Geography Commons^™

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, March 2020, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 1. Issue 2

In this issue:

Dean’s Update P.1
Awards & Recognition P.2
Club Spotlight | Academic Tips P.3
Research | Interest in Science P.4

Modeling Quality Of Urban Life Using A Geospatial Approach, Helena Merschdorf, Michael E. Hodgson, Thomas Blaschke

Faculty Publications

The rapid global urbanization of the past century poses several challenges for planners and policy makers. In particular, the conflation of social and urban issues must be understood to create sustainable and livable urban places. In this regard, it was our aim to model and understand the relationship between urban characteristics and peoples’ perceived quality of urban life (QoUL) using statistical analysis and geospatial modeling. We selected objective variables representing urban characteristics based on literature and used principal components analysis to develop uncorrelated components. These components served as the independent variables in a multiple linear regression analysis. The subjective, dependent …

The Geographical Distribution Of The Latino Population Of The New York City Metropolitan Area, 2018 - A Statistical And Map Data Base, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report investigates where all Latinos lived in the New York City Metropolitan area, including the Northern Suburbs, Long Island, and selected New Jersey counties. The six largest Latino nationalities are mapped by census tract for a very precise visualization of the data.

Methods:

This report uses one-year sample data for 2018 from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, and the 2014 – 2018 five-year sample data at the census-census tract level. The ACS dataset is reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota and is available at IPUMS USA (https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V10.0) and …

Population Collapse And Retreat To Fire Refugia Of The Tasmanian Endemic Conifer Athrotaxis Selaginoides Following The Transition From Aboriginal To European Fire Management, Andres Holz, Samuel W. Wood, Carly Ward, Thomas T. Veblen, David M.J.S. Bowman

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Untangling the nuanced relationships between landscape, fire disturbance, human agency, and climate is key to understanding rapid population declines of fire‐sensitive plant species. Using multiple lines of evidence across temporal and spatial scales (vegetation survey, stand structure analysis, dendrochronology, and fire history reconstruction), we document landscape‐scale population collapse of the long‐lived, endemic Tasmanian conifer Athrotaxis selaginoides in remote montane catchments in southern Tasmania. We contextualized the findings of this field‐based study with a Tasmanian‐wide geospatial analysis of fire‐killed and unburned populations of the species. Population declines followed European colonization commencing in 1802 ad that disrupted Aboriginal landscape burning. Prior to …

Global Pattern And Change Of Cropland Soil Organic Carbon During 1901-2010: Roles Of Climate, Atmospheric Chemistry, Land Use And Management, Wei Ren, Kamaljit Banger, Bo Tao, Jia Yang, Yawen Huang, Hanqin Tian

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Soil organic carbon (SOC) in croplands is a key property of soil quality for ensuring food security and agricultural sustainability, and also plays a central role in the global carbon (C) budget. When managed sustainably, soils may play a critical role in mitigating climate change by sequestering C and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. However, the magnitude and spatio-temporal patterns of global cropland SOC are far from well constrained due to high land surface heterogeneity, complicated mechanisms, and multiple influencing factors. Here, we use a process-based agroecosystem model (DLEM-Ag) in combination with diverse spatially-explicit gridded environmental data to …

Geographies Of Transition—From Topical Concerns To Theoretical Engagement: A Commentary On The Transitions Research Agenda, Christian Binz, Lars Coenen, James T. Murphy, Bernhard Truffer

Geography

This viewpoint takes stock with the ‘geography of sustainability transitions’ (GOST) as it is presented in the transitions research agenda. GOST has been a relatively recent addition to transition theorizing, addressing the need for greater sensitivity and attention to the scales, spatialities, and context-specific factors that shape transitions. In our view, the agenda represents a rather narrow perspective on GOST, which is geared to two empirical themes, namely urban transitions and transitions in developing countries. While these are relevant and topical issues, the section lacks sufficient acknowledgement of the increasing engagement of geographers with transitions studies and the theoretical approaches …

Bayesian Calibration At The Urban Scale: A Case Study On A Large Residential Heating Demand Application In Amsterdam, Cheng-Kai Wang, Simon Tindemans, Clayton Miller, Giorgio Agugiaro, Jantien Stoter

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

A bottom-up building energy modelling at the urban scale based on Geographic Information System and semantic 3D city models can provide quantitative insights to tackle critical urban energy challenges. Nevertheless, incomplete information is a common obstacle to produce reliable modelling results. The residential building heating demand simulation performance gap caused by input uncertainties is discussed in this study. We present a data-driven urban scale energy modelling framework from open-source data harmonization, sensitivity analysis, heating demand simulation at the postcode level to Bayesian calibration with six years of training data and two years of validation data. Comparing the baseline and the …

Population Sustainability In Rural Nebraska Towns, Andrew Husa

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

After beginning with an introduction to rural population trends and population sustainability in rural towns, this dissertation gives an overview of population change in rural Nebraska towns between 1950 and 2010. Following a series of maps depicting the changes in rural Nebraska towns between these two censuses, six case studies are used to explore the growth of individual towns. A discussion on the characteristics of growing rural towns in Nebraska follows these case studies.

The dissertation then continues by discussing statewide rural residential decision making and place attachment based on data collected by the Nebraska Roots Migration Survey. Following a …

Is It Possible To Discern Striga Weed (Striga Hermonthica) Infestation Levels In Maize Agro-Ecological Systems Using In-Situ Spectroscopy?, Bester Tawona Mudereri, Timothy Dube, Saliou Niassy, Emily Kimathi, Tobias Landmann, Zeyaur Khan, Elfatih M. Abdel-Rahman

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The invasion by Striga in most cereal crop fields in Africa has posed a significant threat to food security and has caused substantial socioeconomic losses. Hyperspectral remote sensing is an effective means to discriminate plant species, providing possibilities to track such weed invasions and improve precision agriculture. However, essential baseline information using remotely sensed data is missing, specifically for the Striga weed in Africa. In this study, we investigated the spectral uniqueness of Striga compared to other co-occurring maize crops and weeds. We used the in-situ FieldSpec® Handheld 2™ analytical spectral device (ASD), hyperspectral data and their respective narrow-band indices …

Predicting The Spatial Suitability Distribution Of Moringa Oleifera Cultivation Using Analytical Hierarchical Process Modelling, T. Tshabalala, B. Ncube, H. P. Moyo, E. M. Abdel-Rahman, O. Mutanga, A. R. Ndhlala

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Moringa oleifera Lam, often grows well under cultivation in the tropics and sub-tropics. It does well in sandy to clayey soils and tolerates low rainfall. The plant is well-known for its nutritional and medicinal properties, hence it is fast gaining popularity in South Africa and the rest of the world. The objective of this study was to predict the suitable areas for cultivating M. oleifera in South Africa using climate and edaphic variables that significantly affect its growth and development. We used an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and Geographic Information System (GIS) weight function to assign suitability weights to criteria …

Experimental Approaches In Development And Poverty Alleviation, Yana Van Der Meulen Rodgers, Anthony J. Bebbington, Catherine Boone, Jampel Dell'angelo, Jean Philippe Platteau, Arun Agrawal

Geography

This inaugural World Development Symposium on Development and Poverty Alleviation brings together contributions from a range of disciplines, scholars, practitioners, and countries to mark the recognition of Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer (BDK) through the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Contributors examine how BDK's work has changed the methods and study of Development Economics, and their extended impact in other social science and interdisciplinary fields. Although experimental evaluation has had a profound impact on the conduct of much research and policy making, further development of RCT approaches, and collaboration across methods …

Assessing Boreal Peat Fire Severity And Vulnerability Of Peatlands To Early Season Wildland Fire, Laura Bourgeau-Chavez, Sarah L. Grelik, Michael Billmire, Liza K. Jenkins, Eric S. Kasischke, Merritt R. Turetsky

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Globally peatlands store large amounts of carbon belowground with 80% distributed in boreal regions of the northern hemisphere. Climate warming and drying of the boreal region has been documented as affecting fire regimes, with increased fire frequency, severity and extent. While much research is dedicated to assessing changes in boreal uplands, few research efforts are focused on the vulnerability of boreal peatlands to wildfire. In this case study, an integration of field data collection, land cover mapping of peatland types and Landsat-based fire severity mapping was conducted for four early season (May to mid-June) wildfires where peatlands are abundant in …

Mitochondrial Dna Diversity And Evolutionary History Of Native Human Populations Of Northwest Patagonia (Argentina), María Bárbara Postillone, Virginia Agustina Cobos, Celmira Urrutia, Cristina Beatriz Dejean, Paula N. Gonzalez, Sergio Ivan Perez, Valeria Bernal

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The genetic composition of Amerindian descendants from Patagonia has long been a focus of interest, although the information available is still scarce for many geographic areas. Here, we report the first analysis of the variation in the mtDNA control region for an area of northwestern Patagonia, the North of Neuquén, with the aim of studying the processes and historical events that modeled the evolutionary history of these human groups. We analyzed 113 individuals from two localities of northern Neuquén, along with 6 from southern Neuquén and 223 mtDNA sequences previously published from neighboring areas from Argentina and Chile. We estimated …

Estimation Of Available Epinephrine Dose In Expired And Discolored Autoinjectors Via Quantitative Smartphone Imaging, Amirus Saleheen, Bill M. Campbell, Rebecca A. Prosser, Christopher A. Baker

United States National Park Service: Publications

Epinephrine autoinjectors (EAIs) are important first aid medications for treating anaphylaxis. A 10-fold price increase over the past 12 years and evidence that expired EAIs may still contain significant doses of available epinephrine have motivated interest in the efficacy of expired EAIs as treatments of last resort. Degradation of expired EAIs, which can be caused by improper storage conditions, results in various degrees of discoloration of the epinephrine solution. Previous studies have determined that significant epinephrine remains available in expired EAIs, but these have only considered EAIs that show no discoloration. Here, we investigate the potential for colorimetric estimation of …

Assessment Of Land Cover Change In St. Martin’S Marsh Aquatic Preserve, Florida, Usa, Katie Wagner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

St. Martin’s Marsh Aquatic Preserve (SMMAP) is a 28,461 acre (115.18 km2) preserve located on the coast of Citrus County, Florida, USA. There has been no published research that focused on coastal change on this unique coast. This thesis research focuses on coastal land cover change that has occurred within the preserve from 1988 to 2018. Multitemporal Landsat images were classified using a support vector machine (SVM) classification, while changes in vegetation were evaluated using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Field research was conducted to examine nineteen sites for classification training and test data and notes on habitat composition. …

Effects Of Culling White-Tailed Deer On Tree Regeneration And Microstegium Vimineum, An Invasive Grass, John Paul Schmit, Elizabeth R. Matthews, Andrejs Brolis

United States National Park Service: Publications

Reduction of forest regeneration due to overbrowsing by white-tailed deer is a growing concern for land managers. Abundant deer can impede forest regeneration through direct predation on tree seedlings. Additionally high deer density can facilitate the establishment of a dense understory of browse tolerant plant species that shades seedlings and persists even in the absence of deer. In response to these challenges, land managers have sought to reduce deer herds to restore tree regeneration, but few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of this management. Our study took place in Catoctin Mountain Park, a US National Park Service unit with a …

Nurse Rock Microclimates Significantly Buffer Exposure To Freezing T Temperature And Moderate Summer Temperature, Joshua L. Conver, Elliott Yarwood, Lucas D. Hetherington, Don E. Swann

United States National Park Service: Publications

Nurse tree canopies mitigate exposure to freezing temperatures that could result in injury or mortality to the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea). Abiotic objects have been hypothesized to provide similar beneficial microclimates. We used data loggers at 11 nurse rock sites to record daily daytime summer maximum and winter nighttime minimum temperatures at Saguaro National Park, Arizona, to examine the effectiveness of rocks to moderate seasonal temperature extremes in the microclimate. Temperatures at rock sites averaged 2 °C warmer than exposed open control sites in winter. We found that the efficiency of rocks to act as insulators significantly increased as temperature …

Beryllium-7 Elucidate Sediment Dynamics Of The Branford River Estuary, Connecticut, Usa, Gaboury Benoit, Matthew Hirschbeck, Beth Bisson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Berrylium-7 elucidates sediment dynamics (i.e., sources, sinks, deposition, and resuspension) in a Connecticut estuary. Average 7 −2−1 annual atmospheric deposition of Be is 290 mBq cm year. Sediment samples from 43 locations within the estuary show that 7Be deposition is spatially complex, but were statistically indistinguishable a year apart. Weekly time series of sediments indicate 7 that levels are nearly constant on this shorter time scale on ceradio active decay is taken into account. Be levels in sediments area balance between steady losses through radioactive decay and periodic pulse inputs following rainstorms. The water column was measured intensively during three …

Implications Of Organic Mass To Carbon Ratios Increasing Over Time In The Rural United States, W.C. Malm, B.A. Schichtel, J.L. Hand, A.J. Prenni

United States National Park Service: Publications

The thermal evolution procedure used by most monitoring programs in the United States to determine carbonaceous aerosol concentrations is referred to as the thermal‐optical reflectance method, where an aerosol sample that has been collected on a quartz filter is heated and evolved carbon is characterized as either organic (OC) or light absorbing carbon (LAC). Evolved carbon assigned to OC is multiplied by a factor, Roc, to achieve an estimate of organic mass. Over the last 10–15 years, Roc, estimated through multiple linear regression analysis of data collected in the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) program, has increased at …

Children’S Voices About ‘Return’ Migration From The United States To Mexico: The 0.5 Generation, Víctor Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Since 2004, our research has focused precisely in those minors who ‘returned’ from the United States to Mexico. Our interest has been to know the social, geographical, educational, and symbolic trajectories of those migrant children and adolescents who are part of the contemporary move of returnees. Based on the children’s narratives (all collected before US November 2016 federal election), we now have a multifaceted response to the question: How and why are young Mexican migrants returning from the United States to Mexico? Some of these returnees were born in Mexico and arrived to the United States when they were young. …