Master of Arts / Department of Geography / John A. Harrington Jr / Environmental degradation is a major concern in agricultural landscapes. Innovative tools and methods will be necessary to identify and deal with the ongoing environmental impacts of past and present agricultural practices. The use of scenarios in environmental modeling is one way to address these concerns. Recently a group of researchers devised a framework for creating future land cover scenarios for two physiographic regions in Iowa. Based on that work, a suite of scenarios were created for Antelope Creek watershed in the Northern Flint Hills of Kansas. The Antelope Creek scenarios represent conditions pre Euro-American settlement, present day, increased intensification of agricultural production, enhancement of water quality, and enhancement of biodiversity. These scenarios were then modeled using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Additional model runs were completed to compare SSURGO and STATSGO soil datasets. Results indicated that reductions in discharge, total suspended sediment and various nitrogen and phosphorus loads could be achieved by implementing modest changes to agricultural management practices. Results also indicated that a higher detail soil dataset such as SSURGO lead to slightly higher loads than with STATSGO data.

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / Richard A. Marston / The Black Vermillion River (watershed area = 1310 square kilometers) contributes runoff and sediment into Tuttle Creek Reservoir, a large federal reservoir (volume = 327 million cubic meters) northeast of Manhattan, Kansas. Tuttle Creek, completed in 1962, is filling with sediment faster than other federal reservoirs in the region. The Reservoir’s conservation pool is about 40 percent full of sediment and is predicted to fill by 2023. Debate rages over the relative contribution of sediment from upland sources (largely croplands and pasture) versus channel incision. In the Black Vermillion watershed, bedrock is overlain in most of the watershed by pre-Illinoian age easily erodible glacial till and loess. Row crop agriculture is the most common land use in the watershed and stream channels are incised and prone to frequent flooding and channel instability. This research focused on the spatial extent, timing, and causes of channel incision in the Black Vermillion watershed. I conducted a watershed-wide survey of channel cross-sections in 56 locations repeated at sites that had been surveyed 45 years ago by the Soil Conservation Service. Further, I collected channel cross sections in 2008 at a total of 51 more locations for a total of 107 study sites. Channel depths between 1963 and 2008 increased by a mean of 1.6 meters (maximum = 5.2 meters). Most channels throughout the watershed have incised, are actively incising, or incising and widening. Statistical testing between channel depths as measured in 1963 and 2008 showed that the amount of incision was related to land use/land cover, riparian buffer widths, upstream drainage area, and geology. As channels incise, they progress through six stages of channel evolution, which complicates the relationship between channelization and incision. Channel stage, as identified in the field, was statistically related to geology, occurrence and timing of channelization, land use/land cover, and upstream drainage area. Channelization has reduced channel length by a significant portion and was identified as one of the leading causes of incision. This finding suggests that planting buffers and/or expanding existing buffers along streams should be encouraged in the watershed to alleviate flooding and channel instability.

published_or_final_version / Geography and Geology / Master / Master of Philosophy

The relationship between the changes in color values of scenic landscapes, and the corresponding shifts in viewers' preferences to those changed environments, was the focus of the presented research. Color modifications, either natural or based on some human intervention, provide visual clues that an environment has undergone some transformation. These color changes can occur at both the micro and macro scale, can having temporal dimensions, and can be a result of combinations of both physical landscape change, and shifts in an observer's perspective with respect to that landscape. The research reviewed two existing models and related them in an integrated program of scenic change analysis. The first, a bio-physical remote sensing model, identified the relationships between the existing bio-physical environmental conditions and measured color signatures of selected landscape features. The second, a psychophysical perception model, established relationships between the landscape's bio-physical attributes and measured perceptual responses to those environments. By merging aspects of each model, the research related the changing scenic color patterns with observers' responses to those changed environments. The research methodology presented a program of scenic change analysis incorporating several technologies including (1) ground-based biological inventories, (2) remote sensing, (3) geographic information systems (GIS), and (4) computer visualization. A series of investigations focused on landscape scenes selected from a high elevation coniferous forest in southern Utah. Three initial scenic investigations compared (1) the impact of changing view angles on scenic color values, (2) color shifts due to changing sun-illumination angles within a day, and (3) color shifts due to changing biological conditions over a 12-month period. A fourth investigation measured the color changes caused by a spruce bark beetle outbreak, and developed a series of color signatures to simulate the color shifts indicative of an outbreak at different stages of development. These signatures were applied to digitized site photographs to produce a series of visualizations displaying different levels of beetle damage. The visualizations were then applied in a series of perceptual experiments to test the precision and reliability of the visual simulations.

Anthropogenic activities perturb the global carbon and nitrogen cycle with large implications for the earth’s climate. Land use activities deliver excess carbon and nitrogen to aquatic ecosystems. In the boreal biome, this is mainly due to forestry and atmospheric deposition. Yet, impacts of these anthropogenically mediated inputs of carbon and nitrogen on the processing and emissions of greenhouse gases from recipient streams and lakes are largely unknown. Understanding the ecosystem-scale response of aquatic greenhouse gas cycling to land use activities is critical to better predict anthropogenic effects on the global climate system and design more efficient climate change mitigation measures. This thesis assesses the effects of forest clearcutting and nitrate enrichment on greenhouse gas emissions from boreal inland waters. It also advances methods to quantify sources and sinks of these emissions. Short-term clearcut and nitrate enrichment effects were assessed using two whole-ecosystem experiments, carried out over four years in nine headwater catchments in boreal Sweden. In these experiments, I measured or modeled air-water fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), combining concentration, ebullition and gas-transfer velocity measurements in groundwater, streams and lakes. By using Swedish national monitoring data, I also assessed broad-scale effects of forest clearcutting by relating CO2 concentrations in 439 forest lakes to the areal proportion of catchment forest clearcuts. To improve quantifications of CO2 sources and sinks in lakes, I analyzed time series of oxygen concentrations and water temperature in five lakes on conditions under which whole-lake metabolism estimates can be inferred from oxygen dynamics given the perturbing influence of atmospheric exchange, mixing and internal waves. The experiments revealed that aquatic greenhouse gas emissions did not respond to nitrate addition or forest clearcutting. Importantly, riparian zones likely buffered clearcut-induced increases in groundwater CO2 and CH4 concentrations. Experimental results were confirmed by monitoring data showing no relationship between CO2 patterns across Swedish lakes and clearcut gradients. Yet, conclusions on internal vs. external CO2 controls largely depended on whether spatially or temporally resolved data was used. Partitioning CO2 sources and sinks in lakes using time series of oxygen was greatly challenged by physical transport and mixing processes. Conclusively, ongoing land use activities in the boreal zone are unlikely to have major effect on headwater greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, system- and scale specific effects cannot be excluded. To reveal these effects, there is a large need of improved methods and design of monitoring programs that account for the large spatial and temporal variability in greenhouse gas dynamics and its controls by abiotic and biotic factors.

The town of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and its rich geographic history, can offer insight into the early history of the State of Louisiana and the establishment of the United States as a country, as well as the study of the formation of barrier islands and methods of land use with such areas. The following thesis presents a geographic, as well as a historical, analysis of Grand Isle’s history. It attempts to answer the following questions: What is the shape, form, and origin of the physical landscape of Grand Isle? How have humans interacted with the land and surrounding areas of Grand Isle? And what impacts, if any, have these interactions had on the island and its landscape? These questions include research into both the built environment and the natural environment.

To achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11.7 aiming to create inclusiveand accessible greenspaces, there is need to involve children with profound intellectual andmultiple disabilities in research and planning practices. The aim of this study is to explore whatexperiences of accessibility children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities haveof greenspace. Through the qualitative method of go along interviews using augmentative andalternative communication, such as pictures and sign language, children provide their opinionsabout the public park Långbroparken in southern Stockholm, Sweden. Their experiences areanalysed through the framework of environmental justice, exploring fair distribution,recognition, capabilities and functioning. The findings demonstrate that children with profoundintellectual and multiple disabilities can indeed be included in research practices throughadapted interview situations. Either the researcher needs to be skilled and experienced inalternative and augmentative communication, and preferably have previous relations with thechildren, or be able to cooperate with someone who has such abilities and connections.Individual experiences of physical and social accessibility in the park create feelings of bothoutsideness and immersing oneself into nature and highlight the interaction of person andenvironment. In conclusion, children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities holdvaluable explanations and experiences of what constitutes inclusive and accessible greenspacesand their perspectives are required to fulfil targets such as the United Nations SustainableDevelopment Goal 11.7.

Orientador: Adler Guilherme Viadana / Banca: Archimedes Perez Filho / Banca: Ailton Luchiari / Banca: Antonio Carlos Tavares / Banca: Roberto Marques Neto / Resumo: A bacia hidrográfica é unidade de área padrão, considerada por lei, no Estudo de Impacto Ambiental (EIA) e Relatório de Impacto Ambiental (RIMA) e por agências de planejamento e órgãos gerenciadores, quando da solicitação de leitura das condições ambientais das áreas sujeitas à intervenção, ante a instalação de obras estruturais que tragam impactos aos terrenos anexos. Na bacia hidrográfica os processos advindos da integração entre os elementos dos meios físico, biológico e antrópico se expressam como mosaicos paisagísticos destacados à superfície, em alusão à dinâmica sistêmica existente nessa mesma unidade de área. Nesse interim, a proposta geossistêmica de análise adapta-se aos anseios dos estudos sistêmicos em bacias hidrográficas ao preconizar a utilização de variáveis múltiplas no estudo integrado de uma unidade de área, a fim de investigar as sua estrutura, funcionalidade, dinâmica e evolução a partir da definição de unidades de paisagem hierarquizadas, com expressividade à superfície, as quais são denominadas Geossistemas. A tese ora apresentada adotou a bacia hidrográfica do rio Lourenço Velho, área de 655 km2 inserida no contexto Sul do estado de Minas Gerais, região da Serra da Mantiqueira, com vistas à aplicação da concepção geossistêmica na investigação da dinâmica da paisagem a partir da identificação e do mapeamento de unidades geossistêmicas hierarquizadas. Os objetivos, de forma geral, estiveram pautados na investigação sobre a viabilidade de utilização da concepção geossistêmica como modelo de análise ambiental e nas discussões referentes ao planejamento ambiental da bacia. Especificamente, estiveram em pauta a identificação de compartimentos geomorfológicos como balizadores ao mapeamento de unidades geossistêmicas; a identificação e análise da fragilidade ambiental da bacia hidrográfica e sua relação com as unidades de paisagem; a verificação.. / Abstract: The watershed is a standard area unit, considered by the law in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and by planning agencies and management organs whenever there is a request for a reading report of the environmental conditions of the areas subject to the intervention, in the face of the implementation of structural works that cause impacts on nearby areas. In the watershed the processes of integration between the elements of the physical, biological and anthropic means express themselves as landscape mosaics, in allusion to the existing systemic dynamics in that same area unit. Meanwhile, the geosystem analysis proposal adapts to the concerns of systemic studies on watersheds as it advocates the use of multiple variables in the integrated study of a unit area, in order to investigate its structure, functionality, potential, dynamics and evolution from the definition of hierarchical landscape units, by the expressivity of the surface, which are called Geosystems. This dissertation focused on the Lourenço Velho river basin, 655 km2 of area inserted in the Southern context of the state of Minas Gerais in the region of Serra da Mantiqueira, aiming at the application of the geosystemic design in the investigation of the landscape dynamics based on the identification and mapping of tiered geosystem units. The general objectives were based on the investigation about the feasibility of the use of geosystemic design as a model of environmental analysis and on discussions regarding the environmental planning of the basin. Specifically, this work puts at stake the identification of geomorphological compartments as the underpinning to the mapping of geosystemics units; the identification and analysis of the environmental fragility of the watershed and its relationship with landscape units; the verification of the effectiveness of geosystems in relation to the discussions on the environmental planning... / Doutor

Este trabalho consiste numa análise de livros didáticos para se verificar de que forma vem se dando a organização ou disposição dos conteúdos de geografia física ou natureza, como denominado pelos PCN, nesses materiais. Para se iniciar tal análise, foi necessário levantar os conceitos de Geografia elaborados ou usados como referência por alguns daqueles que produzem ou produziram o conhecimento geográfico e como esses conceitos podem ter contribuído para o entendimento que se tem do seu objeto de estudo, levando ou não a ser definida como uma ciência dicotômica. O entendimento do que é natureza também se fez pertinente para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa, isso porque tem havido uma incorporação da temática ambiental junto aos conteúdos de geografia. Com a análise de tais materiais foi possível constatar os conteúdos citados já foram alocados em diferentes lugares nos livros didáticos de geografia, seguindo das mudanças sofridas por essa ciência no Brasil, bem como das mudanças políticas ocorridas no País. / This paper is an analysis of textbooks to verify how the organization has been taking or disposition of the contents or nature of physical geography, as named by the NCP, in these materials. To start this analysis, it was necessary to raise the concepts of geography designed or used as a reference for some of those who produce or have produced geographic knowledge and how these concepts may have contributed to the understanding that has its object of study, or not taking to be defined as a science dichotomy. Understanding the nature of which is also made relevant to the development of research, that because there has been an incorporation of environmental issues with the content of geography. With the analysis of such materials was possible to verify the contents mentioned have already been allocated in different places in geography textbooks, following the changes undergone by this science in Brazil, as well as the political changes in country.

O presente trabalho teve por objetivo analisar os atributos ambientais: uso do solo, usos potencialmente poluidores, verticalidade das edificações, densidade populacional, deserto florístico, espaços livres públicos e áreas de inundações e pontos de alagamentos, espacializando-os para a definição da qualidade ambiental urbana do distrito do Brás, município de São Paulo (SP). O embasamento teórico da pesquisa foi fundamentada no conceito de paisagem e a metodologia aplicada para atender aos objetivos pretendidos fundamentou-se na metodologia desenvolvida por Nucci (2001), que diagnostica e espacializa de forma integrada os atributos selecionados, considerando os diferentes usos do solo e as condições do meio físico urbano, contribuindo para identificarmos as áreas mais sensíveis do distrito. Houve predomínio de lotes com média de dois a três atributos ambientais negativos. Apesar disso, o distrito obteve bons resultados no total de atributos negativos, com áreas de ausência de atributo negativo. Os índices de cobertura vegetal e de espaços livres públicos foram os fatores de maior relevância na definição da qualidade ambiental urbana do distrito. Diante disso, efetuou-se a análise conjunta dos mapas dos atributos selecionados, gerando o mapa de qualidade ambiental do distrito do Brás. Em seguida, foram propostas formas de melhoria para a qualidade ambiental do distrito do Brás e sua aplicabilidade no planejamento urbano e na elaboração de políticas ambientais que estimulem e orientem uma melhor ocupação do espaço urbano do local. / This study aimed to analyze the environmental attributes such as: (A) land use, (B) potentially polluting uses, (C) vertical buildings, (D) population density, (E) floristic desert, (F) public open spaces and (G) areas of flooding and waterlogging points, spatializing them to the definition of the urban environmental quality of Bras district, in São Paulo (SP). The theoretical basis of the research was based on the concept of landscape and the methodology used to meet the intended objectives was based on the methodology developed by Nucci (2001), who diagnoses and spatializes in an integrated form the selected attributes, considering the different land uses and the conditions of the urban physical environment, helping to identify the most sensitive areas of the district. There was dominance of lots averaging two to three negative environmental attributes. Despite this, the district obtained good results in the total of negative attributes, with areas with no negative attribute. The indices of vegetation and public open spaces were the most relevant factors in the definition of the urban environmental quality of the district. Therefore, we realize a joint analysis of the maps with the selected attributes, generating a synthesis map of the Environmental Quality of Bras district. After that it was proposed some ways to improve the environmental quality of Brasdistrict and the applicability in urban planning and development of environmental policies that encourage and guide a better occupation of the local urban space.