images From The Western Basin Of Lake Erie, Joseph D. Ortiz, Dulci M. Avouris, Stephan J. Schiller, Jeffrey C. Luvall, John D. Lekki, Roger P. Tokars, Robert C. Anderson, Robert Shuchman, Michael Sayers, Richard Becker

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The Kent State University (KSU) spectral decomposition method provides information about the spectral signals present in multispectral and hyperspectral images. Pre-processing steps that enhance signal to noise ratio (SNR) by 7.37–19.04 times, enables extraction of the environmental signals captured by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Research Center's, second generation, Hyperspectral imager (HSI2) into multiple, independent components. We have accomplished this by pre-processing of Level 1 HSI2 data to remove stripes from the scene, followed by a combination of spectral and spatial smoothing to further increase the SNR and remove non-Lambertian features, such as waves. On average, …

Satellite Monitoring Of Harmful Algal Blooms In The Western Basin Of Lake Erie: A 20-Year Time-Series, Michael Sayers, Amanda Grimm, Robert Shuchman, Karl Bosse, Gary L. Fahnenstiel, Steven A. Ruberg, George A. Leshkevich

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Blooms of harmful cyanobacteria (cyanoHABs) have occurred on an annual basis in western Lake Erie for more than a decade. Previously, we developed and validated an algorithm to map the extent of the submerged and surface scum components of cyanoHABs using MODIS ocean-color satellite data. The algorithm maps submerged cyanoHABs by identifying high chlorophyll concentrations (>18 mg/m3) combined with water temperature >20 °C, while cyanoHABs surface scums are mapped using near-infrared reflectance values. Here, we adapted this algorithm for the SeaWiFS sensor to map the annual areal extents of cyanoHABs in the Western Basin of Lake Erie for the …

Are Walkable Places Tech Incubators? Evidence From Nebraska’S ‘Silicon Prairie’, Bradley Bereitschaft

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

This study examines the spatial association between science- and technology-related entrepreneurship and neighbourhood walkability in eastern Nebraska, often referred to as the northern ‘Silicon Prairie’. Tech start-up firms are expected to gravitate toward more walkable or pedestrian-oriented urban locations to benefit from heightened social interaction, knowledge spillovers and a more vibrant, creative atmosphere. Data on start-up firms collected from the online database Crunchbase.com and a walkability index provided by the popular online service Walk Score® were used to evaluate the walkability–tech entrepreneurship nexus. The spatial relationship between walkability and firm location may have important implications for metropolitan areas seeking to …

The Use Of Geospatial Modeling And Novel Diagnostics To Detect And Map Risk Factors Of Soil-Transmitted Helminths In Feira De Santana, Brazil, Ryan Harry Avery

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections impact billions of people worldwide. The traditional STH control approach is a morbidity control strategy implementing mass drug administration (MDA) programs targeting school-aged children (SAC). In Brazil, this control strategy has decreased STH prevalence to less than 20% in most of the country and providing an opportunity to transition from the morbidity control program and towards a surveillance and response system geared towards STH elimination. Surveillance and response systems geared towards elimination require the implementation higher accuracy diagnostics to detect infection in low-transmission communities, surveillance of entire households, high-resolution modeling at the household-habitat scale, and targeted …