Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1936. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-100).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Georgia, 1977. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-222).

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

This study used two modelling approaches to predict future urban landscape for the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan areas. In the first approach, we implemented traditional SLEUTH urban simulation model by using publicly available and locally-developed land cover and transportation data. Historical land cover data from 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011 were used to calibrate SLEUTH model and predict urban growth from 2011 to 2070. SLEUTH model achieved 94.9% of overall accuracy for a validation year of 2014. For the second modelling approach, we predicted future county-level population (e.g., 2050) using historical population data and time-series forecasting. We then used future population projection of 2050, aided by strong population-imperviousness statistical relationship (R2, 0.78-0.86), to predict total impervious surface area for each county. These population-predicted total impervious surface areas were compared to SLEUTH model output, at the county-aggregated spatial scale. For most counties, SLEUTH generated substantially higher number of impervious pixels. An annual urban growth rate of 6.24% for SLEUTH model was much higher than the population-based approach (1.33%), suggesting a large discrepancy between these two modelling approaches. The SLEUTH simulation model, although achieved high accuracy for 2014 validation, may have over-predicted urban growth for our study area. For population-predicted impervious surface area, we further developed a lookup table approach to integrate SLEUTH out and generated spatially explicit urban map for 2050. This lookup table approach has high potential to integrate population-predicted and SLEUTH-predicted urban landscape, especially when future population can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. / Master of Science

Master of Arts / Geography / Marcellus M. Caldas / As concerns increase over climate change, energy independence, and higher fuel prices, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is seen as a part of a clean energy future. Brazilian sugarcane ethanol was developed with a long history of government support, and with the introduction of the flex fueled car in 2003, demand rose dramatically. These factors have helped sugarcane expand beyond its traditional regions of Brazil into the Cerrado. More recently however, private capital from both domestic and foreign companies have started investing in Brazilian agriculture and these investments have helped fuel the sugarcane expansion into the Cerrado in the last 15 years. Over 22 sugarcane mills have been constructed in the Brazilian state of Goiás, located in the heart of the Cerrado. The increased investments driving the expansion of sugarcane into the Cerrado brings numerous questions regarding its environmental and social impacts. Thus, the goal of this thesis is to understand how the structural organization of the sugarcane ethanol mills’ affects development at a municipality level in the state of Goiás, Brazil. More specifically, this thesis has two objectives; to evaluate the effects of the sugarcane mills’ influence on land use and land cover change in these municipalities; and to compare how domestic owned mills, foreign owned mills, and jointly owned mills affect socioeconomic development on the municipalities. Three municipalities were analyzed, Edéia, Caçu, and Quirinópolis. Results showed that land use and land cover change varied by municipality. The majority of Edéia’s sugarcane expansion came from lands already in agricultural use. On the other hand, Caçu’s and Quirinópolis’s sugarcane expansion came from pasture lands. However, throughout all the municipalities, sugarcane expansion over native vegetation was small. All three municipalities increased their socioeconomic development levels over the past 20 years as reported on the Human Development Index. In addition, urban survey responses revealed that the residents of Edéia perceived the sugarcane mill had made their lives better than respondents in either Quirinópolis or Caçu. However, this analysis covers only a brief period of time, and future analysis of these, and other municipalities that host sugarcane mills throughout the Cerrado will be needed.

The human-induced changes of the Earth's land surfaces have been unprecedented, with outcomes often indicating degradation and loss of environmental quality. Mato Grosso State in Brazil, location of the study area, underwent extensive land-use and land-cover changes in recent decades with the rates, patterns and consequences poorly documented until now. In this context, the aim of the present research is to propose a multidisciplinary approach for quantifying historical land-use and environmental changes in the southeast part of this State, where the Cerrado biome (Brazilian savannas) has been intensively converted into agricultural lands. The methodology includes three parts: remote sensing change detection, land vulnerability mapping, and identification of key environmental indicators. Land-use/cover information was extracted from a temporal remote sensing dataset using an object-oriented classification approach, and the changes quantified employing a post-classification method. In addition, the study area was assessed for its vulnerabilities, focusing mainly on erosion risks, wetlands, and areas with limited or no suitability for crops. Finally, key environmental indicators were identified from the preceding steps and analyzed within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework. The results provided an improved mapping of the Cerrados natural vegetation conversion into crops and pastures, and indicate that the Cerrado vegetation was intensively converted and also became more fragmented in the time frame studied. Between 1985 and 2005 the area lost approximately 6491 km 2 of Cerrados (42 %). Modeling based on the Universal Soil Loss Equation indicated significant increase in erosion risk from 1985 to 2005 mainly related to the increase in crop areas and the crops' encroachment into more fragile lands.The identification of environmental indicators rendered complex environmental information more generally accessible by structuring it within the PSR framework.The indicators captured key information about land-use and environmental changes in the area, showing that agricultural expansion is the major human activity exerting pressure on natural resources at a landscape scale, and that the pattern of change included high rates of crop expansion and the use of fragile environments such as wetlands and sandy erodable soils.

This dissertation addresses gender dimensions of Land Use and Land Cover Change (GLULCC) in the last few decades in a collective land titled to Afro-descendant communities in the Pacific region of Colombia, South America, and examines socio-economic and political signifiers affecting land use decisions, rights, and responsibilities. It shows how contrasting but complementary subfields of investigation, Political Ecology and Land Use Science, have contributed ontological, epistemological and practical scholarly works to help better understand the Gender Dimensions of Land Use and Land Cover Change (GLULCC). Historical and current information on environmental, socioeconomic and settlement processes provided a comprehensive portrait of the study area. The remote sensing process (a mainstream method for identifying land use and land cover change) helped exploring the spatial setting of land cover/use, and to reflect on the opportunities and constrains of the steps undertaken during this procedure under the lenses of researching their gendered dimensions. Statistical analyses on both census data (secondary data) and survey sample data (fieldwork data) allowed to establish a set of three groups of gendered land uses, namely, women-akin, men-akin, and gender-blind uses. Exploratory statistics, pairwise correlations, and binary and multinomial logit regression models helped to reassert the latter gendered categories’ assertions. A concluding narrative perspective of GLULCC seeks to further contribute to work streaming/ mainstreaming what I consider may be a scholarly-fertile research line. It hopes to bond, with another perspective, previous theoretical, spatial and quantitative outcomes, under the lenses of the practical experience of fieldwork, which also by way of participatory observation and semi-unstructured interviews brought to the researcher (me) valuable insights and information besides the previous outcomes. Empirical evidence allowed identifying gender-based time allocation, resource-use power relations, and reproductive strategies. Finally, the found rearrangement of settlement spaces and production systems provides practical indications that women´s role on LULCC is well beyond the establishment of small gardens and orchards, or the collection of fuel wood to provide for their families. In contrast, inside this collective title, women’s decisions/strategies have also restructured settlement patterns, and thus, land use dynamics of larger areas at heterogeneous spatial and temporal scales. / text

Research has demonstrated that equivalent temperature (TE), which incorporates both the surface air temperature (T) and moist heat content associated with atmospheric moisture, is a better indicator of overall heat content. This thesis follows up on a study that used TE to determine the impacts of land use/land cover and air masses on the atmospheric heat content over Kentucky during the growing season (April-September). The study, which used data from the Kentucky Mesonet, reveals that moist weather types dominate the growing season and, as expected, differences between T and TE are smaller under dry atmospheric conditions but larger under moist conditions. For example, the lowest TE-T difference was 10.04 °C on a dry weather day on the 18th of April, 2010 (T = 8.91 °C and TE = 18.95 °C). On the other hand, the highest estimated difference for a day of moist tropical weather was 46.54 °C on the 11th of August, 2010 (T = 26.54 °C and TE = 73.08 °C). Since land cover type influences both moisture availability and temperature in the lower atmosphere, the research shows that TE is larger in areas with higher physical evaporation and transpiration rates. Results support the hypothesis that the influence of different weather types over a region is a likely cause of interannual variation in TE.

The subject of this thesis is to complexly discuss the rights to use the land. The purpose of this thesis is particulary to analyse the valid legal regulation of the right to use the land after the Civil Code recodification, but for better ceherence we must also discuss the history and development of the rights to use the land that the actual legislation comes from. Pivotal part of the thesis presents the institute of lease the land and emphyteutic lease, while it is just emphyteutic lease, which plays significant role in presented issue. The thesis also informs about another land-use institutes such as commodatum, precarium and fructus a ususfructus of the land. Last part of the thesis is focused on the special legal regulation which is contained out of the Civil Code. The thesis discusses the managment of the state property and restrictions which are contained in several special acts such as Forestry Act or Act on the Protection of Nature and the Landscape.