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 the school level, which is intended to be a normative measurement of the average "quantity" of education that a school imparts to its students. The school grades are then tied to a punitive system designed to create increased incentives for teachers and administrators to provide a more rigorous education to students. The school grades do not however, consider the impact of local demographics and socio-economics on FCAT scores. I theorize that the educational attainment measured by the FCAT is affected by the daily webs of interaction that extend beyond the school doors and official education. By situating public education in Florida within the historical evolution of spatial inequality of public education, it suggests the potential impacts of the topological relief in the geography of education today. I performed empirical analyses, including correlations and regressions between FCAT school grades and socio-economic variables. The results show that FCAT school grades are significantly influenced by the socio-economic standing of the students of a school. This geographic contextualization problematizes the neo-liberal economic assumption that the FCAT is founded upon. The ignorance of social, political and economic inequality, which is reflected through the public education system, results in the failure of the FCAT to be an effective reform for the improvement of public education in Florida. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester, 2007. / January 26, 2007. / Florida, Neo-Liberalism, Education, Standardized Testing, Geography, FCAT, Inequality / Includes bibliographical references. / Barney Warf, Professor Directing Thesis; Jan Kodras, Committee Member; Jonathan Leib, Committee Member; Mark Horner, Committee Member.

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 driven gentrification in Western cities. A detailed theoretical expectation for gentrification in Seoul is presented in Chapter 3. Chapter 3 explores the context of gentrification in Seoul regarding changes in maximum land values, economic base, demographics, and politics based on the "rent gap," "post-industrial," and "world city" theses. Chapter 4 offers an empirical analysis of gentrification in the 522 administrative dong of Seoul in 1991 and 2001 using correlations, factor analysis, and stepwise regression. It reveals that gentrification in Seoul is mainly affected by the changes in land values, demographics, economic base, and institutional policy characteristics, excluding housing type and ownership. Chapter 5 investigates gentrifiers' demongraphic and economic characteristics, movement patterns and motivation for location choices. It also examines the role of city officials and local government to induce gentrification in Seoul by using semi-structured interview and archival data. Brief summaries of each chapter along with concluding comments are found in Chapter 6. Collectively, the results of my theoretical and empirical investigations show that gentrification in Seoul has the same pattern as Western cities in that the rent gap and post-industrial city status theses are applicable to explain gentrification in Seoul, but there are difference of urban policy between Korea's local governments and Western countries' local governments. Gentrification in Seoul is a relatively small scale phenomenon in terms of the volume of gentrifiers when compared with Western cities. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2006. / April 14, 2006. / Gentrification, Housing Redevelopment, Urban Geography, Urban Restructuring, Urban Revitalization, Neighborhood Change / Includes bibliographical references. / Barney Warf, Professor Directing Dissertation; Tim Chapin, Outside Committee Member; Dan Klooster, Committee Member; Jonathan Leib, Committee Member.

This thesis examines temporal and spatial process that are reproduced and challenged through the hybrid cultural construction, Tribal Style Dance. It also examines how Tribal Style dancers use two embodied devices, signification and performativity, to challenge naturalized identity constructions of gender and sexuality that are layered onto "belly dancing" bodies. The thesis further argues for the academic significance of interrogations of uneven power relationships embedded in dance practices. The report begins by laying out the methods for engaging in a case study. The qualitative approach is meant to begin research into Tribal Style dance as a project and not just a mélange expression. Field research, participant observation and interviews with a selected case study group facilitate the exploration of Improvisational Tribal Style dance. A review of the available literature situates that troupe into temporal and spatial contexts. The thesis then examines the available literature, beginning with an explanation of culture and how culture can be used to reify hegemonic constructions. Culture is examined as a process, not a structure. Through production and reproduction, culture provides a structure and is the result of social actions. Globalizing processes are next examined, from two angles: one, as creating new vehicles for information and cultural object sharing across boundaries; and two, as being necessarily situated within spatial contexts. Globalization, specifically, is allowing Tribal Style dancers to borrow elements from around the world. With these elements, dancers are able to juxtapose images from the Occident and the Orient, thus blurring lines that have been historically and politically constructed between the two. The borrowings are not random; the resulting hybrid, cultural ensemble then signifies resistance to Western hegemonic constructions. Tribal Style dancers use globally available material to create identities that locally deconstruct Orientalist notions of sexualized "belly dancing" bodies. They also create dancing bodies that do not conform to Western ideals for dancers. In so doing, Tribal Style dance has opened spaces for non-normativity and transgression against the fixity of tradition. This thesis also makes an argument for deep interrogations of dance. The historic, Western mind/body separation has led to a devaluation of dance as a physical, but not rational, expression. Postmodernist inquiries into dance practices reveal this to be a social construction. Dance is examined as a power-laden discourse, one that is explicitly gendered and, in the case of "belly dance," sexualized. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester, 2007. / November 5, 2007. / Postcolonialism, Orientalism, Performativity, Embodiment, Human Geography, Middle Eastern Dance, Cyborg / Includes bibliographical references. / Philip Steinberg, Professor Directing Thesis; Jonathan Leib, Committee Member; Barney Warf, Committee Member.

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-American identity is grounded in place and across space. It examines Turkish-Americaness in relation to Westerness, Muslimness, Arabness, Americaness, and Turkishness. The study problematizes ethnic and racial labels such as Muslim Americans in the United States by examining the multiplicity, contextuality, complexity, fluidity, and temporarility of Turkish (and Muslim) identities and the role of different locales (the United States and Turkey) in the construction of Turkishness. The dissertation investigates the role of Turkish and American politics and culture in the construction of Turkish-American identities, and focuses on generational, class and gender differences among Turkish Americans. It suggests that Turkish-American identities are spatially constituted as they represent a ground on which temporary and ever-changing boundaries are marked between inside and outside, the same and the other. These boundaries stress not only distinction or difference but also interconnection. In addition, this dissertation examines the history of Turkish immigration to the United States and provides empirical data about Turkish-American institutions and the distribution of Turkish-American populations throughout the United States. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2003. / October 24, 2003. / Muslim Americans, Ethnic Identity, Politics of Identity, Turkish Americans, Turks / Includes bibliographical references. / Jonathan Leib, Professor Directing Dissertation; Peter Garretson, Outside Committee Member; Janet E. Kodras, Committee Member; Barney Warf, Committee Member.

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 geospatial domain. The ontological data structure developed during this research effort – the Visual Objects Taxonomy/Thesaurus (VOTT) - is a compendium of feature classes and concepts within the visual domain that are of interest to geographers, cartographers, geographic information science (GISci) practitioners, geospatial modeling and simulation engineers, and cognitive scientists. This data structure is an object-oriented, knowledge base of geospatial objects in the visual domain – those objects that we see when we look out a picture window; or objects we see when we look out an aircraft window; even those objects that we see when we view an urban setting. The semantic integration process used in this effort was designed to allow the integration of all forms of existing ontological data structures – word-lists, dictionaries, taxonomies, thesauri, and many other forms of ontologies to create a compendium of class concepts. The final products generated during this phase of the research – a broad-based taxonomy and its counterpart thesaurus - provide object-naming consistence for future cartographic, geographic information science, and modeling and simulation production endeavors. An additional by-product of this research effort is a 3-D model library of generic OpenFlightTM models of a representative number of the concepts in the geospatial ontology. These models are in the public domain and are freely distributable. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2005. / March 21, 2005. / Taxonomy, Ontology, Real-Time Simulation, Terrain Visualization, Modeling, Thesaurus, Geography / Includes bibliographical references. / Xiaojun Yang, Professor Directing Dissertation; Daniel G. Schwartz, Outside Committee Member; J. Anthony Stallins, Committee Member; Daniel J. Klooster, Committee Member.

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 development of the rate of drainage (infiltration) and response to evapotranspiration and rainfall for a site. Those parameters are then used in a site-specific hydrological model that, together with long-term precipitation records, may be used to estimate the extent of saturation and inundation at the site over the long term. The extent of long-term saturation and inundation may then be compared with prevailing legal criteria for wetlands. The study includes an examination of the rationale for the model as well as tests of its validity for the prediction of groundwater levels. In addition, the limits of wetland areas determined by this process are compared with those determined by the use of traditional vegetative and soil indicators of wetlands. The study also addresses possible applications of the process for the planning of wetland restoration. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2007. / December 8, 2006. / Hydrology-Based Wetland Delineation, Wetland Hydrology, Wetland Delineation, Wetlands / Includes bibliographical references. / J. Anthony Stallins, Professor Directing Dissertation; Sergio Fagherazzi, Outside Committee Member; James B. Elsner, Committee Member; Xiaojun Yang, Committee Member.

It is essential that cities adopt new approaches to stormwater management in the face of changing precipitation regime. In some locations, ecoroofs have been incorporated into city plans as a stormwater control measure, and thus their real-world performance under current conditions can assist with adequate planning. In this study rainfall retention data collected during a three year period, between 2014-2017, is analyzed for 75mm and 125mm ecoroof plots in Portland, Oregon, USA. There is no difference in annual rainfall retention performance between the shallower and deeper plots. However, the 36% mean annual retention of the ecoroof plots is a significant improvement over the conventional rooftop. The two ecoroof plots exhibit similar performance, despite their difference in substrate depth, under high, medium, or low precipitation events, as defined by local meteorological conditions. Additionally, the 125mm ecoroof plot exhibits significantly greater performance during low intensity versus high intensity storms. The range of rainfall retention for the 125mm ecoroof under a precipitation event of low intensity ranges from 32% to 100%, with an average retention of 81%, while the high intensity events see a mean retention of 26%. The general trend of ecoroof behavior indicates that rainfall retention capacity shows a negative correlation (rho = -0.37, p=0.00) with increasing precipitation intensity for the 125mm plot. Overall, these findings indicate that extensive ecoroofs of shallower depths are capable of retaining a substantial amount of stormwater. However, their performance is at its worst during the high intensity events that have the potential to overload sewer systems. Further investigation into rainfall retention capabilities of these ecoroofs is warranted to provide more information about design principles, such as vegetation type and diversity, which could also be impactful.

Earth's annual average temperature has increased by about 0.6°C during the past three decades. This warming pulse has brought many changes in the climatic system. For example, the Amazon forests of South America experienced frequent droughts possibly from altered air-sea interaction patterns in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The response of vegetation to this unprecedented rate of warming is the subject of this dissertation. Vegetation greenness levels, a surrogate of vegetation photosynthetic activity, recorded by satellite-borne sensors offer repetitive synoptic views of the Earth's vegetation. This period of extraordinary warming coincided with the availability of multiple data sets of vegetation greenness levels from different satellites, thus providing an unique opportunity to assess the impact of warming on vegetation. The Amazon region has suffered two severe droughts during this decade - the so-called "once-in-a-century" drought in 2005 and an even stronger drought in 2010. Vegetation browning during the 2010 drought was four times greater than that in 2005 (2.4 million km^2). Notably, 51% of all drought-stricken forests showed browning in 2010 (1.68 million km^2) compared to only 14% in 2005 (0.32 million km^2). This large-scale decline in vegetation greenness denotes significant loss of photosynthetic capacity of Amazonian vegetation and thus a major perturbation to the global carbon cycle. In the northern latitudes (>50°N), vegetation seasonality (SV) is tightly coupled to temperature seasonality (ST). As ST diminished, so did SV. The observed declines of ST and SV are equivalent to 4 and 7° (5 and 6°) latitudinal shifts equatorward during the past 30 years in the Arctic (Boreal) region. Analysis of simulations from 17 state-of-the-art climate models indicates an additional ST diminishment equivalent to a 20° equatorward shift this century. How SV will change in response to such large projected ST declines is not well understood. Hence there is a need for continued monitoring of northern lands as their seasonal temperature profiles evolve to resemble those further south. The results presented in this dissertation provide a better understanding of the impact of recent warming on three pristine ecosystems - the Amazonian forests, and the Arctic and Boreal ecosystems.

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-ranging significance for the functioning of the earth's ecosystem and the human society. However, understanding land change dynamics remains a major challenge for global environmental change and sustainability research. The primary objective of this dissertation research is to investigate the feasibility and applicability of integrating various geographic information technologies to improve the understanding of land change dynamics in a complex urban environment. Specifically, the following dimensions of land change science are examined: land change observation and monitoring, driving force analysis, and spatially-explicit modeling. Firstly, a stratified classification approach combined with sub-pixel analysis is developed to map various land use and land cover types in the heterogeneous urban area from medium-resolution satellite imagery. Secondly, remote sensing, GIS and landscape metrics are used in combination to characterize both the spatial characteristics and the nature of urban land changes. Thirdly, a multi-scale analysis is performed to explore the biophysical and socioeconomic driving factors of urban land use change at different spatial aggregation levels and across different spatial extents. Fourthly, given a wide array of existing land change modeling approaches, the theoretical and methodological foundation of these modeling techniques are reviewed and the outstanding issues are discussed in the context of global environmental change research. Lastly, an agent-based model is developed that is coupled with GIS-based spatial data analysis to simulate the residential development decision-making processes and the emergent land use patterns. Overall, this dissertation research has demonstrated the usefulness of integrating various geographic information technologies, such as remote sensing, GIS, and spatial modeling, in land change research. The technological integration also provides the foundation for the coupling of human and environment sciences in understanding land change as a coupled system. An interdisciplinary effort is needed towards more comprehensive research in land change that integrates theories, methods, and techniques in human, environmental, and geographic information sciences. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2014. / July 1, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references. / Xiaojun Yang, Professor Directing Dissertation; Timothy S. Chapin, University Representative; Joseph Pierce, Committee Member; J. Anthony Stallins, Committee Member; Tingting Zhao, Committee Member.

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 conservative politics distinguishable by the focus on the inclusion of more voices in democratic institutions. As a subject of academic research contentious politics in general and social movements in particular have spawned far-reaching and well-developed dialogue (see edited volumes by Aminzade et al. 2001; Leitner, Peck and Sheppard 2007; McAdam, McCarthy and Zald 1996a). Social scientists from the disciplines of Political Science, Sociology, History, Anthropology and Geography all contribute a wide array of theoretical constructs and methodological applications for a truly multi-disciplinary discussion on the topic. Noticeably underrepresented in this corpus of work is attention to conservative contentious politics. What follows is a case study of Tea Party activism as a variety of conservative contentious politics. This study approaches the role of Tea Party activism during the 2010 election cycle in what is arguable the height of Tea Party influence in United States' politics. One of the locations where the influence of Tea Party activism was most evident is Tennessee. The question at the center of this project is how did Tea Party activism during the 2010 election cycle shape scalar politics in the Tennessee Republican gubernatorial primary? By applying MacKinnon's (2011) scalar politics to public speeches made by the Republican candidates for governor in Tennessee, I find that Tea Party activism effectively increased the scale of movement participants' influence in state politics. I conclude the candidates made normal the role of Tea Party activism in campaigning for public office in Tennessee. The implications of this study point to new fields of inquiry into contentious politics specific to electoral politics. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2014. / April 4, 2014. / Contentious Politics, Electoral Politics, Social Movements / Includes bibliographical references. / Joseph Pierce, Professor Directing Dissertation; Davis Houck, University Representative; Victor Mesev, Committee Member; Christopher Uejio, Committee Member.