Geography Commons^™

Centering Animals In Latin American History, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise Of Ranching And Cattle Culture In Western Amazonia By Jeffrey Hoelle (Review), Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Missing The Trees For The Forest: The Socioecological Significance Of Dispersed Farmland Trees In Northern Ethiopia, Jacob A. Wall, Travis W. Reynolds

Honors Theses

Scattered trees are prominent features in the agricultural landscape of the Ethiopian highlands. The dry Afromontane forests of the Amhara Region in northern Ethiopia have faced centuries of deforestation - the FAO estimates only 3% of the region is forested today. The remaining landscape has been largely converted into agricultural and grazing lands, with the exception of some limited government-protected lands, as well as thousands of small forest fragments left around Orthodox Churches (“church forests”). But while a growing body of scholarship has highlighted the ecological and cultural importance of church forests and other natural forest fragments, the roles of …

Missing The Trees For The Forest: The Socioecological Significance Of Dispersed Farmland Trees In Northern Ethiopia, Jacob A. Wall

Honors Theses

Scattered trees are prominent features in the agricultural landscape of the Ethiopian highlands. The dry Afromontane forests of the Amhara Region in northern Ethiopia have faced centuries of deforestation - the FAO estimates only 3% of the region is forested today. The remaining landscape has been largely converted into agricultural and grazing lands, with the exception of some limited government-protected lands, as well as thousands of small forest fragments left around Orthodox Churches (“church forests”). But while a growing body of scholarship has highlighted the ecological and cultural importance of church forests and other natural forest fragments, the roles of …

Monitoring Global Forest Land-Use And Change, Erik J. Lindquist

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Earth’s forests contain nearly three-fourths of the World’s floral and faunal diversity, function as a large carbon sink capable of mitigating the effects of global climate change, affect local and regional physical and chemical cycles and provide wood and non-wood products. However, humans are now capable of modifying their environment in ways more impactful and at rates faster than at any other time in history. Consistent and comparable estimates of global forest land-use and change are critical for monitoring human impacts on the Earth system. International treaties and reporting requirements aimed at safeguarding the delivery of forest-related ecosystem services depend …

Developing Management Guidelines That Balance Cattle And Timber Production With Ecological Interests In The Black Hills Of South Dakota, Kurt M. Chowanski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Forested lands contribute to the United States (US) economy by providing livestock and timber production. Livestock grazing of forested lands has been widespread throughout the western US since the settlement era, and currently occurs on 51.4 million hectares (ha) representing 16% of all US grazing land and 22% of all US forested land (Nickerson et al. 2011). While livestock grazing and timber harvest are occurring on a substantial amount of forested land, relationships between management practices, tree stocking, timber production, forage production, livestock grazing, wildlife, aesthetics, and ecological integrity are not well documented. Whether considering timber or cattle, finding a …

Biodiversity And Carbon Content Of Trees On A University Campus, Todd R. Lookingbill, Kimberly Britt Klinker

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

The summer research project described in this chapter can serve as a model for the introduction of a spatial approach to problem solving in a multidisciplinary setting. This example demonstrates that even undergraduate students can collect, analyze, and build web applications for relevant spatial databases. It also demonstrates the importance of having a campus GIS support group to guide projects, train the students in technical skills, and enable them to share their results through an ArcGIS Online based web app. Involvement in the summer project prompted the students to pursue degrees in geography, economics and environmental studies, and computer science …

"Treat Everybody Right:" Multidimensional Foodways In Detroit, Alex B. Hill

Wayne State University Theses

Detroit is assumed to be a “food desert” even with contradicting evidence. With fruits and vegetables available at each of Detroit’s 70+ independent grocery stores, there remains a lack of understanding in consumer preference and perception of nutritional access. It was reported in 2010 that upwards of $200 million in grocery spending leaves the City of Detroit. Throughout the months of July to September 2014, 73 Detroit residents participated in focus groups and group interviews to discuss food purchasing habits and perceptions of food access. Of the 73 participants, 51 completed a Food Purchasing and Eating Patterns (FPEP) survey which …

Supporting Spatial Orientation : Using Resizable Icons To Visualize Distant Landmarks On Mobile Phones, Jiayan Zhao

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Mobile phones have become so popular in navigation. Empirical studies, however, have implied several pitfalls of using these mobile systems. First of all, the small size of the mobile screen fragmentizes the map information so that users have to interact with the display frequently for fear of disorientation. In addition, generated navigation guides with continuous displays of routing information relieves users’ cognitive load, but the excessive reliance on the displayed spatial information keeps the users being mindless of the environment that impacts their acquisition of spatial knowledge. Later, landmarks as important referents were suggested to help users integrate the current …

Identifying Spatial Process Of Vacant Housing In Buffalo Core Urban Area, Yutian Feng

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

With the fact that vacant houses contribute to decline of living environment, understanding spatial distribution and agents of vacant house behind that spatial pattern is necessary for policy-makers to better work out proactive plans. An agreement that vacant buildings are not only symptomatic of other problems but even contributes to neighborhood decline. Thus, this paper will examine spatial characteristics of the compact and contiguous Buffalo urban district through three steps. First, we will test if there is spatial auto-correlation of vacant houses throughout the whole study area by global Moran’s I. Secondly, the Ordinary Least Square Regression Model without considering …

Spatial Analysis Of Newborn Hearing Screening In New York State, Nafin Harun

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Spatial Analysis of Newborn Hearing Screening in New York State

Straight Time And Scandal: Travesti Urban Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Christine L. Woodward

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

São Paulo, Brazil is currently pursuing a project of creative urbanism. Though city rhetoric insists this project is rooted in tolerance of sexual diversity, I suggest that city policy effectively perpetuates normative conceptions of family and respectability. Using data gathered through a series of qualitative interviews with transgender and travesti individuals living in São Paulo, I argue that the straight time of São Paulo’s creative urbanism generates exclusionary temporalities and spatialities in the city that render travestis out of time and out of place. Furthermore, I argue that travestis use their capacity to enact shame through scandals to generate temporalities …

Spaces Of Solidarity: Negotiations Of Difference And Whiteness Among Activists In The Arizona/Sonora Borderlands, Carrie Mott

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Interpersonal conflict poses a serious threat to social justice activism. In the context of multi-racial solidarity activism in southern Arizona, conflicts are often born of the challenges accompanying differentials in social privilege due to differences in race and ethnicity relative to white supremacist settler colonialism. We can see these tensions topologically through the very different relationships white, Latin@, Chican@, and indigenous activists have to on-going processes of white supremacy. This dissertation explores the factors contributing to successes and failures of multi-racial activist ventures in the context of the Arizona/Sonora borderlands, particularly the challenges of negotiating social difference among communities of …

The Working Lives And Spatial Practice Of Digital Media Developers In San Francisco, Daniel G. Cockayne

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In this dissertation I examine work practices in the 21st Century, looking in particular at how categories such as labor and value are changing in the context of technological shifts and the valorization of entrepreneurial work. I take the example of digital media workers in San Francisco to show how work is changing in relation to correlative changes in the capitalist mode of production and the devaluation of labor under neoliberal models of reason. This approach interrogates how attachments toward work are produced and reproduced to ask why work has become such a naturalized and unquestionable category in everyday life. …

Impermeable Assemblages: Flooding, Urban Infrastructure, And Stormwater Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Nate Millington

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project analyzes efforts to remake the relationship between water and city in São Paulo, Brazil. Currently experiencing overlapping problems of flooding, scarcity, and pollution, São Paulo illustrates the challenges of managing water in a contemporary mega-city. This dissertation subsequently considers the city’s water management through an approach that borrows from urban political ecology, social studies of science, and post-colonial urban theory. With an epistemological grounding in these literatures, this project analyzes ongoing conversations about water management in São Paulo, and focuses on how water is encountered and engaged with in the landscape by engineers, artists, and activists. This project …

Unaccompanied Children Migration, Ronald Alvarado

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

The way people view immigration has changed over the past few years. Children fleeing to the United States without their parents has been a huge issue lately. Unaccompanied children are kids younger than 18 who are sent alone, in this case to the United States. These kids migrate because of the extreme violence that occurs in their home countries.

Statistics prove that children in their home countries are exposed to much violence. Most are coming from the northern triangle of Central America. I believe they should have more rights here in the United States, and be treated just the same …

Using Synthetic Tropical Cyclones To Characterize Extreme Hurricanes Affecting Charleston, South Carolina, Kelsey N. Ellis, Jill C. Trepanier, Robert E. Hodges

Faculty Publications

The characteristics and conditions favoring extreme hurricanes remain largely unknown because of their small number in the observational record. Synthetic tracks are capable of providing a large, representative sample of these events, which provides an opportunity to further understanding of extreme characteristics as compared with those of more common tropical cyclones. The authors compare 300 synthetic extreme (100-yr event, ≥ 48.9 m s-1) and 300 common (5-yr event, ≤ 33.6 m s-1) tropical cyclones for Charleston, South Carolina, for differences in spatial, temporal, and other characteristics. Results suggest that extreme hurricanes have a more-defined spatial and temporal behavior, generally forming …

Editorial, Thomas J. Lampoltshammer, Michael Leitner, Noella Edelmann

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mapping Rice Cropping Systems In Vietnam Using An Ndvi-Based Time-Series Similarity Measurement Based On Dtw Distance, Xudong Guan, Chong Huang, Gaohuan Liu, Xuelian Meng, Qingsheng Liu

Faculty Publications

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time-series data has been widely used in the fields of crop and rice classification. The cloudy and rainy weather characteristics of the monsoon season greatly reduce the likelihood of obtaining high-quality optical remote sensing images. In addition, the diverse crop-planting system in Vietnam also hinders the comparison of NDVI among different crop stages. To address these problems, we apply a Dynamic TimeWarping (DTW) distance-based similarity measure approach and use the entire yearly NDVI time series to reduce the inaccuracy of classification using a single image. We first de-noise …

Synoptic Climatology Of Extreme Snow And Avalanche Events In Southern Alaska, Kristy C. Carter

Theses and Dissertations

Snowfall distribution in southern Alaska during large snowfall events (>12 inches/day) is complex and dependent on several small-scale factors. Output from highresolution WRF simulations was used to provide further insight into factors that contribute to differences in precipitation patterns. Common synoptic patterns among large snowfall events and cities were studied to create a snow climatology for seven cities in southern Alaska based on the predominant wind flow at the surface and aloft and the location of the surface low and 500 mb height field. Results aid in understanding the synoptic set-up for large snowfall events in each city and …

Hydrologic Modeling Scenarios In A South Carolina Piedmont Drainage Basin, Parker Douglas Leslie

Theses and Dissertations

Changing land cover can drastically alter the hydrologic processes of a drainage basin. At the same time, the hydrologic processes that occur are governed by weather and climate of the region. The Southeastern United States, and more specifically the Piedmont region of South Carolina, is experiencing significant changes to the landscape and highly variable weather and climate conditions. Few modern hydrologic studies that investigate the impact from these dynamic variables on streamflow and the water balance within the region have taken place and further study is warranted because of the drastic change likely to occur. One objective of this thesis …

Assessing Individual Transit Vulnerability To Nuisance Flooding In The Charleston, Sc Area, Sumathee Selvaraj

Theses and Dissertations

Minor coastal flooding, also known as nuisance flooding, is projected to be more frequent due to relative sea level rise. Nuisance flood events in Charleston have resulted in various social impacts caused by road closures, traffic disruptions, and economic losses. This thesis presents research conducted to understand the dimensions of individual transit vulnerability to nuisance flooding and how transit vulnerability will be affected by increased extents of nuisance flooding driven by rising sea levels and heavy rainfall. Mixed methods were used to conduct this research in Berkley, Charleston, and Dorchester Counties, South Carolina. An electronic, in-person survey was administered at …

Multivariate Analysis And Geographic Modeling Of Archaeological Landscapes, J. Christopher Gillam

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in Geographic Information Science (GISci), archaeological databases and statistics enable the development and refinement of spatial applications of multivariate statistics and other quantitative methods for modeling ancient and historical cultural landscapes. Along the Central Savannah River of South Carolina, this research on prehistoric and historic site distributions, their environmental, temporal and cultural context, and geographic modeling explored methodologies for predicting site locations and modeling cultural landscapes to gain a better understanding of the distant and recent past. Methods for testing extant models, detecting changes in land-use through time, and for developing time-sliced and adaptation-based landscape models were demonstrated using …

Barriers To Success: Refugee Mobility In The New South Immigrant Gateway City Of Columbia, Sc, Usa, Alysha V. Baratta

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores mobility and service access of refugees who have been resettled in a non-traditional smaller-city immigrant destination of Columbia, South Carolina. I show that delivery of basic refugee social services varies based on support from individual states while federal expectations for refugees to reach economic selfsufficiency are applied equally across the US. I argue that mobility is a major challenge in obtaining these goals, further exacerbated in the context of a smaller resettlement site. Although redistribution to smaller metropolitan areas may provide refugees safer and more affordable housing, less spatial distance to traverse (Mott, 2010), they often lack …

Gis Mapping For Peace Corps, Jeremy Huey

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

International volunteerism programs, such as the Peace Corps, find interested, educated men and women to live abroad in order to help local communities in need of assistance. The goal of this project is to create maps intended to enhance the training of those volunteers. When volunteers leave training programs and head to their prospective service communities, a certain period of time is needed in order to obtain a full grasp of the terrain, boundaries, weather, climate etc. A more effective training program, which incorporates maps of regional climates, environments, landscapes, cultures and resources, will lead to more effective volunteerism. By …

Land Cover Mapping And Change Analysis At The Tensleep Preserve In Wyoming, Tyler Richard Grupa

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Mapping land cover and land cover change are important, especially for land managers who protect natural lands and generate restoration projects. Accurate land cover assessment of rangelands can be difficult because the spectral difference between plant species may be minimal. The goal of this research is to map the land cover in the Tensleep Preserve and highlight change that has occurred over the past twenty-three years using the Feature Analyst extension. The land cover change map will highlight significant changes and Feature Analyst will accurately identify different land covers using historical aerial photographs and ground truthing data collected in 2013. …

Mechanism Of Seasonal Arctic Sea Ice Evolution And Arctic Amplification, Kwang-Yul Kim, Benjamin D. Hamlington, Hanna Na, Jinju Kim

CCPO Publications

Sea ice loss is proposed as a primary reason for the Arctic amplification, although the physical mechanism of the Arctic amplification and its connection with sea ice melting is still in debate. In the present study, monthly ERA-Interim reanalysis data are analyzed via cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function analysis to understand the seasonal mechanism of sea ice loss in the Arctic Ocean and the Arctic amplification. While sea ice loss is widespread over much of the perimeter of the Arctic Ocean in summer, sea ice remains thin in winter only in the Barents-Kara seas. Excessive turbulent heat flux through the sea …

Model Lessons Geography Of Southern Iberia Institute - Portugal And Spain, Jack Davis, Jeff Salvati, Tabitha M. Richards, Denise Harrington, Jordan Kasler, Amanda Mattei, Heidi Wilson, Luke Ovgard, Karen Kraemer

Instructional Materials

Model Lessons Geography of Southern Iberia Institute - Portugal and Spain to use with The Student Atlas of Oregon.

The Geopolitics Of Reproductive Healthcare: Latina Immigrants’ Experiences As Non-Citizens And Biological Citizena In Atlanta, Ga, Rebecca E. Lane

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines the experiences of Latina immigrants in Atlanta, GA in accessing and receiving reproductive healthcare. Although Atlanta is a new destination city for immigrant labor, the state of Georgia has passed anti-immigrant legislation, including a 2011 law that allows local police to check immigrants’ documentation while investigating unrelated violations. This localization of immigration policing heightens immigrants’ risk of detention and deportability. In combination with media discourses of illegality, local immigration policing instills fear in immigrants, which deters them from going out in public in order to perform everyday tasks such as seeing a doctor. Latinas immigrants’ ascribed illegality …

Socio-Spatial Mobilities In An Immigrant Gateway City: Analyzing Latina\O Experiences In East Boston, Mitchell Beam Snider

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which Latino migrants in East Boston represent their material and imagined socio-spatial mobilities in the city. It considers the ways in which participants discuss the relationship of their mobilities to experiences of social exclusion and inclusion as well as feelings of belonging. The first empirical chapter specifically analyses how participants’ motility—or capacities for being mobile—interfaced with their experiences (or lack thereof) of onward migration. It finds that there is a complex relationship between onward migration and participants' motility. The second empirical chapter considers how participants represented encounters with others in the city as emotional …