Search results

Title: A map of the Garden of Eden, before God destroy'd it with the flood
Date: 1738
Collection: Maps
Description: Map showing the Garden of Eden located inside a bend of a river formed by the confluences of the Hiddekel [Tigris], Perath [Euphrates], Pison [Pishon], and Gihon rivers, with the Tree of Life and Fountain of Life at its center.

Title: An assessment of the geographic knowledge and understandings of fifth grade students in Michigan
Creator: Bettis, Norman Clyde, 1938-
Date: 1974
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: CHINA’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND SOFT TARGET ON HUMAN HEALTH : A MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY STUDY OF HAZE POLLUTION IMPACTS ON MATERNAL AND INFANT HEALTH IN XIANYANG 2008-2016
Creator: Zhang, Qiong
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACTCHINA’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND SOFT TARGET ON HUMAN HEALTH: A MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY STUDY OF HAZE POLLUTION IMPACTS ON MATERNAL AND INFANT HEALTH IN XIANYANG 2008-2016 By Qiong Zhang Since the adoption of economic reform in 1978, China has invested heavily in industry, commercial and residential construction, and transportation in the country. The rural-to-urban migration in search of economic opportunities has led to rapid sprawling of China’s large and mid-sized cities. Outdated...
Show moreABSTRACTCHINA’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND SOFT TARGET ON HUMAN HEALTH: A MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY STUDY OF HAZE POLLUTION IMPACTS ON MATERNAL AND INFANT HEALTH IN XIANYANG 2008-2016 By Qiong Zhang Since the adoption of economic reform in 1978, China has invested heavily in industry, commercial and residential construction, and transportation in the country. The rural-to-urban migration in search of economic opportunities has led to rapid sprawling of China’s large and mid-sized cities. Outdated environmental policies and lack of strict regulation and control of harmful stationary and mobile sources of air pollution have led to high haze concentrations and growing public health concerns in China. As one of the most vulnerable population groups, as well as the core of every family, the public is concerned that haze will cause detrimental health effects on the people in general, and among pregnant women, mothers and infants in particular. The goals of this dissertation research are to understand the history and evolution of Chinese environmental policies and to investigate the impacts of maternal haze exposure on maternal health and adverse birth outcomes in a mid-sized city in China. The objectives are (1) to review and summarizes the evolution of environmental policies and regulations from a structuralist perspective to understand the origin and persistence of rising haze in the country; (2) to utilize remote sensing imagery and ground monitoring sites, to conduct a haze assessment in Xianyang City, a mid-sized city experiencing rising levels of haze due to urban expansion and increased vehicle transportation and industrial emissions; and (3) to conduct an investigation of haze impacts on maternal and infant health in Xianyang City, utilizing a primary dataset of a sample of infants born at Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine First Affiliated Hospital from January 2008 to December 2016. A Human Ecology conceptual framework is used to understand the relationships among haze, maternal and infant health, and environmental and health policies. The findings from this study showed even though China has a long history and rich variety of environmental policies and regulations, the hierarchical structure in the Target Pyramid System and the highly consistent party consciousness in the “One Position Two Jobs” system have limited government officials from enacting environmental protection to ensure public health. The effect of this limitation is demonstrated by observations of aerosol loading using satellite imagery, specifically the Ultraviolet Aerosol Index (UVAI) obtained from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) carried by Aura satellite. OMI imagery data showed that Xianyang has experienced significant increasing trends in severity, duration, and coverage of haze from 2008 to 2016. In terms of public health, maternal exposure to increasing haze levels during the first and third trimesters had significant effects on lowering infant’s birth weight. Maternal co-morbidities including Cardiomyopathy, Chronic Maternal Co-Morbidity, Diabetes, Gynecology, Hypertension and Obstetric Maternal Co-Morbidity mediate the haze exposure and reduced birth weight relationships. These findings demonstrate that chronic exposure to high dosages of haze has negative effects on mother’s health, which in turn impacts infant health as evidenced by significant lowering of birth weight. In conclusion, under the Chinese Communist Party’s managing priority pyramid, maintaining the bureaucratic legitimacy of the party and pursuing economic development are Superior Target goals. However, to ensure population health, it is important to entitle public health and health care professional to receive authoritative power to provide environmental health education particularly for susceptible population groups such as pregnant women, mothers and infants about the untoward health effects of environmental pollution.
Show less

Title: CLIMATIC VARIABILITY AND CHANGE IN THE MIDWESTERN UNITED STATES : IMPLICATIONS FOR NITROGEN LEACHING IN AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS
Creator: Baule, William James
Date: 2022
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: How has the background climate of the Midwestern United States changed over recent decades and how has this affected nitrate leaching? These are the core questions addressed in this dissertation, through three self-contained studies focused on different aspects of the climate-agriculture interface in the Midwestern United States. In Chapter 2, statistical methods are used to quantify the solar radiation biases present in a widely used reanalysis-based hydrometeorological dataset over space,...
Show moreHow has the background climate of the Midwestern United States changed over recent decades and how has this affected nitrate leaching? These are the core questions addressed in this dissertation, through three self-contained studies focused on different aspects of the climate-agriculture interface in the Midwestern United States. In Chapter 2, statistical methods are used to quantify the solar radiation biases present in a widely used reanalysis-based hydrometeorological dataset over space, implement statistical bias correction and interpolation to address the spatial nature of this bias, and quantify the impacts of the solar radiation bias and proposed correction on simulated maize yields and water stress. Correction of reanalysis solar radiation alone brought simulated yield and water usage more in line with simulations forced with in-situ solar radiation. Chapter 3 examines changes in precipitation, utilizing a unique approach to station screening during the period 1951-2019 over a region encompassing the Great Lakes and broader Midwestern regions, of the United States. A multiple tier procedure was utilized to identify high quality input data series from the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily dataset. Temporal and spatial trends were analyzed for a broad range of related annual and seasonal indicators ranging from accumulated totals and frequency of threshold events to event duration and potential linkages with total precipitable water. Our analyses confirm the results of previous studies while providing unique insights to data quality and seasonality. The trends of the indicators in our study exhibited more cohesive spatial patterns and temporal similarities when compared with studies with different quality control criteria, illustrating the importance of quality control of observations in climatic studies and highlighting the complexity of the changing character of precipitation. In Chapter 4, System Approach to Land Use Sustainability, a process-based crop model was applied with gridded soil and meteorological data using a yield stability zone concept to simulate corn and soybean production in 14 Midwestern states at the sub-field scale during the 1989-2019 period. Five zones based on multi-year yield stability were simulated for each field at 30m x 30m resolution, with zones being relative to each individual field. Outputs were evaluated using a nitrogen balance approach to establish zone-specific statistical distributions of nitrate leaching across the 14 states, specifically highlighting periods with changing and highly variable precipitation. Results indicate that low stable, unstable hill tops, and unstable slope zones are associated with an outsized contribution to overall nitrate leaching and that unstable zones exhibit variable year-to-year response to weather tied to their position in the landscape. Spatial analysis of the results suggests leaching is tied to precipitation variability, water stress, and total precipitation amount. In aggregate, the chapters presented here highlight the interconnectedness of the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum to changes in hydrologic regime and sensitivity to the biases in the data used to conduct analyses, run models, and from which conclusions are drawn. The study findings shed light on the potential for improved management of agricultural fields and illustrate how process-based crop models can be useful for designing management practices to reduce environmental pollution and increase profits to producers.
Show less

Title: EXPLORING NEIGHBORHOOD PATHWAYS TO HEALTH : AN INTEGRATED ANALYSIS ACROSS SCALES
Creator: Rzotkiewicz, Amanda T.
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This research is a synthesis and discussion of two papers that apply diverse geographic techniques to closely examine neighborhoods and health, introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is titled, “Systematic review of the use of Google Street View in health research: Sampling, exposure assessment, prevention or monitoring, and health policy compliance” and of 54 studies qualifying for the review, one (2%) utilized GSV for sampling, forty-four (82%) for exposure assessment, and six (11%) for policy...
Show moreThis research is a synthesis and discussion of two papers that apply diverse geographic techniques to closely examine neighborhoods and health, introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is titled, “Systematic review of the use of Google Street View in health research: Sampling, exposure assessment, prevention or monitoring, and health policy compliance” and of 54 studies qualifying for the review, one (2%) utilized GSV for sampling, forty-four (82%) for exposure assessment, and six (11%) for policy monitoring. Most studies reported considerable benefits of GSV, when compared to non-virtual methods, through the reduction of research time and costs, making it a promising tool for automated environmental assessment for health research. Chapter 3 explores a relatively novel pathway to health (the microbiome) and is titled, “Evaluating the relationship between neighborhood vegetation and the human microbiome: implications for green space-health research”. Neighborhood vegetation scores and impervious surface area were compared to the microbial genera and biodiversity of the mouth, ears, eyes, nose and rectum (a surrogate of the gut) human microbiomes of postmortem residents of Wayne County, Michigan (n = 98). Relationships between neighborhood greenness and microbial composition varied by neighborhood size and area of the body. Results suggest that each body area is a unique microbial niche that interacts with the environment in different ways, an important consideration for targeted modification of the microbial environment. Overall, this research illustrates how an integrated analysis of neighborhoods and health has the potential to improve both health research and public policy across a wide range of geographic contexts and scales.
Show less

Title: Evaluating the ecogeographical effects of earth's largest terrestrial herbivore
Creator: Nagelkirk, Ryan Lee
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Savannas cover a fifth of Earth's land surface, are home to over a half billion people, and disproportionately affect interannual variability of the global carbon cycle. In Africa, these open, grassy and sparsely wooded habitats support pastoralist cultures, the world's largest array of megafauna and thriving tourist economies. However, savannas and their uses are under threat: woody plant encroachment linked to increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is reducing grassy cover required by...
Show moreSavannas cover a fifth of Earth's land surface, are home to over a half billion people, and disproportionately affect interannual variability of the global carbon cycle. In Africa, these open, grassy and sparsely wooded habitats support pastoralist cultures, the world's largest array of megafauna and thriving tourist economies. However, savannas and their uses are under threat: woody plant encroachment linked to increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is reducing grassy cover required by both domestic livestock and wildlife, while also encroaching on the open views of wildlife critical to tourism. Yet, understanding of the determinants of savanna woody cover (bushes and trees) is limited. To this end, a growing number of site-specific studies have found that tree mortality rates in protected areas are principally controlled by African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana). However, it is not known whether these impacts significantly affect the total woody cover of the larger landscapes and region. This dissertation focuses on quantifying the relationship between elephant densities and savanna woody cover in protected areas across elephants' Eastern African range. Research questions are addressed in three self-contained chapters. Chapter 1 tests multiple approaches to mapping savanna woody cover fractions across 12 protected areas (PAs) using Landsat imagery, and presents a novel approach to reference data generation. The results show a machine learning approach, Random Forests, produces the most accurate maps and demonstrates that accurate maps do not require more than a single annual image - which is advantageous given the general image scarcity in these areas. In Chapter 2, the most accurate mapping approach from Chapter 1 is used to produce over 30 years of savanna woody cover data. These data are then used to assess whether there is a relationship between woody cover and elephant densities across the 12 PAs, as well as for specific landscapes within the PAs. Results point toward climate, principally wet season precipitation, being the major determinant of woody cover across the PAs (R2 = 0.38, p = 0.03), though elephants were linked to increased woody cover on hill slopes far from permanent water bodies (R2 = 0.41, p = 0.03). In addition, areas near water contain consistently low levels of woody cover unexplained by any of the variables considered. Last, Chapter 3 presents a meta-analysis of the literature comparing the relative impacts of elephants and fire on woody cover. The majority of studies (80.3%) find elephants to be the primary disturbance, with the relative dominance of the two disturbances linked to climate. The coolest and wettest savannas are more likely to be dominated by fire, while elephants are most likely to dominate across a comparatively broad set of environmental conditions. Overall, the evidence presented here suggests (1) both overall woody cover and the relative impacts of elephants and fire are principally regulated by climate; (2) elephants, perhaps through the dispersal of seeds and nutrients, increase woody cover on hillslopes far from permanent water bodies; (3) areas near water are in a long-term state of low woody cover, potentially driven by disturbances, and (4) given the dominant role of elephants as a disturbance in the majority of sites and climates, conservationists should consider increasing elephant populations as a means of mitigating the woody encroachment threatening Africa's savannas, wildlife and pastoralist cultures.
Show less

Title: GEOGRAPHIC APPLICATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE-RICH MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES IN SPATIOTEMPORAL DATA ANALYSIS
Creator: Hatami bahman beiglou, Pouyan
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In the modern realm of pervasive, frequent, sizable and instant data capturing with advancements in instrumentation, data generation and data gathering techniques, we can benefit new prospects to comprehend and analyze the role of geography in everyday life. However, traditional geographic data analytics are now strictly challenged by the volume, velocity, variety and veracity of the data requiring analysis to extract value. As a result, geographic data science has garnered great interest in...
Show moreIn the modern realm of pervasive, frequent, sizable and instant data capturing with advancements in instrumentation, data generation and data gathering techniques, we can benefit new prospects to comprehend and analyze the role of geography in everyday life. However, traditional geographic data analytics are now strictly challenged by the volume, velocity, variety and veracity of the data requiring analysis to extract value. As a result, geographic data science has garnered great interest in the past two decades. Considering that much of data science’s success is formed outside of geography, there is an increased risk within such perspectives that location will remain simply as an additional column within a database, no more or less important than any other feature. Geographic data science combines this data with spatial and temporal components. The spatial and temporal dependence allow us to interpolate and extrapolate to fill gaps in the presence of inadequate data and infer reasonable approximations elsewhere by incorporating information from diverse data types and sources. However, within scientific communities there exist arguments regarding whether geographic data science is a scientific discipline of its own. Because data science is still in its early adoption phases in geography, geographic data science is required to develop its unique concepts, differentiating itself from other disciplines such as statistics or computer science. This becomes possible when geographers, within a community of practice, are enabled to learn and connect the current tools, methods, and domain knowledge to address the existing challenges of geographic data analysis. To take a step toward that purpose, in this dissertation, three knowledge-rich applications of data science in the analysis of geographic spatiotemporal big datasets are studied, and the opportunities and challenges facing this research along the way are explored. The first chapter of this dissertation is allocated to review the challenges and opportunities in the era of spatiotemporal big data, followed by tackling three different problems within geography, one within the subfield of human geography, and two within physical geography. Finally, in the last chapter, some final thoughts on the current state of geographic data science are discussed and the potential for future studies are considered.
Show less

Title: GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN SKULL MORPHOLOGY OF THE BONE CRACKING HYENAS, CROCUTA CROCUTA AND HYAENA HYAENA
Creator: Cavalieri, Cybil Nicole
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: My dissertation focuses on identifying geographic patterns in the size and shape of spotted hyena and striped hyena skulls and determining if bioclimatic and social variables explain observed patterns. Within the subsequent chapters of this dissertation I investigate geographic variation in spotted hyena and striped hyena skulls using geometric morphometrics and spatial statistics.In chapter one, I examined the relationship between bioclimatic factors, social factors, and spotted hyena skull...
Show moreMy dissertation focuses on identifying geographic patterns in the size and shape of spotted hyena and striped hyena skulls and determining if bioclimatic and social variables explain observed patterns. Within the subsequent chapters of this dissertation I investigate geographic variation in spotted hyena and striped hyena skulls using geometric morphometrics and spatial statistics.In chapter one, I examined the relationship between bioclimatic factors, social factors, and spotted hyena skull size to better understand the forces that might underlie geographic patterns of size. Spotted hyenas exhibit slight female-biased sexual size dimorphism. Skull size co-varies with temperature, precipitation, and landcover but more strongly co-varies with population density. The highest densities are associated with the smallest skull size, possibly reflecting a relationship between high population density and access to resources. These findings support the idea that the underlying driver of geographical and ecological rules is access to resources, providing further empirical evidence for the energetic equivalence rule.In chapter two, I investigated the influence of climatic variables and food resources on observed geographic patterns in striped hyenas. Striped hyenas exhibit slight male-biased sexual size dimorphism. There is a strong geographic pattern of size variation in striped hyena skulls with larger individuals found at higher latitudes, as predicted by Bergmann’s rule. I found evidence that seasonal climatic variables are better predictors of hyena skull size than annual climatic variables. We did not find evidence to support our prediction that striped hyenas would be larger in areas with higher net primary productivity or increased access to human-provided foods. These findings support the notion that geographic variation in body size is primarily driven by seasonal climatic variables, which is consistent with the seasonality hypothesis.In chapter three, I investigated whether striped hyena skull shape is sexually dimorphic and whether the geographic pattern of skull shape variation supports the historic delineation of subspecies proposed by Pocock (1934). I found no evidence for sexual shape dimorphism in the skull of striped hyenas. While we found considerable morphological overlap between historic subspecies, some parts of morphological shape space were occupied by a single subspecies, suggesting that striped hyenas vary in morphology across geography, but that historic subspecies are not effectively capturing this variation.
Show less

Title: GOVERNANCE OF PEOPLE-CENTERED FOREST-AGRISCAPES RESTORATION IN MALAWI : INSTITUTIONAL AND MODELING APPROACHES
Creator: Djenontin, Ida Nadia Sedjro
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This doctoral dissertation embodies an interdisciplinary inquiry of human-environment interactions approached from a geospatial perspective. It investigates some socio-institutional dimensions of ecosystem restoration, focusing on the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) paradigm. FLR is a people-centered ecosystem restoration approach that advances a holistic landscape approach to restoring degraded natural resources. FLR’s implicit landscape approach to environmental management requires...
Show moreThis doctoral dissertation embodies an interdisciplinary inquiry of human-environment interactions approached from a geospatial perspective. It investigates some socio-institutional dimensions of ecosystem restoration, focusing on the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) paradigm. FLR is a people-centered ecosystem restoration approach that advances a holistic landscape approach to restoring degraded natural resources. FLR’s implicit landscape approach to environmental management requires sectoral interactions and policy integration in implementing restoration interventions in interlocking agricultural and forested landscapes – forest-agriscapes. As such, FLR seeks to address, holistically, the interlinked challenges of land degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, livelihood insecurity, and unsustainable supply of multiple socio-ecological benefits. The research analyses specifically how to achieve integrated and sustainable governance of landscape-scale restoration of lands, trees, and forests by deepening understanding of the related institutional, socio-economic, cultural, and behavioral dimensions. It employs an analytical approach that blends qualitative analysis, econometric modeling, and spatial agent-based modeling (ABM) to explore forest-agriscapes restoration as a complex socio-ecological system (SES). Using Malawi as a country case study in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the research first investigates what potential context-appropriate governance system—including governance model, institutional arrangements, and regulatory framework—would adequately promote effective integrated implementation of landscape restoration. The research adopts a polycentric governance perspective based on the Ecology of Games Theory (EGT). Using the EGT, it explores the structural and functional dimensions of an appropriate integrated governance system by examining four specific governance parameters: collaboration arrangements, social learning mechanisms, coordination processes, and institutional externalities. Second, the research draws on an econometric perspective and an environmental behavior perspective rooted in social psychology to examine the local patterns and socio-cultural determinants and the decision-making processes of local individual and collective resources restoration efforts. Through a mixed qualitative and quantitative methods approach, it addresses why and how local smallholder farmers and resource users engage in restoration activities, including the driving and constraining factors for their restoration efforts. Finally, the research uses ABM, a bottom-up computational modeling approach to SES, to explore the aggregate landscape-level dynamic patterns and environmental impacts of local restoration decisions and consequent activities, with different simulations of management and policy scenarios. The research offers diverse knowledge contributions and practical insights for effective forest-agriscape restoration. It advances knowledge on framing ingredients of a contextualized polycentric governance system to successfully operationalize an integrated landscape approach to resources management and restoration in Malawi and contributes to testing the EGT as a novel theory of polycentric governance. Moreover, the research illuminates the nature, level, diversification features, and areal extent of local restoration, and uncovers associated main drivers and challenges. It also offers more social understanding of individual and collective restoration behaviors, notably insights on local farmers’ and resources users’ decision-making processes for land, tree, and forest restoration. This improves knowledge on empirically capturing such behavioral components and integrating them into computational modeling. Further, the research uncovers a forward-looking 10-year trend and spatially explicit patterns of potential restoration extent, intensification, participation level, and resulting landscape regreening. The dynamics of the potential aggregate environmental impacts of local, bottom-up restoration efforts suggest empowering them, shedding light on likely propitious management and policy options to operationalize. This contributes insights for spatially targeted and evidence-based restoration implementation in Malawi, exemplifying how to enhance the use of ABMs to support restoration management and policy. Overall, the research shows the promise of using mixed integrative research approaches to better inform effective FLR interventions and the practical insights for Malawi are also relevant for other similar SSA contexts. Broadly, the dissertation illustrates effective socio-ecological governance as one way to approach the persistent challenge centered on a complex co-existence issue: how to balance competing goals of attaining sustainable natural resource-based livelihoods, food security, and poverty reduction while protecting biodiversity and ecological integrity within a changing climate context.
Show less

Title: IMPACTS OF DISTANT DRIVERS ON LANDSCAPES AND BIODIVERSITY
Creator: Hovis, Ciara Layne
Date: 2022
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Global biodiversity is increasingly impacted by distant drivers. With societies more connected than ever before, natural resource consumption has expanded beyond administrative and political boundaries. International food trade in particular has profound impacts on land-use and socioeconomic and environmental outcomes. At the same time, global biodiversity is threatened at an unprecedented scale, with many of the causes obfuscated by complexities of distant, interacting socioecological...
Show moreGlobal biodiversity is increasingly impacted by distant drivers. With societies more connected than ever before, natural resource consumption has expanded beyond administrative and political boundaries. International food trade in particular has profound impacts on land-use and socioeconomic and environmental outcomes. At the same time, global biodiversity is threatened at an unprecedented scale, with many of the causes obfuscated by complexities of distant, interacting socioecological systems. Understanding the ultimate drivers of biodiversity change and translating them to local biodiversity outcomes is integral to addressing conservation challenges in the age of globalization. This dissertation analyzes the impacts of international trade on biodiversity in an agroecosystem undergoing land-use change driven by global markets. Chapter 1 provides background on the study region, Heilongjiang Province, and describes disruption of soybean production in the area due to changes in global trade. Chapter 2 is a systematic review of studies on distant drivers of biodiversity change. Across all taxa, harmful impacts on biodiversity were the most frequent outcome reported, with distant impacts of trade and tourism most frequently studied. In Chapter 3, satellite imagery was classified into landcover classes to create high-fidelity maps of the agriculture-dominated study landscape. By utilizing phenological, synthetic aperture radar, and vegetation/soil index data, accuracies of 91%- 80% were achieved. In Chapter 4 these landcover maps were used to calculate landscape metrics. These metrics were then used to analyze relationships between landscape structure (i.e., composition and configuration) and bird communities. Functional biodiversity indices derived from life history and morphological traits were examined in addition to taxonomic measures. Though no discernable differences between taxonomic and functional community metrics were observed, several significant relationships between landscape structure and biodiversity metrics were found. Crop diversity, natural landcover, and edge metrics, were positively correlated with bird richness. Aggregation of patches, corn area, and soybean area were negatively correlated. We also compared landscape structure and biodiversity between two regions impacted by global soybean trade. Despite the more impacted region having lower crop diversity and natural area, there was no difference in biodiversity between the two regions. The more impacted region also had more rice area, demonstrating that negative biodiversity impacts may be mitigated by rice cultivation. Chapter 5 built on the previous chapter by modeling bird occupancy to assess species-specific relationships with landscape structure. Results indicated that increased crop diversity significantly increased occupancy of birds at both the taxonomic and functional level, particularly for birds belonging to less common functional groups. Percentage of natural area was not as important as expected, while metrics related to landscape configuration had very few significant impacts on occupancy. Increases in rice area were not as detrimental to bird occupancy as increases in corn and soybean. In fact, soybean area exhibited more significant negative relationships with bird occurrence than corn, suggesting that decreases in soybean area due to global trade may have benefitted bird biodiversity in the case of a monocultural landscape. However, due to the prevalence of small-scale farming practices, the more likely outcome would be a decrease in crop diversity due to soybean fields being converted to more profitable crops (e.g., corn, rice). By linking global trade, changes in landcover/use, landscape structure, and local bird communities in the same context, the results of this dissertation highlight the need for integrated biodiversity studies that place ecosystems in the broader context of globalization.
Show less

Title: INVESTIGATING UGANDA’S HIGH HIV INCIDENCE AMONG YOUNG WOMEN IN AN ERA OF WIDESPREAD GAINS IN HIV PREVENTION AND TREATMENT
Creator: Namanya, Judith
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation examines the factors driving risky sexual behavior associated with reported high numbers of new HIV infections among young women in Uganda, using Mbarara District as a case study. Using the modified Social Ecological Model for Young Women’s Vulnerability to HIV Infection, the study investigates the contextual and broader structural factors, their interactions within and across multiple levels, and how they influence the sexual behaviors of individual young women in ways that...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the factors driving risky sexual behavior associated with reported high numbers of new HIV infections among young women in Uganda, using Mbarara District as a case study. Using the modified Social Ecological Model for Young Women’s Vulnerability to HIV Infection, the study investigates the contextual and broader structural factors, their interactions within and across multiple levels, and how they influence the sexual behaviors of individual young women in ways that increase their vulnerability to contracting HIV. The objectives of the study are: 1) Evaluate individual-level factors associated with sexual risk-taking behavior, specifically having unprotected sex, among young women ages 15-35 years; 2) Describe contextual and broader structural factors that make young women vulnerable to HIV-related risky sexual behaviors, and assess how these contextual factors interact with individual-level factors in ways that perpetuate high levels of HIV infection; and 3) Re-examine the connection between poverty and other economic factors to risky sexual behavior and vulnerability in the context of high HIV transmission among young women. The study used mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, combining household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and in-depth interviews. Household survey results show that risky sexual behavior i.e., having sex without a condom, is still high (over 48%) among the unmarried young women ages 15-35 years. Engagement in unprotected sex increased by age, with young adults reporting more unprotected sex encounters than adolescent girls. Those with primary or some secondary education were at an increased risk of having unprotected sex. Surprisingly, women with tertiary education were at higher risk of engaging in unprotected sex than those who had completed secondary education. Negative binomial regression analyses show that women with no employment and those with part-time employment were at an increased risk for unprotected sex compared to those with low paying but stable employment. These findings on education and HIV risk call for a careful reexamination of the link between higher education and HIV vulnerability to inform policy. Education policies and interventions need to focus on curricula that incorporate entrepreneurial skills at different educational levels from primary to college. Keeping girls in school under the protective eye of parents, guardians and teachers is key in reducing exposure to unprotected sex among young girls. Findings from the qualitative analysis revealed that sociocultural and structural factors, including social norms (premarital sex as taboo, early marriage pressures, subornation of girls and women), youth unfriendly HIV services (e.g., long waiting times, rude and unprofessional clinic staff), high unemployment rates, sexual harassment, exploitation by male employers, and discrimination were key factors perceived to drive risky sexual behavior in relation to HIV contraction among young women. The findings show that while many young women, especially those with children, engaged in risky transactional sexual behavior to meet basic needs, many younger women, including college-level ones, did so to meet materialistic wants and to fit-in with peers. Widespread availability of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) caused complacency among young people. HIV was no longer perceived as life threatening due to ARVs, which prevent progression into full-blown AIDS, morbidity and death. In fact, some young women were more scared of getting pregnant than contracting HIV. We suggest that efforts to reduce new HIV infections among young women and young men should target individual risk perception, and balance HIV treatment and prevention messages. Findings reveal a complex mix of dynamic and interacting factors operating at different levels that create context specific sexual behavioral risk socioscapes that sustain or accentuate the high rates of new HIV infections among the young women. Using a Social Ecological Model for Young Women’s Vulnerability to HIV as a guiding framework, we contend that efforts for addressing the high HIV infections among young women, including sexual behavioral change interventions, economic empowerment programs, should not only aim at individual women but also target factors operating at the sociocultural and structural levels.
Show less

Title: KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS AND SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT COMPLIANCE
Creator: Redican, Kyle James
Date: 2022
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In the wake of the 2014 Flint Water Crisis, researchers, regulators, and utility professionals have given increased attention to understanding drivers of (CWS) Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance by community water systems (CWSs). Most of this research has only explored system traits while ignoring the vital role of human capital, especially the operator. The status of CWS operators can vary widely between different systems. More critically, scholars have not investigated how effective...
Show moreIn the wake of the 2014 Flint Water Crisis, researchers, regulators, and utility professionals have given increased attention to understanding drivers of (CWS) Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance by community water systems (CWSs). Most of this research has only explored system traits while ignoring the vital role of human capital, especially the operator. The status of CWS operators can vary widely between different systems. More critically, scholars have not investigated how effective external linkages between CWS operators have impacted SDWA compliance. Drawing from the theories of Organizational Learning’s inter-organizational learning, Innovation Systems’ knowledge transfers, and Agglomeration Economics’ knowledge spillovers, I hypothesized that increased interactions between CWS operators, facilitated in part by geographic proximity, would lead to more information sharing, increased CWS performance, and fewer SDWA violations. Remarkably little is known about the drivers of inter-operator interactions or whether such interactions improve SDWA compliance, and this research helped fill the data gap through a large-sample survey of CWS operators in Michigan to capture the frequency of interactions along with a range of operator and system characteristics which may explain why some operators participate in more inter-operator interactions than others. With this novel dataset, along with publicly available system and community data, this research first investigated what endogenous operator characteristics were associated with more reported inter-operator interactions. Through multiple methods on reported operator interactions, the Utility and Contract operators and operators with memberships in professional organizations appear more likely to report more interactions than Non-Affiliated operators and all operators who were not members of professional organizations. Second, based on Tobler’s first law of geography, there should be some spatial autocorrelation in the number of reported interactions, and this was tested using variogram modeling. Observed spatial autocorrelation indicated location-based differences in the number of reported interactions. Third, we used multiple methods to explore the primary research question to identify endogenous and spatial drivers of reported inter-operator interactions. Multiple models found that rural districts had a higher probability of fewer SDWA violations with increased interactions, while the urban districts had the inverse relationship. Fourth, the research incorporated CWS-specific and operator-specific variables, as the operator-specific data were not independent of the CWS observations (since some operators run multiple CWSs). I used a Generalized Linear Mixed-Model to estimate these relationships accounted for the multiple levels and found that more interactions increased the probability of SDWA compliance for certain types of operators. The broader implications of this research encourage stakeholders to pursue more inter-operator interactions as a low-cost mechanism to increase SDWA compliance. Seven avenues to increase interactions are outlined, ranging from open operator contact lists to operator focus groups to identify common problems and solutions to creating a state-level operator mentorship program to support new operators.
Show less

Title: Lansing, Michigan and Shizuoka, Japan : a comparison of a realfunctional organization in two different environments
Creator: Masai, Yasuo, 1929-
Date: 1960
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: MEASURING AND MODELING THE EFFECTS OF SEA LEVEL RISE ON NEAR-COASTAL RIVERINE REGIONS : A GEOSPATIAL COMPARISON OF THE SHATT AL-ARAB RIVER IN SOUTHERN IRAQ WITH THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA IN SOUTHERN LOUISIANA, USA.
Creator: Kadhim, Ameen Awad
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: There is a growing debate among scientists on how sea level rise (SLR) will impact coastal environments, particularly in countries where economic activities are sustained along these coasts. An important factor in this debate is how best to characterize coastal environmental impacts over time. This study investigates the measurement and modeling of SLR and effects on near-coastal riverine regions. The study uses a variety of data sources, including satellite imagery from 1975 to 2017, digital...
Show moreThere is a growing debate among scientists on how sea level rise (SLR) will impact coastal environments, particularly in countries where economic activities are sustained along these coasts. An important factor in this debate is how best to characterize coastal environmental impacts over time. This study investigates the measurement and modeling of SLR and effects on near-coastal riverine regions. The study uses a variety of data sources, including satellite imagery from 1975 to 2017, digital elevation data and previous studies. This research is focusing on two of these important regions: southern Iraq along the Shatt Al-Arab River (SAR) and the southern United States in Louisiana along the Mississippi River Delta (MRD). These sites are important for both their extensive low-lying land and for their significant coastal economic activities. The dissertation consists of six chapters. Chapter one introduces the topic. Chapter two compares and contrasts bothregions and evaluates escalating SLR risk. Chapter three develops a coupled human and natural system (CHANS) perspective for SARR to reveal multiple sources of environmental degradation in this region. Alfa century ago SARR was an important and productive region in Iraq that produced fruits like dates, crops, vegetables, and fish. By 1975 the environment of this region began to deteriorate, and since then, it is well-documented that SARR has suffered under human and natural problems. In this chapter, I use the CHANS perspective to identify the problems, and which ones (human or natural systems) are especially responsible for environmental degradation in SARR. I use several measures of ecological, economic, and social systems to outline the problems identified through the CHANS framework. SARR has experienced extreme weather changes from 1975 to 2017 resulting in lower precipitation (-17mm) and humidity (-5.6%), higher temperatures (1.6 C), and sea level rise, which are affecting the salinity of groundwater and Shatt Al Arab river water. At the same time, human systems in SARR experienced many problems including eight years of war between Iraq and Iran, the first Gulf War, UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Iraq, and the second Gulf War. I modeled and analyzed the regions land cover between 1975 and 2017 to understand how the environment has been affected, and found that climate change is responsible for what happened in this region based on other factors. Chapter four constructs and applies an error propagation model to elevation data in the Mississippi River Delta region (MRDR). This modeling both reduces and accounts for the effects of digital elevation model (DEM) error on a bathtub inundation model used to predict the SLR risk in the region. Digital elevation data is essential to estimate coastal vulnerability to flooding due to sea level rise. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 1 Arc-Second Global is considered the best free global digital elevation data available. However, inundation estimates from SRTM are subject to uncertainty due to inaccuracies in the elevation data. Small systematic errors in low, flat areas can generate large errors in inundation models, and SRTM is subject to positive bias in the presence of vegetation canopy, such as along channels and within marshes. In this study, I conduct an error assessment and develop statistical error modeling for SRTM to improve the quality of elevation data in these at-risk regions. Chapter five applies MRDR-based model from chapter four to enhance the SRTM 1 Arc-Second Global DEM data in SARR. As such, it is the first study to account for data uncertainty in the evaluation of SLR risk in this sensitive region. This study transfers an error propagation model from MRDR to the Shatt al-Arab river region to understand the impact of DEM error on an inundation model in this sensitive region. The error propagation model involves three stages. First, a multiple regression model, parameterized from MRDR, is used to generate an expected DEM error surface for SARR. This surface is subtracted from the SRTM DEM for SARR to adjust it. Second, residuals from this model are simulated for SARR: these are mean-zero and spatially autocorrelated with a Gaussian covariance model matching that observed in MRDR by convolution filtering of random noise. More than 50 realizations of error were simulated to make sure a stable result was realized. These realizations were subtracted from the adjusted SRTM to produce DEM realizations capturing potential variation. Third, the DEM realizations are each used in bathtub modeling to estimate flooding area in the region with 1 m of sea level rise. The distribution of flooding estimates shows the impact of DEM error on uncertainty in inundation likelihood, and on the magnitude of total flooding. Using the adjusted DEM realizations 47 ± 2 percent of the region is predicted to flood, while using the raw SRTM DEM only 28% of the region is predicted to flood.
Show less

Title: MODELING THE JOINT IMPACTS OF SOCIAL NETWORK AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT ON ADOLESCENTS’ PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Creator: Liu, Wei
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This research stems from the worldwide public health problem of childhood obesity and insufficient physical activity (PA) among adolescents. Studies have shown that both social networks and the built environment could affect PA, but how do they jointly exert influence? Understanding the scale and mechanism of this joint impact could shed light on developing an effective intervention to promote PA. The goal of this dissertation is to try to disentangle the joint influence of social networks...
Show moreThis research stems from the worldwide public health problem of childhood obesity and insufficient physical activity (PA) among adolescents. Studies have shown that both social networks and the built environment could affect PA, but how do they jointly exert influence? Understanding the scale and mechanism of this joint impact could shed light on developing an effective intervention to promote PA. The goal of this dissertation is to try to disentangle the joint influence of social networks and the built environment on changes in PA through social network analysis and test a novel intervention based on the findings from the social network models. This study uses two waves of Add Health data from two sample schools. Chapter Two investigates how school-based friendship networks could influence Physical Education (PE) class enrollment. Chapter Three examines the influence of home location, neighborhood characteristics, as well as the demographic characteristics and change in PA of peers who were nominated as friends in the Add Health social survey on high school student’s friend selection and PA dynamics between two academic years. Chapter Four presents a spatial agent-based model that was derived from the social network model and integrates a location-based mobile game similar to Pokémon Go as a PA-promoting intervention to test different intervention scenarios. Through this research, I demonstrate that friends’ PE enrollment status has a weak influence on the change of individual’s PE enrollment in two consecutive years. Another observation is that student’s total PA change can affect their PA behaviors. Contrarily, the built environment of the neighborhood did not prove to exert significant influence. Due to social influence, students participating in an intervention program may cause a change in PA of non-participants, i.e., we can observe a spillover effect of the intervention program. This dissertation enriches the field of health geography by integrating social network analysis and spatial thinking to jointly investigate the influence of environmental and social spaces and to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the complex system of childhood obesity. It also extends existing models and provides a spatial agent-based model as an intervention exploration tool that can be calibrated for research and education by other scholars.
Show less

Title: Michigan State University Distinguished Professor Emeritus John M. Hunter talks about his reearch done in Africa
Creator: Hunter, John M. (John Melton), 1928-
Date: 2003-05-19
Collection: G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
Description: Peter Limb, Michigan State University Librarian and Africana Bibliographer introduces David Robinson, University Distinguished Professor of History and David Wiley, Director of the MSU African Studies Center who both interview John M. Hunter, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography. Hunter tells of his field research in the Gold Coast, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Nigeria in the mid-1950s, while serving as an MSU professor abroad. He also discusses the census mapping...
Show morePeter Limb, Michigan State University Librarian and Africana Bibliographer introduces David Robinson, University Distinguished Professor of History and David Wiley, Director of the MSU African Studies Center who both interview John M. Hunter, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography. Hunter tells of his field research in the Gold Coast, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Nigeria in the mid-1950s, while serving as an MSU professor abroad. He also discusses the census mapping model he developed and used in Ghana in 1960, which was funded by UNESCO and became a model used in many African countries. Other topics covered include medical geography, socio-economic geography, river blindness, schistosomiasis, elephantiasis, guinea worm disease and seasonal hunger.
Show less

Title: PERSONAL SERVICE AND LEISURE TRAVEL IN THE CITY OF DETROIT AND ITS SUBURBS : EXPLORING INDIVIDUAL- AND NEIGHBORHOOD-LEVEL VARIABILITY
Creator: Li, Xiaomeng
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The ability to travel is essential for people to participate in society, acquire resources and services, and engage in daily life. Trips for personal service and leisure constitute a significant share of total travel, more than one-third of all trips, but the distinct patterns of these journeys have often been overlooked in the existing literature. Also, daily travel in high-poverty, declining urban neighborhoods experiencing disinvestment is less studied and is not well understood. Focusing...
Show moreThe ability to travel is essential for people to participate in society, acquire resources and services, and engage in daily life. Trips for personal service and leisure constitute a significant share of total travel, more than one-third of all trips, but the distinct patterns of these journeys have often been overlooked in the existing literature. Also, daily travel in high-poverty, declining urban neighborhoods experiencing disinvestment is less studied and is not well understood. Focusing on the city of Detroit and its suburbs, this dissertation examines daily travel patterns – the one-way trip distance (length of journey to the destination), weekly trip frequency and total distance traveled, and mode of travel – for personal services and leisure activities, and how they vary by individual sociodemographic characteristics and different neighborhood environments. The results show that personal service and leisure travel have distinct patterns in terms of trip distance and mode selection. Also, the effects of the neighborhood environment and individual sociodemographic characteristics on travel vary significantly by the purpose of the journey (personal service versus leisure). In particular, the effect of aging varies by neighborhood context and trip purpose. Seniors in declining urban neighborhoods have significantly fewer leisure trips, indicating challenges they face in leisure activity participation. Moreover, the typical association of high-density built environments and shorter trip distances do not hold in the declining urban Detroit neighborhoods. In fact, residents in such neighborhoods experience unique burdens in travel and have to travel longer distances to reach amenities despite living in a high-density built environment, due to the extreme disinvestment within the city of Detroit. Lastly, focusing on an essential type of personal services – pharmacies, it is shown that residents in declining urban neighborhoods actually bypass local independent stores within the neighborhood and travel longer distance to shop at more distant national chain pharmacies.
Show less

Title: SINGAPORE, MICHIGAN, A BURIED COASTAL GHOST TOWN : A GEOGRAPHICAL CASE STUDY AND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY MICHIGAN
Creator: Church, Michelle Lynn
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Michigan’s landscape has undergone significant alterations due to human activities during the nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, Michigan had become a leading lumber producer in the United States. However, by the turn of the twentieth century, the logging industry shifted from the East Coast westward. This led to fragmented landscapes, the result of interactions between the logging industry decision-makers, regional policymakers, and wood product consumers. Not all Michigan...
Show moreMichigan’s landscape has undergone significant alterations due to human activities during the nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, Michigan had become a leading lumber producer in the United States. However, by the turn of the twentieth century, the logging industry shifted from the East Coast westward. This led to fragmented landscapes, the result of interactions between the logging industry decision-makers, regional policymakers, and wood product consumers. Not all Michigan communities were equally affected by the logging boom. Some landscapes, like those around Singapore, Michigan, were transformed so significantly they were no longer economically viable. Using the photographic record, this research explores the concept of settlement abandonment due to natural resource depletion. It contextualizes the images with narratives that identify the motivations and actions of key players in the logging industry around Singapore and assesses the impacts of the logging industry on the environment and community. These materials suggest that a combination of rampant demand for lumber, a lack of government regulation, and an indifferent local population led to the decimation of the forests surrounding Singapore. Due to the pressures put on the landscape as a means of profit, this area has been forever altered.
Show less

Title: SPATIOTEMPORAL MODELING OF DAMS AND CONSEQUENT IMPACTS ON THE MEKONG RIVER BASIN ECOSYSTEM
Creator: Lin, Zihan
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The hydro-dam can help increase adaptation to climate change and meet water, energy, and food needs as a widely adopted water infrastructure. However, it alters and fragments ecosystems, especially at places where hydro-dam constructions are gaining popularity for the sake of more socio-economic benefits. This dissertation examines and characterizes the process and outcomes of ecosystem changes owing to hydro-dams, using the Mekong River Basin as an example. The overarching research question...
Show moreThe hydro-dam can help increase adaptation to climate change and meet water, energy, and food needs as a widely adopted water infrastructure. However, it alters and fragments ecosystems, especially at places where hydro-dam constructions are gaining popularity for the sake of more socio-economic benefits. This dissertation examines and characterizes the process and outcomes of ecosystem changes owing to hydro-dams, using the Mekong River Basin as an example. The overarching research question is answered from four angles, including 1) finding new essential properties of dams, 2) determining dams’ impact scope on land change, 3) estimating cascade consequences of dams on significant water bodies, and 4) analyzing dams’ ripple effect on the atmosphere.The main body (Chapters 2-4) of this dissertation consists of three articles. In Chapter 2, I achieve the first two research goals by performing time-serial trajectory analyses on 67 working Mekong hydro-dams and the lands surrounding them using long-term geospatial imageries and statistical methods. In Chapter 3, I calculated and analyzed the open water surface area of the Tonle Sap Lake and the changes at a 16-day interval from 2001 to 2015 to assess how upstream hydro-dam proliferation has influenced the largest inland lake in the lower basin. In Chapter 4, the spatial variations of inundation areas in the Tonle Sap Lake floodplain and temporal changes of the greenhouse gas (such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide) emissions from the changing lands were modeled and quantified using geospatial datasets and a biogeochemical model to provide a solution to the fourth research question. In summary, this dissertation has successfully established a new remote sensing approach that enables hydro-dam characterization and set up a combined framework combining geospatial modeling and biogeochemical modeling. The three studies come to the conclusions that 1) hydro-dams’ impact scale on land change is spatially anisotropic at the local level, 2) hydro-dams’ cascade consequence on a large water body at a remote place is significant, and 3) hydro-dams’ ripple effect on floodplain via water and lands can cause more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. This dissertation can enrich the current literature regarding human-nature interactions, focusing on hydro-dam’s role in the ecosystem. It also broadens the knowledge of hydro-dams’ impacts and attracts more relevant studies and environmental protection efforts. More importantly, this dissertation can assist future policy-making, especially for sustainable hydro-dam planning and transboundary water resource management.
Show less

Title: Science in the digital age : overcoming uncertainty and the adoption of Volunteered Geographic Information for science
Creator: Langley, Shaun Arthur
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: With the advent of Web 2.0, the public is becoming increasingly interested in spatial data exploration. The potential for Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to be adopted for Science through collaborations between researchers and non-scientists is of special interest to me. In particular, mobile devices and wireless communication permit the public to be more involved in research to a greater degree. Furthermore, the accuracy of these devices is rapidly improving, allowing me to address...
Show moreWith the advent of Web 2.0, the public is becoming increasingly interested in spatial data exploration. The potential for Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to be adopted for Science through collaborations between researchers and non-scientists is of special interest to me. In particular, mobile devices and wireless communication permit the public to be more involved in research to a greater degree. Furthermore, the accuracy of these devices is rapidly improving, allowing me to address questions of uncertainty and error in data collections. Cooperation between researchers and the public integrates themes common to VGI and PGIS (Participatory Geographic Information) to bring about a new paradigm in GIScience. This dissertation discusses VGI in the context of a new paradigm, eScience, and the broader framework of Neogeography. I discuss current issues with data quality and uncertainty regarding VGI and detail one approach to quality credibility of the data. Finally, the dissertation outlines the framework for utilizing VGI in the context of case study in disease ecology for the purpose of surveillance of tsetse flies, the primary vector of African Trypanosomiasis. My system allows for two-way communication between researchers and the public for data collection, analysis, and the ultimate dissemination of results. Enhancing the role of the public to participate in these types of projects can improve both the efficacy of disease surveillance as well as stimulating greater interest in science.
Show less

MSU Libraries

Digital Repository

Enabled Filters

Pages

Pages

MSU Libraries

Digital Repository

You are here

Search results

Pages

Pages