Geography Commons^™

Niche Modeling For The Giant Panda, Ailuropoda Melanoleuca, And The Original Panda, Ailurus Fulgens: Habitat Preferences And Evolutionary Consequences, Lauren M. Lyon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The well-known symbol for conservation, the giant panda bear, and the original red panda have been forced into remote habitats due to anthropogenic disturbance, making ecological study difficult. Therefore the first known species distribution model was created to predict the most likely areas of occurrence within the known range of these elusive animals. These models were then projected onto North America and evaluated against existing breeding programs. Additionally, the close proximity of the Gray Fossil Site and the discovery of the most complete fossil red panda specimens in the world allowed ecomorphological comparisons between the modern red panda, Ailurus fulgens …

Progressive Education In Appalachia: East Tennessee State Normal School And Appalachian State Normal School, Holly Heacock

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, I am examining how East Tennessee State Normal School in East Tennessee and Appalachian State Normal School in Western North Carolina interpreted progressive education differently in their states. This difference is that East Tennessee State began as a state funded school to educate future teachers therefore their school and their curriculum was more rounded and set to a structured schedule. Appalachian State Normal School was initially founded to educate the uneducated in the “lost provinces” therefore, curriculum was even more progressive than East Tennessee State’s – based strongly on the practices of farming, woodworking, and other practical …

The Community Rating System: Assessing Indicators Of Community Participation, A Dasymetric And Sovi Approach, Zachary P. Landis

Theses and Dissertations

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was established to provide affordable insurance to property owners and encourage communities to adopt and enforce floodplain management, primarily through the Community Rating System (CRS). The CRS awards points to communities for adopting a variety of activities in support of floodplain management. One area of interest in the CRS program is understanding differences in the types of communities participating and the degree of their participation. Research on the NFIP’s CRS tends to focus on community program participation in reducing flood losses and indicators of participation. Much of this research was performed prior to 2013 …

Representing The Relationships Between Field Collected Carbon Exchanges And Surface Reflectance Using Geospatial And Satellite-Based Techniques, Alexandria G. Mccombs

Theses and Dissertations

Carbon exchanges between the atmosphere and the land surface vary in space and time, and are highly dependent on land cover type. It is important to quantify these exchanges to understand how landscapes affect the carbon budget, which will have a significant impact on future climate change and will inform climate change projections. However, how do you represent regional carbon exchanges from a single meteorological station? A single observing station will represent a limited area around the station, but each individual observation will sample a different physical land area in time due to varying wind speeds, wind direction, and atmospheric …

Seeing Community Through The Trees: Characterizing Resident Response To Urban-Tree Planting Initiatives, Eli Goldman

Sustainability and Social Justice

Urban tree planting initiatives have become common across cities in the United States. In order to advocate for sustainable urban forests, managers of urban planting initiatives must adopt a strong community framework, which includes community values in reforestation efforts. Clark University researchers conducted interviews and surveys with residents in six central Massachusetts cities and towns to assess why residents value urban trees and to characterize public response to reforestation efforts. Results indicate residents had positive experiences with tree planting programs, are most likely to value urban trees for aesthetic reasons, and commonly associate change in neighborhood character with Asian Longhorned …

Gis Specialist 2016 Internship With Cdm Smith In Boston, Massachusetts, Suzanne L. Meek

Sustainability and Social Justice

This report provides a detailed experience of my internship with CDM Smith during the summer of 2016. This was a formal 12-week internship that was extended an additional two weeks due to my success in the first few weeks. My title was listed as a GIS Specialist Intern. My responsibilities included applying GIS technologies to construction, water, and energy projects, digitizing various locations for cities and private clients, FEMA projects, and street light audits in two different towns in New England.

Environmental And Climatic Constraints On Large-Scale Camelina Production In Eastern Arkansas, Benjamin Robert Tracy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Camelina sativa is a cold weather crop that is typically grown in semi-arid environments in the Western United States, usually as a spring crop, but sometimes during the winter. Research analyzing climate data and soil hydrology is important to better understand the environmental and terrain conditions necessary for Camelina farming wherever it is proposed for large-scale production. This study focused on various conditions and constraints pertaining to the potential for Camelina as a crop biofuel in Eastern Arkansas. Due to interest in the economic potential of crop biofuels in this area, and in particular the low input costs for Camelina, …

Dynamic Nearest Neighbor Queries In Euclidean Space, Sarana Nutanong, Mohammed Eunus Ali, Egemen Tanin, Kyriakos Mouratidis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Given a query point q and a set D of data points, a nearest neighbor (NN) query returns the data point p in D that minimizes the distance DIST(q,p), where the distance function DIST(,) is the L₂norm. One important variant of this query type is kNN query, which returns k data points with the minimum distances. When taking the temporal dimension into account, the k NN query result may change over a period of time due to changes in locations of the query point and/or data points.

Problematizing Europe’S Borders In The Context Of The Recent Refugee Crisis, Liam A. Simmonds

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

The fundamental problem of Europe’s borders is how a bounded social reality is to be organized, primarily meaning who is to be included and who is to be excluded. The present refugee crisis has only served to expose and intensify this raison d'être of borders as exclusionary mechanisms which carry great political, economic, and symbolic weight, frequently much to the detriment of those excluded by them. Primarily drawing from the international political sociological work of Didier Bigo and affiliated scholars, I present a theoretical paper coupled with relevant empirical examples to present a critique of the exclusionary modes of operation …

Reconstructing Grassland Fire History Using Sedimentary Charcoal: Considering Count, Size And Shape, Berangere A. Leys, Julie L. Commerford, Kendra K. Mclauchlan

Dartmouth Scholarship

Fire is a key Earth system process, with 80% of annual fire activity taking place in grassland areas. However, past fire regimes in grassland systems have been difficult to quantify due to challenges in interpreting the charcoal signal in depositional environments. To improve reconstructions of grassland fire regimes, it is essential to assess two key traits: (1) charcoal count, and (2) charcoal shape. In this study, we quantified the number of charcoal pieces in 51 sediment samples of ponds in the Great Plains and tested its relevance as a proxy for the fire regime by examining 13 potential factors influencing …

Can Global Health Governance Contend With Transnational Corporate Activities? A Case Study On The Chinese Tobacco Industry, Xing Gao

Geography Honors Projects

In the past two decades, China’s state-owned tobacco enterprise (CNTC) has expanded its operation and influence abroad under the “going global” strategy. These globalization activities directly and indirectly impact the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first international treaty signed under the WHO auspices. In this project, I explore how certain CNTC expansionary strategies undermine FCTC articles, as well as the ways in which FCTC articles have failed to curb the tobacco industry’s transnational growth. Using international political economy as an overarching framework for the analysis of global health governance, I argue that the FCTC fails to halt the …

Conference Of The Birds: Iranian-Americans, Ethnic Business, And Identity, Delia Walker-Jones

Geography Honors Projects

The United States is home to the largest population of Iranians outside of Iran, an immigrant group that slowly emerged over the latter half of the 20th century, spurred by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent unrest in the mid-2000s. This case study explores the Iranian and Iranian-American-identifying population of the United States, with a geographic focus on the Twin Cities metro area in Minnesota. It delves into several key questions: are Iranian ethnic businesses distinct from those previously suggested in ethnic entrepreneurship case studies? And how do perceptions of Iranian-American identity play a role in the development of these …

The Escalation Of Trump Stormfront And The 2016 Election, Dianne Dentice

Symposium on Arts and Research

Since David Duke ran for public office and was elected to the Louisiana state legislature in 1989, leaders of the far political right have been trying to gain a foothold in mainstream electoral politics. In a campaign tinged with populist rhetoric, Donald Trump emerged victorious in the 2016 election. What does this mean for the American white nationalist movement?

Prescribed Fire And Deer Ticks: A Management Method For The Primary Vector Of Lyme Disease In The Eastern United States, Shane M. Tripp

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The United States is currently amid a public health crisis caused by the bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, that is responsible for Lyme disease. A deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, is the primary vector for these bacteria in the Eastern United States and its explosive population increase and range expansion in the past several decades is responsible for the rapid spread of the disease. Understanding the cause of this growth is dependent on the habitat characteristics that determine the deer tick’s abilities to survive, reproduce, and disperse into new areas and the changes that may have released it from historic limits. Fire suppression …

Mapping Community Space And Place In Mto Wa Mbu, Tanzania Through Surveys And Gis, Jessica Craigg

Georgia College Student Research Events

Cities throughout the African continent have been developing at an unprecedented pace, many of them due to the influence of the tourism industry. This is particularly true in Tanzania, a country famous for its national parks and their draw to tourists who help provide money for development. However, the only way to get the whole story on how to spend this money is through the experiences and needs of the people themselves. This study focuses on a small town in northeastern Tanzania, Mto wa Mbu, situated near Lake Manyara National Park, and its people’s perceptions of the park and community. …

Trends In U.S. Tea Imports: 1991-2015, Evan Kennedy

Honors Theses

Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, and over the past two decades it has experienced a newfound popularity in the United States. Over this time period, ready-to-drink and loose-leaf tea has increased in popularity, whereas tea bags and instant tea declined in popularity. Since the United States produces almost no tea itself, an increase in consumption requires increased imports. Therefore, this paper examines U.S. import trends as a means to begin an examination of consumption. Ten countries (Argentina, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam) provide approximately 80% of the …

Characterizing Large-Scale Meteorological Patterns And Associated Temperature And Precipitation Extremes Over The Northwestern United States Using Self-Organizing Maps, Paul C. Loikith, Benjamin R. Lintner, Alex Sweeney

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The self-organizing maps (SOMs) approach is demonstrated as a way to identify a range of archetypal large-scale meteorological patterns (LSMPs) over the northwestern United States and connect these patterns with local-scale temperature and precipitation extremes. SOMs are used to construct a set of 12 characteristic LSMPs (nodes) based on daily reanalysis circulation fields spanning the range of observed synoptic-scale variability for the summer and winter seasons for the period 1979–2013. Composites of surface variables are constructed for subsets of days assigned to each node to explore relationships between temperature, precipitation, and the node patterns. The SOMs approach also captures interannual …

Human Experience Of Fountain Spaces In Denver And Albuquerque, Susanna Diller L

Geography ETDs

Concerns about water have been at the forefront of public conversation over the last few years, in no small part driven by situations like the drought in California. The drought prompted cities like Los Angeles to turn off public fountains, even though fountains have a very low resource impact. This interaction is more about what a fountain represents; particularly in dry regions, fountains have been used to display power, affluence, and social importance. It has been researched and is now taken for granted that public fountains are a public good, improving microclimates, reducing stress, and adding to the overall quality …

State-Wide Patterns In Diabetes Screening Service: Comparing 3 Medical Insurance Plans, Stephen Anim-Preko

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

In the U.S, diabetes has become one of the major health concerns. In like manner, health insurance coverage is vital to the health needs of individuals. Adults having elevated glucose levels are recommended to receive glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) testing to determine the average blood sugar concentrations. Differences in insurance coverage has significant impact on recommended screenings.

The study analyzes secondary data from 2011 to 2013 for three different health plans being Medicaid, Blue Care Network (BCN) and Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Michigan. Statistical methods were used to ascertain the best regression model for count data and the association …

Modeling Channel Response To Dam Removal In Lansing, Michigan, Using Swat, Ryan Filbin

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

The removal of dams has increased in recent decades in the United States, largely resulting from decaying infrastructure and greater efforts to restore rivers to a more natural, free-flowing state. Dam removal presents the opportunity for increased public safety, improved environmental prosperity, and improved economic prosperity in conjunction with riverfront revitalization projects. The City of Lansing, Michigan, contains two moderate-to high-risk dams along the Grand River that pose a significant risk to the surrounding area in the event of structural failure.

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is applied to model the impacts of the Moores Park Dam and …