Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Multiple Methods Of Public Engagement: Disaggregating Socio-Spatial Data For Environmental Planning In Western Washington, Usa, Rebecca J. Mclain, David Banis, Alexa Todd, Lee Cerveny

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highlights

• The effectiveness of participatory GIS approaches at engaging different publics was explored.

• Online surveys engaged urbanites; community workshops engaged rural residents.

• Urban and rural residents went to similar places but engaged in different activities.

• Use of multiple data collection methods will broaden public engagement.

• Mapping behavior studies are needed to improve understandings of PPGIS data quality.

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 …

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, …

Geopolitics Of Rare Earth Elements, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Rare earth elements (REE) contain unique chemical physical properties such as lanthamum, are found in small concentrations, need extensive precise properties 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, military, and …

Mobile-Based Sidewalk Inventory App For Smart Communities, Health, And Safety, Madhav Erraguntla, Dursun Delen, Rupesh K. Agrawal, Karthic Madanagopal, Richard Mayer

Suburban Sustainability

As the United States and other nations strive to cope with the obesity epidemic (NCHS, 2015), progressive communities are developing sidewalk infrastructure to promote physical activity and health. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that community-based interventions like neighborhood walk, bike programs etc. have shown to be effective in promoting physical activity and health. Smart cities are embracing the development of community trails and promoting their use to increase physical activity among youth and adults. System implementation, data collection, and analysis were performed from January 2015 through July 2015. To promote these objectives, communities and cities need accurate information …

Removing Dams, Constructing Science: Coproduction Of Undammed Riverscapes By Politics, Finance, Environment, Society And Technology, Zbigniew J. Grabowski, Ashlie Denton, Mary Ann Rozance, Marissa Matsler, Sarah Kidd

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Dam removal in the United States has continued to increase in pace and scope, transitioning from a dam-safety engineering practice to an integral component of many large-scale river restoration programmes. At the same time, knowledge around dam removals remains fragmented by disciplinary silos and a lack of knowledge transfer between communities of practice around dam removal and academia. Here we argue that dam removal science, as a study of large restoration-oriented infrastructure interventions, requires the construction of an interdisciplinary framework to integrate knowledge relevant to decision-making on dam removal. Drawing upon infrastructure studies, relational theories of coproduction of knowledge and …

Hermeneutic Philosophies Of Social Science: Introduction, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Values Mapping And Counter-Mapping In Contested Landscapes: An Olympic Peninsula (Usa) Case Study, Rebecca J. Mclain, Lee Cerveny, Kelly Biedenweg, David Banis

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Indigenous peoples, local communities, and other groups can use counter-mapping to make land claims, identify areas of desired access, or convey cultural values that diverge from the dominant paradigm. While sometimes created independently, counter-maps also can be formulated during public participation mapping events sponsored by natural resource planning agencies. Public participation mapping elicits values, uses, and meanings of landscapes from diverse stakeholders, yet individuals and advocacy groups can use the mapping process as an opportunity to make visible strongly held values and viewpoints. We present three cases from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State to illustrate how stakeholders intentionally used …

Quantifying Resilience Of Multiple Ecosystem Services And Biodiversity In A Temperate Forest Landscape, Elena Cantarello, Adrian C. Newton, Phillip A. Martin, Paul M. Evans, Arjan Gosal, Melissa S. Lucash

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Resilience is increasingly being considered as a new paradigm of forest management among scientists, practitioners, and policymakers. However, metrics of resilience to environmental change are lacking. Faced with novel disturbances, forests may be able to sustain existing ecosystem services and biodiversity by exhibiting resilience, or alternatively these attributes may undergo either a linear or nonlinear decline. Here we provide a novel quantitative approach for assessing forest resilience that focuses on three components of resilience, namely resistance, recovery, and net change, using a spatially explicit model of forest dynamics. Under the pulse set scenarios, we explored the resilience of nine ecosystem …

Finding Water Scarcity Amid Abundance Using Human–Natural System Models, William K. Jaeger, Adell Amos, Daniel P. Bigelow, Heejun Chang, David R. Conklin, Roy Haggerty, Christian Langpap, Kathleen Moore, Philip Mote, Anne W. Nolin, Andrew J. Plantinga, Cynthia L. Schwartz, Desiree Tullos, David P. Turner

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Water scarcity afflicts societies worldwide. Anticipating water shortages is vital because of water’s indispensable role in social-ecological systems. But the challenge is daunting due to heterogeneity, feedbacks, and water’s spatial-temporal sequencing throughout such systems. Regional system models with sufficient detail can help address this challenge. In our study, a detailed coupled human–natural system model of one such region identifies how climate change and socioeconomic growth will alter the availability and use of water in coming decades. Results demonstrate how water scarcity varies greatly across small distances and brief time periods, even in basins where water may be relatively abundant overall. …

Man And Land: Competing Ontologies, Colonial Legacies, And The Quest For Food Sovereignty, Savannah Smith

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Land is an ontological reality, which is at the center of different relationships to land. These relationships are situated in and a product of historical and spatial process that have an under lying power geometry. These different understandings of land tenure can create conflict when they intersect with competing interests in the same space. In Cameroon, this is currently the case in the form of large-scale land acquisitions, which often conflict with local communities as multinational corporations and local elites acquire land concessions with facilitation by the government in the name of development. This paper aims to understand this issue …

Land Insecurity In Gulu, Uganda: A Clash Between Culture And Capitalism, Zachary Slotkin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper presents the causes and consequences of land insecurity in Gulu, Uganda. In order to address this important and often sensitive issue, the paper analyzes the role of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency and the government’s policy of forced encampment during the insurgency in contributing to land insecurity, causing widespread displacement among former internally displaced persons (IDPs). It further explores the importance of land ownership in providing economic productivity to rural landowners, as well as the nature of customary land tenure in Acholi culture and the government’s efforts to privatize communal land, to give a background on the …

Desert Pool {If Every Desert Was Once A Sea}, Karen Miranda Abel

The Goose

Desert Pool {If every desert was once a sea} is a site-specific art project by Canadian artist Karen Miranda Abel completed in 2016 while artist-in-residence at Joya: arte + ecología, an arts-led research centre situated in an alpine desert within a national park in southern Spain. The elemental installation represents an envisioning of the ancient sea that occupied the Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park millions of years before the current desert ecology, a time when its highest mountain peaks may have been islands.

Southern Annular Mode Drives Multicentury Wildfire Activity In Southern South America, Andrés Holz, Juan Paritsis, Ignacio A. Mundo, Thomas T. Veblen, Thomas Kitzberger, Grant J. Williamson, Ezequiel Aráoz, Carlos Bustos-Schindler, Mauro E. González, H. Ricardo Grau, Juan M. Quezada

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is the main driver of climate variability at mid to high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, affecting wildfire activity, which in turn pollutes the air and contributes to human health problems and mortality, and potentially provides strong feedback to the climate system through emissions and land cover changes. Here we report the largest Southern Hemisphere network of annually resolved tree ring fire histories, consisting of 1,767 fire-scarred trees from 97 sites (from 22 °S to 54 °S) in southern South America (SAS), to quantify the coupling of SAM and regional wildfire variability using recently created …

Examination Of Sentinel-2a Multi-Spectral Instrument (Msi) Reflectance Anisotropy And The Suitability Of A General Method To Normalize Msi Reflectance To Nadir Brdf Adjusted Reflectance, David P. Roy, Jian Li, Hankui Zhang, Lin Yan Dr., Haiyan Huang, Zhongbin Li

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Sentinel-2A multi-spectral instrument (MSI) acquires multi-spectral reflective wavelength observations with directional effects due to surface reflectance anisotropy and changes in the solar and viewing geometry. Directional effects were examined by considering two ten day periods of Sentinel-2A data acquired close to the solar principal and orthogonal planes over approximately 20° × 10° of southern Africa. More than 6.6 million (January 2016) and 10.6 million (April 2016) pairs of reflectance observations sensed 3 or 7 days apart in the forward and backscatter directions in overlapping Sentinel-2A orbit swaths were considered. The Sentinel-2A data were projected into the MODIS sinusoidal projection …

Land Surface Phenology And Seasonality Using Cool Earthlight In Croplands Of Eastern Africa And The Linkages To Crop Production, Woubet G. Alemu, Geoffrey M. Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

Across Eastern Africa, croplands cover 45 million ha. The regional economy is heavily dependent on small holder traditional rain-fed peasant agriculture (up to 90%), which is vulnerable to extreme weather events such as drought and floods that leads to food insecurity. Agricultural production in the region is moisture limited. Weather station data are scarce and access is limited, while optical satellite data are obscured by heavy clouds limiting their value to study cropland dynamics. Here, we characterized cropland dynamics in Eastern Africa for 2003–2015 using precipitation data from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and a passive microwave dataset of land …

Utilizing A Consumer-Grade Camera System To Quantify Surface Reflectance, Joseph J. Lehnert

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Consumer-grade camera systems are often employed in aerial remote sensing to provide insight into patterns and processes of interest to science and industry, a trend that has largely been encouraged by the rapid growth of the small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) industry. However, little research exists on the ability of these systems to accurately measure surface reflectance in specific wavebands, a crucial consideration for many remote sensing applications. This research was conducted on the premise that with proper equipment and calibration techniques consumer-grade cameras would be capable of accurately measuring surface reflectance in user-defined wavebands of interest. A stereo-pair, Fujifilm …

Using The 500 M Modis Land Cover Product To Derive A Consistent Continental Scale 30 M Landsat Land Cover Classification, Hankui Zhang, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Classification is a fundamental process in remote sensing used to relate pixel values to land cover classes present on the surface. Over large areas land cover classification is challenging particularly due to the cost and difficulty of collecting representative training data that enable classifiers to be consistent and locally reliable. A novel methodology to classify large volume Landsat data using high quality training data derived from the 500 m MODIS land cover product is demonstrated and used to generate a 30 m land cover classification for all of North America between 20°N and 50°N. Publically available 30 m global monthly …