Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Field Relations, Geochemistry, And Geochronology Of The Rocks At Perkins Point, Castine, Maine, Robert Knowles, Douglas Reusch

Individual Projects

Northwest of Castine, Maine is the coastline known as Perkins Point, which is home to about 500 meters of bedrock exposure. Previous mapping projects of Penobscot Bay indicate a discrepancy in rock type for this area, and therefore the origin of the rocks is unclear. Preliminary observations suggest that these rocks are mostly volcanic. The goal of this project is to determine the field relations, geochronology, and geochemistry to conclude the true nature of these rocks and ultimately create a geological map.

Evaluating Potential Effects Of 2019 Australian Bushfires On Animal Species, Protected Land, And Land Cover, Alyssa J. Kaewwilai

Student Publications

The 2019-2020 Australian bushfire event had exceptionally dry, hot conditions as well as high potential impacts on the country’s wildlife and natural resources. The purpose of the study was to analyze the potential impacts of the 2019 Australian bushfire event on animal species, protected land, and varied land cover types. The research question of this project is: how does the location of the Australian Bushfires of 2020 potentially impact animal species, protected land and national parks, as well as different land covers? Raster calculator was used to combine and classify layers from the MODIS Burned Area Product of burned (1) …

Land Surface Characterization For Identification And Assessment Of Potential Grazing Lands In Arid Western Rajasthan, India, Pratap Chandra Moharana, R. K. Goyal, C. B. Pandey, R. K. Bhatt

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Grazing lands (non-arable terrestrial ecosystems) play a vital role in the rural economy and environmental conservation. Modern tools in which, GIS, GPS and satellite remote sensing play vital role in the assessment, characterization and management of grazinglands (Paul et al., 2010). The present study aims to assess the physical conditions and distribution pattern of permanent pastures and other grazing lands in arid Rajasthan using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Though grazing lands do occur in a number of habitats, the study has focused on those sites which have water resources for its rational utilization for pasture/grassland development. Rapid advances in …

Identification And Characterization Of Pastureland And Other Grazing Resources Of Jammu & Kashmir Using Gis And Satellite Remote Sensing Technique, J. P. Singh, I. Dev, D. Deb, R. S. Chaurasia, S. Radotra, Suheel Ahmed

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Livestock acquires special importance in mountain farming system from both ecological and socioeconomic point of view. They are an integral part of the farming system and a “bridge’’ connecting two types of land viz., forest and cultivated. In hilly regions, the arable agriculture is not very remunerative; therefore farmers of all categories rear sheep, goats, cattle etc. under sedentary, semi-migratory and migratory systems to supplement family income (Dev et al., 2014). The common property resources (CPR) and degraded pasturelands are the major feed sources. Remotely sensed satellite imagery and Geographic Information System (GIS) are being widely used for the …

Mapping Of Thar Desert Grasslands Using High Resolution Carto-Data (A Case Study Of Jodhpur District), Mahesh Kumar Gaur, Pratap Chandra Moharana, C. B. Pandey, R. K. Bhatt

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

The spatio-temporal condition and trend of grasslands in India at village-level is still not known completely. Historical and contemporary monitoring and assessment protocols are primarily based on the wisdom, knowledge and experience of village-level revenue officer (patwari) which is just significant from the statistical point of view. Contrastingly, such grassland areas are considered to be of high priority by government authorities for the long-term conservation of biodiversity. Protection, development and sustainable use of grasslands are very important for the rural economy and livestock. The major grasslands now survive west of isohyets 200 to 250 mm rainfall where livestock …

Assessment Of Land Cover Change In St. Martin’S Marsh Aquatic Preserve, Florida, Usa, Katie Wagner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

St. Martin’s Marsh Aquatic Preserve (SMMAP) is a 28,461 acre (115.18 km2) preserve located on the coast of Citrus County, Florida, USA. There has been no published research that focused on coastal change on this unique coast. This thesis research focuses on coastal land cover change that has occurred within the preserve from 1988 to 2018. Multitemporal Landsat images were classified using a support vector machine (SVM) classification, while changes in vegetation were evaluated using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Field research was conducted to examine nineteen sites for classification training and test data and notes on habitat composition. …

Comparing Rusle Ls Calculation Methods Across Varying Dem Resolutions, Amanda Moody

All Master's Theses

Soil erosion is a global problem that reduces land productivity and causes environmental degradation. Soil erosion models, such as the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), are used to estimate the severity and distribution of erosion. The topographic factor (LS), which combines slope length and angle, is an important part of RUSLE. This work compared two methods of L calculation, the grid cumulation (GC) and the contributing area (CA) methods, and two methods of S calculation, the neighborhood (NBR) and maximum downhill slope (MDS) methods. These were compared across digital elevation models (DEMs) of 1, 5, 10, and 30m resolutions. …

A Karst Feature Predictability Model Within Barber County, Kansas, Gary M. Kelner

Master's Theses

This research consisted of two topics: 1) geographic predictive models of karst features and 2), a petrographic study examining the lithology of the study area. The study area is a privately owned ranch in the Gypsum Hills of Barber County, Kansas and is known to have karst features. Two predictive models for karst features were utilized. Previously identified features, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery aided in the creation of these predictive models. These predictability models also used the ESRI ArcMap software platform. The data for these models consists of slope, …

Comparing Coastal Storm Impact To Decadal Change In Barrier Island Ecosystems, Philip A. Tuley

Theses and Dissertations

Highly dynamic coastal systems respond to disturbance events with a combination of topographic and vegetative changes. Sea level rise impacts on barrier islands have been quantified, but storm effects on vegetation are limited. Here we quantified barrier island vegetation change in response to an isolated storm event and compared to long-term periods. We hypothesized that disturbance-resisting areas with high woody vegetation cover and/or high foredune elevation would experience minimal transitions after a storm event, whereas disturbance-reinforcing areas with low vegetation cover and low foredune elevation would experience greater transitions between ecosystem states after a storm event. Patterns of dissonance were …

Sistem Informasi Geografi (Sig) Pencarian Lokasi Tambal Ban Dengan Pemanfaatan Teknologi Gps, Desy Ika Puspitasari, Zaenuddin Zaenuddin, Fitrah Yuridka

Elinvo (Electronics, Informatics, and Vocational Education)

The occurrence of a tire leak in the middle of a trip can often be caused by many things, such as being hit by a sharp object, the age of the tire is too old, leaking in the former patches, or it can be caused by others. These factors make vehicle users panic and think to immediately find the nearest tire repair location. Almost everyone has a smartphone where there is a Google Map application by utilizing GPS technology so as not to get lost when driving, with GPS technology can be estimated the distance between one location and another. …

Assessing Beaver Dam Dynamics In The Logan-Little Bear Watershed, Connor Penrod

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper seeks to address a knowledge gap concerning how flood events impact beaver dams over time. To address this gap, I took four time-snapshots of beaver dams, mapping them across the Utah portion of the Logan-Little Bear watershed, from 2009 to 2016 to bookend a large flood event in 2011. I assessed dam status (intact, breached, or blown out) for each dam mapped to assess the impact of the large spring runoff on the dam status. Assessing dam status over time allowed me to assess the change in condition over time, from before to several years after, while also …

Soil Erosion Analysis Of The Monroe County’S Watersheds In Indiana, Danielli De Melo Moura, Jie Shan

Purdue GIS Day

This study was carried out to spatially predict the amount of soil loss (tons/ha/year ) of Monroe County’s watersheds using Geographic Information System (GIS). Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was used to estimate potential soil losses by using information such as rainfall data for calculating the rainfall erosivity (R) , soil map for calculating the soil erodibility (K), digital elevation model for obtaining the topography factor (LS) and vegetation/cropland cover for calculating the cover management factor (C) and support practice factor (P). The result of the analysis depicted that the soil loss rate in Moroe’s watersheds ranges from 0 …

Deformable Part Models For Automatically Georeferencing Historical Map Images, Nicholas Howe, Jerod Weinman, John Gouwar, Aabid Shamji

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Libraries are digitizing their collections of maps from all eras, generating increasingly large online collections of historical cartographic resources. Aligning such maps to a modern geographic coordinate system greatly increases their utility. This work presents a method for such automatic georeferencing, matching raster image content to GIS vector coordinate data. Given an approximate initial alignment that has already been projected from a spherical geographic coordinate system to a Cartesian map coordinate system, a probabilistic shape-matching scheme determines an optimized match between the GIS contours and ink in the binarized map image. Using an evaluation set of 20 historical maps from …

Gaps In Protection Of Important Ocean Areas: A Spatial Meta-Analysis Of Ten Global Mapping Initiatives, Natasha J. Gownaris, Christine M. Santora, John B. Davis, Ellen K. Pikitch

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

To safeguard biodiversity effectively, marine protected areas (MPAs) should be sited using the best available science. There are numerous ongoing United Nations and non-governmental initiatives to map globally important marine areas. The criteria used by these initiatives vary, resulting in contradictions in the areas identified as important. Our analysis is the first to overlay these initiatives, quantify consensus, and conduct gap analyses at the global scale. We found that 55% of the ocean has been identified as important by one or more initiatives, and that individual areas have been identified by as many as seven overlapping initiatives. Using our overlay …

Changes In The Greenland Ice Sheet Of The Southeastern Maniitsoq Coast From 1994-2004 And 2009-2019, Alyssa J. Kaewwilai, Charlie E. Reisman

Student Publications

Remote sensing mechanisms through the use of technology like the Landsat 5-7 Land Manager satellites are commonly used in conjunction with multispectral methods such as unsupervised classification to record and analyze changes in snow and ice over time in areas such as the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). Unsupervised classification is a method of identifying, grouping, and labeling features in an image according to their spectral values and is therefore a good method of classifying snow and ice in areas such as Greenland. The goal of unsupervised classifications is to assign pixels into potentially meaningful subsurface classes based on similarities of …

The Relationship Between Forest Management And Stream Discharge In Mazumbai And Baga Ii Forest Reserves, Tanga Region, Tanzania, Shannon Duffy

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Deforestation is known to alter hydrology by reducing interception, transpiration and infiltration capacity, and increasing runoff which all leads to higher stream discharge. For rural Tanzanian communities, surface water resources are crucial for meeting basic needs, so the integrity of headwater catchments need to be maintained to ensure their reliability. The objectives of this study were to a) map the streams in the two forests because none currently exist and b) determine the effect of deforestation on discharge variability. Over fifteen days of data collection, this study analyzed variability of discharge and the degree of correlation between discharge and rainfall …

Clearcutting In Appalachia: Impacts On Stream Water Quality In An Appalachian Watershed, Alyssa J. Kaewwilai, Hannah R. Peterson, Abigail F. Rec

Student Publications

Clearcutting forests has the potential to impact the water quality of high water headwater streams. In this study, we measured the effect of forest clearcut events on parameters of stream water quality within Michaux State Forest. The watershed of two streams included 2.1% and 11.6% of the total catchment in clearcuts, while the other 4 watersheds had no clearcuts. We measured pH, electrical conductivity, total suspended solids, and nitrate (ppm) and phosphate (ppm) concentrations from six different tributary streams. Mann-Whitney U tests maintain no statistical difference observed between pH (U= 4.00, p= 1.00), temperature (U=1.00, p=0.165), electrical conductivity (U=2.00, p=0.355), …

A Gis-Based Study Of Wild Atlantic Way In The West Of Ireland: Its Associated Organisations And Environmental Impacts., Leanne Leonard

SURE Journal: Science Undergraduate Research Experience Journal

Background

Coastal regions are heavily reliant on tourism in order to achieve socio-economic sustainability. However, tourism impacts both positively and negatively on many coastal destinations. The world’s longest defined coastal route of 2600km, the Wild Atlantic Way (WAW), attracts tourists to the region of the West of Ireland after Fáilte Ireland began a promotional tourism drive in 2014. The association between WAW tourism and environmental impacts requires investigation.

The West of Ireland is home to a range of areas protected by the Birds and Habitats Directives which aim to safeguard against potentially damaging developments, meaning the anthropogenic effects from tourists …

Climate Change And Dissolved Organic Matter In Subarctic Lakes: Relevance To Methylmercury Bioavailability, Kyra Lyn Simone

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the first steps of methylmercury (MeHg) bioaccumulation, uptake by phytoplankton, is regulated by dissolved organic matter (DOM). Methylmercury binds strongly with DOM, especially high-molecular weight (HMW) compounds containing reduced sulphur; this binding decreases MeHg bioavailability. Climate-induced changes were measured at the landscape level using ArcGIS; land-cover changes between 2005-2010 were assessed around lakes in Mackenzie Valley, NWT. The observed changes, a 10% increase in forest-classified area and up to 15% decrease in wetland area, will likely increase delivery of HMW DOM and MeHg to lakes. Partitioning experiments were conducted to examine effects of DOM ligand quality on MeHg …

Identification Of Mined Areas That May Contribute To Water Quality Degradation At Hobet Coal Mine, West Virginia, Brian P. Murphy

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

Precision Agriculture Gis Technologies For Mississippi, 1st. Edition, Amelia A.A. Fox

College of Agriculture & Life Sciences Publications and Scholarship

Precision agriculture is meant to improve on-farm efficiency in hopes of ultimately increasing profitability while also protecting the environment. However, this difficult process almost always includes the proper management and interpretation of data. Therefore, it is imperative that those individuals involved in making such decisions are educated on these processes. In a data-driven world, this textbook is a great resource for those wanting to learn how to utilize their data in hopes of making better informed on-farm decisions.

Debris-Slide Susceptibility Modelling Using Gis Technology In The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Raja Das

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Debris-slides are one of the most frequently occurring geological hazards in metasedimentary rocks of the Anakeesta ridge in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM), which often depends on the influence of multiple causing factors or geo-factors such as geological structures, slope, topographic elevation, land use, soil type etc. or a combination of these factors. The main objective of the study was to understand the control of geo-factors in initiating debris-slides using different knowledge and data-driven methods in GIS platform. The study was performed in three steps: (1) Evaluation of geometrical relationship between geological discontinuity and topographic orientation in initiation of …

Habitat Suitability Index Model Of The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis Pratensis) In West-Central Florida, Courtney E. Buck

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Florida Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis pratensis) is a state threatened endemic subspecies of the Sandhill Crane (Nesbitt & Tacha, 1997). With a population that was estimated at a maximum of 5,000 individuals in 2003 (Nesbitt & Hatchitt, 2008), it is imperative to identify potentially viable habitats, as Florida is rapidly developing. This research develops a Habitat Suitability Index model to determine unsuitable to optimally suitable habitat locations throughout west-central Florida. To do so, six suitability variables based on the crane’s life history were evaluated: Potential nesting area, immediate nesting area, wetland coverage, foraging area, brooding area, and road proximity. …

Wildfire Exposure To Critical Habitat Of Endangered And Threatened Species In California, Kristin Butcher

Master's Theses

Researchers, fire ecologists and wildlife managers are concerned about impact to endangered and threatened species and their critical habitat due to the projected increase in future wildfires. Wildfires have been studied in California for the last six decades and have been increasing at an alarming rate since the 1980’s. In this study, I use the 2018 spatial dataset for critical habitat of federally endangered and threatened species located in the state boundaries of California and compare it to a spatial dataset for wildfires that have occurred over the span of 32 years (1984 to 2016). Trends are derived from spatial …

Utilizing Compost For Carbon Sequestration: A Strategy For Climate Goals And Land Use Management, Sarah R. Koplowicz

Master's Projects and Capstones

In recent years, research has been developed for the use of compost combined with managed grazing (and manure) on grasslands (DeLonge et al, 2013) or rangelands, resulting in carbon sequestration from the atmosphere back into soil at a relatively high rate . The Marin Carbon Project (MCP) was established as a collaborative effort to analyze the potential effects of this technique for greenhouse gas mitigation. The MCP established that combining compost applications with managed livestock grazing benefits the soil health and native plant community, while simultaneously enabling carbon sequestration through the mechanisms of plant production and microbial activity. Additional recent …

Mapping In The Humanities: Gis Lessons For Poets, Historians, And Scientists, Emily W. Fairey

Open Educational Resources

User-friendly Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the common thread of this collection of presentations, and activities with full lesson plans. The first section of the site contains an overview of cartography, the art of creating maps, and then looks at historical mapping platforms like Hypercities and Donald Rumsey Historical Mapping Project. In the next section Google Earth Desktop Pro is introduced, with lessons and activities on the basics of GE such as pins, paths, and kml files, as well as a more complex activity on "georeferencing" an historic map over Google Earth imagery. The final section deals with ARCGIS Online …

Development Of Digital Bathymetry Maps For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo Using Sonar And Remote Sensing Techniques, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

This article presents an improved algorithm for optimization and development of a digital bathymetric model (DBM) for Lake Azuei (LA) (Haiti) and Lake Enriquillo (LE) (Dominican Republic) using the ANUDEM method. Both sonar data and contour lines of the lakes’ layout extracted using Landsat imagery were compiled for bathymetry development. We show that the performance of the ANUDEM method was strongly dependent on the density and irregularity of the spatial distribution of the data. Changing the resolution of the output grids and deriving auxiliary topographically corrected contours improved the ANUDEM performance and minimized the systematic errors of the method. Statistical …

Repairing Landsat Satellite Imagery Using Deep Machine Learning Techniques, Griffin J. Lane, Patricia Goresen, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

Satellite Imagery is one of the most widely used sources to analyze geographic features and environments in the world. The data gathered from satellites are used to quantify many vital problems facing our society, such as the impact of natural disasters, shore erosion, rising water levels, and urban growth rates. In this paper, we construct machine learning and deep learning algorithms for repairing anomalies in the Landsat satellite imagery data which arise for various reasons ranging from cloud obstruction to satellite malfunctions. The accuracy of GIS data is crucial to ensuring the models produced from such data are as close …

Project Sidewalk: A Web-Based Crowdsourcing Tool For Collecting Sidewalk Accessibility Data At Scale, Manaswi Saha, Michael Saugstad, Hanuma Maddali, Aileen Zeng, Ryan Holland, Steven Bower, Aditya Dash, Sage Chen, Anthony Li, Kotaro Hara, Jon Froehlich

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We introduce Project Sidewalk, a new web-based tool that enables online crowdworkers to remotely label pedestrian-related accessibility problems by virtually walking through city streets in Google Street View. To train, engage, and sustain users, we apply basic game design principles such as interactive onboarding, mission-based tasks, and progress dashboards. In an 18-month deployment study, 797 online users contributed 205,385 labels and audited 2,941 miles of Washington DC streets. We compare behavioral and labeling quality differences between paid crowdworkers and volunteers, investigate the effects of label type, label severity, and majority vote on accuracy, and analyze common labeling errors. To complement …

Potential Fossil Yield Classification (Pfyc) Survey Of Nevada Surficial Geology, And A Multi-Sensor, Remote Sensing, Change-Detection Study Of Land-Use/Land-Cover Urbanization Impacting The Las Vegas Formation Located In Northwestern Las Vegas Valley, John Jayson Medema

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is a combination of two separate but related projects. The first project is a Potential Fossil Yield Classification (PYFC) survey. The PFYC is a Bureau of Land Management funded survey designed to synthesize paleontologic information into a geographic information system (GIS) as a distributable geodatabase. The database is designed to represent surficial geologic deposits contained in a polygon shapefile. Throughout the State of Nevada each polygon represents a mapped geologic unit at a scale of at least 1:250 k. Each mapped geologic unit is then assigned a “potential fossil yield classification”, a numerical ranking value of 1-5 based …