Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Dating Late Quaternary Alluvial Fills In The Platte River Valley Using Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating, Jacob C. Bruihler

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Alluvial fills underlying the Platte River Valley in Nebraska record the geologic history of the Platte River in the late Quaternary. This study investigated the alluvium underlying the valley near the cities of North Platte and Kearney, Nebraska. Data obtained from sediment cores drilled in the alluvial deposits was used to investigate the changes in Platte River dynamics on a glacial – interglacial timescale. Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating was used to determine burial ages of recovered sediments and to quantify the thicknesses of the late Pleistocene and Holocene alluvial fills at each study area. Our geochronology depicts considerable differences …

Renewable Energy Matters: Small Hydel Power And Sustainability In India, Madhu N. Rao

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Shared Perspectives Of Divided Space: Perceptions Of The Urban Environment Among Jerusalemites, Andie Duplantis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Multidisciplinary research and philosophical discourse have long explored the complex relationship between the objective environment and subjective human perception. No two humans perceive, experience, and form attitudes about the same phenomenon in exactly the same way. Individual demographics (sex, age) and group identity (culture, religion, ethnicity, political ideology) have been shown to have a profound effect on perception of phenomena; research has also focused on the effect of the physical environment itself. Differences in perception, experience, and resulting behavior have great implications for governance, particularly in regards to planning and development. Recognizing these differences, modern urban planning increasingly seeks to …

Relationship Between Lidar-Derived Canopy Layering And Rainfall Redistribution In Forests Varies With Scale, Daniel Cirincione

GS4 Student Scholars Symposium

Forest canopy can reduce precipitation reaching the ground by up to 50% through interception, storage, and evaporation of droplets from leaf and bark surfaces. This process, called "interception loss," impacts runoff, recharge, flood flashiness, erosion, etc., and cost of stormwater management. It is not well understood how canopy structure affects interception loss, particularly in urban forests. This research addresses this issue by monitoring interception loss variables for a common south eastern US tree species (slash pine) across a natural-to-urban gradient in forest structure. This study considers three different sites to obtain the natural-to-urban gradient. Two of those sites are at …

A Comparison Of Multiple Datasets For Monitoring Thermal Time In Urban Areas Over The U.S. Upper Midwest, Cole Krehbiel, Geoffrey M. Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

Traditional studies of urban climate used air temperature observations from local urban/rural weather stations in order to analyze the general pattern of higher temperatures in urban areas compared with corresponding rural regions, also known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. More recently, satellite remote sensing datasets of land surface temperature have been exploited to monitor UHIs. While closely linked, air temperature and land surface temperature (LST) observations do not measure the same variables. Here we analyze land surface temperature vs.air temperature-based characterization and seasonality of the UHI and the surface UHI (SUHI) from 2003 to 2012 over the …

A General Method To Normalize Landsat Reflectance Data To Nadir Brdf Adjusted Reflectance, David P. Roy, Hankui Zhang, Junchang Ju, Jose Luis Gomez-Dans, Philip E. Lewis, Crystal Barker B. Schaaf, Qingsong Sun, Jian Li, Haiyan Huang, V. Kovalskyy

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Landsat satellites have been providing spectacular imagery of the Earth's surface for over 40 years. However, they acquire images at view angles ±7.5° from nadir that cause small directional effects in the surface reflectance. There are also variations with solar zenith angle over the year that can cause apparent change in reflectance even if the surface properties remain constant. When Landsat data from adjoining paths, or from long time series are used, a model of the surface anisotropy is required to adjust all Landsat observations to a uniform nadir view (primarily for visual consistency, vegetation monitoring, or detection of …

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring For Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, 2011-2015 Summary Report, Isabel W. Ashton, Christopher J. Davis

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

The Northern Great Plains Inventory & Monitoring Program and Fire Effects Program have been monitoring vegetation in Agate Fossil Beds National Monument for over 18 years. While methods have changed slightly, this report summarizes data from over 80 locations from 1998-2015. We use these data to explore status and trends in upland and riparian plant communities, the occurrence of rare plants, and the effects of the Fossil Hills trail installation on the surrounding vegetation. A summary of the current condition (2011-2015) and trends (based on 1998-2015) in plant communities at Agate Fossil Beds NM (AGFO) is found in …

They Come Like The Clouds: Governing The Mountainous Periphery, Jared Sousa

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper addresses the extension of governmental power into the mountainous periphery of the village of Dho Tarap in the Dolpa District of Nepal. New technologies, new markets, and new social dynamics are penetrating the Himalaya and reshaping the connections that mountain people have to the outside world. In this context of connectivity and modernity, the people of Dho Tarap are also being thrust into far closer proximity to the Nepali government. After a series of geopolitical moves in Nepal and China in the 1960s, Dho Tarap as part of an isolated border region has been a part of a …

One Year Later: The Politics And Stories Of Post-Earthquake Nepal, Boyer Andrew

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on April 25^th, 2015. This was followed by a second major earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on May 12^th , 2015. These disasters took the lives of thousands of Nepali people, destroyed hundreds of thousands of structures, and displaced an estimated two million people. Immediately following the disaster, there was an outpouring of humanitarian aid from around the world. This lead to a conference where $4.1 billion USD of reconstruction funds were pledged to Nepal by international donors. Five months later, a new constitution passed into law and an informal blockade of …

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring For Scotts Bluff National Monument, 2011-2015 Summary Report, Isabel W. Ashton, Christopher J. Davis

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

The Northern Great Plains Inventory & Monitoring Program and Fire Effects Program have been monitoring vegetation in Scotts Bluff National Monument for over 18 years. While methods have changed slightly, this report summarizes data from over 80 locations from 1998-2015. Below, we list the questions we asked using these data and provide a summarized answer. For more details see the full report. A summary of the current condition (2011-2015) and trends (based on 1988-2015) in plant communities at Scotts Bluff is found in Table ES-1.

1. What is the current status of plant community composition and structure of …

Air Quality Related Values (Aqrvs) For Northern Great Plains Network (Ngpn) Parks, Effects From Ozone; Visibility Reducing Particles; And Atmospheric Deposition Of Acids, Nutrients And Toxics, Timothy J. Sullivan

United States National Park Service: Publications

Summary

This report describes the Air Quality Related Values (AQRVs) of the Northern Great Plains Network (NGPN). AQRVs are those resources sensitive to air quality and include streams, lakes, soils, vegetation, fish and wildlife, and visibility. This report also describes air pollutant emissions and air quality in NGPN, and their effects on AQRVs. The primary pollutants likely to affect AQRVs include nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) compounds (nitrate [NO₃^-], ammonium [NH₄⁺], and sulfate [SO₄^2-]); ground-level ozone (O₃); haze-causing particles; and airborne toxics.

The 13 parks that are included in …

Coupling Community Preferences With Hydrologic Evaluation Of Low Impact Development Implementation In An Urban Watershed, Corinna M. Fleischmann, Carol Atkinson-Palombo, Joseph T. Bushey, Eric D. Jackson, David W. Payne

Suburban Sustainability

Stormwater runoff, and its associated pollutants, is a major problem in urban watersheds where the runoff is either channeled into surface water bodies or wastewater treatment plants. One emerging Best Management Practice (BMP) to control stormwater runoff is low impact development (LID). The EPA Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) was used to evaluate the hydrologic effectiveness at a watershed scale of five LID technologies (vegetated swales, bioretention cells, porous pavement, rain barrels and tree boxes) in an existing, typical urban watershed. As implementation focused on public transportation areas, hydrologic effectiveness of runoff reduction was assessed as a function of roadway length: …

Cruising The Canal: A Methodological Approach To Assessing Trail Conditions Along The Hennepin Canal Parkway, Alyssa Clarida

Geography: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Trail conditions in the United States are degrading and trail systems do not receive enough funding to repair them in a timely manner. Park managers often conduct trail assessments to collect trail condition data. They use this data to make timely and judicious decisions regarding trail repairs. However, many trail assessments are time consuming, costly, and require high levels of expertise. This project creates a trail assessment methodology that can be applied to a trail with limited funds. The final methodology was efficient, succinct, accurate, and simple to conduct. It uses a problem based methodology where every instance of degradation …

Clinton Regional Trail Analysis, Dr. Christopher Strunk, Victoria Lason

2015-2016: Clinton, Iowa

No abstract provided.

Conterminous United States Crop Field Size Quantification From Multi-Temporal Landsat Data, Lin Yan Dr., David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Agricultural field size is indicative of the degree of agricultural capital investment, mechanization and labor intensity, and it is ecologically important. A recently published automated computational methodology to extract agricultural crop fields from weekly 30 m Web Enabled Landsat data (WELD) time series was refined and applied to a year of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhance Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) acquisitions for all of the conterminous United States (CONUS). For the first time, spatially explicit CONUS field size maps and derived information are presented. A total of 4,182,777 fields were extracted with mean and median …

Model Lessons About Geography And Teaching With Primary Sources, Mary Arnold, Tabitha M. Richards, Helen Peynado, Licinia Stoian, Emily Pahlke, Alison Norton, Melanie A. Mays, Deidre Pribula, Deborah Jones, Mason Mahaffie, Emily Veale, Kerry Zambrano, Scott Bailon, Elena Kavanaugh, Stephanie Burns, Delia Wallis

Instructional Materials

Model Lessons for Teaching with Primary Sources to use with The Student Atlas of Oregon.

The Upper Peninsula As It Was: What The Europeans Encountered, Robert Archibald

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

This essay establishes a baseline for measuring environmental change caused by the influx of Europeans beginning in the seventeenth century. In it the author describes the natural forces including volcanism, sedimentation, geologic metamorphism, and glaciation as natural forces that shaped the landscape of the Upper Peninsula and created deposits of minerals. He uses survey notes, travel accounts and journals to describe flora and fauna prior to large-scale commercial exploitation

Bakken Crude Oil And The Changing Logistics Of The American Oil Industry, Austin Rau

Independent Research

The extraction of Bakken crude oil in the Williston Basin of North Dakota is transforming how petroleum is shipped. Before 2008, North American oil was carried primarily via pipeline from source regions to refineries along the Gulf Coast or to metropolitan areas close to consumers. The current pipeline system is ill-equipped to accommodate massive volumes of oil from this previously low producing region. Lack of infrastructure and high demand for “light tight oil” (LTO) led to the use of railroads as a means of moving the product to refineries across the nation. Transporting oil via rail over long distances was …

Late Holocene Expansion Of Ponderosa Pine (Pinus Ponderosa) In The Central Rocky Mountains, Usa, Jodi R. Norris, Julio L. Betancourt, Stephen T. Jackson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Aim: Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) experienced one of the most extensive and rapid post-glacial plant migrations in western North America. We used plant macrofossils from woodrat (Neotoma) middens to reconstruct its spread in the Central Rocky Mountains, identify other vegetation changes coinciding with P. ponderosa expansion at the same sites, and relate P. ponderosa migrational history to both its modern phylogeography and to a parallel expansion by Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma).

Location: Central Rocky Mountains, Wyoming and Montana, and Black Hills, Wyoming and South Dakota, USA.

Methods: Plant macrofossils were analysed in …

Simulating The Impacts Of Land-Use Land-Cover Changes On Cropland Carbon Fluxes In The Midwest Of The United States, Zhengpeng Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the major drivers of the cropland carbon fluxes is important for carbon management and greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture. Past studies found that agricultural land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes, such as changes in cropland production technologies, tillage practices, and planted crop species, could have large impacts on carbon fluxes. However, the impacts remain highly uncertain at regional to global scales. Satellite remote sensing is commonly used to create products with geospatial information on LULC changes. This geospatial information can be integrated into biogeochemical models to simulate the spatial and temporal patterns of carbon fluxes. We used the General Ensemble …