Geography Commons^™

Tree Inventory Report: Soma District, Cody Graham, Jeremy Bigelow, Gary Shaw, Andrew Bailey, Katelynn Bisso, David Dunnington, Joshua Emmons, Morgan Farber, Cody Graham, Ryan Guidry, Max Joyner, Roger Klingelhoffer, Jonathan Newman, Nicholas Scarpelli, Geoffrey Duh

Asset Mapping: Community Geography Project

The SOMA tree inventory project was taken on by a group of fourteen students as a senior capstone at Portland State University, in September of 2015. Many of us came to this class with GiS background, however, there are others representing the diverse collection of studies offered at PSU, such as film, communication, and general sciences. Capstone courses are PSU’s requirement for all seniors that allow each student to take part in helping those in the surrounding community, by providing a benefit to organizations in need of a large group of volunteers. Our capstone course was designed to impart the …

Delivering Green Streets: An Exploration Of Changing Perceptions And Behaviours Over Time Around Bioswales In Portland, Oregon, Glyn Everett, Jessica Lamond, Anita T. Morzillo, Annie Marissa Matsler, Faith Ka Shun Chan

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Green Infrastructure (GI) is an increasingly popular means of dealing with flooding and water quality issues worldwide. This study examines public perceptions of, and behaviour around, bioswales, which are a popular GI facility in the United States. Bioswales are highly visible interventions requiring support from residents and policy-makers to be implemented and maintained appropriately. To understand how the residents’ perceptions and attitudes might develop over time, we interviewed residents of Portland, Oregon, living near bioswales installed 1–2, 4–5 and 8–9 years ago, to determine awareness, understanding, and opinions about the devices. We found no consistent patterns across time periods, but …

Characterizing The Sediment Bed In Terms Of Resistance To Motion: Toward An Improved Model Of Saltation Thresholds For Aeolian Transport, Brandon L. Edwards, Steven L. Namikas

Faculty Publications

Models of aeolian transport thresholds generate a wide range of predictions, and error in threshold modeling leads to uncertainty in predicting aeolian events. This paper proposes a new characterization of the representative grain size for use in prediction of transport thresholds. This characterization is based on the distribution of resistance to motion in the sediment bed. The traditional grain size distribution uses a mean diameter to represent the sediment bed. However, the distribution of inertial forces resisting motion is not linearly proportional to the distribution of grain diameters, so that an arithmetic mean does not adequately represent the distribution of …

Thermodynamic Modeling Of Aqueous Geochemistry Of Chlorine Salts: Application To Stability And Habitability Of Liquid Brines On Mars, Amira Elsenousy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The WCL (Wet Chemistry Lab) instrument on board the Mars’s Phoenix Lander has identified the soluble ionic composition of the soil at the landing site. Two important ions were detected at the landing site; perchlorates (ClO4-) with a concentration of ~ 2.4 wt% and chlorides (Cl-) with a concentration of 0.54 wt%. Between chloride and perchlorate ions three other oxidized ions exist and called chlorine ions: hypochlorite ClO - (ox. state +1), chlorite ClO2- (ox. state +3) and chlorate ClO3- (ox. state +5). These oxidized ions might be existed as intermediate species on the surface of Mars but remained undetected. …

Towards Systematic Selection Of Terrain- And Ground Cover-Specific Lidar Filtering Parameters, Vance Green

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accurate automated classification of LiDAR point clouds is a well-known problem and proper parameterization of the classification algorithm is essential to creating useful bare-earth terrain models. Parameterization is particularly important in areas characterized by extremely low relief, such as the Little Red River Irrigation Project Area in central Arkansas. In this kind of landscape, analyses such as hydrological flow models are sensitive to small changes in the topography, and therefore prone to errors in the classification of the LiDAR point cloud and the digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from it. Developing effective project-specific parameters requires a high degree of knowledge …

A Geographic View Of Expansion Choices By U.S. Firms In China, Rossitza Wooster, David Banis, Ayesha Khalid

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

How does geography matter for explaining the location patterns of U.S. companies in China? We combine insights from the literature on economic geography and spatial interdependence in foreign direct investment (FDI) activity, to provide a comparative analysis using both sectoral regression results and maps that illustrate patterns in the data. We use a unique sample of publicly traded U.S. firms who announced expansion of operations into China between 1980 and 2005. Regression results show that relative to the tertiary sector, firm characteristics matter more for primary sector firms, whereas province characteristics matter more for secondary sector firms. Additionally, our GIS …

Feeding The South: An Assessment Of Food Availability In Rural Mississippi, Nicole Baiza Lawrence

Master's Theses

The overall goal of this project is to investigate Mississippi’s rural food environment by assessing the food resources available to rural Mississippians. The primary objectives were to identify sample locations in each of the four cultural regions of Mississippi and determine the food resources available to residents of those counties. The intellectual merit of this research lies in its in-depth exploration of food accessibility in rural areas. Though there is a wealth of literature on the topics of urban food access and food deserts, very little research has been done in rural areas. Most studies focus on urban environments which …

Creando Las Estrellas: Determining The Quality Of The Dominican And Cuban Player Development Systems, Samuel C. Hearn

Honors Theses

Recently, there has been a huge rise in the number of Cuban ballplayers, or peloteros, as the baseball playing Latinos are known. Why do Major League Baseball (MLB) teams go to such lengths to sign Cubans, when a heavy presence already exists in Cuba’s Caribbean neighbor, the Dominican Republic? Through the comparison educational systems, statistics of each country’s elite players, and comparative accounts of the Dominican and Cuban player development systems, the contrast between the two systems is evident. Though the Dominican system creates a large return in the investment MLB teams make in the country, the socialized sport system …

Predictive Modeling Of Terrestrial Radiation Exposure From Geologic Materials, Daniel A. Haber

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Aerial gamma ray surveys are an important tool for national security, scientific, and industrial interests in determining locations of both anthropogenic and natural sources of radioactivity. There is a relationship between radioactivity and geology and in the past this relationship has been used to predict geology from an aerial survey. The purpose of this project

is to develop a method to predict the radiologic exposure rate of the geologic materials in an area by creating a model using geologic data, images from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), geochemical data, and pre-existing low spatial resolution aerial surveys …

Rainfall Interception And The Coupled Surface Water And Energy Balance, Albert I.J.M. Van Dijk, John H. Gash, Eva Van Gorsel, Peter D. Blanken, Alessandro Cescatti, Carmen Emmel, Bert Gielen, Ian N. Harman, Gerard Kiely, Lutz Merbold, Leonardo Montagnani, Eddy Moors, Matteo Sottocornola, Andrej Varlagin, Christopher A. Williams, Georg Wohlfahrt

Geography

Evaporation from wet canopies (. E) can return up to half of incident rainfall back into the atmosphere and is a major cause of the difference in water use between forests and short vegetation. Canopy water budget measurements often suggest values of E during rainfall that are several times greater than those predicted from Penman-Monteith theory. Our literature review identified potential issues with both estimation approaches, producing several hypotheses that were tested using micrometeorological observations from 128 FLUXNET sites world-wide. The analysis shows that FLUXNET eddy-covariance measurements tend to provide unreliable measurements of E during rainfall. However, the other micrometeorological …

Land System Science And Sustainable Development Of The Earth System: A Global Land Project Perspective, Peter H. Verburg, Neville Crossman, Erle C. Ellis, Andreas Heinimann, Patrick Hostert, Ole Mertz, Harini Nagendra, Thomas Sikor, Karl Heinz Erb, Nancy Golubiewski, Ricardo Grau, Morgan Grove, Souleymane Konaté, Patrick Meyfroidt, Dawn C. Parker, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Hideaki Shibata, Allison Thomson, Lin Zhen

Geography

Land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment. Understanding the drivers, state, trends and impacts of different land systems on social and natural processes helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the tradeoff these changes may represent. The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social-and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions. Land system science has moved from a focus on …

Geospatial Workflows And Trust: A Use Case For Provenance, Rachel Frances Linck

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At first glance the Astronomer by Vermeer, Tutankhamun’s burial mask, and a geospatial workflow may appear to have nothing in common. However, a commonality exists; each of these items can have a record of provenance detailing their history. Provenance is a record that shows who did what to an object, where this happened, and how and why these actions took place. In relation to the geospatial domain, provenance can be used to track and analyze the changes data has undergone in a workflow, and can facilitate scientific reproducibility. Collecting provenance from geospatial workflows and finding effective ways to use this …

The Role Of Geography In Nexus Thinking: Becoming Institutional And Community Leaders While Defending The Discipline!, Amy E. Potter

Earth, Environment & Sustainability: Faculty Presentations (1988-2022)

This presentation was given during the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.

North Korea: Gis Study Of The Slowed Migration Of North Korean Refugees, Brandi Hunnicutt

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Since 2009, human rights organizations have noted an almost fifty-percent decrease of North Korean refugees reaching freedom in South Korea, when for so many years there was a steady increase. This capstone paper evaluated the decline by taking two perspectives of research, one perspective being physical terrain changes or modifications prohibiting the flow of refugees and a second approach of examining the lifestyle demographics of the refugees who have successfully crossed the North Korean border. Geographic Information System (GIS) tools were utilized to determine that in both research approaches there is data indicating purposes for the decrease -- proving that …

Assessing The Risk Of West Nile Virus On The Age 65 And Older Population Segments In Fort Collins, Colorado, Richard Cornell

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

West Nile virus (WNV) is an arbovirus whose more severe, neurologic symptoms may include seizures, paralysis, or coma. Despite a variety of possible symptoms, most people do not realize they are infected with the virus with a majority of those infected not developing any symptoms. Members of the population aged 65 and older naturally experience reduced immunity to viruses as they get older. Exposure to West Nile virus can occur around one’s home, in a park, natural area, alongside a source of water, or even walking along a trail. Areas exist around town that present risks of being infected or …

Using Gis To Assess Species Distributions In The Pacific Northwest, Leslie Perry

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

A species distribution application was developed using ArcGIS (Model Builder) and Python to support management decisions and species reviews for the BLM and Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest. The application integrates observation data for flora and fauna species from agency geodatabases and available data on various environmental factors, such as ownership, land uses, and forest types. Results of the application include species-specific geodatabases containing observation data and combined observation-environmental data with tables presenting distribution information based on the environmental factors. These results are intended to provide baseline information about species distribution patterns and can be used for a variety …

Utilizing Web-Based Gis Applications For Spatial Analysis Of Real Estate Appraisal Data, Esther Bowlin

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Internet-based map applications have become a widely implemented GIS tool, and by most estimations, will experience continued growth over the coming years. The real estate industry is particularly well positioned to capitalize on the boom of web mapping technologies as real estate is a largely spatial discipline. To fulfill the marketing objectives of a real estate appraisal firm, a web-based mapping application was developed to execute simple spatial analysis tasks. The application is capable of analysis tasks such as heat mapping and includes geolocation services as well as coordinate conversion. All processes are executed within the Google Map API and …

Who, What And Why: A Statistical And Geospatial Analysis Of The Development Of The Marcellus Shale In West Virginia, Erin Sevatson

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Over the last decade, the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia has seen a rapid rise in exploitation of resources. The boom is undeniable but the reasons behind the success stories remain debatable. What factors have led to successes for operators in the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia? Statistical and spatial analysis can aid in making that determination. Statistical analysis will focus on correlating leased acreage numbers to drilled and producing well data to demonstrate the correlation between leased acres and number of wells. Spatial Analysis will be used to determine the areas with the highest prevalence of drilled and producing …

Art Education In My Backyard: Creative Placemaking On An Urban Farm, Jodi Kushins

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

An art educator describes how she used her knowledge and experience of artistic and educational initiatives that forefront collective activity in real world settings to transform her backyard into an urban farm with the help of friends and neighbors. She combines an autoethnographic account of her experiences, including original photographs, with research on conceptual artists, participatory culture, and creative placemaking to position her work as participatory environmental art education. The paper is organized around the major steps one undertakes in planting a garden – siting, amending, seeding, tending, and harvesting - to draw parallels between the processes of maintaining a …

Wildlife In U.S. Cities: Managing Unwanted Animals, John Hadidian

Conservation Collection

Conflicts between people and wild animals in cities are undoubtedly as old as urban living itself. In the United States it is only of late, however, that many of the species now found in cities have come to live there. The increasing kind and number of human-wildlife conflicts in urbanizing environments makes it a priority that effective and humane means of conflict resolution be found. The urban public wants conflicts with wildlife resolved humanely, but needs to know what the alternative management approaches are, and what ethical standards should guide their use. This paper examines contemporary urban wildlife control in …

A Study On The Integration Of Multivariate Metocean, Ocean Circulation, And Trajectory Modeling Data With Static Geographic Information Systems For Better Marine Resources Management And Protection During Coastal Oil Spill Response – A Case Study And Gap Analysis On Northeastern Gulf Of Mexico Tidal Inlets, Richard Ray Knudsen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires the development of Regional and Area Contingency Plans. For more than 20 years, the State of Florida, under both the Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, has worked closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop these plans for coastal and marine oil spill response. Current plans, developed with local, state and federal stakeholder input, use geographic information systems (GIS) data such as location and extent of sensitive ecological, wildlife, and human-use features (termed Environmental Sensitivity Index data), pre-defined protection priorities, …

Is Nubia Plate Rigid? A Geodetic Study Of The Relative Motion Of Different Cratonic Areas Within Africa., Mary Wambui Njoroge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Nubia plate is normally considered to be a rigid plate and as such used in the realization of terrestrial reference frame. Gondwana breakup plate reconstruction, the Cameroon volcanic line, seismicity, and the morphology of the Okavango rift zone (ORZ) suggest the presence of internal deformation within the Nubia plate. To test this hypothesis, six different reference frames were developed from the velocity field of three individual regions (West, Central and South), and of different combinations of them (West+Central, South+Central, and Nubia as a whole). The residual velocities with respect to these references frame help us understand the presence of …

Predicting Toucan Locations In Panama Using Arcgis, Daniel J. Herrera

Geography: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Toucans are omnivorous birds native to southern Latin America and South America. They are non-migratory, and their range is disputed among experts. In an attempt to develop a better understanding of the range and behavior of toucans, correlations between toucan presence and geographic features of the area were analyzed to create a location probability map.

Habitat Selection Of Wolverines: A Geospatial Analysis Of Wolverine Movements In Southwest Montana, Bryn Karabensh

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Wolverine research in the contiguous United States is not abundant and understanding of the ecology of this species is not fully understood in this ecosystem. Specifically lacking in research is data regarding wolverine movements. This paucity of data and analysis inhibits the ability to effectively develop and implement conservation and management strategies. This paper seeks to identify patterns and habitat preferences of wolverines with respect to their movements. Specifically, do they avoid roads and clear-cuts zones from timber harvest and do they display a preference to topography features during movements? Using GPS locations of wolverines a regression analysis was applied. …

Geography: A Career Without Borders

DePaul Magazine

What do mosquito abatement, education policy, retail site location and public transportation have in common? Although it might not seem obvious, these disparate pursuits all involve the work of geographers. This article looks at the wide variety of occupations open to geographers, who manipulate and map big data, use geographic information systems for municipal functions and pest removal, analyze transportation and job siting, pursue human and environmental sustainability practices, and teach. The article also includes a brief summary of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

Locating A Wildlife Corridor For The Wild Tiger In India, Carmen George

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The tiger (Panthera Tigris) has been on the ICUN red list of endangered species since 1972. In the early 20^th century, 100,000 wild tigers roamed Asia and today approximately 3,600 remain. India is home to over half of the remaining wild tigers and continues to struggle in creating effective conservation plans. Poaching, habitat destruction and prey depletion are several primary causes of tiger population degradation and remain major barriers to rejuvenation of healthy populations in the wild. Wildlife corridors are essential to the process of repairing fragmented habitats. Through the use of GIS and remote sensing this …

Characterizing And Mapping The Field Scale Spatial Variability Of Surface Horizon Soil Properties And Water Content With Noninvasive Em38, Ryan W.R. Schroeder, Robert Austin, Joshua Heitman, Adam Howard

Purdue GIS Day

The spatial variability of physical soil properties at the field scale is increasingly important in agriculture and natural resource management. Changes in topography, parent material, management practices, erosion/deposition rates, etc. can influence the variability of the soil’s physical properties and help guide management and land use plans. The Geonics EM38 is a noninvasive geophysical sensor which is used to measure the apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) of the soil through electromagnetic induction – primarily influenced by clay content, soil moisture content, and salinity. Soil moisture has been found to be a significant contributor to ECa and is therefore useful in determining …

Research Computing And Data For Geoscience, Preston Smith

Purdue GIS Day

This presentation will discuss the data storage and computational resources available for GIS researchers at Purdue.

This presentation will discuss the data storage and computational resources available for GIS researchers at Purdue.

Gis Resources @ Purdue, Larry Biehl

Purdue GIS Day

GIS tools, resources, and data provided by ITAP and RCAC

It’S All About The Journey… From Brainstorming To Canvas, From Map To App, Frank Garofalo

Purdue GIS Day

The Ideation and brainstorming skills for GIS project development toward a user friendly interface.