Geographic Information Sciences Commons^™

The Relationship Between Forest Management And Stream Discharge In Mazumbai And Baga Ii Forest Reserves, Tanga Region, Tanzania, Shannon Duffy

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Deforestation is known to alter hydrology by reducing interception, transpiration and infiltration capacity, and increasing runoff which all leads to higher stream discharge. For rural Tanzanian communities, surface water resources are crucial for meeting basic needs, so the integrity of headwater catchments need to be maintained to ensure their reliability. The objectives of this study were to a) map the streams in the two forests because none currently exist and b) determine the effect of deforestation on discharge variability. Over fifteen days of data collection, this study analyzed variability of discharge and the degree of correlation between discharge and rainfall …

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 …

Determining Fire Severity Of The Santa Rosa, Ca 2017 Fire, John Cortenbach, Richard Williams, Buddhika Madurapperuma

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

Free And Open Source Gis In South America: Political Inroads And Local Advocacy, Sterling Quinn

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Geographical information systems (GIS) practitioners worldwide enjoy a growing array of free and open source software (FOSS) options. This software has expanded the accessibility of GIS in economically developing countries while fostering local technical expertise. This article reviews FOSS GIS uptake and advocacy in South America, especially how it relates to a climate of political friendliness toward FOSS in the region. The use or absence of FOSS GIS is assessed in public-facing web maps in South America, first at the national government level, and then at the provincial level using Argentina as a country of study. Local technical support groups …

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 …

The Effect Of Citi Bike Introduction On Injury Rates In New York City, Masakazu Hiruma

Theses and Dissertations

This paper tests the hypothesis that the introduction of Citi Bike influences bicycle injuries by observing the gradual expansion of the bike share system in NYC. Data is analyzed from 2012-2018 New York Police Department (NYPD) Motor Vehicle Collisions and Citi Bike Station Feeds (NYC Open Data).

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. …

Food Deserts Debunked And Decentered: From Deficit To Relational Mapping For Food Justice In Worcester, Ma, Brenna Robeson

Sustainability and Social Justice

The mapping of food deserts has become a standardized component of food and health policy work concerned with expanding food access. These maps often follow a similar format of spatially identifying where grocery stores are absent in communities, thus suggesting a straightforward problem diagnosis and intervention blueprint. This paper questions the over-emphasis among many food and health policy practitioners on these technically engineered policy stories, specifically for their obstruction of histories of white supremacy and capitalism within the US food system and urban landscapes. A mixed-methods approach is applied to a case study of Worcester, MA which appropriates GIS to …

Automation Of State Climate Office Processes & Products: Developing Efficient Approaches For Data Dissemination, Michael Shoop

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

State Climate Offices (SCO’s) in the United States are critical conduits for improving weather and climate data in local communities. Two states do not have a state-recognized SCO: Tennessee and Massachusetts. Efforts are underway at East Tennessee State University to develop the Tennessee Climate Office (TCO). Currently, climate services and products are severely lacking across Tennessee. This thesis provides an improved methodology for an existing TCO product and outlines the development of a new product using Python scripting. Daily storm reports within the monthly climate report are automated and a Weather Forecasts Hazard Index (WFHI) web application is developed. Both …

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 …

A Hybrid Gis/In Situ Analysis Of Aed Coverage On The Unm Central Campus, Ian T. Hill

Geography ETDs

Automated External Defibrillators (AED’s) are lifesaving devices that can greatly improve the survival rates of cardiac arrest when used quickly. There are publicly accessible AED’s on the UNM campus, and each device has an effective range based on how quickly a responder can retrieve the AED and return it to the site of the cardiac emergency. The ranges of the AED’s on UNM central campus are analyzed using GIS, interior building measurements, and various retrieval speeds. This helps evaluate the current placement of AED’s on campus and helps reveal where future coverage is needed. This focus on the combined navigation …

Searching Activity Trajectories With Semantics, Li-Hua Yin, Huiwen Liu

PhD Student’s Publications Collection

With the widespread use of smart phones and mobile Internet, social network users have generated massive geo-tagged tweets, photos and videos to form lots of informative trajectories which reveal not only their spatio-temporal dynamics, but also their activities in the physical world. Existing spatial trajectory query studies mainly focus on analyzing the spatio-temporal properties of the users’ trajectories, while leaving the understanding of their activities largely untouched. In this paper, we incorporate the semantics of the activity information embedded in trajectories into query modelling and processing, with the aim of providing end users more informative and meaningful results. To this …

Measuring And Understanding Food Accessibility In The Tampa Bay Area, Bailey I. Glover

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the Tampa Bay region, increasing population and changing demographics have begun to alter the characteristics of established neighborhoods. An increase in suburban growth has triggered a shift in the location and profitability of food establishments in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods. Supermarket closures have garnered attention from public health officials who are concerned with the overall availability of fresh food throughout Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. Unfortunately, there has been little research surrounding the quality of food sold at establishments in both the Tampa Bay region and abroad. Instead, many geographic studies have chosen to group both fresh and prepared food establishments …

Habitat Suitability Index Model Of The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis Pratensis) In West-Central Florida, Courtney E. Buck

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis pratensis) is a state threatened endemic subspecies of the Sandhill Crane (Nesbitt & Tacha, 1997). With a population that was estimated at a maximum of 5,000 individuals in 2003 (Nesbitt & Hatchitt, 2008), it is imperative to identify potentially viable habitats, as Florida is rapidly developing. This research develops a Habitat Suitability Index model to determine unsuitable to optimally suitable habitat locations throughout west-central Florida. To do so, six suitability variables based on the crane’s life history were evaluated: Potential nesting area, immediate nesting area, wetland coverage, foraging area, brooding area, and road proximity. …

Public, Private And Tribal Lands In Humboldt And Trinity Counties, Nate A. Douglass

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This map titled “Public, Private and Tribal Lands in Humboldt and Trinity Counties” was a commissioned project by Dr. Yvonne Everett in the Environmental Science and Management Department at Humboldt State University. The purpose of the map was to depict the overlap in land ownership and native, pre-European territories. The most challenging part of the project was finding a way to successfully represent multiple land ownership layers while also distinctly calling out former aboriginal territories, all in one map. For this, bold dotted lines with soft concentric halos seemed to do the trick. These aboriginal territories were manually digitized from …

Yosemite & Zion National Park, Sean Flemming

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This map displays exciting color gradients representing the variation of the elevation in both Yosemite and Zion National Parks. It was created utilizing United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Map 3DEP 1/3rd arc-second Digital Elevation Models and Adobe Photoshop.

Hobet Mine Mountaintop Removal, Brian Murphy

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The Hobet Coal Mine is located in West Virginia, and was an active mining site for 41 years. At the time, it was one of the largest surface coal mines in the United States. The impacts of this particular mine are especially pronounced because of the sheer scale of alteration to the landscape caused by removing the peaks of mountains to retrieve the coal. The once verdant and biodiverse mountains have been obliterated, and when the coal is removed, the remaining earth is filled into nearby valleys, creating a flat plateau. This terrain has been destroyed, poisoned, and exploited by …