Geography Commons^™

Producing Tradition: International Standards And Development In Jordanian Olive Oil, Brittany Eleanor Cook

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation project examines how value is changed and created through organic certification and the universalizing ideas of capacity building within the olive oil industry in Jordan and how these shifts affect the social and material processes of production. I approach organic olive oil production in Jordan as one method that producers use in accessing markets and capacity building. By shifting from looking strictly at organic certified farms to examining the larger context of capacity building and international standards, I identify how organic is just one strategy in a larger effort to diversify Jordanian agricultural production and to access global …

Accounting For Spatial Autocorrelation In Modeling The Distribution Of Water Quality Variables, Lorrayne Miralha

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Several studies in hydrology have reported differences in outcomes between models in which spatial autocorrelation (SAC) is accounted for and those in which SAC is not. However, the capacity to predict the magnitude of such differences is still ambiguous. In this thesis, I hypothesized that SAC, inherently possessed by a response variable, influences spatial modeling outcomes. I selected ten watersheds in the USA and analyzed them to determine whether water quality variables with higher Moran’s I values undergo greater increases in the coefficient of determination (R²) and greater decreases in residual SAC (rSAC) after spatial modeling. I compared non-spatial ordinary …

President Trump Tweets Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un On Nuclear Weapons: A Comparison With Climate Change, David E. Allen, Michael Mcaleer

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A set of 125 tweets about North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un by President Trump from 2013 to 2018 are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they differ, and their implications about President Trump's understanding and approach to international diplomacy. The results suggest a predominantly positive emotion in relation to tweets about North Korea, despite the use of questionable nicknames such as "Little Rocket Man". A comparison is made between the tweets on North Korea and climate change, madefrom …

Mapping Quality Of Life In Nebraska: Migration Rates, Aileen S. Garcia, Rodrigo Cantarero, Grant Daily, Maria Rosario T. De Guzman, Jeong-Kyun Choi, Soo-Young Hong, Sarah Taylor

Mapping Quality of Life in Nebraska

KEY POINTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Nebraska is a state that is not often viewed as affected significantly by mobility and migration. As a state, the net migration rate of 1.1 from 2015 to 2016 is fairly low compared to others like Florida (16.0) or Nevada (14.4). However, data from this report suggests that there is, in fact, substantial movement of people moving in and moving out; as well as pockets within the state where there is higher than average influx of both domestic and international migrants.

In general, migration trends in the state mirror national trends of “rural flight” where people …

Evaluating Long-Term Trends In Vegetation And Management Intensity, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve 1995–2014, Sherry A. Leis, Lloyd W. Morrison

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

Inventory and Monitoring Networks of the National Park Service are charged with collecting and reporting data related to the status and trends of key natural resources. We have analyzed a suite of grazing data from 1995- 2016, fire history data from 1998-2015, and vegetation community data from 2002-2014 to better understand trends as they relate to management strategies at the preserve over time. We found that cattle stocking rates declined and fires became less frequent over the latter half of the record. Similarly, bare ground declined, woody species increased slightly, and the floristic quality index was relatively stable with …

Vulnerability Of Protected Areas To Human Encroachment, Climate Change And Fire In The Fragmented Tropical Forests Of West Africa, Francis Kwabena Dwomoh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Upper Guinean region of West Africa is home to some of the most globally significant tropical biodiversity hotspots, providing ecosystem services that are crucial for the region’s socio-economic and environmental wellbeing. Nonetheless, following decades of human-caused destruction of natural habitats, protected areas currently remain the only significant refugia of original vegetation relics in landscapes that are highly fragmented. Aside from having strong geographic variation in land use, climate, vegetation, and human population, the region has also experienced remarkable biophysical and socio-economic changes in recent decades. All these factors influence the fire regime and the vulnerability of forests within protected …

Quantification Of Understory Fuels In The Superior National Forest Using Lidar Data, Jeffrey R. Irwin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fire is a natural part of the ecosystems in the Great Lakes region. Several factors including harvesting, insect outbreaks, and fire suppression have had an impact on these ecosystems. Of particular concern is the rise in the proportion of shade tolerant species, such as balsam fir. Because of its resinous bark and easily ignited needles, balsam fir is flammable. Additionally, balsam fir is vulnerable to spruce budworm infestation, which leads to additional fuel loading from needle cast. Detecting increases in fire risk is important to fire managers in Superior National Forest for many reasons. Determining the amount and extent of …

Biomass Burning In The Conterminous United States: A Comparison And Fusion Of Active Fire Observations From Polar-Orbiting And Geostationary Satellites For Emissions Estimation, Fangjun Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Biomass burning is an important source of atmospheric greenhouse gases and aerosol emissions that significantly influence climate and air quality. Estimation of biomassburning emissions (BBE) has been limited to the conventional method in which parameters (i.e., burned area and fuel load) can be challenging to quantify accurately. Recent studies have demonstrated that the rate of biomass combustion is a linear function of fire radiative power (FRP), the instantaneous radiative energy released from actively burning fires, which provides a novel pathway to estimate BBE. To obtain accurate and timely BBE estimates for near real-time applications (i.e., air quality forecast), the satellite …

From Rhetoric To Response: Climate Change, Conflict, And Development In Karamoja, Uganda, Daniel Abrahams

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the broad question: How do the discourses of climate change and conflict travel across time and space to become policy, programming, and ultimately a development initiative that exist on the ground? To answer this question, I broke the research into three separate papers. The first examines how the US policy community approaches, understands and seeks to address the discourses of climatesecurity. The second examines the ways in which climate change affects conflict outcomes in Karamoja, Uganda. And the third, using the efforts of Mercy Corps in Karamoja as a case study, examines the realities and opportunities in …

Measuring Agricultural Drought And Uncertainty In Future Drought Projections, Junyu Lu

Theses and Dissertations

Drought is a devastating, recurring, and widespread natural hazard that affects natural habitats, ecosystems, and economic and social sectors. Within the agricultural sector, droughts can reduce soil-water availability, affect water and soil quality, contribute to crop failures and pasture losses, and severely reduce crop yield. Effective drought quantification and early warning are critical for drought risk adaptation. Moreover, future drought risks could be exacerbated due to climate change. Modeling how climate change might influence future drought risks is of great importance in natural resources and water resources planning management. This dissertation has three parts. 1) The first part compares and …

Everyday Occupations: Traffic, Hazards, And Mobility In The West Bank, Alice Arnold

Theses and Dissertations

Mobility in the West Bank is inherently tied to the Israeli military occupation. Each new stage of the decades old conflict comes with new implications for the way Palestinians move around the West Bank. The past years have seen a transition during which the severe mobility restrictions that constituted the closure policy of the second intifada eased and intercity travel has increased. In this study I examine day-to-day experiences of mobility in the West Bank in the post-closure period. In doing so I highlight the ways in which routine experiences of mobility, those with traffic, road hazards, and infrastructure, bring …

Internal Gravity Wave Detection During The 21 August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse, Michael J.W. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Total solar eclipses supply both visual captivation and a controlled meteorological experiment through a sudden decrease in solar radiation. However, along with commonly expected changes in weather conditions, prior research suggests an adjustment of atmospheric dynamics caused by both a decrease in local incident solar radiation and the Moon’s sweeping shadow across the Earth at supersonic speed. The result is the potential production of internal gravity waves, which transfer both energy and momentum vertically to and from the upper levels of the atmosphere. A series of radiosondes were launched before, during, and after the 21 August 2017 eclipse in Batesburg, …

Multi-Scale Flow Mapping And Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Origin-Destination Mobility Data, Xi Zhu

Theses and Dissertations

Data on spatial mobility have become increasingly available with the wide use of location-aware technologies such as GPS and smart phones. The analysis of movements is involved in a wide range of domains such as demography, migration, public health, urban study, transportation and biology.

A movement data set consists of a set of moving objects, each having a sequence of sampled locations as the object moves across space. The locations (points) in different trajectories are usually sampled independently and trajectory data can become very big such as billions of geotagged tweets, mobile phone records, floating vehicles, millions of migrants, etc. …

Analysis Of Evacuation Behaviors And Departure Timing For October 2016’S Hurricane Matthew, Erika O. Pham

Theses and Dissertations

During a hurricane, an individual’s risk perception does not remain static. Spatial and temporal variations of a hurricane will shift perceptions of risk, and complicating this dynamic are information-seeking processes increasingly reliant on the individual’s self-motivated interpretation of information sources. Initial evacuation resistance or willingness could change even after evacuations are ordered, affecting evacuation preferences and departure times. Because Hurricane Matthew’s continually shifting track had virtually nonstop coverage, evacuation decisions were also being modified as residents either grew more or less certain of their safety.

This research investigates the evacuation behaviors associated with Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016. It …

Anthropogenic Influences On Sedimentation In The Chicken Creek Watershed Of South Carolina, Tyler L. Dearman

Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogeomorphic changes in response to destructive agricultural practices followed the arrival of European settlers into the Americas. The southeastern Piedmont physiographic region of the USA was severely affected by erosion and sedimentation following settlement in the 1700s and farming up through the 1930s. Deep floodplain aggradation formed uninterrupted alluvial deposits that extended many km. This research examines anthropogenic impacts of land-use change on valley bottom sedimentation in the Chicken Creek Watershed of South Carolina. Abrupt contacts between pre-settlement floodplain soils and a thick overburden of legacy sediment are common throughout the two-km study reach and provide clear evidence of extensive …

Comparison Of Sentinel-2 And Landsat 8 Oli In The Mapping Of Soil Salinity In Hyde County, North Carolina, Eleanor Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This study presents the first comparison of Landsat 8 OLI and Sentinel-2A MSI imagery in identifying soil salinity using soil physiochemical, spectral, statistical, and image analysis techniques. By the end of the century, intermediate sea level rise scenarios project approximately 1.3 meters (4.2 feet) of sea level rise along the coast of the southeastern United States. One of the most vulnerable areas is Hyde County, North Carolina, where 440 square miles of agricultural lands are being salinized, endangering 4,200 people and 40 million dollars of property. To determine the best multispectral sensor to map the extent of salinization, this study …

Tweets About Tornado Warnings: A Spatiotemporal And Content Analysis, Raelene C. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the United States, tornadoes frequently occur throughout the entire year. With each tornado there is a tornado warning that the National Weather Service (NWS) issues with a goal of protecting life and property. By using social media, these messages quickly reach the public. By analyzing Twitter data, this study aims to gain a spatiotemporal understanding of tweets, including when and where they most frequently occur. Most tweets occur within the warning time (temporal) and inside the warning polygon (spatial). To gain a better understanding of the information the tweet contains, a content analysis shows key warning characteristics such as …

Investigation Of Hydrologic Change In The South Fork Edisto Basin 1981-2016, Alexander Preston Butler

Theses and Dissertations

Increased demands on water resources coupled with an increased awareness of the need to preserve environmental flows have led to a need to understand how anthropogenic activities may have impacted water resources in South Carolina. The South Fork of the Edisto River has been facing increasing demands for both surface water and groundwater. This research investigated if and why hydrologic change, as indicated by a change in the rainfall/ stream discharge relationship, occurred in the South Fork Edisto Basin, in South Carolina, between the years 1980-2016. A double-mass curve analysis, which is corroborated by runoff coefficients, indicates that a fundamental …

Urban Social Landscapes And Urban Places: Processes Of Making And Informing Maronite Identity In Beirut, Divin Boutros

Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at the Maronites of Beirut and examines, from their perspective, the role of belonging, imagined geographies, and memories of place in the processes of making and informing Maronite identity in Beirut after the civil war of 1975. The civil war of 1975 allows me to examine the city’s change in demographics in relation to the Green Line that divided the city between a Muslim West Beirut, and a Christian Eastern Beirut during the civil war. The thesis approaches Beirut’s homogenous neighborhoods, a result of the city’s cantonization during the civil war, as problematic for the future of …

Motives For Patenting A Map Projection: Did Fame Trump Fortune?, Mark Monmonier

Geography and the Environment - All Scholarship

John Parr Snyder claimed that patenting a map projection was largely pointless because essentially similar transformations are readily available in the public domain. Map projection patents are rare, many patentees did not attempt to develop their patents, and none who did seems to have made much money. An explanation for their decision to patent lies in recognition that the patent system and peer-reviewed scientific journals are parallel literatures, either of which can satisfy an innovator’s need for attention, as suggested by achievement motivation theory. Moreover, no single factor can account for the invention of a map projection that was patented: …