Spatial Science Commons^™

The Effects Of Urban Development And The Incidence Of Flooding And Discharge Changes From 1956-2016: A Case Study From Juan Diaz Township, Republic Of Panama, Virgilio De Jesus Quintero Rodriguez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The increase in flood occurrences in the Township of Juan Diaz has affected thousands of families and hundreds of businesses and has negatively impacted the lives of thousands of residents, who expect the worse every time there is a prolonged period of rain. Some of the residents lose their appliances, cars, furniture and houses every year. This study examines the relationship between urban development and flooding. Also, it addresses the influences of topography, green cover, population changes, runoff changes, and social dynamics on this relationship. This study implemented the use of thematic cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), personal interviews and …

Potable Water Leakage Prediction And Detection Using Geospatial Analysis, Jacob Tittle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to increasing water treatment costs and conservation needs, traditional water loss analysis and acoustic leak detection methods are becoming heavily scrutinized by water utilities. This study explores water loss in Johnson City, Tennessee and how geospatial data analysis techniques improve water loss mitigation. This project uses sample water system pressure data and ordinary kriging spatial interpolation methods to identify leakage areas for further investigation. Analysis of existing geographic information system (GIS) water utility datasets with interpolated hydraulic grade values at sample water pressure points produce manageable survey areas that pinpoint areas with possible water leakage. Field detection methods, including …

Institutional Arrangements For The Blue Economy: Marine Spatial Planning A Way Forward, Daud Hassan, Md. Ashraful Alam Ashraf

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Blue Economy is one of the important aspects of Sustainable Ocean Governance as it refers to sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth and improved livelihood by maintaining healthy marine ecosystem. In order to achieve sustainable ocean governance, it is important to implement the contemporary and newly developed principles and concepts including Blue Economy and Ecosystem based management (EBM). As an implementation toll for sustainable ocean governance, Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) can play an important role to achieve the objectives of Blue Economy. Due to various reasons, the current institutional arrangements for sustainable ocean govern as well as exploring …

Regional Scale Dryland Vegetation Classification With An Integrated Lidar-Hyperspectral Approach, Hamid Dashti, Andrew Poley, Nancy Glenn, Nayani Ilangakoon, Lucas Spaete, Dar Roberts, Et. Al.

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The sparse canopy cover and large contribution of bright background soil, along with the heterogeneous vegetation types in close proximity, are common challenges for mapping dryland vegetation with remote sensing. Consequently, the results of a single classification algorithm or one type of sensor to characterize dryland vegetation typically show low accuracy and lack robustness. In our study, we improved classification accuracy in a semi-arid ecosystem based on the use of vegetation optical (hyperspectral) and structural (lidar) information combined with the environmental characteristics of the landscape. To accomplish this goal, we used both spectral angle mapper (SAM) and multiple endmember spectral …

A Least Cost Analysis: Correlative Modeling Of The Chaco Regional Road System, Sean Field, Carrie Heitman, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

During the ninth through twelfth centuries A.D., Ancestral Pueblo people constructed long, straight roads that interconnected the Chaco regional system across the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. The intent and use of these features has eluded archaeological consensus, although recent research has reiterated the occurrence of long distance timber importation to Chaco Canyon. To enhance our interpretation of these features we offer a large-scale least cost analysis wherein optimal pathways that are modeled to simulate timber importation are compared to the actual road locations. A series of least cost paths were produced through different energy allocation algorithms, at …

Deciphering Public Transit Ridership In Baton Rouge: Spatial Disaggregation Approaches, Xuan Kuai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Background: Surveys across the U.S. reveal that commuters driving personal vehicles spend a significant amount of time in traffic, while public transit, as an efficient commuting mode, has been largely underutilized.

Purpose: What causes a low public transit ridership? How could public transit ridership be explained by demographic, socio-economic and spatial characteristics of neighborhood? This study answers these questions by deciphering the relationships between public transit ridership and various factors in a medium-size city in southern U.S. – Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Methods: Non-spatial and spatial data in a larger areal unit (e.g., block group) are used to infer demographic, socio-economic …

Digitally-Mediated Practices Of Geospatial Archaeological Data: Transformation, Integration, & Interpretation, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Kristin Landau

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Digitally-mediated practices of archaeological data require reflexive thinking about where archaeology stands as a discipline in regard to the ‘digital,’ and where we want to go. To move toward this goal, we advocate a historical approach that emphasizes contextual source-side criticism and data intimacy—scrutinizing maps and 3D data as we do artifacts by analyzing position, form, material and context of analog and digital sources. Applying this approach, we reflect on what we have learned from processes of digitally-mediated data. We ask: What can we learn as we convert analog data to digital data? And, how does digital data transformation impact …

Misrecognition In A Sustainability Capital: Race, Representation, And Transportation Survey Response Rates In The Portland Metropolitan Area, Raoul S. Liévanos, Amy Lubitow, Julius A. Mcgee

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

US household transportation surveys typically have limited coverage of and responses from people of color (POC), which may lead to inaccurate estimation of POC transportation access and behavior. We recast this technocratic understanding of representativeness as a problem of “racial misrecognition” in which racial group difference is obscured yet foundational for distributive transportation inequities and unsustainability. We linked 2008–2012 population and housing data to an apparent stratified random sample of 6107 household responses to the 2011 Oregon Household Activity Survey (OHAS) in a “sustainability capital”: the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. We detailed how the 2011 OHAS consistently overrepresented White households …

The Importance Of Landscape Position Information And Elevation Uncertainty For Barrier Island Habitat Mapping And Modeling, Nicholas Matthew Enwright

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Barrier islands provide important ecosystem services, including storm protection and erosion control to the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, and tourism. As a result, natural resource managers are concerned with monitoring changes to these islands and modeling future states of these environments. Landscape position, such as elevation and distance from shore, influences habitat coverage on barrier islands by regulating exposure to abiotic factors, including waves, tides, and salt spray. Geographers commonly use aerial topographic lidar data for extracting landscape position information. However, researchers rarely consider lidar elevation uncertainty when using automated processes for extracting elevation-dependent habitats from lidar data. …

Lidar-Based Sinkhole Detection And Mapping In Knox County, Tennessee, J Clint Shannon, David Moore, Yingkui Li, Cathy Olsen

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Sinkholes are one of the major causes of damage to roads, buildings, and other infrastructure throughout the US. Sinkholes near or on roads are especially costly and occasionally deadly. Knox County and much of East Tennessee are located within karst areas (comprised of porous and soluble limestone and dolomite), deeming it at risk for sinkholes. Currently, Knox County uses contour maps to manually identify sinkholes. Supported by a geographic information system (GIS), we developed a streamlined model to identify the locations and extents of potential sinkholes using 1.3-ft resolution LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data and applied it to the …

Understanding Cumulative Hazards In A Rustbelt City: Integrating Gis, Archaeology, And Spatial History, Daniel Trepal, Don Lafreniere

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

We combine the Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI) concept developed within spatial history with elements of archaeological predictive modeling to demonstrate a novel GIS-based landscape model for identifying the persistence of historically-generated industrial hazards in postindustrial cities. This historical big data approach draws on over a century of both historical and modern spatial big data to project the presence of specific persistent historical hazards across a city. This research improves on previous attempts to understand the origins and persistence of historical pollution hazards, and our final model augments traditional archaeological approaches to site prospection and analysis. This study also demonstrates …

Cartographies Of Debt: Auto Title Loans And Spatial Inequality, Michihiro C. Sugata

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Despite being a decade removed from the 2008 Financial Crisis, an alarming number of Americans are turning to alternative finance service providers (AFSP) for “short term” loans. These loans typically carry triple digit interest rates and can contribute to exacerbating the financial precarity of the borrowers. This article investigates the relationship between the spatial distribution of the AFSP industry and considers the impacts of this saturated presence on the individuals who live in these neighborhoods. Using the Phoenix metropolitan area as a site of exploration, I examine where the industry has pooled and look at the descriptive characteristics of those …

Real Time Habs Mapping Using Nasa Glenn Hyperspectral Imager, Reid W. Sawtell, Robert Anderson, Roger Tokars, John D. Lekki, Robert Shuchman, Karl Bosse, Michael Sayers

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The hyperspectral imaging system (HSI) developed by the NASA Glenn Research Center was used from 2015 to 2017 to collect high spatial resolution data over Lake Erie and the Ohio River. Paired with a vicarious correction approach implemented by the Michigan Tech Research Institute, radiance data collected by the HSI system can be converted to high quality reflectance data which can be used to generate near-real time (within 24 h) products for the monitoring of harmful algal blooms using existing algorithms. The vicarious correction method relies on imaging a spectrally constant target to normalize HSI data for atmospheric and instrument …

Evaluating Visible Derivative Spectroscopy By Varimax-Rotated, Principal Component Analysis Of Aerial Hyperspectral Images From The Western Basin Of Lake Erie, Joseph D. Ortiz, Dulci M. Avouris, Stephan J. Schiller, Jeffrey C. Luvall, John D. Lekki, Roger P. Tokars, Robert C. Anderson, Robert Shuchman, Michael Sayers, Richard Becker

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The Kent State University (KSU) spectral decomposition method provides information about the spectral signals present in multispectral and hyperspectral images. Pre-processing steps that enhance signal to noise ratio (SNR) by 7.37–19.04 times, enables extraction of the environmental signals captured by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Research Center's, second generation, Hyperspectral imager (HSI2) into multiple, independent components. We have accomplished this by pre-processing of Level 1 HSI2 data to remove stripes from the scene, followed by a combination of spectral and spatial smoothing to further increase the SNR and remove non-Lambertian features, such as waves. On average, …

Satellite Monitoring Of Harmful Algal Blooms In The Western Basin Of Lake Erie: A 20-Year Time-Series, Michael Sayers, Amanda Grimm, Robert Shuchman, Karl Bosse, Gary L. Fahnenstiel, Steven A. Ruberg, George A. Leshkevich

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Blooms of harmful cyanobacteria (cyanoHABs) have occurred on an annual basis in western Lake Erie for more than a decade. Previously, we developed and validated an algorithm to map the extent of the submerged and surface scum components of cyanoHABs using MODIS ocean-color satellite data. The algorithm maps submerged cyanoHABs by identifying high chlorophyll concentrations (>18 mg/m3) combined with water temperature >20 °C, while cyanoHABs surface scums are mapped using near-infrared reflectance values. Here, we adapted this algorithm for the SeaWiFS sensor to map the annual areal extents of cyanoHABs in the Western Basin of Lake Erie for the …

The Long-Run Effects Of Tropical Cyclones On Infant Mortality, Isabel Miranda

Master's Theses

In the United States alone, each tropical cyclone causes an average of $14.6 billion worth of damages. In addition to the destruction of physical infrastructure, natural disasters also negatively impact human capital formation. These losses are often more difficult to observe, and therefore, are over looked when quantifying the true costs of natural disasters. One particular effect is an increase in infant mortality rates, an important indicator of a country’s general socioeconomic level. This paper utilizes a model created by Anttila-Hughes and Hsiang, that takes advantage of annual variation in tropical cyclones using annual spatial average maximum wind speeds and …

Greenway Trail Viewshed Characteristics: Planning Applications Using Gis And Remote Sensing, Aric Addison Beehler

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This study applies theoretical findings relating greenway trail viewshed characteristics to a proposed greenway trail. Utilizing geographic information systems and remote sensing techniques, this study compares the viewshed characteristics of two proposed routes to connect an existent greenway trail system to Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Greene County, MO. Light Detection and Ranging data is then used to map the viewshed of each route and calculate the openness and interconnectedness of each viewshed. High-resolution multispectral imagery is then used to calculate the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index measuring the “greenness” within each viewshed. Finally, parcel-level land use data is used to …

3d Canopy Model Reconstruction From Unmanned Aerial System And Automated Single Tree Extraction, Hai Ha Duong

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This project aims to develop and assess methodology for spatial modeling and extracting individual trees from high spatial resolution Digital Surface Model (DSMs) derived from unmanned aerial system (UAS) or drone-based aerial photos. Those results could be used for monitoring of vegetative response of forests, grasslands and vineyards to regional and localized fluctuations in climate and seasonality. The primary objective of this research is to extract 3D spatial information using drone-based aerial imagery through photogrammetric methods. UAS flights were taken place at phenologically critical times over several locations owned and managed by Missouri State University (MSU). The 3D DSM can …

Determining The Effect Of Mission Design And Point Cloud Filtering On The Quality And Accuracy Of Sfm Photogrammetric Products Derived From Suas Imagery, Daniel Shay Hostens

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This research investigates the influence that various flight plan and mission design strategies for collecting small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) imagery have on the accuracy of the resulting three-dimensional models to find an optimal method to achieve a result. This research also explores the effect that using gradual selection to reduce the sparse point cloud has on product accuracy and processing details. Imagery was collected in the spring of 2018 during leaf-off conditions at six field sites along the North Fork of the White River. The aerial imagery was collected using a DJI Phantom Pro 4 sUAS. Four different image …

Assessing How Terrain Representations And Scale Affect The Accuracy Of Distance Estimates, Kristian Mueller

Geography ETDs

Terrain is often displayed on maps either as background or foreground. Although terrain representations are ubiquitous, there is not a thorough understanding of map-readers’ cognition of geographic surfaces from various terrain representations. The research described in this thesis empirically assessed map users’ abilities at estimating straight-line distance using maps with two different types of terrain representations and at three different scales. The objective of this research was to assess how accurately map users estimate distance on the ground taking into account variations in elevation. Participant data in the form of demographics and distance estimates were statistically analyzed to determine if …

Analyzing Trends And Patterns In Adverse Birth Outcomes In Massachusetts From 2000-2014, Madeleine Haynes

Sustainability and Social Justice

This study explores spatio-temporal trends and patterns in adverse birth outcomes (ABO) in the state of Massachusetts from 2000-2014. ABO include low birth weight (< 2500 g) and preterm deliveries (gestational age < 37 weeks). This research evaluates if there are areas in Massachusetts that have experienced statistically significant increases or decreases in ABO throughout the study period. Birth data was obtained from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and only singleton, live births were included for the analysis. The data were aggregated to census tracts, and the total number of births and the number of ABOs were calculated for each census tract for each year. In total, 1478 census tracts were included in this analysis. Births to non-Hispanic black mothers and births to non-Hispanic white mothers were separated to evaluate if trends in ABO are similar regardless of race as previous literature has identified a much higher rate of ABO in births to non-Hispanic black women. Trends and patterns of ABO were evaluated using the Space Time Cube and the Mann-Kendall statistic and a multivariate regression was conducted to identify potential correlations between socioeconomic factors and prevalence of ABO. Results of this study can be used to identify areas that are experiencing an increase in ABO to potentially allow for more effective, targeted intervention methods.

Homelessness In Portland, Oregon: An Analysis Of Homeless Campsite Spatial Patterns And Spatial Relationships, Krystle N. Harrell

Geography Masters Research Papers

Homelessness is a complex American social issue. Understanding the homeless population, including how many people experience homelessness, how they entered the experience, their demographics, how they survive, and where they survive, aids policymakers, planners, and advocates in developing the appropriate approaches and solutions to end and prevent homelessness. Analysis of homeless spatial patterns and distributions across different locales provides a more in-depth understandings of this population and how best to support them, from the local to national level. Using geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical methods, this study examines the spatial patterns of homeless campsites and their relationship with urban …

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 …

The Value Of Farmland: Mapping Assessor Data To Understand Land Use Change, Lyndi Perry

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ideas developed by regional economists have potential applications within the urban planning field. One potential application is toward conserving farmland, and within this thesis this topic is examined for the study area of Utah County, Utah. Using assessor data, a land value map is created and further used to develop a regional economic model and spatial models that were analyzed for patterns of land use change.

Findings show that representing land value as continuous surface maps is a useful approach. The maps reveal that Utah County has densified as its population increased while farmland loss still occurred in agriculturally-important areas. …

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 …

Geoannotator: A Collaborative Semi-Automatic Platform For Constructing Geo-Annotated Text Corpora, Morteza Karimzadeh, Alan M. Maceachren

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Ground-truth datasets are essential for the training and evaluation of any automated algorithm. As such, gold-standard annotated corpora underlie most advances in natural language processing (NLP). However, only a few relatively small (geo-)annotated datasets are available for geoparsing, i.e., the automatic recognition and geolocation of place references in unstructured text. The creation of geoparsing corpora that include both the recognition of place names in text and matching of those names to toponyms in a geographic gazetteer (a process we call geo-annotation), is a laborious, time-consuming and expensive task. The field lacks efficient geo-annotation tools to support corpus building and lacks …

Twitter Use In Hurricane Isaac And Its Implications To Disaster Resilience, Kejin Wang

LSU Master's Theses

Disaster Resilience is the capacity of a community to ‘bounce back’ from disastrous events. Most studies rely on traditional data such as census data to study community resilience. With the advent of social media era, the new data source gives us an opportunity to explore the application of Twitter data to better understand disaster resilience. A research question is: does Twitter use correlate with disaster resilience? In other words, will communities with more Twitter users be more resilient to disasters, presumably because they are more likely to be better informed? The underlying issue is that if there are social and …

Vulnerability Of Industrial Facilities In The Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor To Relative Sea Level Rise And Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge, Joseph Blake Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Relative sea level rise (RSLR) and tropical cyclone-induced storm surge are major threats to the Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor (LMRIC) which has approximately 120 industrial complexes located within the corridor. Spatial interpolation methods were applied to the 2004 National Oceanic and Atmospheric published Technical Report #50 subsidence dataset and cross-validation techniques were used to determine the accuracy of each method. Digital elevation models (DEMs) were created for the years 2025, 2050, and 2075, based on these predictive surface of subsidence rates. Future DEMs were utilized to model RSLR and determine the extent of storm surge on the LMRIC by …

Spatial-Temporal Variability Of In Situ Cyanobacteria Vertical Structure In Western Lake Erie: Implications For Remote Sensing Observations, Karl Bosse, Michael Sayers, Robert Shuchman, Gary L. Fahnenstiel, Steven A. Ruberg, David L. Fanslow, Dack G. Stuart, Thomas H. Johengen, Ashley M. Burtner

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Remote sensing has provided expanded temporal and spatial range to the study of harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) in western Lake Erie, allowing for a greater understanding of bloom dynamics than is possible through in situ sampling. However, satellites are limited in their ability to specifically target cyanobacteria and can only observe the water within the first optical depth. This limits the ability of remote sensing to make conclusions about full water column cyanoHAB biomass if cyanobacteria are vertically stratified. FluoroProbe data were collected at nine stations across western Lake Erie in 2015 and 2016 and analyzed to characterize spatio-temporal variability …

Downscaling Smap Soil Moisture Data Using Modis Data, Le Tu

LSU Master's Theses

Soil moisture level is an important index in studying environmental changes. High resolution soil moisture data is in high demand for agricultural and weather forecasting purpose. Current daily large-scale soil moisture projects fail to provide sufficient resolution for medium or small region research. To acquire high-resolution soil moisture data, different kinds of methods are put into practice, including multivariate statistical regression, weight aggregation and so on. In this research, SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) level 3 data with 36-km resolution are successfully downscaled by MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) 1-km LST (Land Surface Temperature) product, NDVI (Difference Vegetation Index) product, …