Geography Commons^™

Uas, Joseph P. Hupy

Purdue GIS Day

This roundtable focuses on UAS as a geospatial data collection tool. Researchers with extensive background in GIS and remote sensing software, or interest in incorporating their UAS data more into GIS discuss about possible research opportunities and collaboration as well as how to incorporate UAS and GIS into curriculum.

Is Corruption Influenced By Human Development Index And Transparency? A Global Spatial Assessment Using Gis, Seyedali Ghahari, Shabnam Ghotbi, Samuel Labi, Nader Naderpajouh

Purdue GIS Day

The intricacy of the construction practices sometimes causes the vague atmosphere between clients, partners, and providers, is one of the Achilles heels of infrastructure projects; this grounds the industry as the most inefficient, corrupted business in the world. Governments, in recent years, have made a significant positive effort on public transparency. E-government is an effective tool to execute the very subject. Not only e-government helps transparency, but also it provides openness, accountability, the participation of citizens, etc. By giving citizens access to the functionality of public organizations and institutions, and providing open media for public debates, nations can obtain higher …

Spatial Humanities, Katherine M. Jarriel, Megha Anwer, Elizabeth Brite, Matthew Hannah, Amber N. Nickell

Purdue GIS Day

This roundtable introduces spatial humanities researches at Purdue. Projects include "Mapping Victorian women's habitation and violence encounter" by Dr. Megha Anwer; "Animating material agencies with GIS data: an example from the archealogy of the Soviet Union" by Dr. Elizabeth Brite; "Modeling community interaction in Bronze Age Greece" by Dr. Katherine Jarriel; "Mapping 'no place': Eastern and Central Europe's nineteenth and twentieth century phantom, indifferent, and alternative geographies by Amber Nickell.

How Much Do Purdue's Trees Weigh? Estimating Biomass In Urban Areas, Jacob Klaybor, Gillian Clark, Brady Hardiman

Purdue GIS Day

Vegetation plays an important role in urban areas by reducing the urban heat island effect, sequestering carbon emissions, and providing socioeconomic benefits to the surrounding areas. However, the roles and distributions of urban forests have historically been ignored or underestimated. This presentation uses the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, as a case study to quantify the aboveground vegetative biomass of campus trees. Tree biomass is calculated with data from the Purdue Arboretum and family-specific allometric relationships based on each tree's diameter at breast height to estimate the total carbon storage available within campus trees. Biomass estimates of …

Economic Resilience And Diversity In Indiana From 2002 To 2016, Santiago Ruiz, Michael Wilcox, Indraneel Kumar

Purdue GIS Day

It is well accepted that recessionary shocks affect long-term patterns of economic growth within regions. For this reason, it is important to understand how regional economies recover and in which extent a shock could be an economic burden in long term. A relevant variable to measure shock’s impact is employment, for two reasons. First, past recessions suggested that in most cases, the decline in employment tended to be deeper than in output. Second, layoffs of workers are key forms of adjustment to which employees seek to reduce costs. Given these, our research aims to understand shifts in employees during, after …

My Laptop Takes Forever, Now What!, Eric Adams

Purdue GIS Day

ITAP Research Computing's Data Workbench offers researchers access to an interactive computing environment for non-batch big data analysis and simulation. Researchers who outgrow their local computing resources can benefit from the extra computing power that Data Workbench offers without jumping directly into the High-Performance Computing clusters.

In this presentation, we will discuss the details of Data Workbench, file storage options including the Data Depot and how to transfer large files reliably with the Globus research data management service.

Sustainable Environment: Nexus Project, Zachary S. Brecheisen, Darrell Schulze, Timothy Filley, Jino Ramson, W. Daniel Leon-Salas, Natalie Chin, Fariborz Daneshvar, Andre De Lima Moraes

Purdue GIS Day

Arequipa region is locaed in Southwestern Peru. The Arequipa Nexus Institute for food, energy, water and the environment aims to address the key challenges to a sustainable furture for the people in the region. This roundtable discusses about the sustainable water management, geosaptial analysis and environment sharing, long range sensor network solution for soil health monitoring and data management and sharing in this Nexus project.

Middle-Range Theories Of Land System Change, P. Meyfroidt, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, A. De Bremond, E. C. Ellis, K. H. Erb, T. Filatova, R. D. Garrett, J. M. Grove, A. Heinimann, T. Kuemmerle, C. A. Kull, E. F. Lambin, Y. Landon, Y. Le Polain De Waroux, P. Messerli, D. Müller, J. Nielsen, G. D. Peterson, V. Rodriguez García, M. Schlüter, B. L. Turner, P. H. Verburg

Geography

Changes in land systems generate many sustainability challenges. Identifying more sustainable land-use alternatives requires solid theoretical foundations on the causes of land-use/cover changes. Land system science is a maturing field that has produced a wealth of methodological innovations and empirical observations on land-cover and land-use change, from patterns and processes to causes. We take stock of this knowledge by reviewing and synthesizing the theories that explain the causal mechanisms of land-use change, including systemic linkages between distant land-use changes, with a focus on agriculture and forestry processes. We first review theories explaining changes in land-use extent, such as agricultural expansion, …

Centroid-Amenities: An Interactive Visual Analytical Tool For Exploring And Analyzing Amenities In Singapore, Xue Qian Jazreel Siew, Sean Jia Ming Koh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Planning for civic amenities in a fast-changing urban setting such as Singapore is never an easy task. And as urban planners look toward more data-driven approaches toward urban planning, so grows the demand for more flexible geospatial analytics tools to facilitate a more iterative and granular approach toward urban planning. Such specific tools however, are not always readily available as plugins for traditional desktop GIS software, as numerous customizations must be made to model specific temporal planning scenarios for quick analysis, which could prove both costly and time-consuming. Hence, to address this need, open-source tools such as R Shiny could …

A Comparative Analysis Of Non-Invasive Exploration Techniques Lidar Vs. Aerial Photography – Kincaid Mounds Archaeological Site, Austin Valentine, Austin Valentine Jr.

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

KINCAID MOUNDS - A Comparative Analysis of Non-invasive Exploration Techniques is a journal of my efforts to conduct non-invasive site investigations at the Kincaid Mounds Archaeological site in Southern Illinois. Through the utilization of tools such as; drones, photography, satellite imaging, light distance and ranging, and powerful analysis software, I will demonstrate a number of useful techniques which one can utilize to conduct independent site investigations without disturbing a sites landscape or structural integrity. Thus, illustrating differences between those techniques and pointing out their strengths and weaknesses in their various applications.

During this journey, I will also venture into the …

An Investigation Of Habitat Suitability Factors And Their Interactions For Predicting Gopher Tortoise Habitat, Abigail V. Lavallin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates the interaction between four habitat factors vital to the gopher tortoise in Florida. Federally and state listed as threatened throughout its entire range, the gopher tortoise is vital to protect, not only for itself individually but its burrows provide an essential habitat to over 300 species making it a key stone species within its environment. Historic habitat modeling methods are reviewed for the gopher tortoise to highlight the gap on this topic. This research expanded on the methods utilized by Baskaran et al. (2006) evaluating the soil, landcover, percentage of canopy cover and the depth to water …

Mackinder And The Arctic's Emerging Geopolitics: Recommendations For The U.S. And Its Nato Allies, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This presentation shows how Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) described Canada and the Arctic region in his geopolitical writings. It goes on to stress how the Arctic is becoming increasingly important in international geopolitical policymaking due to its significant oil and natural gas resources, how warming temperatures are increasing international access to its waters, and the how countries as diverse as Canada, China, Russia, and the U.S. see the Arctic region in their strategic policymaking. It concludes by stressing that the Arctic can no longer be viewed as a region immune from international conflict and presents recommendations for the U.S. and its …

Collaborative Wcu Gis For Education, Research, And Outreach, Gary Coutu

Sustainability Research & Creative Activities Grants Reports

As WCU integrates sustainability into curriculum, public engagement, and campus-based research, GIS tools/data are critical for management, research, collaboration, and communication. A shared, WCU campus GIS has been published and the Center for GIS and Spatial Analysis continues to collaborate with the Office of Sustainability and faculty on the dissemination and use of our WCU GIS platform.

Access To Safe Water Supply: Management Of Catchment For The Protection Of Source Water In Ghana, Michael K. Eduful

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates provisions made within institutional and regulatory frameworks of water resources management to enhance multi-stakeholder relationships and the challenges of maintaining those relationships, and implications of water resources management for rural communities in the Densu River basin, Ghana. The primary objectives of this study were four fold, these are to: i) review the existing regulatory framework and how it promotes or hinders multi-stakeholder relationships within the catchment area; ii) examine multi-stakeholder relationships to identify challenges in promoting effective collaboration in water resources management; iii) explore the impacts of catchment management on the livelihoods of rural communities; and iv) …

Natural Resources-Based Conflicts In Coastal Louisiana: A Multi-Faceted Social And Ecological Setting, Audrey Grismore

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Louisiana coastal zone supports numerous natural resource-based economies and due to overlapping demands on the same territory, conflicts among users and resource managers have emerged. When the state recognized serious depletion of oysters in the late nineteenth century, it intervened with a set of conservation polices to try to establish sustained yields that produced one set of conflicts. When the oil industry began operating in the coastal estuaries and wetlands in the 1930s, it produced additional conflicts with fishing folk. The zone of conflict gave rise to cyclic adaptations as each group struggled to sustain its environmentally based economic …

Environmental Governance And The Global South, Jeffrey J. Minneti

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Over the last several decades, efforts to regulate the environment through traditional public law at national and international levels have stalled. In contrast, private environmental governance has flourished as nongovernmental entities have engaged in standard setting and assessment practices traditionally left to public government. This Article observes that while private governance of producers’ environmental product claims has grown tremendously in recent years, the vast majority of the governance originates in the global North and thrusts the global North’s economic and environmental agenda into the global South. In light of recent empirical studies of the effectiveness of such governance, the Article …

Rates Of Planimetric Change In A Proglacial Gravel-Bed Braided River: Field Measurement And Physical Modeling, Lara Middleton, Peter Ashmore, Pauline Leduc, Darren Sjogren

Geography & Environment Publications

Planimetric change was measured on daily hydrographs over two meltwater seasons using time-lapse images of the proglacial, gravel, braided, Sunwapta River, Canada. Significant planimetric change occurred on 10-15 days per year. Area of planimetric change correlated with peak and total daily meltwater hydrograph discharge. A clear threshold discharge can be identified below which no planform activity occurs, an intermediate range over which change occurs conditionally, and a peak flow range at which significant change always occurs. Field conditions were reproduced in a physical model in a laboratory flume. Photogrammetric DEMs of bed morphology and measurements of bedload output were made …

Using Digital Scholarship And Citizen Science To Reduce Lead Poisoning Risk In Indiana, Matthew L. Sisk 6317313

Bucknell University Digital Scholarship Conference

Lead exposure remains a prevalent public health issue in many communities. In some cases, the exposure risk comes from contaminated water, but in others it is from the legacy of lead-based paint or contaminated soils. Here, we report on recent work using digital scholarship techniques along side a citizen science model to increase awareness and reduce environmental hazards in the affected city of South Bend, Indiana. Over the past two years, we have worked closely with local community organizations, civic entities and concerned individuals to develop a home test kit that puts the tools to determine risk in the hands …

Academic Job Tips By Costanza Rampini - Phone Interview, Costanza Rampini

Faculty Publications, Environmental Studies

If you are on the academic job market, particularly in the fields of environmental studies/geography, I would be happy to share tips and questions from phone and on-campus interviews. I realize that Ph.D. advisors should provide this type of coaching, but they don't always do it...and some haven't been on the job market for a long time. It helps to speak to someone who just went through it...and has fresh notes from it! I was so much more prepared and had much more articulated answers by the time I had my 8th phone interview as compared to my first. Some …

Zoo Animal Welfare: The Human Dimension, Justine Cole, David Fraser

Zoo and Aquarium Animal Populations Collection

Standards and policies intended to safeguard nonhuman animal welfare, whether in zoos, farms, or laboratories, have tended to emphasize features of the physical environment. However, research has now made it clear that very different welfare outcomes are commonly seen in facilities using similar environments or conforming to the same animal welfare requirements. This wide variation is almost certainly due, at least in part, to the important effects of the actions of animal care staff on animal welfare. Drawing mostly on the farm animal literature, we propose that this “human dimension” of animal welfare involves seven components: (1) positive human–animal interaction, …