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This research was conducted to determine the effectiveness of using commercial satellite data to detect covert nuclear weapons programs. Seven-band Landsat Thematic Mapper data covering the Pahute Mesa (an area within the United States Nevada Nuclear Testing Site), acquired on October 16, 1985, were analyzed to determine if underground nuclear test sites were spectrally distinguishable from the surrounding area. The analysis consisted of four steps: (1) analyzing the raw data, (2) manipulating the raw data through contrast stretching, filter application, matrix algebra, and principal components analyses, (3) identifying parameters that affect classification of underground nuclear tests and (4) selectively limiting parameters. The results of limiting parameters showed that a supervised classification of a signature created with a five-original-pixel seed of one representative, known test site provided an accurate classification of most known test sites. To further eliminate erroneous classification of roads and other areas of similar reflectance, these areas were seeded to create a second signature. This signature, whose spectral responses were different, was then used in a simultaneous classification. This classification further eliminated erroneous classification of non-test site areas, demonstrating that commercial satellite digital data can aid in the detection of covert nuclear weapons programs, in this case, underground nuclear testing. An application of the classification scheme used is proposed to confront a scenario in which a country seeks additional verification of another party's proposed violation of test ban treaties. / Department of Physics and Astronomy

This dissertation argues that Pacific literature is haunted by a form of ecological aggression known as nuclear colonialism. The Pacific is the region of the world where Western nations tested most of their nuclear and thermonuclear weapons – an extreme form of colonial occupation that will impact both the land and the people for hundreds of thousands of years. This study analyzes Pacific works published post World War II, from Māori poet Hone Tuwhare’s 1964 collection of poetry to riMajel oral performer Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s 2017 videoart, focusing in particular on the francophone works of writers identifying as Kanak, Mā’ohi, and Ni-Vanuatu. Through a series of close-readings of this multilingual and transnational corpus, it argues that nuclear colonialism functions as a leitmotiv informing both the politics and the poetics of this anticolonial corpus, despite the fact that nuclear violence is often denounced in between the lines, through oblique and diffuse references mirroring the ubiquity of radioactivity itself.