Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Access to health care for a few social groups, such as migrant and seasonal farm workers and their dependents, is uncommonly low. Recent legislation targeting some of these groups have been increasingly successful, while the initiatives...
Seagrasses are valued for the range of ecosystem services they provide such as nursery and adult habitat for commercially and recreationally fished species, a critical food resource for threatened species, and filtration systems for...
Urban growth causes environmental changes on a global scale. Coastal regions which undergo fast landscape transitions and population growth are facing higher risks from ecological degradation and severe natural hazards. However, the...
This dissertation is an account of conservative social movement activism. Conservative political projects are characterized by advocacy of market-centric state policies. Conservative social movement activism is one variety of...
Hurricanes threaten the United States every year. It is important to quantify the risk of these events for emergency managers. Extreme value statistics are used to model hurricane characteristics at different locations. Using wind speeds...
Urban cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning enhancement has been well documented for Atlanta, Georgia. This study builds on those investigations using modeling techniques. Numerous styles of analyses and regressions were conducted to establish...
Florida has a high frequency of tornadoes that occur throughout the United States. Together, Florida's large population and expensive property, provides a great risk for injuries, fatalities, and damage to structures for when a tornado...
A combination of field work, modeling, and remote sensing was used to determine mass balances for the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru and for parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet. A 40-year history of deglaciation on Quelccaya derived from...
The proportion of individuals aged 65 and over is growing at an astronomical rate in the United States, and some estimate that this demographic age group will double by the year 2025. Aging adults are primarily dependent on the personal...
Tupelo Forests and Honey Production along the Apalachicola River of Northwest Florida: Livelihood Preservation and Forest Conservation in a Changing Rural Landscape
This research is a case study of beekeepers, honey production, and land-use change in a rural area of Northwest Florida. The dense stands of tupelo trees that grow along the Apalachicola River and its tributaries make this region one of...
This dissertation investigates housing redevelopment and neighborhood change as a gentrification process in Seoul, Korea. Chapter 2 presents a reveiw of the literature regarding debates over gentrification and outlines what forces have...
Since the launch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2002, research needs have been established in the areas of disaster preparedness and critical infrastructure protection. Disaster preparedness seeks to lessen the adverse...
Hurricane evacuation refers to an individual’s or household’s response to a hurricane threat by temporarily relocating somewhere safe. However, it is rarely the case that everyone will comply when he/she is ordered to evacuate by...
My study explores the role of geography in the construction of cultural identity for place-based communities of practice. I combine recent advances in cultural geography, which focus on the role of cultural traces to culturally order and...
This study involves evaluation of a hydrological approach for the delineation of jurisdictional wetlands and the planning and monitoring of wetland restoration. The proposed process uses short-term groundwater observations for the...
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) is part of an educational reform strategy that initiates competition and market forces among public schools in Florida. Students take a standardized test and their scores are aggregated at...
My dissertation explores the Comité Pro Santa Cruz, a Bolivian rightwing social movement which developed to promote the political and economic interests of the eastern lowland department of Santa Cruz’s white and mestizo “elite” social...
In my dissertation I evaluate perspectives of development participation in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. Using semi-structured interviews and Q methodology, I assess what priorities exist in Foz economic strategies, what groups are perceived to...
The official tornado report record is limited by a significant bias. Termed the "population bias", it communicates misleading climatological trend information by displaying an increasing number of reports from 1950 through the early...
This dissertation seeks to establish the relationship between formal political processes, such as NATO and EU expansion, and the formation and reconstruction of identity, in this case "Western" identity and "European" identity. By...
Accurate and replicable measurements of changes to land cover from drought conditions are essential for monitoring ecosystem disturbances. Techniques designed to measure land cover changes have been developed using data from remote...
This dissertation includes a series of studies that present innovative methodologies to improve tornado risk and vulnerability assessments. Limitations of the historical tornado dataset are well known and relate to inconsistencies in...
The simulation of overland flow accumulation is critical for drainage network extraction, soil moisture monitoring, and hydrological modeling, etc. A variety of flow accumulation algorithms have been developed, but the complex and...
North Atlantic hurricanes constitute a threat to both life and property. The warm seas found in tropical low-latitudes provide a breeding ground for hurricanes, with nearly continuous heat and moisture fluxes into near-surface air....
Taiwanese identity has been defined, redefined and challenged at various spatial scales. At the local level, the renaming of streets in Taiwan after 1949 reflected the nationalist identity that was manifested in the Kuomintang (KMT)....
Environmental justice studies tend to deemphasize political economic processes, social relations between various social groups, scale and the social constructions of environmental issues which hide environmental injustice. Political...
Heat-related mortality rates increase significantly during heat waves, in some instances even more than doubling. Climate change projections indicate that the frequency and intensity of these extreme heat events may increase. Well-known...
The question of who is Puerto Rican is constantly raised in Puerto Rico as much as within the diaspora. Historically, the Puerto Rican diaspora has concentrated in New York, New Jersey, and other northeastern and midwestern states....
This dissertation adds to ongoing research efforts that seek a better understanding of the complex relationships between human beings and their environment. Specifically, the impact of natural disasters on coastal communities from the...
Urban sprawl is a descriptive term of art commonly referring to low density, scattered development extending out from cities. Although many studies have examined the causes, costs, and solutions to sprawl, consensus on what to do about...
Wetlands are transitional ecosystems between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are among the most productive and diverse ecosystems and make a critical part of larger ecosystems. Functional wetlands provide numerous significant...
Between Proxy and Instrument: Reconstructing Past Weather Using Qualitative Human Observations in the Absence of Instrumental and Proxy Records: A Case Study from Shirley Plantation, Virginia USA
In this dissertation, I produce novel scientific knowledge about the weather of the past using subjective human observations in the absence of instrumental records in the United States. Using a handwritten plantation journal from Shirley...
Traits, Species, and Communities: Integrative Bayesian Approaches to Ecological Biogeography across Geographic, Environmental, Phylogenetic, and Morphological Space
Assuming a methodological perspective, this dissertation proceeds through a series of studies that cover levels of biological organization ranging from the morphological traits of individual specimens to community assemblages. The...
This research examines the geographical manifestations of the debates in 2002 over adding sexual orientation antidiscrimination protections within three Florida communities: Miami-Dade County, the City of Orlando, and Collier County....
The inter-annual variability of typhoon landfalls in China is investigated using historical and modern records. A north-to-south anti-correlation in yearly activity is confirmed from the historical records. When activity over Guangdong...
Outward urban growth, driven by increasing population, economic development, and technological advancement, has become a worldwide phenomenon. Such growth is often viewed as the vitality of a regional economy. But it has brought negative...
Urban growth or sprawl has been an interesting research topic for contemporary urban studies. The availability of remote sensing and GIS techniques facilitate a large number of empirical and practical studies in addition to traditional...
The tracking of hurricanes, largely controlled by the organization of the presiding pressure systems, determines whether or not any given hurricane will strike a coastline. Some of the climatic influences, such as the North Atlantic...
This dissertation investigates the overall impact of chemical exposure, health care disparities, and current health care issues facing the Appalachian Region of the United States while adding to the research of human disease ecology and...
Religious experience is highly personal, and is often comprised of affectual encounters and emotional responses, both within personal space and through ordained sacred spaces. Geographers have continually ignored the role of personal...
In this dissertation I examine the United States as a space of hunger. While geographers have analyzed hunger in other places around the world, especially in the Third World, they have generally neglected to explain its occurrence in the...
Coral reefs have been increasingly reported as ecosystems in severe "crisis" and decline, with estimates of irreparably damaged reefs to be around 54%, and possible losses of 15-20% more over the next half-century. The urgency to...
Mangroves are coastal halophytes that tend to inhabit the low energy, tropical and sub-tropical coasts of the world. The mangrove habitats that occupy large swaths of the south Florida coastline are important habitats for a myriad of...
This dissertation examines Turkish-American identity formations in the United States. Through a case study based in the New York metropolitan area, this study explores how the contestation and negotiation of Turkish ethnicity and Turkish...
Land changes are complex and dynamic processes that involve the human and natural systems interacting over space and time to reshape the earth's surface. As a fundamental form of global environmental changes, land changes also hold wide...
Landscape characteristics are believed to have a close linkage with in-stream nutrient level. Both empirical and process-based approaches have been used to model the relationship between landscape characteristics and non-point source ...
This series of studies evaluates the ability of global climate models (GCMs) to simulate the observed relationship between the upper limit of tropical cyclone (TC) intensity and sea surface temperature (SST). Previous studies addressed...
This study contributes a critical geographic perspective to understanding possibilities and constraints for achieving more sustainable and just urbanization through New Urbanism, a market-oriented, Smart Growth approach consistent with...
This dissertation describes the development of a very large, multi-domain ontology. It addresses the processes involved in developing object-oriented ontological data structures in general and specifically ontological data structures of...
The 1920's blues scene is a time and scene often depicted in books, plays, film, and music. However much the time and place have been popular for artistic exploration, the story of the lesbian and lesbian existence in this time and place...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
