Geography Commons^™

Using Storm-Watersheds And A Multi-Criteria Decision Model For Biodiversity Conservation In An Urban Environment, Christina M. Chiappetta

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Many planning and land use decisions in New York State are controlled at the local (town or municipal) level, not an optimal scale for planning and implementing resource conservation management. Watershed boundaries provide a more ecologically meaningful scale for conservation, because they capture a full range of natural ecosystem processes that span political boundaries. However, defining an urban watershed is complicated by stormwater infrastructure, so standard topographic watershed boundaries may be inadequate for urban resource conservation even when applied at the watershed scale. Storm-watersheds distort both municipal and watershed boundaries, because the flows are redirected in ways that are often …

What We Can Learn From Small Units Of Analysis, Andrew Palmer Wheeler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The dissertation is aimed at advancing knowledge of the correlates of crime at small geographic units of analysis. I begin by detailing what motivates examining crime at small places, and show how aggregation creates confounds that limit causal inference. Local and spatial effects are confounded when using aggregate units, so when the researcher wishes to distinguish between these two types of effects it should guide what unit of analysis is chosen. To illustrate these differences, I generate simulations of what happens to effect estimates when you aggregate a micro level spatial effects model or presume a neighborhood effects model.

Discourses Of Disaster, Recovery, And Recovery Actors In Post-Earthquake Haiti : A Critical Discourse Analysis, Juliana Svistova

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract

Carnival, Protest, And Community Identity: West Louisville And The Kentucky Derby Festival, Benjamin L. Blandford

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation uses “Derby Cruising” in order to open up the tension between African Americans in Louisville and the Kentucky Derby Festival, especially as that tension was manifest in the spaces of West Louisville. The Kentucky Derby Festival has long served as a site of mediation between people of color and official Louisville. Derby Cruising (1998-2005) and protests around the open housing movement (1967) and anti-police violence (2000) are presented as three critical sites where African American expressions of identity, representation, and belonging have been negotiated through the Kentucky Derby Festival at particular historical moments and in particular places in …

Environmental Governance In The Carbon Economy: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions In California's Cap-And-Trade Program, Patrick M. Bigger

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Since 2006 California has been pursuing the most ambitious climate change policy in the United States, implementing a suite of greenhouse gas reduction measures ranging from automobile refrigerant disposal rules to clean energy standards for electric power utilities. The most significant of these measures is the creation of a cap‐and‐trade program. Through this program, regulators seek to create a knowable price‐signal to incentivize emissions reductions among polluters. Using a suite of ethnographic methods, this dissertation looks at the people, ideas, and institutions that have been mobilized in the creation of California’s cap‐and‐ trade program.

Substantively, the dissertation engages with three …

Geo-Based Technologies, Tourists And Bushfires In Northern Australia, Donnell Holloway, David Holloway, Lelia Green

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper analyses how the use of geo-based technologies can play a role in the safety of tourism operations and tourist travel — especially in the case of bushfires. The study uses data from 42 qualitative interviews with tourists, tourism operators and other stakeholders in the remote Kununurra area of Western Australia carried out in 2012 and 2013. We contend that the spatiotemporal nature of tourism has stimulated considerable development in a range of geo - based technologies. The paper argues that geo-based technologies are an integral part of fire suppression and mitigation practices, and that tourists’ familiarity with geo-based …

Trends And Spatial Variability In Dry Spells Across The South-Central United States, Jill C. Trepanier, Michael J. Roberts, Barry D. Keim

Faculty Publications

Annual average and maximum spells with no precipitation in the southern United States are analyzed. In this study, dry spells are defined as consecutive days with no measurable rainfall. The study area includes 70 weather stations in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Interarrival times between daily precipitation records for each station provide the data for this analysis. All 70 stations were analyzed from 1950 to 2013. Six stations that each have data for more than 100 years were analyzed for the period from 1908 to 2013. Approximately 25% of stations in the region show significant negative trends through …

Analyses Of Potential Ravine And Bluff Stabilization Sites Within The Blue Earth And Le Sueur River Basins, Anna My-Tien T. Tran

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has listed much of the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) basin as impaired waters due to excessive turbidity, sedimentation, and nutrient loading. Of particular importance are the associated environmental problems (e.g. eutrophication, habitat and wetland loss, loss of biodiversity, and changes in water quality) that have developed within Lake Pepin, a popular recreational riverine lake of the UMR. Three major drainages contribute to these issues and empty in to the UMR near Lake Pepin - the Minnesota River Basin (MRB), St. Croix River, and UMR. The MRB makes up approximately one-third of the drainage …

Overcoming Uncertainty And Barriers To Adoption Of Blue-Green Infrastructure For Urban Flood Risk Management, Colin R. Thorne, E. C. Lawson, Connie P. Ozawa, Samantha Hamlin, Leonard A. Smith

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) and Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) are increasingly recognised as vital components of urban flood risk management. However, uncertainty regarding their hydrologic performance and lack of confidence concerning their public acceptability create concerns and challenges that limit their widespread adoption. This paper investigates barriers to implementation of BGI in Portland, Oregon, using the Relevant Dominant Uncertainty (RDU) approach. Two types of RDU are identified: scientific RDUs related to physical processes that affect infrastructure performance and service provision, and socio-political RDUs that reflect a lack of confidence in socio-political structures and public preferences for BGI. We find that socio-political …

Determining Rockfall Volumes In Three Sites Along Habs Mountain Road In Southwestern Saudi Arabia, Using Lidar Technology, Abdullah Ayed Al-Otaibi

Masters Theses

"The rugged elevated topography is a characteristic feature of the western and southwestern regions of Saudi Arabia. Few arterial roads connect the scattered villages of these regions to major cities, such as Habs Road in Jazan region. Rock fall poses a serious hazard to people, property and animals along the rock cuts of this road. Although no traditional Rockfall studies have previously been applied to this road, accessibility and rock formation shape and structure variability influenced the choice of using Terrestrial Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) technology to calculate the volume of rockfall at selected sites along this road.

Software …

Exploring Daily Dietary Behaviour Through Examination Of The Food Choice Process, Ivy Dam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As obesity rates continue to rise, the negative health impacts associated with unhealthy food choice behaviour remain an issue of concern. Observing the connection between food consumption and weight gain alone is likely not sufficient to understanding people’s construction of food choices. More detailed examination of a novel concept, the overall food choice process (FCP), including food thoughts, plans, purchases, and preparation, leading up to food intake/consumption may contribute to an improved understanding of food choice behaviour.

This thesis explored the wider FCP that gives rise to observed food consumption by testing passive video recording technologies, …

Exploring The Moments And Memory Of Tourist Experiences In Peru, Sarah Quinlan Cutler

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Tourist experiences offer anomalous and complex interactions between tourists and tourism places. The study of these experiences is the focus of this doctoral dissertation, which aims to explore subjective aspects of the tourist experience. This exploration involves the conceptualisation of tourist experiences and the development of a multi-phased research design that captures the perceptions of momentary in situ experiences and examines how these perceptions change over time.

The dissertation addresses under studied areas in tourism and answers calls for research into immediate conscious experiences and tourist centred methodology. This investigation into tourist experiences involves 21 participants who took an educational …

Tentative Securities: 26/11, Israel And The Politics Of Mobility, Rhys A. Machold

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines the global mobility of security knowhow in relation to the management of terrorism in megacities. Specifically, it offers three insights. First, it shows how historical events are performed as sites in need of transnational policy intervention. Second, it enables an understanding of how and why the sourcing of policy ‘models’ actually takes place. Third, it sheds light on how mobile policy schemes travel geographically and are put to work in particular contexts. In doing so, it elaborates on the conditions under which policies move geographically but also addresses the kinds of constraints and contradictions they face.

The …

A Critical Review Of Ontario’S Blue Box Program: Identifying And Testing Best Practices In Printed Paper And Packaging Recycling, Calvin Lakhan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation undertook a critical review of four recycling policies used in Ontario which are designed to promote household waste diversion and reduce material management costs. These policies include:

1) Municipal funding should be directly tied to program performance relative to their peer group. 2) All municipalities should make investments in recycling promotion and education, and will be reimbursed $1 per household for all recycling promotion and education expenditures

3) Where possible, municipalities should implement pay as you throw schemes for household waste as a means to minimize the amount of material being disposed of in the waste stream.

4) …

A New Technique For Modeling The Geomorphology Of A Slow Moving, Soft-Slope Landslide Using Terrestrial Lidar, Nathan Bradley Rohrbaugh

Masters Theses

"Soft slope movement is a big problem whether it involves an engineered slope, one that is near infrastructure, or both. Active landslides that fail slowly sometimes allow ample time to affect remedial works. In order to plan effective remedial works, there needs to be a model of the entire geometry of the slide. This thesis describes a new approach to evaluate the morphology of slope geometry using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data obtained from simple targets strategically positioned on a slide body. The data was gathered in three-month intervals over a period of one year to allow enough time …

A Composite Spatial Model Incorporating Groundwater Vulnerability And Environmental Disturbance To Guide Land Management, Johanna L. Kovarik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research has long recognized and studied the dynamics of groundwater processes. More recently, groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) are being recognized for their diversity and vulnerability to anthropogenic impact. Groundwater in karst landscapes presents a distinctive situation where flow through the subsurface often moves rapidly on the scale of days and weeks as opposed to years or millennia in other systems. This distinctive situation of karst systems and their vulnerability to human impacts necessitate an integrated and multifaceted approach for the management of these important resources. However, development of such an approach is complicated by the difficulty of obtaining detailed data …

Between Warrior And Helplessness In The Valley Of Azawa - The Struggle Of The Kel Tamashek In The War Of The Sahel, Patrick James Christian

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an Investigation into the Tuareg involvement in violent conflict in the Sahara and the Sahel of North Africa from a sociological psychological perspective of unmet human needs. The research begins by establishing the structure and texture of the sociological, psychological, and emotional life patterns of their existence when not involved in violent conflict. This is followed by an examination of the pathology of Tuareg social structures that are engaged in intra and inter communal violence as perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. The first part of the research establishes normal conditions of the sociological life cycle and highlights natural …

Geography Standard Posters: The Use Of Geography, Center For Spatial Analysis And Research. Portland State University

Instructional Materials

The poster looks at applying geography to interpret the past and applying geography to interpret the present and plan for the future.

Geography Standard Posters: Human Systems, Center For Spatial Analysis And Research. Portland State University

Instructional Materials

The poster looks at characteristics of human populations, the complexity of earth's cultural mosaics, patterns of economic independence, patterns of human settlement, how do urban and rural areas differ, and the division and control of Earth's surface.

Changing States: Using State-And-Transition Models To Evaluate Channel Evolution Following Dam Removal Along The Clark Fork River, Montana, Christopher Van Dyke

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Located just east of Missoula, Montana, Milltown Dam stood from 1908 to 2008 immediately downstream of the Clark Fork River’s confluence with the Blackfoot River. After the discovery of arsenic-contaminated groundwater in the nearby community of Milltown, as well as extensive deposits of contaminated sediment in the dam’s upstream reservoir, in 1981, the area was designated a Superfund site – along with much of the Upper Clark Fork Watershed. This motivated the eventual decision to remove the dam, perform environmental remediation, and reconstruct approximately five kilometers of the Clark Fork River and its floodplain. This study is part conceptual and …