Geography Commons^™

Submesoscale Dynamics Of Phytoplankton And Carbon Export Revealed By High-Resolution Airborne And Satellite Remote Sensing Of Currents And Ocean Color, Sarah E. Lang

Open Access Dissertations

Satellites and airborne sensors reveal submesoscale (1 - 10 km) variability in ocean color in the form of filaments, eddies, and patches. The variability in ocean color is closely tied to the physical dynamics that restructure phytoplankton distributions and drive active biological responses like changes in primary productivity and community structure. As the base of the marine food web and a key component of the biological carbon pump, phytoplankton are crucial to the overall health of marine ecosystems and to the ocean's role in climate. This dissertation focuses on the use of airborne and satellite remote sensing to study the …

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (Mst) And New Agrarian Questions In Brazil, Estavan Coca, Gustavo Oliveira

Geography

The Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) primarily organized occupations of large-scale farms, forcing the redistribution of land for creation of agrarian reform settlements. In the past 20 years, however, land occupations and the establishment of new agrarian reform settlements have consistently declined, while the MST shifted strategies to strengthening existing agrarian reform settlements, increasing marketing mechanisms through government purchasing programs and direct rural–urban connections, cultivating new financial instruments, advancing agroecological transformations to strengthen production and contesting space in governance and discourse about sustainability, rural development and socio-ecological wellbeing. We argue this shift represents not an abandonment of the …

Assessing The Robustness Of Prithvi Geospatial Foundation Model For Coastal Habitat Mapping Under Data Availability And Domain Shift Scenarios, Sam Khallaghi, Rishi Singh, Rahebeh Abedi, Ronald J. Eastman, Lyndon Estes, Sujit Roy, Rahul Ramachandran, Hamed Alemohammad

Geography

Self-supervised learning techniques and geospatial foundation models are garnering increasing attention within the remote sensing community, marking a pivotal shift toward more adaptable, generalizable and data efficient methodologies. Despite their growing popularity, comparative analyses between these emergent models and traditional, task-specific supervised deep learning models for tasks such as semantic segmentation remain largely unexplored. This study is formulated as a comparative analysis to scrutinize the efficacy of the finetuned Prithvi geospatial foundation models against a supervised convolutional neural network trained from scratch for semantic segmentation of mangrove forests and pond aquaculture under varying levels of data availability and domain shift. …

Driving Into The Past: Road Logs And The History And Geology Of The Eastern Sierra Of California, Char Miller

Eastern Sierra History Journal

Road Logs are a pedagogical tool that geologists use on field trips with their students. Dee Trent's 1982 Road Log, which reproduced in this issue of ESHJ, also functions as a cultural artifact; it demonstrates what was known then, and how that scientific knowledge and the human geography of the region has changed over time.

Road Log For The Natural History Of The Owens Valley And Eastern Sierra Nevada, D. D. Trent

Eastern Sierra History Journal

D.D. Trent, who taught Geology at Citrus College in Southern California for many years, developed this 1982 Road Log for his students for use on field trips. It contains many scientific findings and historical insights about the region and he also contributed hand-drawn maps and illustrations to capture their attention. The Road Log is introduced by Char Miller's essay, "Driving into the Past" and then annotated and updated by Prof. Nicole Moore in an article that follows.

D.D. Trent 1982 Natural History Of Owens Valley/Eastern Sierra: Annotations And Updates, Nicole E. Moore

Eastern Sierra History Journal

Prof. Moore offers some annotations to and updates of D.D. Trent's 1982 Road Log. These revisions are part of the evolution of scientific knowledge and the adaptation of new technologies that enable a deeper understanding of the geology of the Owens Valley and Eastern Sierra. Like Trent, Moore has routinely taken her students up US 395 to explore and assess the region's geological formations.

Between “The Favela” And “The City”: Exploring The Daily Geographies Of Carolina Maria De Jesus Using Gis, Sterling D. Quinn

Geography Faculty Scholarship

Geographic information systems (GIS) enable interesting visual and analytical engagement with personal narratives. I offer a case study by constructing digital historical maps of Carolina Maria de Jesus’s São Paulo as described in her 1950s diary entries from Quarto de Despejo (published as Child of the Dark in English). Examining 48 locations mentioned in the book, I show how GIS algorithms such as standard deviation ellipses and kernel density estimation can summarize geographies of daily activities in the personal, institutional, and professional realms, including in the informal economy. I also employ ideas from feminist cartography to put Carolina’s own words …

Geospatial Analysis Of Wildfire Ignitions And Proximity To Electric Transmission Lines In Arizona’S National Forests, Shane Ishmael, Ronny Schroeder

Student Works

The number of wildfires in Arizona rose by 18% from 2023 to 2024. Wildfires hit the Western United States hard, especially in states like Arizona and California, where vast national forests often fall victim to the biggest blazes. According to the Western Fire Chiefs Association, 19% of wildfires from 2016 to 2020 were sparked by electrical transmission lines.

This study explores whether wildfire start-location hotspots line up with power transmission routes running through Arizona’s Coconino and Tonto National Forests. The main hypothesis is that areas near power lines are more likely to become wildfire hotspots than other regions.

We used …

Between A Rockpile And A Hard Place: Mapping The Folk-Hydronymy Of Southern New England, Amanda Gilmore

Open Access Master's Theses

Fishermen in Southern New England (SNE) utilize a wide variety of placenames to delineate areas of significance on the open ocean. This information provides new revelations not just about the way fishermen navigate the ocean, but also insight about overlaps between Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) and Fishermen’s Ecological Knowledge in the historically prolific fishing sector of Southern New England. Prior to this study, this collection of vernacular place names on the water, or folk-hydronymy, had never been documented or analyzed, as it was held almost entirely in cognitive maps and proliferated through communication with other fishermen. This project’s goal was …

Weaponized Borders: A Contrapuntal Analysis Of Uneven Humanitarian Aid And Comparative Landscapes, Alex Orla-Bukowski

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The proliferation of global border regimes has caused an increased level of state violence against humans and the environment. In this thesis I explore how contemporary border regimes propagate myths on human mobility, obstruct humanitarian policy, and weaponize environmental landscapes to sustain state violence while obscuring political responsibility. Building on this, I argue that borders are the source of violence and create systems of vulnerability as a core-function of state making. My research primarily utilizes semi-structured interviews with humanitarian actors and secondary data analysis to trace the testimonies of those subject to state-based harm and explore the gaps in aid …

Uncertainty-Aware Estimation, Planning, And Control For Tracking Multiple Drifting Patches In Flow Fields, Daniel O. Akanji, Krishnanand N. Kaipa, Cong Wei

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

In this study, we present a replay-based framework for uncertainty-aware persistent tracking of multiple advected surface patches using an autonomous marine vehicle operating in spatiotemporal-varying currents. The method combines three components: local flow estimation, covariance-aware patch-boundary propagation with intermittent boundary fusion, and mission-level scheduling over multiple patches. Each patch is represented by a polygonal boundary, whose vertices are propagated through the estimated flow field while carrying per-vertex covariance, thereby quantifying uncertainty growth during advection. A flow-aware gain-scheduled linear quadratic regulator (LQR) was designed to shape the desired surge speed to take advantage of favorable currents. When the vehicle services a …

Modeling Inundation Susceptibility, Dengue Fever Risk, And Social, Ecological, And Technological Vulnerability To Climate Change At Small Geographic Scale In Thailand, Zachary Alan Zoet

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The climate is changing, and the livelihoods of more than 3.3 billion people are presumed to be vulnerable to a climate altered significantly from historical norms. Despite international concerns that ramifications of climate change may affect environmental conditions in ways that could exacerbate inundation, dengue fever incidence, and social vulnerability in large areas of the planet, research focused on revealing the roots of these problems tends to cover small areas at large geographic scales. Inconsistencies in research design elements that may ramify from data classification regimen and misappropriation of variable selection, non-consensus about unit of analysis or scale, and disagreement …

Climate Change In Gilgit-Baltistan: Satellite-Based Land Use/Land Cover Change Detection, Socio-Economic Dimensions, And Adaptation Strategies, Ali Muhammad

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Climate change is increasingly transforming the cryosphere, hydrology, and human landscape of Gilgit-Baltistan, a highly climate-sensitive mountain region in northern Pakistan. This thesis investigates these transformations through satellite-based land use/land cover (LULC) change detection in four representative tehsils of Gilgit-Baltistan—Ali Abad, Gilgit, Nagar, and Sikander Abad—selected to span a gradient of human pressure and cryospheric exposure within the region. Using summer, cloud-free (< 10%) imagery from USGS Landsat 7 (2000) and Landsat 8 (2025), it conducts a multi-temporal comparison of environmental and socio-spatial change. After atmospheric correction and band compositing, the imagery is classified in ArcGIS Pro into six classes—Water, Barren land, Vegetation, Snow, Glacier, and Built-up—using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier, with Maximum Likelihood Classification and Random Forest also tested but found less suitable for the final workflow. The analysis detects a pronounced reduction in mapped glacier-class area alongside a comparatively stable snow class, together with built-up expansion, while examining how temperature, precipitation, tourism, and population dynamics relate to observed LULC transitions. The results reveal a pattern of cryospheric decline and urban growth, with implications for water availability, ecological stability, hazard exposure, and settlement pressure. By integrating geospatial change detection with climatic and socio-economic interpretation, the thesis moves beyond mapping to explain interacting environmental and human drivers of landscape transformation and provides a reproducible remote-sensing baseline for monitoring land-surface change in heterogeneous mountainous terrain. It recommends integrated water-resource management, climate-resilient land-use planning, watershed and glacier monitoring, and sustainable tourism governance, supporting evidence-based decision-making by the Government of Gilgit-Baltistan and organizations working on climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable regional development.

Protected And Conserved Areas In Canada: Advancing Conservation Policy, Practice & Indigenous Leadership, Christopher J. Lemieux, Don Carruthers Den Hoed, Eli Enns, Catherine E. Reining

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Protected and Conserved Areas in Canada: Advancing Conservation Policy, Practice, and Indigenous Leadership, is Canada’s first bilingual, interdisciplinary, open-access textbook dedicated to the evolving management and planning of protected and conserved areas. This resource addresses critical pressures and transitions in conservation, integrating Indigenous perspectives and case studies from across Canada to prepare the next generation of practitioners and researchers to become ethical, equitable, and effective decision-makers.

Over the past decade, Canada has experienced rapid expansion of protected and conserved areas, including the rise of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), the expansion of marine protected and conserved areas, and …

Aires Protégées Et Conservées Au Canada: Faire Progresser Les Politiques, Les Pratiques, Et Le Leadership Autochtone En Matière De Conservation, Christopher J. Lemieux, Don Carruthers Den Hoed, Eli Enns, Catherine E. Reining

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Aires protégées et conservées au Canada : faire progresser les politiques, les pratiques et le leadership autochtone en matière de conservation est le premier manuel bilingue, interdisciplinaire et en libre accès au Canada consacré à la gestion et à la planification en pleine évolution des aires protégées et conservées. Cette ressource aborde les enjeux et transitions critiques qui marquent le domaine de la conservation, en intégrant les perspectives autochtones et des études de cas provenant de tout le pays, pour préparer la prochaine génération de praticiens et de chercheurs à devenir des décideurs éthiques, équitables et efficaces.

Au cours de …

Grandmothers Of Invention: A Commentary On Fifty Years Of Hazards And Disasters Research And Practice In The United States, Susan L. Cutter, Kathleen Tierney

Faculty Publications

This commentary highlights the role of “grandmothers of invention”: women in the United States who were the first to enter the field of hazards and disasters as core researchers and who played key roles in advancing the science and practice of hazards/disasters research since 1975. We examine the evolution and transformation of the field from the perspective of the women who were initially entering a male-dominated field. The innovations in theory, concepts, tools, topics, and mentoring the next generation of scholars and practitioners are highlighted. Notably, emphasis on these women's singular and collective influence on practice and policy highlights the …

Datums And Benchmarks From Sylvester Manor Umass Boston Archaeological Work, Shelter Island, Ny, John M. Steinberg, John Schoenfelder, Chiara M. Torrini, Joseph E. Kinney, Stephen A. Mrozowski, David B. Landon

Data and Datasets

Datums from Sylvester Manor Archaeological work (2019-2026).  Includes zipped shapefile of points and complementary csv, that includes the site areas for each datum.

Below The Rows, Beyond The Roots: An Art Exhibition Depicting Agriculture Across The Globe, Maggie Enoch

Honors Theses and Capstones

In Below the Rows, Beyond the Roots, artist Maggie Enoch creates multimedia works inspired by her exposure to diverse agricultural systems and perspectives while studying geography and sustainable agriculture/food systems around the world. By integrating complex histories with the contemporary realities of farming, Maggie paints vivid pictures of the power of food in this five-piece exhibition.

Regional Oceanographic Controls On Water Column Nitrogen Fixation In Northern Australian Waters, Douglas G. Capone, Ajit Subramaniam, Yubin Raut, Joseph P. Montoya, Margaret R. Mulholland, Rachel Ann Foster, Miles Furnas, Edward J. Carpenter

OES Faculty Publications

Large blooms of the diazotrophic cyanobacteria, Trichodesmium, have been re-ported along the north coast of Australia and are readily evident in remote sensing images. During a research cruise in November 1999, we sampled from Townsville to Broome, examined Trichodesmium population densities and their rates of carbon and N₂ fixation alongside microscopy-based cell counts of them and other cyanobacte-rial diazotrophs. Additionally, we also enumerated the picophytoplankton community using flow-cytometry, measured bulk chlorophyll concentrations, carbon and N₂ fixation rates, and water column hydrography, enabling comparison of diazotrophic and picophytoplankton functional groups across the system. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering analysis of physicochemical oceanographic …

Using Maximum Entropy (Maxent) Tool In Arcgis Pro For Species Distribution Modelling Of Pseudoscorpions In The Pacific Northwest, Elliot Toshihiro Cochran

Masters in GIS Practicum Reports

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create Species Distribution Models (SDMs) is rising among many scientific disciplines. Many professionals who were not originally focused on GIS are increasingly becoming more invested in this technology. SDMs are widely used to estimate species’ potential geographic distributions and to evaluate the environmental factors that constrain their ranges. The presence-only maximum entropy (MaxEnt) algorithm implemented in the MaxEnt tool in ArcGIS Pro was used in this project to model habitat suitability for two species of pseudoscorpions, M. pacificus and an undescribed species, in Oregon and Washington. Presence points (of specimen sample locations) …