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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Physical and Environmental Geography

Balance And Imbalance: The Necessity Of Natural Disasters In Balinese Hinduism, Lorin Foster Demuth Oct 2018

Balance And Imbalance: The Necessity Of Natural Disasters In Balinese Hinduism, Lorin Foster Demuth

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

No abstract provided.


Land Insecurity In Gulu, Uganda: A Clash Between Culture And Capitalism, Zachary Slotkin Oct 2017

Land Insecurity In Gulu, Uganda: A Clash Between Culture And Capitalism, Zachary Slotkin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper presents the causes and consequences of land insecurity in Gulu, Uganda. In order to address this important and often sensitive issue, the paper analyzes the role of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency and the government’s policy of forced encampment during the insurgency in contributing to land insecurity, causing widespread displacement among former internally displaced persons (IDPs). It further explores the importance of land ownership in providing economic productivity to rural landowners, as well as the nature of customary land tenure in Acholi culture and the government’s efforts to privatize communal land, to give a background on the …


Man And Land: Competing Ontologies, Colonial Legacies, And The Quest For Food Sovereignty, Savannah Smith Oct 2017

Man And Land: Competing Ontologies, Colonial Legacies, And The Quest For Food Sovereignty, Savannah Smith

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Land is an ontological reality, which is at the center of different relationships to land. These relationships are situated in and a product of historical and spatial process that have an under lying power geometry. These different understandings of land tenure can create conflict when they intersect with competing interests in the same space. In Cameroon, this is currently the case in the form of large-scale land acquisitions, which often conflict with local communities as multinational corporations and local elites acquire land concessions with facilitation by the government in the name of development. This paper aims to understand this issue …


Geospasial Indonesia: The Utilization Of Spatial Data Through Geographic Information Systems Across Indonesia In Various Environmental Contexts, Kaitlyn Bretz Oct 2016

Geospasial Indonesia: The Utilization Of Spatial Data Through Geographic Information Systems Across Indonesia In Various Environmental Contexts, Kaitlyn Bretz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Spatial planning and mapping in Indonesia have had a precarious history for the past several decades. Laws controlling the creation of maps for land use planning have fluctuated greatly between executive administrations and the country is still struggling to create a single, unified national map. With the One Map Policy the future of mapping is optimistic, but in the meantime spatial data analyses are lacking. Geographic information systems (GIS) is a computerized system for the capture, storage, querying, analysis, and display of spatial data, and is used predominately by the government, private companies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) across Indonesia. Community …


Variability Of Lacustrine Sediment Proxy Responses To Late Holocene Climate Change As Modified By Lake Specific Processes: A Review Of Ecological And Geophysical Processes Across Northern And Eastern Iceland, Mallory Mintz Oct 2016

Variability Of Lacustrine Sediment Proxy Responses To Late Holocene Climate Change As Modified By Lake Specific Processes: A Review Of Ecological And Geophysical Processes Across Northern And Eastern Iceland, Mallory Mintz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Consistenly-deposited lake sediments provide some of the highest resolution records of local and global climates in the past, offering the potential to better understand modern climate change in the context of past climate variability. In relating proxies to their respective climate regimes, the environmental cues that the specific proxies reacted to must be isolated from the general noise of possible local influences. In this investigation, biogenic silica (BSi), total organic carbon (TOC), δ13C values, and carbon: nitrogen ratios were analyzed between lakes through northern Iceland, to review possible complicating factors specific to the use of lacustrine proxies in the interpretation …


Proxy Dating In Iceland Testing The Validity Of Silene Acaulis As A Phytometric Proxy, Madelyn Grant Oct 2016

Proxy Dating In Iceland Testing The Validity Of Silene Acaulis As A Phytometric Proxy, Madelyn Grant

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Climate change is causing drastic changes in the cryosphere, particularly in the Arctic region where average warming is 1.9 times greater than in the rest of the world due to Arctic amplification. Understanding the response of essential climate variables such as glaciers and ice caps to rapid Arctic warming is essential to predicting future changes in the Arctic region and around the world. Proxy dating methods can help construct a record of warming-induced glacial retreat in areas where long-term monitoring systems are not in place. In Arctic regions, the cushion plant Silene acaulis represents one of the only feasible proxies …


Investigating Effects Of Climate Change On Glaciers And Proglacial Landscapes In Southeast Iceland: Fluvioglacial Behavior Of Sólheimajökull And Seljavallajökull, Roberta B.C. Miller Oct 2016

Investigating Effects Of Climate Change On Glaciers And Proglacial Landscapes In Southeast Iceland: Fluvioglacial Behavior Of Sólheimajökull And Seljavallajökull, Roberta B.C. Miller

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Seljavallajökull glacier, part of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier system, and Sólheimajökull, part of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier system, are two glaciers that extend into valleys in the southeast part of Iceland. Due to climate warming, both of these glaciers are part of a melting ice cap. They are located nearby to one another, and Sólheimajökull has been extensively studied for its outwash plain sedimentology, retreat history, pro-glacial geomorphology and has been steadily monitored by the Glaciological Society of Iceland. Seljavallajökull has also been monitored by this group, but it has not been studied for sediment profiles and landscape chronology as Sólheimajökull …


One Year Later: The Politics And Stories Of Post-Earthquake Nepal, Boyer Andrew Apr 2016

One Year Later: The Politics And Stories Of Post-Earthquake Nepal, Boyer Andrew

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on April 25th, 2015. This was followed by a second major earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on May 12th , 2015. These disasters took the lives of thousands of Nepali people, destroyed hundreds of thousands of structures, and displaced an estimated two million people. Immediately following the disaster, there was an outpouring of humanitarian aid from around the world. This lead to a conference where $4.1 billion USD of reconstruction funds were pledged to Nepal by international donors. Five months later, a new constitution passed into law and an informal blockade of …


They Come Like The Clouds: Governing The Mountainous Periphery, Jared Sousa Apr 2016

They Come Like The Clouds: Governing The Mountainous Periphery, Jared Sousa

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper addresses the extension of governmental power into the mountainous periphery of the village of Dho Tarap in the Dolpa District of Nepal. New technologies, new markets, and new social dynamics are penetrating the Himalaya and reshaping the connections that mountain people have to the outside world. In this context of connectivity and modernity, the people of Dho Tarap are also being thrust into far closer proximity to the Nepali government. After a series of geopolitical moves in Nepal and China in the 1960s, Dho Tarap as part of an isolated border region has been a part of a …


Avian Diversity Across Three Distinct Agricultural Landscapes In Guadalupe, Chiriquí Highlands, Panama, Jarred Jones Dec 2014

Avian Diversity Across Three Distinct Agricultural Landscapes In Guadalupe, Chiriquí Highlands, Panama, Jarred Jones

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Deforestation of tropical forest for agricultural purposes threatens habitat loss of native species. The value of various agricultural landscapes in conserving avian populations is useful in determining diversity-conscious development plans. However, generalized results from regionalscale studies cannot be implemented to insular avian habitats. This study serves as the only current avian diversity study of the Chiriquí Highlands. To determine the effect of agricultural land use within an insular avian habitat, I compared avian diversity and site population similarity in Guadalupe, Chiriquí Highlands of the Talamanca Range, Panama. I hypothesized that avian diversity is greatest at forest edge followed by forest …


Index-Based Insurance And Risk Management Among Nomadic Mongolian Herders , Kelsey Larson Dec 2014

Index-Based Insurance And Risk Management Among Nomadic Mongolian Herders , Kelsey Larson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Mongolian herders must contend with the risk of dzuds, harsh winters that can kill large numbers of livestock. To do so, they use a mixture of formal financial tools and traditional risk mitigation techniques. This paper is a study of the interaction between the Mongolian Index-based Livestock Insurance Program and traditional informal risk mitigation techniques. The researcher interviews herders in Bulgan soum, Arhangai aimag and Galuut soum, Bayanhongor aimag to compare the IBLI program’s impact in a community that has had IBLI since 2006 and one that only received IBLI in 2012. This study finds that insurance purchase is positively …


Exploring The Preservation Of Pastoralism And The Natural World In Western Mongolia , Josephine Brownell Dec 2014

Exploring The Preservation Of Pastoralism And The Natural World In Western Mongolia , Josephine Brownell

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

At a time when Mongolia is experiencing the intense effects of land degradation, human activity, and climate change, it is crucial that a new land management framework is developed with conservation in mind. Pastoralism’s unique relationship with the land serves as a method of protecting the natural world for the future. This study focuses on a pastoral community in Western Mongolia while considering a main research question: Is a herder’s historically deep connection with the land enough to protect the modern pastoral lifestyle in Mongolia for years to come? In answering this question, a review of related previous studies on …