Geography Commons^™

A Spatial Collaboration: Building A Multi-Institution Geospatial Data Discovery Portal, Mara Blake, Karen Majewicz, Ryan Mattke, Kathleen W. Weessies

Collaborative Librarianship

As academic education and research increasingly take advantage of geospatial data and methodologies, we see a corresponding exponential growth in the number of available geospatial resources in the form of GIS datasets and scanned historical maps. However, users can experience difficulty finding these resources due to the unconnected multitude of platforms and clearinghouses that host them. Additionally, the resources are not always well described with web semantic metadata that facilitates discovery. In response to this challenge, The Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Data Project began in 2015 to provide discoverability, facilitate access, and connect scholars to geospatial resources. Our project …

Assemblage Of The Emergent Plantation Museum Experience, Amy E. Potter, Candace Bright, Derek H. Alderman, David L. Butler, Perry L. Carter, Stephen P. Hanna, E. Arnold Modlin

Earth, Environment & Sustainability: Faculty Presentations (1988-2022)

This presentation was given during the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting.

Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction Using Coral Microatolls (Sp. Siderastrea Siderea) From The Gulf Of Gonâve, Haiti, Gilman Reno Ouellette Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Natural and anthropogenic climate changes present unique and serious risks to society. In order to plan and implement adaptation and mitigation strategies successfully, regional manifestations of broad-scale climate changes must be understood robustly. The Caribbean region contains part of the Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP), a major sea surface temperature (SST) feature that plays a key role in North Atlantic climate. Climate variability in the Caribbean is captured poorly by climate models, due in part to a lack of continuous, multidecadal instrumental climate records from the region. I explored three research questions in this dissertation: Does non-systematic bias exist in …

Human-Environment Interactions: Sea-Level Rise And Marine Resource Use At Eleanor Betty, An Underwater Maya Salt Work, Belize, Valerie Renae Feathers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Dissertation excavations were performed in the spring of 2013 at the underwater site of Eleanor Betty in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. The marine environment preserved wooden architecture associated with the salt works. Excavation goals included: 1) excavating and defining the boundaries of the submerged shell midden; 2) collecting sediment samples for paleoenvironmental analyses; and 3) recovering cultural remains to determine the site’s purpose (residence versus production workshop).

Four transects were added to the existing transect from excavations performed during the 2011 field season. The shell midden measured 5 meters in length (north-to-south throughout all transects) by 0.5-to-1 meters in …

Weather Communication On Twitter: Identifying Popular Content And Optimal Warning Format Via Case Studies And A Survey Analysis, Joshua D. Eachus

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The use of Twitter as a channel for weather information inspires a deeper analysis of key information nodes during episodes of high impact weather, especially local meteorologists. To optimize communication on the channel, it is important to understand what kinds of messages produce exposure and attention among users—which translates to knowledge that could improve the reach of a warning. Literature identifies two key models that well describe the cognitive processing of tweets and warnings. The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) describes risk perception and the factors that enable or disable one from acting on a warning. Particularly through environmental and …

Language And Socioeconomics Predict Geographic Variation In Peer Review Outcomes At An Ecology Journal, C. Sean Burns, Charles W. Fox

Information Science Faculty Publications

Papers submitted by scientists located in western nations generally fare better in the peer review process than do papers submitted by scientists from elsewhere. This paper examines geographic variation in peer review outcomes (whether a manuscript is sent for review, review scores obtained, and final decisions by editors) for 3529 submissions over a 4.5 year period at the journal Functional Ecology. In particular, we test whether geographic variation in language and socioeconomics are adequate to explain most or are all of this variation. There was no relationship between the geographic regions of handling editors and the decisions to send …

Accessing Blue Spaces: Social And Geographic Factors Structuring Familiarity With, Use Of, And Appreciation Of Urban Waterways, Melissa Haeffner, Douglas Jackson-Smith, Martin Buchert, Jordan Risley

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Are urban waterways amenities, and if so, are there inequities in household access? While urban waterways represent a potential site for access to nature within the urban environment, there have been few studies on the accessibility and interactions with water features in particular, what we refer to as “blue spaces." This study drew on a sample of households in Northern Utah living in neighborhoods with a nearby river or canal to ask if local waterways provide positive impacts to households and if proximity to them increased the likelihood of households spending time at them and being familiar with them. We …

Geospatial Tools And Data Provided By Itap/Research Computing, Larry Biehl

Purdue GIS Day

The presentation will provide the audience information about the geospatial applications that are available on campus including Esri ArcGIS, ERDAS Imagine, Exelis ENVI, Trimble eCognition and others. The information will include where to go to download the software installers and how to set up the licensing for them. The discussion will also go over the new software installer file download process.

Archaeological Investigation Of An Iron Age Fortress On Dana Island, Turkey, Nathan C. Mcburnett

Purdue GIS Day

In this project, the Bogsak Archaeological survey team investigated a fortress on the northern crest of the mountain on Dana Island, located just off the coast of Turkey in the Rough Cilician Region. Although the interior remains of the fortress, consisting of a large number of ceramics and architectural features such as a basilica, were dated to the Late Roman Era, we found that the fortress itself actually predates this. Based on ceramic remains being used as aggregate in the fortress wall, the team was able to date the fortress itself to the Iron Age (Classical Era). GIS software was …

Using Gis To Determine Locations For Safety Improvements, Mario Romero, Etienne Tino Atisso, Taojun Wang, Laura Slusher, Andrew Tarko

Purdue GIS Day

Crash location is a critical piece of information for any type of safety-related analysis; however, there is often a high percentage of error in crash latitude and longitude coordinates. Currently, a time-consuming, manual process is used in Indiana to correct faulty crash location coordinates. The Crash Location Improvement Program (CLIP) is a tool developed by the Purdue University Center for Road Safety, with support from Indiana LTAP, which allows users to quickly and easily identify and correct crash coordinates, allowing for a more accurate safety analysis. After correcting the coordinates, crash location maps, heat maps, and other visualization tools are …

Spatiotemporal Computing For Enabling Scientific Research And Engineering Development: A Gis Practice, Chaowei Yang

Purdue GIS Day

No abstract provided.

Using Space Based Earth Observations To Understand Our Changing Planet, Kumar C. Navulur

Purdue GIS Day

"Satellite remote sensing has come a long way in the last 2 decades to map and monitor our changing planet. Technology trends include increasing spatial resolution (pixel size), number of spectral bands that can be leveraged to extract information, and frequency of revisit globally. Satellite industry has be improving the location accuracy from space to enable various precision applications on the earth. Advances in cloud computing and other technologies now allow for creation of mosaics and information layers at scale. The latest trend is analytics that allows for predictive intelligence.

The author will discuss practical application of satellite imagery for …

Spatial Analysis Of Landfills In Respect To Flood Events And Sea-Level Rise Using Arcgis Pro, Benjamin S. Taylor, Songlin Fei

Purdue GIS Day

"Recently in the news, media coverage of flood events has garnered attention due to tropical storms like Hurricane Harvey and the costly damages that resulted. Under climate change, events like sea-level rise (SLR) and flooding are projected to increase which threaten infrastructure, making it necessary for proper planning before, during, and after installation of landfills to mitigate risk. Studies in Austria and the UK have revealed that many landfills are located in flood zones in addition to coastal areas affected by coastal erosion. In the United States, there have been minimal analysis’ on landfill locations related to flood events and …

Geodata Science Education At Purdue, Wen-Wen Tung

Purdue GIS Day

This presentation introduces a group of Purdue faculty’s effort to create a set of geodata science graduate-level education programs.

Earthquake-Induced Collapsed Building Detection With Vhr Synthetic Aperture Radar Images, Fan Wu, Jie Shan, Chao Wang

Purdue GIS Day

"Compared with optical sensors, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can provide important damage information due to its ability to map areas affected by earthquakes independently from weather conditions and solar illumination. In 2013, a new TerraSAR-X mode named staring spotlight (ST), whose azimuth resolution was improved to 0.24 m, was introduced for various applications. This very high resolution (VHR) data source made it possible to extract detailed information from individual buildings.

We present a new concept for individual building damage assessment using a post-event sub-meter VHR SAR image and a building footprint map. With the building footprint map, the original footprints …

The Geopolitics Of Rare Earth Elements: Emerging Challenge For U.S. National Security And Economics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Rare earth elements (REE) contain unique chemical and physical properties such as lanthanum, are found in small concentrations, need extensive precise processes to separate, and are critical components of modern technologies such as laser guidance systems, personal electronics such as IPhones, satellites, and military weapons systems as varied as Virginia-class fast attack submarines, DDG- 51 Aegis destroyers, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and precision guided munitions. The U.S. has some rare earth resources, but is heavily dependent on access to them from countries as varied as Afghanistan, Bolivia, and China. Losing access to these resources would have significant adverse economic, …

What Is Exciting At The Libraries? – Gis Resources At Libraries, Nicole Kong

Purdue GIS Day

This presentation introduce the new GIS resources offered from Purdue University Libraries. These new support areas include the D-VELoP GIS computing lab, new Esri Development Center (EDC), GIS data portal, GIS data server, Insights for ArcGIS, and GIS VR technology.

Modeling Check-In Behavior With Geographical Neighborhood Influence Of Venues, Thanh Nam Doan, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With many users adopting location-based social networks (LBSNs) to share their daily activities, LBSNs become a gold mine for researchers to study human check-in behavior. Modeling such behavior can benefit many useful applications such as urban planning and location-aware recommender systems. Unlike previous studies [4,6,12,17] that focus on the effect of distance on users checking in venues, we consider two venue-specific effects of geographical neighborhood influence, namely, spatial homophily and neighborhood competition. The former refers to the fact that venues share more common features with their spatial neighbors, while the latter captures the rivalry of a venue and its nearby …

Towards New Weather And Climate Baselines For Assessing Weather And Climate Extremes, Impacts, And Risks, Fiona Williamson, Rob Allan, Roseanne D'Arrigo

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Initiatives to recover (sourcing, imaging, digitizing) historic datasets for generating more accurate longterm climate models have only gained momentum over the last decade, despite a long precedent of compelling arguments as to the value of historic weather observations (Le Roy Ladurie, 1972; Lamb, 1977). Although such work is relatively well established in Europe, the United States, China, and Japan; Southeast Asia currently has a dearth of data rescue initiatives with a long historical focus. The reasons behind this include a perception of the paucity of surviving data; the scattered nature of data due to shifts between colonial rule and independence …

Reading Between The Vines: Analyzing Climate Change Adaptive Capacity In The Tulbagh Valley Wine Industry, South Africa, Jana Catherine Brady

LSU Master's Theses

There is great concern across the wine industry about the effect climate change will have on wine production and quality. These worries are valid because wine grapes are sensitive to the climatological conditions in which they are grown. However, not all viticultural areas will experience climate change in the same manner and the effects of climate change could vary considerably by region. This thesis examines the potential impact of climate change on the wine industry in the already hot and dry Tulbagh Valley, South Africa. The valley has produced wine since the early 18^th century, but today the valley …