Spatial Science Commons^™

A Subspecies-Level Database Of Amazonian Bird Distributions, With Inferences On Suture Zones And Conservation, Marco Antonio Rego

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Amazonia has the largest and most biodiverse tropical forest on the planet. However, the distributions of its species are still poorly understood, even for well-studied vertebrates such as birds. Available distribution maps for Amazonian birds often lack accuracy in delimiting the area where species occur. Existing distributional information for Amazonian birds is often limited to species-level level taxonomy, even though many Amazonian bird subspecies represent biological species. Here, I investigate the geographic distributions of 4,148 bird taxa (species and subspecies) using museum scientific specimens as the primary source of data. To build the data base I use more than 600,000 …

A Multi-Method Exploration Of Health Disparities And Covid-19 Incidence And Mortality In The United States, S M Asger Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The 21^st century experienced several health crises, especially in the form of infectious disease outbreaks such as the SARS outbreak in 2003, the H1N1 in 2009, and Ebola outbreaks in 2013. However, none has produced a worldwide socio-economic and health impact compared to the recent pandemic, known as COVID-19. As of October 4, 2022, more than 614 million cases with 6 million deaths have been reported worldwide. The United States is currently in the leading position with more than 98 million cases and 1 million deaths. The pandemic, however, did not impact the entire region similarly, and the infections …

Lidar Field Data Collection For 3d Cartography, Danny Jang

Symposium of Student Scholars

Remote sensing using LiDAR technology for terrestrial mapping can be done using airborne or ground-based methods. Ground-based methods of LiDAR scanning have the favorable advantage of being much more cost-effective compared to the majority of aerial choices (balloons and drones might overcome this advantage in the future) for small-area large-scale cartography. LiDAR data collection has been traditionally utilized for urban applications, forest applications, agricultural applications, and geoscience applications. This student research aims to use the data gathered from this process for crafting 3D maps using cost-effective 3D printers.

Species Data And Vector Modeling: Evaluating Datasets For Improved Models Of Ixodes Ricinus Tick Distribution In Europe Under A Changing Climate, Steven Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To increase capacity for monitoring and surveillance of tick-borne diseases, publicly available tick distribution and climate change datasets are required to create accurate predictive distribution models. It is difficult, however, to assess model accuracy and utility when using incomplete datasets.  The more recent development of comprehensive tick databases for Europe and availability of climate change scenarios from multiple IPCC Assessment Reports allows for improved modeling efforts. Multiple tick datasets were combined and three climate change projections were compared by predicting current and future distributions of Ixodes ricinus ticks in Europe using the MaxEnt species distribution model. Overall, much of Europe …

Learning From Public Spaces In Historic Cities, Cody Josh Kucharski

Symposium of Student Scholars

Successful public spaces in cities are key for enhancing social cohesion and improving health and safety. Learning from historic cities involves the development of representational and analytical tools aimed at capturing their essence as places of human interaction. The research reports findings of the spatial analysis of twenty Adriatic and Ionian coastal cities, which addresses the question of how the network of public spaces calibrates different degrees of spatial enclosure necessary for creating successful social interactions. Cities in the littoral region include well-preserved historic centers that are renowned for the successful integration of urban squares into the urban fabric. For …

Estimation Of Economic Risk From Coastal Natural Hazards In Louisiana, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Louisiana, U.S.A., is among the most vulnerable areas globally to coastal natural hazards, with risk vulnerability likely increasing. The risks associated with non-tropical-cyclone hazards in Louisiana’s coastal zone have been understudied. This research enhances present and future (i.e., 2050) Louisiana risk assessment using locally-weighted, model-based hazard frequency/intensity and population projections.

Results suggest that property risks associated with extreme cold temperature and tornado are and will remain costlier than those for hail and lightning. Property risks of extreme cold temperature and hail are projected to decrease with the expected warming temperatures, with those of all four of these hazards peaking in …

Ancient Lowland Maya Neighborhoods: Average Nearest Neighbor Analysis And Kernel Density Models, Environments, And Urban Scale, Amy E. Thompson, John P. Walden, Adrian Z. Chase, Scott R. Hutson, Damien Marken, Bernadette Cap, Eric Fries, M. Rodrigo Guzman Piedrasanta, Timothy S. Hare, Sherman W. Horn Iii, George J. Micheletti, Shane M. Montgomery, Jessica Munson, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Kyle Shaw-Müller, Traci Ardren, Jaime J. Awe, M. Kathryn Brown, Michael Callaghan, Claire E. Ebert, Anabel Ford, Rafael A. Guerra, Julie A. Hoggarth, Brigitte Kovacevich, John M. Morris, Holley Moyes, Terry G. Powis, Jason Yaeger, Brett A. Houk, Keith M. Prufer, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Many humans live in large, complex political centers, composed of multi-scalar communities including neighborhoods and districts. Both today and in the past, neighborhoods form a fundamental part of cities and are defined by their spatial, architectural, and material elements. Neighborhoods existed in ancient centers of various scales, and multiple methods have been employed to identify ancient neighborhoods in archaeological contexts. However, the use of different methods for neighborhood identification within the same spatiotemporal setting results in challenges for comparisons within and between ancient societies. Here, we focus on using a single method—combining Average Nearest Neighbor (ANN) and Kernel Density (KD) …

Participatory Mapping To Address Neighborhood Level Data Deficiencies For Food Security Assessment In Southeastern Virginia, Usa, Nicole S. Hutton, George Mcleod, Thomas R. Allen, Christopher Davis, Alexander Garnand, Heather Richter, Prachi P. Chaven, Leslie Hoglund, Jill Comess, Matthew Herman, Brian Martin, Cynthia Romero

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Background: Food is not equitably available. Deficiencies and generalizations limit national datasets, food security assessments, and interventions. Additional neighborhood level studies are needed to develop a scalable and transferable process to complement national and internationally comparative data sets with timely, granular, nuanced data. Participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) offer a means to address these issues by digitizing local knowledge.

Methods: The objectives of this study were two-fold: (i) identify granular locations missing from food source and risk datasets and (ii) examine the relation between the spatial, socio-economic, and agency contributors to food security. Twenty-nine subject matter experts from three cities …

Hydrological Drought Forecasting Using A Deep Transformer Model, Amobichukwu C. Amanambu, Joann Mossa, Yin-Hsuen Chen

University Administration Publications

Hydrological drought forecasting is essential for effective water resource management planning. Innovations in computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) have been incorporated into Earth science research domains to improve predictive performance for water resource planning and disaster management. Forecasting of future hydrological drought can assist with mitigation strategies for various stakeholders. This study uses the transformer deep learning model to forecast hydrological drought, with a benchmark comparison with the long short-term memory (LSTM) model. These models were applied to the Apalachicola River, Florida, with two gauging stations located at Chattahoochee and Blountstown. Daily stage-height data from the period 1928–2022 were …

Acid Mine Drainage In The Shamokin Creek Watershed: A Spatial Analysis Of Economic And Environmental Consequences Of Coal Mining, Ben Shimer

Student Project Reports

No abstract provided.

Expulsive Greening: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of Green Gentrification In The Resilience Paradigm, Brooklyn 2010–2020, Rose Jimenez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: This project analyzes the spatial coincidence between gentrification typologies and urban greening in Brooklyn, New York from 2010 to 2020. Assets formed under the NYC Green Infrastructure Program were chosen as a proxy for urban greening to represent the spatial practice specifically within the 21st-century climate change resilience paradigm of development. Methods: First, five indexes measuring variations of economic and demographic conditions related to gentrification were applied to Brooklyn for comparative analysis: NOAA’s Social Vulnerability Indicators of Gentrification Pressure, The NYC Heat Vulnerability Index, The Small Area Index of Gentrification, Typologies of Gentrification and Displacement, and The Housing Risk …

Forecasted Climate Analysis From 2000 To 2100 Using Rcp 4.5 And Rcp 8.5 Model Scenario As A Hazard Early-Warning System In Prague City, Czech Republic, Risty Khoirunisa

Smart City

In the last decades, the increasing number of populations in urban areas is dramatically increased. According to the to the 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects more people live in urban areas, around 55 percent of the world’s population in 2018 and are projected into two thirds of global population in 2050. As the world continues to growth, the lands need to be converted thus deforestation happen. If this continues, the greenhouse gas emission will increase and the climate change will become a threat in the future. Therefore, it become essential to understand how the climate will change in the …

Park Equity Modeling: A Case Study Of Asheville, North Carolina, Anisa Young

All Theses

Parks and greenspaces are publicly available entities that serve the vital purpose of promoting multiple aspects of human welfare. Unfortunately, the existence of park disparities is commonplace within the park setting. Specifically, marginalized individuals encounter limited park access, insufficient amenity provision, and poor maintenance. To remedy these disparities, we propose a process in which we select candidate park facilities and utilize facility location models to determine the optimal primary parks from both existing and candidate sites.

We note that platforms currently exist to identify the geographical areas where residents lack sufficient access to parks. However, these platforms do not yet …

Gis Automated Delineation And Analysis Of Cancer Service Areas In The United States, Changzhen Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Delineating a meaningful and reliable geographic unit pertaining to cancer care is essential in examining geographic variations in cancer care for better analysis, management, and planning. Public health researchers have devoted great efforts to defining various service areas, which; however, lack scientific rigor or are unrepresentative of the highly specialized cancer care markets, and their methods have become obsolete in the era of big data and high geo-computation. This study develops the “Spatially Constrained Leiden (ScLeiden)” method, a network community detection algorithm in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and applies it to delineate a series of coherent cancer service …

Differentiating Fissure-Fed Lava Flow Types And Facies Using Radar And Lidar: An Example From The 2014–2015 Holuhraun Lava Flow-Field, Gavin Douglas Tolometti, Catherine D. Neish, Christopher W. Hamilton, Gordon R. Osinski, Antero Kukko, Joana R.C. Voigt

Earth Sciences Publications

Distinguishing between lava types and facies using remote sensing data is important for interpreting the emplacement history of lava flow-fields on Earth and other planetary bodies. Lava facies typically include a mixture of lava types and record the collective emplacement history of material preserved at a particular location. We seek to determine if lava facies in the 2014–2015 Holuhraun lava flow-field are discernible using radar roughness analysis. Furthermore, we also seek to distinguish between lava types using high resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data. We extracted circular polarization ratios (CPR) from the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar and …

Cityengine As A Tool For Visualizing Neighborhood Change: An Initial Study, Zach Noyes

City and Regional Planning

Urban planning is reliant upon genuine public engagement to ensure that planning and policy decisions reflect the ideas shared by the public. Because planning is a profession largely focused on the physical and built implications of more abstract planning concepts, effective graphic communication is critical to securing public support and understanding of policy decisions. ESRI's CityEngine uses procedural modeling technology to render personally-tailored scenes to non-planner members of the public, and shows potential to positively change the way that planners generate graphic representations of physical impacts of policy changes. This initial study establishes a methodology for determining the efficacy of …

Modeling And Predicting Geospatial Teen Crash Frequency, Sonu Mathew, Srinivas S. Pulugurtha, Sarvani Duvvuri

Mineta Transportation Institute

This research project 1) evaluates the effect of road network, demographic, and land use characteristics on road crashes involving teen drivers, and, 2) develops and compares the predictability of local and global regression models in estimating teen crash frequency. The team considered data for 201 spatially distributed road segments in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, USA for the evaluation and obtained data related to teen crashes from the Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) database. The team extracted demographic and land use characteristics using two different buffer widths (0.25 miles and 0.5 miles) at each selected road segment, with the number of …

Influence Of Altitude And Scan Angle On Uas-Lidar Ground Height Measurement Accuracy In Juncus Roemerianus Scheele (Black Needle Rush)-Dominated Marshes, Michael Amelunke

Master's Theses

Coastal marshes are influenced by complex interactions among environmental and human factors. Marsh plant communities exist across subtle elevation gradients which are highly influenced by the local tidal regime. To better understand these dynamic conditions, improved methodologies for acquiring accurate elevation values are a necessity in marsh research and management. However, overestimation of marsh elevation values obtained from remote sensing is common due to vegetation characteristics. The goal of this study was to address this problem by determining the optimum altitude and scan angle for Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) collection using an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) within Juncus roemerianus …

Using Lidar To Estimate Carbon Sequestration Of Evergreen Trees At Eastern Washington University (Ewu) Campus, Cheney, Washington, Kristy A. Snyder

2022 Symposium

EWU contains a variety of deciduous and evergreen trees across its campus, providing several benefits. However, no comprehensive record exists of the total number, location, species, or ages of these trees. This knowledge can inform facilities of proper care for individual trees and can be used to estimate carbon sequestration on campus. Traditional on-the-ground methods for assessing trees require tree cores or clinometers, making trees susceptible to pests or disease and leading to inaccurate results. Remote sensing using lidar data is a noninvasive, more precise method to measure tree height and subsequently assess tree age. This poster explores using point …

The Spatial Associations Between Crime And Economy In Chicago 2015-2020, Hongtao Huang

Honors Capstones

The severity of the crime is often the most intuitive reflection of whether a region is safe and the top factor for the public when evaluating a region. Economist's list of the safest cities in seven major North American cities, Chicago was ranked at six, just above Dallas. Chicago scored the lowest in personal security, which is closely tied to the crime. Against the backdrop of higher unemployment and prices, this study is interested in how property-based crimes are related to the economic decline in Chicago geographically. The study used the heterogeneity analysis tool Geodetector to investigate the correlation between …