Geography Commons^™

Re-Spatializing Gangs In The United States: An Analysis Of Macro- And Micro-Level Network Structures, Ryan J. Roberts

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Despite the significant contributions from location-based gang studies, the network structure of gangs beyond localized settings remains a neglected but important area of research to better understand the national security implications of gang interconnectivity. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the network structure of gangs at the macro- and micro-level using social network analysis. At the macro-level, some gangs have formed national alliances in perpetuity with their goals and objectives. In order to study gangs at the macro-level, this research uses open-source data to construct an adjacency matrix of gang alliances and rivalries to map the relationships between …

Using Aeolian Depositional Lag Times To Relate Dune Vegetation And Topographic Change, Jacquelyn Brianna Ferguson

Theses and Dissertations

Sediment deposition impacts dune morphology and is a product of many environmental factors. Dune vegetation is related to post-storm dune recovery and morphology. Though it is widely agreed that vegetation impacts sediment deposition, this relationship has not yet been quantified in the field. This research was conducted at Isle of Palms, a meso-tidal barrier island in South Carolina, where we collected topographic and vegetation data over an incipient foredune. Vegetation data were classified by functional type (dune-builder or dune-stabilizer) or land cover (sand, wrack). We identified land cover changes resulting in greater surface roughness. To relate land cover change to …

The Eviction Landscape In South Carolina, Ethan Magnuson

Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the South Carolinian eviction crisis from the perspective of radical geography. South Carolina was chosen for the severity of its crisis and the lack of research at a sub-state level. Court records of eviction filings from 2019 were geocoded and tested for spatial clustering, which was clearly visible. Plaintiff names were used to identify the most frequent filers and distinguish landlords by type. At the census tract level, eviction filing counts were compared with neighborhood characteristics using negative binomial regression, and most were found to be significant in South Carolina. …

This Land Is Their Land, Char Miller

Eastern Sierra History Journal

An 1891 petition to the United States government from the Indigenous people of the Yosemite Valley in the central Sierras offers a blistering indictment of the settler-colonial expropriation of their homeland and a counter narrative to conservationists who have debated for more than a century the impact of flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley to provide water to San Francisco.

Industrial Emission Patterns: A Study Of Two Refineries In Louisiana, Khanh Vu

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Military Communities And Natural Hazards In The United States, Logan Lee

Theses and Dissertations

The vulnerability and resilience of communities to hazards is a concept that has gained traction in the research community in recent decades. Climate change, combined with increasing damages from natural hazards, has energized researchers and practitioners alike to identify the risks to people and places from future losses. Military communities support large military bases and are composed of service members, their families, and civilian populations alike. Due to the presence of military installations and military populations, the characteristics of the population and influences in military communities are unique. However, there is a gap in current research to assess whether the …

Building A Long-Time Series For Weather And Extreme Weather In The Straits Settlements: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach To The Archives Of Societies, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In comparison to the Northern Hemisphere, especially Europe and North America, there is a scarcity of information regarding the historic weather and climate of Southeast Asia and the Southern Hemisphere in general. The reasons for this are both historic and political, yet that does not mean that such data do not exist. Much of the early instrumental weather records for Southeast Asia stem from the colonial period and, with some countries and regions changing hands between the European powers, surviving information tends to be scattered across the globe making its recovery a long and often arduous task. This paper focuses …

Sea-Level Rise And Settlement At Ta’Ab Nuk Na, Belize: Analyses Of Marine Sediment From The I-Line, 4m Transect, Conner B. Flynt

LSU Master's Theses

The ancient Maya of Mesoamerica created a culture with writing, religion, and vast trade networks. These trade networks are evident on the southern coast of Belize, where archaeologists have found sites dedicated to salt making. One of these sites, Ta’ab Nuk Na, was the subject of this thesis. Sediment and charcoal samples were collected from this site by the Underwater Maya Research Group led by Heather McKillop and E. Cory Sills. For my thesis research, I subjected these samples and components within them to loss-on ignition, radiometric dating, and microscopic analysis. Loss-on ignition was used to ascertain organic material percentage …

Socastee Interview, Participant #08, March 31, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Participatory Mapping With High-Resolution Satellite Imagery: A Mixed Method Assessment Of Land Degradation And Rehabilitation In Northern Burkina Faso, Colin Thor West, Elisabeth Kago Ilboudo Nébié, Aaron J. Moody

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Sahelian West Africa is a region that has high population densities and that has frequent severe droughts and enormous pressure on natural resources. Because of these challenges, it is the place where the term desertification was originally coined. Recently, however, experts have identified large zones of greening where the amount of vegetation exceeds what one would expect based on rainfall alone. This pattern is well documented, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. This research employs participatory mapping linked with high-resolution satellite imagery to better understand the human role behind regional vegetation trends. Through a case study of three communities in …

Socastee Interview, Participant #04, March 30, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Investigating Decadal Changes Of Multiple Hydrological Products And Land-Cover Changes In The Mediterranean Region For 2009–2018, Wenzhao Li, Sachi Perera, Erik Linstead, Rejoice Thomas, Hesham El-Askary, Thomas Piechota, Daniele Struppa

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Land-cover change is a critical concern due to its climatic, ecological, and socioeconomic consequences. In this study, we used multiple variables including precipitation, vegetation index, surface soil moisture, and evapotranspiration obtained from different satellite sources to study their association with land-cover changes in the Mediterranean region. Both observational and modeling data were used for climatology and correlation analysis. Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) were used to extract surface soil moisture and evapotranspiration data. Intercomparing the results of FLDAS and GLDAS suggested that FLDAS data had better …

Barriers To Post-Secondary Success, Douglas Swanson, Najeana Henderson, Maritza Sloan

Dissertations

This study reviews factors that prior studies have identified or failed to consider as barriers to post-secondary success. The three main areas include academic success for Latinx students after high school, organizational systems and their impact on African-American students’ postsecondary readiness, and what workers think of their high school education with regards to career preparedness.

Five factors are identified as major barriers for Latinx students to continue in a higher education system. A survey of former students from Saint Louis, Missouri, and Dallas, Texas, metroplex area identified 56 Latinx students that participated in an initial survey. This led to a …

Socastee Interview, Participant #03, March 26, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #01, March 26, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by CCU students.

Evaluation Of Manual And Semi-Automated Deep-Seated Landslide Inventory Processes: Willapa Hills, Washington, Tiffany E. Justice

Dissertations and Theses

Recent advances in remote sensing data and technology have allowed for computational models to be designed that successfully extract landforms from the landscape. The goal of this work is to create one such semi-automated model to extract deep-seated landslides located in complex geomorphic terrain. This is accomplished using geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) techniques, considered by leaders in the field of image analysis to have an advantage over traditional automated classification methods. GEOBIA methods can mimic human visual interpretation by including more characteristic features used to assess the relationship between image data and the ground surface such as color reflectance …

Sheep Replace Pronghorn: An Environmental History Of The Mono Basin, Robert B. Marks

Eastern Sierra History Journal

This article examines the ways in which the hunting-gathering people of the Mono Basin lived before their way of life and environment was overturned by the nineteenth-century arrival of Euro-American settlers with vastly different ways of interacting with the environment. And it tracks some of these alterations by tracking when and how sheep replaced pronghorns.

Nevada Population Density Maps, 2015 - 2019, Jaewon Lim, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet reports the population distribution for the 687 census tracts in the State of Nevada between 2015 and 2019. Mapping population distribution by census tract can misrepresent population density. Oftentimes, in rural regions with low population density, large census tracts are home to a small number of people. Likewise, urban cores have many small census tracts, each with high population density. Using a method for constructing density-equalizing projections, or cartograms (i.e. maps that show statistical information in diagrammatic form) by Mark Newman and Michael Gastner at the University of Michigan, the constructed maps in this fact sheet better …

Predictive Modeling Of Fmol Health System Utilization Using Machine Learning Algorithms And Retrospective Study Of Covid Tested Patients, Ramyakrishna Tummala

LSU Master's Theses

Overutilization of Emergency Departments (ED) is a major problem among the health care providers in the United States. In this research, a machine learning-based predictive model for predicting ED high utilizers will be designed based on a set of existing and proposed facilities and the population and social determinant of health (SDOH) factors influencing utilization. The purpose of the model will be to alert the healthcare systems and government organizations by identifying the reasons for overutilization of the medical services among the people in a particular community. Also, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) developed in Whunan city, China has …

Environmental Determinism And Professional Football, Hunter Hallows

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper analyzes the impact that geography has through the scope of determinism on professional football within the last 20 years. Fox Sports personality Colin Cowherd suggested the idea of determinism in football in 2017, and this project follows up on the idea that weather and climate specifically will be determinant factors in the success of an NFL franchise. Multiple demographic, economic, and climatic factors were selected to examine which factors are determinant in NFL franchise success. T-Tests were run on each of these variables to provide a P-Value, or an indication of whether or not the relationship between NFL …