Geography Commons^™

Biopolitics Of Bike-Commuting: Bike Lanes, Safety, And Social Justice, Samantha Z. Herr

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

As cities have become increasingly motivated to be more sustainable, transport cycling has become integral in these plans. Boston is one such city enthusiastic about bicycle transportation. I take a socio-discursive approach to an investigation of transport cycling integration in Boston, MA. First, I explore the historical processes leading to the appearance of bike lanes on U.S. city streets. Next, I investigate how bike lanes are entwined in cycling safety—both in the discursive and embodied dimensions. What begins as a concern of the physical body leads to ideals of legitimacy and inclusivity, of which the bike lane has become a …

Performing Community: The Place Of Music, Race And Gender In Producing Appalachian Space, Deborah J. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Traditional, participatory music is a powerful medium through which people express and shape their ideas about identity, mobility, social relations, and belonging, and through which people are in turn shaped. The everyday cultural practices of playing, sharing, and dancing to traditional music, as well as discussions about the nature of traditional music and production of events involving traditional music, all work to construct the region called Appalachia.

Through this dissertation, I seek to answer some simple questions that have complicated answers involving place, identity, power, and social relations, with economic, social, and emotional ramifications: Who gets to be an Appalachian …

Singapore’S Chinatown: Nation Building And Heritage Tourism In A Multiracial City, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper focuses on the pivotal role played by the state in refashioning the Chinatown landscape as part of both nation-building and heritage tourism projects, and the ensuing cultural politics. After a brief history of the creation of Singapore’s Chinatown, the paper discusses, first, Chinatown’s place in Singapore’s post-independence nation-building project and, second, the reconfiguration of the Chinatown landscape as a tourism asset. The final section reflects on the changing politics of place as Chinatown gains legitimacy in state discourses on heritage, tourism and multiculturalism, as well as in the popular imagination as an ethnic precinct par excellence.

Who Needs A Plow-Zone? Using A Common Site Mapping Method In A New Way At The Silvernale Site (21gd03), Kyle Gary Harvey

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Agricultural activities are responsible for extensive disturbance and destruction of archeological sites throughout the region and beyond. Plowing moves the artifacts from their original locations thus making it difficult to tie them back to the contexts in which they belong. It has become a relatively common practice for many archeologists when faced with this problem is to simply blade off the disturbed area of the site, usually the upper 30 to 40 centimeters, so that they can better access undisturbed areas. They do this because they believe that since the artifacts have been moved out of context that they are …

Trap Efficiency Of A Silted Prairie Reservoir: Rapidan Reservoir, Blue Earth County, Minnesota, Katherine Brosch Rassmussen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Rapidan Dam and Reservoir are located along the Blue Earth River south of Mankato, Minnesota. The dam was constructed in 1911 as a source of hydroelectric power to supplement the surroundings communities. Currently, the reservoir is heavily silted and provides little hydroelectric benefit while proving costly to maintain. This study (1) defines the sedimentary, geomorphic, stream flow and suspended load characteristics of the reservoir for 2008-2009 and (2) compares these parameters with those available from 1985 (23 years prior). Stream gauging and sediment sampling took place in 2008 and 2009 at three monitoring locations (two upstream and one downstream of …

Racial And Ethnic Proportions Of Early In-Person Voters In Cuyahoga County, General Election 2008, And Implications For 2012, Norman Robbins, Mark Salling

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Demographic And Socioeconomic Conditions And A Patron Borrowing Analysis Of Cleveland Public Library Branch And Main Libraries, Mark Salling

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

We provide here an analysis of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the Cleveland Public Library’s (CPL) service area and that of the neighborhoods in which the library’s patrons live. We also describe the borrowing patterns for the branch and downtown, Main Library, locations. The census-based demographic and socioeconomic data used for the analysis include income, number of children, race, Hispanic ethnicity, language spoken at home, ability to speak English, public-versus-private school attendance by grade level, housing tenure (owner/renter), educational attainment, employment status, and place of employment (Cleveland versus other). Data from the 2010 census and the Census Bureau’s 2005-2009 …

Review Of Griffith Taylor – Visionary Environmentalist Explorer By Carolyn Strange And Alison Bashford, Christina E. Dando

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Few would argue the inherently visual nature of geography, our use (and love of) maps, our emphasis on fieldwork and observation. Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford’s biography Griffith Taylor: Visionary, Environmentalist, Explorer is as much a visual biography as a textual one, drawing on extensive visual materials as well as diaries and letters. Through images and texts, Strange and Bashford create a portrait of a complicated geographer, revealing a leading geographer of the twentieth century whose contributions cover the spectrum and the globe.

Book Review Of Civic Discipline: Geography In America, 1860–1890 By Karen M. Morin, Christina E. Dando

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Karen Morin's Civic Discipline: Geography in America, 1860–1890 examines nineteenth-century American geography practices outside of academia and the contributions of Charles P. Daly, New York judge and American Geographical Society (AGS) president. Daly was not an academic geographer yet had tremendous influence over public geographic knowledge, impacting the actions of many actors on many stages. Civic Discipline is not a biography but rather “a sociology of Charles Daly's geography—a social geography,” illuminating an area frequently ignored in geography's history: the ways in which Daly and the AGS impacted the American geographical imagination (p. 3).

Superstorm Sandy Changed The Shape Of Connecticut, Peg Vanpatten

Wrack Lines

Superstorm Sandy, followed quickly by a Nor'easter, arrived in our region just in time to cancel Halloween. While the wind wasn't up to hurricane strength in most of Connecticut, its storm surges and high winds still caused plenty of damage.

Social Interaction At The Maya Site Of Copan, Honduras: A Least Cost Approach To Configurational Analysis, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In this article, I employ least cost paths using GIS to measure the relationship between site configuration and social connectivity at the ancient Maya site of Copan, Honduras. I investigate two questions. First, did people of different social classes experience varying degrees of social connectivity? Second, did people living in different parts of the city experience difference degrees of social connectivity? Ultimately, the goal is modify traditional configurational analysis using least cost analysis (LCA) to identify how social hierarchy was embedded in landscapes and how ancient people may have strategically manipulated landscapes to structure social interaction and community organization.

Sparse Coding For Hyperspectral Images Using Random Dictionary And Soft Thresholding, Ender Oguslu, Khan Iftekharuddin, Jiang Li, Mark Allen Neifeld (Ed.), Amit Ashok (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Many techniques have been recently developed for classification of hyperspectral images (HSI) including support vector machines (SVMs), neural networks and graph-based methods. To achieve good performances for the classification, a good feature representation of the HSI is essential. A great deal of feature extraction algorithms have been developed such as principal component analysis (PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA). Sparse coding has recently shown state-of-the-art performances in many applications including image classification. In this paper, we present a feature extraction method for HSI data motivated by a recently developed sparse coding based image representation technique. Sparse coding consists of a …

Potential Wolverine Habitat Vs. Winter Recreation. Conflict In Colorado!, Paul Quigley

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The Global list of endangered species of flora and fauna is growing, with the most highly specialized species often at ‘critically endangered’ status. Managing these populations effectively involves numerous and varied organizations, conflicting motivations, arbitrary anthropogenic boundaries and often most importantly, data compilation and management. We are seeing many more reintroductions of locally extirpated species back into habitats of historical prevalence – and as extreme a method of conservation as this is, there is still a need for more extreme methods. High profile and highly specialized endangered species are often managed in a ‘crisis’ mode, where complex behaviors and interactions …

Assessment Of Climate Change Effect On Water Harvesting Structures In Rainfed Regions: Geospatial Data Mining Approach, Sreedhar Nallan, Leisa Armstrong

Research outputs 2012

Advances in the Information and Technologies (ICT) may assist researchers in the assessment of watershed development programmes by developing better visualization understanding of their impacts. GIS based research studies utilizing remote sensing images can facilitate in identifying the potential zones for watershed development and enable improved ground water resources. Effective watershed management is dependent on a number of factors such as demography, climate, soil, land use and topography and these are affected by changing climatic conditions. For example, changes in rainfall intensity and volume in rain fed areas can influence the effectiveness of the placement of watershed structures. Existing methods …

Applying Gis Metrics To Determine Degree Of Glacial Modification In Mountainous Landscapes, Carl Delbert Swanson Ii

All Master's Theses

The ability to quantitatively assess the degree of glaciation in mountainous areas can be a powerful tool in unraveling the evolution of landscapes, and provide key insights in regions where field research is difficult. Here we determine, test, and apply metrics that assess the relative degree of past glacial modification in mountainous landscapes. Results show that slope results can be used to quantitatively assess the degree to which an area is modified by glaciation. In particular, analysis of basins using slope frequency distribution curves and slope vs. elevation plots capture steeper slopes, flatter valley bottoms, cirques, and arêtes of glaciated …

Transboundary Political Ecology In The Peru-Brazil Borderlands: Mapping Workshops, Geographic Information, And Socio-Environmental Impacts, David S. Salisbury, A. William Flores De Melo, Pedro Tipula Tipula

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

Development, resource, and settlement frontiers inspired by national policies and global demand continue to expand into the international boundary lands of Amazonia. National policies promote development and conservation projects on lands already inhabited and managed. Regional governments are increasingly frustrated by the inadequate and outdated geographic information available to solve overlapping claims and improve planning in sensitive border regions. The resulting combination of inappropriate policies, contested resources, and poor geographic information in the borderlands create impacts not only for national, regional, and local landscapes and livelihoods but also foreign relations due to transboundary effects. This article uses a transboundary political …

Análisis De Los Impactos Socio-Ambientales De Las Carreteras En La Amazonía: Carretera De Puerto Esperanza A Iñapari En Perú, George Appling, David S. Salisbury

Geography and the Environment Poster Presentations

La Cuenca del Purús está situada en las regiones de Ucayali y Madre de Dios en el sudeste del Perú. Además del Rio Alto Purús, la cuenca abarca un parque nacional, una reserva comunal, reservas territoriales para pueblos indígenas aislados, territorios indígenas y un pueblo pequeño (Figura 1). En el año 2004, el Gobierno Peruano creó el Parque Nacional Alto Purús, el más grande en el Perú, para preservar una de las secciones mejor conservadas del bosque tropical en el bioma Amazónico. Como se demuestra en la Figura 1, la Reserva Comunal Purús colindante, sirve como zona de amortiguamiento entre …

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 40, 2011-2012, Department Of Geography-Geology

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography-Geology

The Effect Of Mortgage Liberalization On Housing Patterns In Tampa Bay, Jason Richardson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to determine whether the process of mortgage finance liberalization, manifested in concurrent activities of securitization, deregulation, and neo-liberal policy, have resulted in changes to the tenure of residents in neighborhoods in Tampa Bay. It makes use of existing literature on gentrification and mortgage finance and compares those findings with three sample neighborhoods in and around the city of Tampa. To do so the thesis employs data collected from lenders pursuant to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, court records of sales and mortgages filed with the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Hillsborough County, and interviews with stakeholders …

Mapping And Assessing Urban Impervious Areas Using Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis: A Case Study In The City Of Tampa, Florida, Fenqing Weng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The advance in remote sensing technology helps people more easily assess urban growth. In this study, the utility of multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) is examined in a sub-pixel analysis of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery to map urban physical components in Tampa, FL. The three physical components of urban land cover (LC): impervious surface, vegetation and soil, were compared using the proposed MESMA with a traditional spectral mixture analysis (SMA). MESMA decomposes each pixel to address the heterogeneity of urban LC characteristic by allowing the number and types of endmembers to vary on a per pixel basis. This …

Walking In The Land Of Cars: Automobile-Pedestrian Accidents In Hillsborough County, Florida, Marc Aaron Poling

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Analyses of traffic accidents are often focused on the characteristics of the accident event and hence do not take into account the broader neighborhood contexts in which accidents are located. This thesis seeks to extend empirical analyses of accidents by understanding the link between accidents and their surroundings. The case study for this thesis is Hillsborough County, Florida, within which the city of Tampa is located. The Tampa Bay region ranks very high in terms of accident rates within U.S. metropolitan areas and is also characterized by transport policies which favor private automobiles over mass transit options, making it an …

Making Lives, Changing A Landscape: An Environmental History Of The Tualatin Valley, Washington County, Oregon, Camille A. Cope

Geography Masters Research Papers

Sheltered by mountains on all sides, the 724-square mile Tualatin Valley has been home to successive groups of people who have shaped the landscape based on their needs, tools, and ideas about the human relationship to nature. Thousands of years of indigenous burning practices and cultivation of native plants, followed by two centuries of European-American fur trapping, agriculture, logging, and urbanization have created the Tualatin Valley landscape of today. Understanding how a history of changing land use has affected the region is integral to building an environmentally sustainable future.

Myths And Measures: The Cultural Performance Of Portland’S Strip Club Identity, Wayne Coffey

Geography Masters Research Papers

Identities of place develop through a multitude of perceptions. Place myths guide much of this perception. Portland, Oregon’s identity has evolved in particular around a much quoted but unchallenged statistic regarding the volume of nude dancing venues. This paper focuses on the literature specific to both nude dance venues and place identity; Portland’s legal history that contributed to this phenomenon; and some of the cultural and spatial variables pertinent to this issue. Two initiatives, aimed at restructuring the state constitution specifically to deal with nude dance venues and other adult entertainment, are analyzed.

Academic Freedom, Intellectual Diversity, And The Place Of Politics In Geography, Reecia Orzeck

Faculty Publications - Geography, Geology, and the Environment

This paper examines the conservative critique of higher education in the USA. I argue, first, that the right's call for greater “intellectual diversity” in American higher education should be understood as an attack on the professional self-regulation and disciplinary autonomy that are central to academic freedom in this country. Second, I suggest that the right's politicization of politics in the academy brings to light the importance of our developing a vision of the university that accounts for rather than disavows the political nature of the work we do.

Securing Access To Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics Of Active Embedding And Field Structuration, Stephan Manning, Joerg Sydow, Arnold Windeler

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This article examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to secure access to high-skilled, yet lower-cost science and engineering talent. Based on two in-depth case studies of engineering offshoring projects of German automotive suppliers in Romania and China we analyze how MNCs engage in ‘active embedding’ by aligning local institutional conditions with global offshoring strategies and operational needs. MNCs thereby contribute to the structuration of field relations and practices of sourcing knowledge-intensive work from globally dispersed locations.Our findings stress the importance of institutional processes across geographic boundaries that regulate and get shaped by MNC activities.

Challenging Rust: Race And Rightsizing In Detroit, An American Post-Industrial Context, Andrienne Palchick

Geography Honors Projects

Cities in the American Rustbelt face the considerable challenges of depopulation and economic decline, but they are also increasingly viewed as places ripe with opportunities for innovation and an exciting re-imagination of urban space. This paper examines the Detroit Works Project, a re-envisioning and revitalization initiative in Detroit, to explore larger questions of accessibility and inclusion in U.S. post-industrial cities. It is an investigation of how to structure these revitalization efforts within cities where networks of actors, who invested in urban industrial growth, created policies which built the geographies of unequal access, racial segregation, and systemic marginalization that persist today.

Using Participatory Scenarios To Stimulate Social Learning For Collaborative Sustainable Development, Kris A. Johnson, Genya Dana, Nicholas R. Jordan, Kathy J. Draeger, Anne Kapuscinski

Dartmouth Scholarship

Interdependent human and biophysical systems are highly complex and behave in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways. Social and ecological challenges that emerge from this complexity often defy straightforward solutions, and efforts to address these problems will require not only scientific and technological capabilities but also learning and adaptation. Scenarios are a useful tool for grappling with the uncertainty and complexity of social-ecological challenges because they enable participants to build adaptive capacity through the contemplation of multiple future possibilities. Furthermore, scenarios provide a platform for social learning, which is critical to acting in the face of uncertain, complex, and conflict-laden problems. We …

Use Of Environmental Isotope Tracer And Gis Techniques To Estimate Basin Recharge, Abdulganiu A.A. Odunmbaku

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The extensive use of ground water only began with the advances in pumping technology at the early portion of 20th Century. Groundwater provides the majority of fresh water supply for municipal, agricultural and industrial uses, primarily because of little to no treatment it requires. Estimating the volume of groundwater available in a basin is a daunting task, and no accurate measurements can be made. Usually water budgets and simulation models are primarily used to estimate the volume of water in a basin.

Precipitation, land surface cover and subsurface geology are factors that affect recharge; these factors affect percolation which invariably …

The Management Of Feral Pig Socio-Ecological Systems In Far North Queensland, Australia, Gabriela Shuster

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The development of management programs for socio-ecological systems that include multiple stakeholders is a complex process and requires careful evaluation and planning. This is particularly a challenge in the presence of intractable conflict. The feral pig (Sus scrofa) in Australia is part of one such socio-ecological system. There is a large and heterogeneous group of stakeholders interested in pig management. Pigs have diverse effects on wildlife and plant ecology, economic, health, and social sectors. This study used the feral pig management system as a vehicle to examine intractable conflict in socio-ecological systems. The purpose of the study was …

Impacts Of Urbanisation On The Native Avifauna Of Perth, Western Australia, Robert A. Davis, Cheryl Gole, J Dale Roberts

Research outputs 2013

Urban development either eliminates, or severely fragments, native vegetation, and therefore alters the distribution and abundance of species that depend on it for habitat. We assessed the impact of urban development on bird communities at 121 sites in and around Perth, Western Australia. Based on data from community surveys, at least 83 % of 65 landbirds were found to be dependent, in some way, on the presence of native vegetation. For three groups of species defined by specific patterns of habitat use (bushland birds), there were sufficient data to show that species occurrences declined as the landscape changed from variegated …