Geography Commons^™

Detecting Coastal Marsh Change From Aerial Imagery Using Spectral And Textural Methods: Pascagoula River Estuary, Mississippi, 1955-2014, Margaret Claire Bell Waldron

Master's Theses

As sea level rise accelerates, coastal marsh ecosystems are increasingly vulnerable. Vertical accretion rates must exceed or keep pace with rates of sea level rise to prevent transition to open water or inland migration of marsh vegetation. While some marsh systems along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast have remained stable, others, e.g., the marshes of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, have experienced high rates of conversion to open water. This study examined the historical extent of intertidal marsh at the mouth of the Pascagoula River in Jackson County, Mississippi to determine whether marsh extent changed during the period 1955-2014 and …

Losing Louisiana: Race, Techno-Science, And The Disappearing Geographies Of The Lower Mississippi River Delta, Monica Patrice Barra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on eighteen months of ethnographic and historical research in southeast coastal Louisiana (USA), this dissertation explores the racial histories, engineering and scientific practices, and geophysical processes that have shaped land loss and coastal restoration in the lower Mississippi River Delta. Rather than treating land loss simply as a natural process or matter of environmental restoration, this ethnography examines its cultural, material, and political dimensions, especially for communities of color that have already experienced long histories of loss — of property, livelihood, and political rights. A focus on the geophysical transformations of the river - dictating land growth, sinking, and …

Training As Restructuring: Cases From Entry-Level Healthcare And Manufacturing Workforce Training In Eastern Connecticut, Shelley Buchbinder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the 1980s, capital mobility and state restructuring have increased precarity in older industrial regions, such as eastern Connecticut (CT). These changes reconfigured labor markets, changing the work available, including the types, conditions, and skills required. Greater responsibility devolved onto poor and working-class people to navigate a labor market with insufficient living-wage work with 42.4% of jobs pay under $15/hour (Tung, Lathrop, & Sonn, 2015). Entry-level healthcare and manufacturing are two avenues for sub-baccalaureate, living-wage employment. Employment and Training (E&T) prepares people for entry-level jobs; it is a politically popular response to restructurings (Lafer, 2002; Laney et al., 2013). How …

Contested Development: A Poor People's Movement For A Better Los Angeles, 1960–2018, Deshonay R. Dozier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Zooming in on the historical development of Downtown Los Angeles’s (LA) Skid Row, this dissertation traces a continuity of abolitionist alternatives made by homeless and poor Angelinos from the 1960s to our present day. Skid Row is an important entry way into Los Angeles urban politics, particularly with respect to how forms of difference, at the axis of race, gender, class, and ability shape regional relations of property and the built environment. I show how these relations shape Downtown Los Angeles’s geography through carceral practices. These carceral practices, made by social services and policing, shape space by routinely containing and …

Chacra Farming, Peasant Livelihood Portfolios And Identities In The Peruvian Andes, Anna C. Bebbington

Geography Honors Projects

Nearly fifty years after land reform in Peru, and in the face of dramatic climatic and social change, small-scale, high-altitude agriculture and the livelihoods of peasant households have fundamentally changed.Nonetheless, low-input subsistence agriculture, known as chacra agriculture, remains a prominent feature in Andean landscapes and peasant livelihoods. Drawing on research conducted in two agro-pastoral communities in the Ancash region of Peru, this thesis seeks to show how and why households in these communities continue to rely on the chacra as part of their livelihood strategies. While seeking to understand the role of the chacra in peasant livelihood portfolios, I consider …

A Systematic Assessment Of Socio-Economic Impacts Of Prolonged Episodic Volcano Crises, Justin Peers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Uncertainty surrounding volcanic activity can lead to socio-economic crises with or without an eruption as demonstrated by the post-1978 response to unrest of Long Valley Caldera (LVC), CA. Extensive research in physical sciences provides a foundation on which to assess direct impacts of hazards, but fewer resources have been dedicated towards understanding human responses to volcanic risk. To evaluate natural hazard risk issues at LVC, a multi-hazard, mail-based, household survey was conducted to compare perceptions of volcanic, seismic, and wildfire hazards. Impacts of volcanic activity on housing prices and businesses were examined at the county-level for three volcanoes with a …

Project Sidewalk: A Web-Based Crowdsourcing Tool For Collecting Sidewalk Accessibility Data At Scale, Manaswi Saha, Michael Saugstad, Hanuma Maddali, Aileen Zeng, Ryan Holland, Steven Bower, Aditya Dash, Sage Chen, Anthony Li, Kotaro Hara, Jon Froehlich

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We introduce Project Sidewalk, a new web-based tool that enables online crowdworkers to remotely label pedestrian-related accessibility problems by virtually walking through city streets in Google Street View. To train, engage, and sustain users, we apply basic game design principles such as interactive onboarding, mission-based tasks, and progress dashboards. In an 18-month deployment study, 797 online users contributed 205,385 labels and audited 2,941 miles of Washington DC streets. We compare behavioral and labeling quality differences between paid crowdworkers and volunteers, investigate the effects of label type, label severity, and majority vote on accuracy, and analyze common labeling errors. To complement …

Geographical Analysis Of Offender Vulnerability: Modeling Coastal Hazards And Social Disorganization In Southern Mississippi, Ashleigh Nicole Price

Master's Theses

Hazards research continually examines how specific groups are affected by damaging events and how their unique sociodemographic characteristics contribute to variations in resilience and recovery. Studies have shown that underprivileged communities suffer more adversely and take longer to recover from hazard events. Probationers and parolees are uniquely disadvantaged regarding demographics and economic opportunity, both of which contribute to increased vulnerability and reduced resilience. Numerous legal restrictions and widespread discrimination towards former criminals means offenders are often relegated to underserved, criminogenic neighborhoods. Given such severe social and financial limitations, offenders have little capacity to prepare for or recover from disasters.

The …

Hope For Struggling School Districts, Mary D. Travis

Master's Theses

Education improves the opportunities and life-chance outcomes of our children, and is a key factory in both economic and community development. Although high school graduation rates have shown improvement nationwide in recent years, public education is suffering from increasing inequality between different school districts and within the same school districts. Such inequalities widen academic outcome gaps and can result in entire school districts being branded as academic failures. However, there is also encouraging evidence of struggling schools and school districts moving toward improvement. Innovative leaders who are committed to inclusive and rigorous academics, shared leadership, and an in-depth understanding of …

The Alt-Right And Global Information Warfare, Emmi Bevensee, Alexander Ross

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Alt-Right is a neo-fascist white supremacist movement that is involved in violent extremism and shows signs of engagement in extensive disinformation campaigns. Using social media data mining, this study develops a deeper understanding of such targeted disinformation campaigns and the ways they spread. It also adds to the available literature on the endogenous and exogenous influences within the US far right, as well as motivating factors that drive disinformation campaigns, such as geopolitical strategy. This study is to be taken as a preliminary analysis to indicate future methods and follow-on research that will help develop an integrated approach to …

Ancient Maya Obsidian Trade: Frenchman’S Cay, Belize, Emily Cook

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

“How To Lose The Hounds”: Tracing The Relevance Of Marronage For Contemporary Anti-Police Struggles, Celeste Winston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the interconnected practices of flight from slavery and flight from policing. Focusing on Black communities within Montgomery County, Maryland, I provide evidence for how local legacies of enslavement and flight from slavery have empowered later generations of residents, including people still living there today, to practice safety and security on their own terms, beyond policing. I draw on archival and ethnographic research in seven Black communities in Montgomery County to document historical and ongoing local Black life practices and organizing against and outside of policing. I center these communities’ past and present placemaking and collective strategies of …

An Examination Of Seasonal Shifts In Climate And Visitation, And Perspectives On Seasonal Shifts And Climate Adaptation Strategies In Tourism And Recreation Businesses For Moab, Utah, Elizabeth Cook

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The city of Moab, an outdoor recreation hub in eastern Utah, has been encountering both shifts in the seasonality of visitation, and increases in tourist visitation, even with summer temperatures above the normal high. Tourism research describing the effects of climate change on the outdoor recreation industry has focused on winter, snow-dependent activities, while studies in Moab city have focused on the economic value of outdoor recreational activities. Few studies have described the relationship between seasonal tourism and climate change for arid desert locations. The purpose of this study is to describe how the tourism and recreation industry in Moab, …

Are You Happy? Local Economic Development In Northern Thailand, Katherine Sorensen

Master's Theses

Thailand has had a long history of economic development. In recent years, Thailand began to focus on economic development initiatives a local level. The implementation process has been slow, but the introduction of social enterprise programs has proven a promising strategy in local economic development. Successful examples of economic development can be found in Thailand wherein this paper argues through collaboration between government agencies and local communities lies the key to success.

Qualitative techniques including a two months of fieldwork in Thailand, first hand observations, and appreciative inquiry interviews are used to analyze economic development initiatives in the communities of …

Spreadsheets-In-Space: A Quantitative Exploration Of Movement, Currency Creation, And Conflict Within Eve Online, Christopher Alan Pryor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

EVE Online is a massively-multiplayer online game with complex interactions between players and their unique, virtual environment. These relationships are the ongoing results of a conflict-driven economy, but they vary both in duration and by location.

This study attempts to quantify the direct effects of movement and indirect effects of conflict upon economic activity in the form of currency creation and delineate how successfully these relationships can be quantified by narrower time-spans and areas. Results of the mediation models used in this exploration indicate the changing relationship between movement (Ship Jumps), conflict (Ship Kills), and currency creation (Faction Kills) is …

Analysis And Conservation Of Native Forests At Kessler Mountain Fayetteville, Arkansas, Alan James Edmondson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Kessler Mountain in Fayetteville Arkansas has long been recognized for its beauty and natural resources. Parts of Kessler Mountain have been homesteaded and developed in the past, but most of the mountain has remained relatively undisturbed. The planned development of over 4,000 housing units to cover Kessler Mountain stimulated controversy and consideration of other management alternatives. A twist of fate involving an economic recession, a dedicated group of outdoor recreation enthusiasts, and environmental conservationists led to the permanent protection of 384 acres in the Kessler Mountain Regional Park. To help evaluate the natural resources at Kessler Mountain, forest composition, structure, …

The Image From The Road: Towards Mapping The Phenomenological, Rachel Anna Smith Loerts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An area of focus, used in early and contemporary forms of cognitive geography research, is the ‘cognitive map’, a concept that suggests “that people hold a map-like database in their minds to which they can add and use to tackle geographical tasks”. Kevin Lynch, an urban planner in the 1960s, was an early adopter of the cognitive map approach to reveal spatial cognition, what or how people see their environment, specifically cognition of the urban environment. Lynch’s research aimed to develop empirical methods, to identify how people make spatial relationships. Contemporary tools like machine learning are now considered relevant for …

Identifying Priority And “Bright-Spot” Counties For Diabetes Preventive Care In Appalachia: An Exploratory Analysis, Peter J. Mallow, Michael Topmiller, Jennifer Rankin, Jene Grandmont, David Grolling, Jessica L. Mccann, Mark Carrozza

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) prevalence and mortality in Appalachian counties is substantially higher when compared to non-Appalachian counties, although there is significant variation within Appalachia.

Purpose: The objectives of this research were to identify low-performing (priority) and high-performing (bright spot) counties with respect to improving T2DM preventive care.

Methods: Using data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, and the Appalachia Regional Commission, conditional maps were created using county-level estimates for T2DM prevalence, mortality, and annual hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) testing rates. Priority counties were identified using the following criteria: top 33rd …

Lightning Talk: Re/Mapping The Archives: Repository Content For The Digital Humanities And Cartographer, Michael R. Howser

Digital Initiatives Symposium

The print map, once seen as a unique and preservation worthy collection treated uniquely as a collection housed within a separate library or library space, has seen a precipitous decline in usage since Google Maps and other online tools emerged on the scene starting in 2005. With many print map collections experiencing declines in researcher requests per year, this inevitable decline of print map usage underscores the difficulty in discovering maps via the library catalog, search engines, and/or via finding aids. As collection space is pinned against demands for student space, print map collections are targets for capturing additional space …

Community, Renewables, And Development: An Analysis Of Placemaking And Sense Of Place In Community Responses To Large Scale Solar Developments, A Spotsylvania Case Study Report, Kidest Gebre

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

With the ever increasing threat of climate change, many nations are committing to decreasing their dependence on fossil fuels and turning to renewable energy development. The U.S is in the top ten list of nations that are solar-powered and the Spotsylvania Solar Farm Project is one of the largest utility solar farms in the U.S. With this project, my intention is to analyze the role community folks play as major stakeholders in large-scale energy project development, such as the Spotsylvania Solar Farm Project. I will use the Spotsylvania Solar Farm Project can be a case study to analyze community attitudes …

The Current And Future Land Assessment Analysis And Property Taxes Analysis Of The Land Of Proposed Solar Farm In Spotsylvania County, Evelyn Jeong

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

Anthropogenic global climate change is threatening our planet. Human energy demand and consumption has been rapidly increasing throughout the world. In order to combat global climate change from greenhouse gases emissions, increase in renewable energy development is crucial. Solar energy is one of the fastest growing renewable energy source in the world and in the United States. In Spotsylvania County, Virginia, a solar energy company called sPower proposed one of the biggest solar farms in the East Coast. Because of the size, scale, economic viability, environmental concerns, and more, there has been push back from the concerned citizens of the …

The Financial Climate And Economic Mechanisms That Facilitated The Usa And Ur’S Shift Towards Solar Power, Monica Stack

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

The University of Richmond (UR) has been committed to sustainability and environmental innovation for many years. However, in the pursuit of carbon neutrality they have had had to weigh economic interests with their commitment to environmentalism. Due to a shifting national energy climate and the emergence of financial mechanisms by which an entity can participate in the renewable energy market, UR was recently able to invest in a 20MW portion of a nearby solar array to offset emissions from 100% of their purchased electricity. This report details the financial forces which have made solar prominent and affordable. It then explains …

Erosion And Storm Water Runoff: Spower Solar Farm Project: Watershed Environmental Analysis, Stanford Lee

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

The University of Richmond has announced their partnership with sPower’s Spotsylvania Solar Energy Center that is to be developed in the next two years to contribute to their 2050 carbon neutrality goals. The university is supposed to have 20 MWs of the 500 MW solar development, which should produce enough energy to account for 100% of the electricity usage on campus. This will make the University of Richmond the first institution of higher education in the southeast to match 100% of its electricity needs with solar energy and will decrease the university’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60% (University of Richmond …

Incorporating Community Solar At The University Of Richmond To Reach Sustainability Goals, Maribel Sabino

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

An analysis of the scale pertaining to sustainability efforts by the University of Richmond concerning the solar farm in Spotsylvania and alternative solar options is imperative to understanding and encouraging sustainability at the University of Richmond. Solar energy as a renewable energy has high potential to help institutions of higher education reach sustainability goals. Considering solar power at various scales will help understand if solar is a viable option to reach these goals. This project examines community solar under a lens of sustainability as a potential contender to meeting the sustainability and carbon neutrality goals of the University of Richmond. …

Understanding The Stake Of The Government And Government Officials In The Spotsylvania Solar Farm Project, Haley Neuenfeldt

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

The Spotsylvania Solar Farm Project is a proposal to build a 500 megawatt solar farm in Livingston in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The project is managed by Spower with various investors such as Dominion, the University of Richmond, Microsoft, Apple, Etsy, Swiss-Re, and Akamai. However, there are many stakeholders outside of the main investment groups. These stakeholders include the citizens in Spotsylvania where the solar farm will be located, climate activists advocating for increased renewable energy usage, and local, state, and federal government representatives. Across the scale of government representatives, there have been initiatives to increase, decrease, and regulate solar power …

Los Angeles' Riparian Renaissance: Rethinking The Geographies Of Gentrification Through Green City-Wide Infrastructure Projects, Henry Nieberg

Geography Honors Projects

The neoliberal restructuring of global cities has allowed larger scales of investment that has catalyzed and enlarged gentrification processes. The impacts of gentrification today have the potential to transcend individual communities and affect the whole city. Building on the “rent gap” theory, I examine the reasons and ways capital is injected in capital-deficient neighborhoods, and how the inflow of capital affects the spatial scales in which the process of gentrification is occurring today. While there are studies on the impacts local green infrastructure-spending and greening initiatives can have on neighborhood gentrification, we know less about how large, arterial green infrastructure …

Demographic Trends Of Walkable Cities In The United States, Christine Leonhardt

Sigma Xi Student Research Symposium (2019)

Walkable cities have become attractive places to live in recent years as they benefit resident’s well-being. Walkable cities have a positive correlation with a population that is young, educated, safe, and healthy. In cities with high-walkability, residents are encouraged to walk more, rather than use a car for each outing, which counters obesity and a sedentary lifestyle, a grim atmosphere, and unsafe surroundings. Most research on walkability and demographics is limited to case studies comparing city neighborhoods, whereas this research encompasses 108 United States cities with a population over 200,000 people. This research goes beyond a city’s walk score, established …

Mapping And Gis Tools For Disaster Preparation And Recovery, Jim Craner

Collaborative Librarianship

There are many tools for online and offline mapping, as well as geographic information systems ("GIS"), that public librarians can offer their communities. These tools can be invaluable for emergency response planning before a disaster as well as response and recovery operations after a disaster. Librarians, as community information and technology stewards, can play a valuable role in these scenarios.

Occupational (Im)Mobility In The Global Care Economy: The Case Of Foreign-Trained Nurses In The Canadian Context, Margaret Walton-Roberts

Global Nurse Migration Pathways: A Comparative Project

The twenty-first century has witnessed a number of significant demographic and political shifts that have resulted in a care crisis. Addressing the deficit of care provision has led many nations to actively recruit migrant care labour, often under temporary forms of migration. The emergence of this phenomenon has resulted in a rich field of analysis using the lens of care, including the idea of the Global Care Chain. Revisions to this conceptualization have pushed for its extension beyond domestic workers in the home to include skilled workers in other institutional settings, particularly nurses in hospitals and long-term care settings. Reviewing …

#Nolaeats: Marketing New Orleans' French Quarter Restaurants Using Instagram, Darby Libka

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

New Orleans has been a well-known tourist destination since the 1800s and continues to draw visitors every year, especially to its famous French Quarter. The Creole cuisine that calls this region home plays a large role in this place’s ability to have a strong identity, which restaurants in the French Quarter capitalize on. Restaurants in this neighborhood sell the Creole cuisine, but through the analyzation of their Instagram accounts, it is clear that while the cuisine is important, the ability to sell a piece of New Orleans is a greater focus. Gumbo can be found in most any New Orleans …