<p> Prehistoric habitation structures located in the Mount Trumbull region of northwestern Arizona are constructed across a diverse topographic landscape. Several archaeological site reports for the Mt. Trumbull region allude to the exceptional views from habitation structures despite their often non-obtrusive locations. In this thesis, I utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to facilitate the understanding of patterns and relationships among archaeological habitation structures discovered across this exceptionally diverse landscape. </p><p> Using cumulative viewshed analysis, this thesis endeavors to characterize prehistoric habitations as linked in two ways. The first is geographic. Are habitation sites intervisible? The second means of connection concerns material manifestations. To what extent do habitation sites share similar ceramics, architectural styles, and stone tools? The research seeks to improve current knowledge of Ancestral Pueblo settlement patterns and determine if the geographic location of habitation sites predicts the structure of their material remains; and if so, would this provide evidence for the existence of prehistoric communities? Based on the outcomes of several cumulative viewshed analyses, I conclude that the placement of known habitation sites across the landscape significantly differs when compared to sample non-site locations suggesting that habitation sites were constructed in areas of the landscape that favored intervisibility.</p><p>

<p> The whereabouts of the unsheltered homeless population in Orange County, CA is determined by various push-pull factors. Access to services, methods and intensity of policing, and general tolerance by local residents or business owners all factor into where those experiencing homelessness will congregate. Public policy is related to these concepts as it is influenced by resident input and is the tool used to implement services and guide law enforcement. This thesis takes a closer look into factors specific to the rapid growth of homeless encampments at the Santa Ana Riverbed in Northern Orange County. The research tracks the growth of homeless encampments in the study area dating back to 2013 using geospatial techniques and analyzes the increase in numbers in relation to changes in local policies, such as anti-camping ordinances. Specifically, the research relied upon analysis of aerial imagery and data collected in the field. The study finds that disproportionate enforcement of anti-camping laws in the riverbed and adjacent cities created a hospitable area for homeless persons in the Santa Ana Riverbed. Finding a catalyst that explains the rapid growth of encampments in the last two years is less clear, but likely due to a variety of factors.</p><p>

<p> Geographic Information Science (GIS) has been working its way into various fields from the public to the private sectors. The world of journalism and news media is no exception and as both fields grow, GIS is becoming an important spatial news reporting tool in journalism as a form of data journalism. Thus this thesis examines the usage of GIS by news reporting agencies for creating maps that accompany news stories and/or are used as the news story. Specifically this research examines how smaller, more local-based news organizations, such as the <i>Long Beach Press Telegram</i> and the <i>Orange County Register</i> (with a comparison to the <i>Los Angeles Times</i>) are or are not using GIS-based mapping within their news stories and how they can better improve or integrate GIS-based maps and interactive mapping on the local level of reporting. This could assist in providing better analyses of local spatial patterns for various news stories and give the local readers a better understanding of their community and the issues related to it. </p><p> A mixed-methods approach was applied, which involved qualitative and quantitative methods. This included surveys, interviews and data analysis. The survey respondents were college students (news readers), the interviewees were journalists working with GIS and the data analysis involved examining the news stories of all three newspapers. The findings concluded that the smaller, more local papers are in fact using maps and GIS less than the <i> Los Angeles Times</i> and that most survey respondents (readers) would like to see more and better maps in news stories. The interview answers pointed to how the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> has managed to use and expand that usage of GIS and maps through creative solutions and workarounds to help lessen various barriers, such as budget, lack of skilled journalists, GIS software complexity, and time. </p><p> As the world of journalism continues to transform and adapt to digital news reporting, local newspapers&rsquo; use of GIS-based tools will also need to increase. This will allow them to better engage and inform readers in the future since GIS will possibly become an extremely useful or even vital tool in spatial news reporting.</p><p>

<p> The increasing density of utilities within roadway right-of-way overburdens transportation agencies in two ways. In utility coordination, there is an increased difficulty in the manual identification of utility conflicts, while in utility permitting, there is an increased difficulty in the case-by-case review of utility permits for potential conflicts due to lack of readily available, easily accessible and inter-operable utility location data. This study proposes the development of a utility conflict detection framework within a geo-spatial environment, using non-geospatial utility location data obtained from Indiana Department of Transportation&rsquo;s (INDOT) Electronic Permitting System (EPS), as a step towards addressing these challenges. The automatic detection of utility conflicts is demonstrated using spatial conflict detection models, wherein a conflict report and a visualization of conflict area/volume are generated. A data-entry GUI is developed to streamline data-entry of utility/highway project design parameters into a geodatabase, which is populated with existing highway and utility location information. The framework is designed to be implemented by state transportation agencies for: (1) early detection of utility conflicts in highway projects (before 60% design) and in utility permitting (before a permit is approved/denied), and (2) to automate the utility conflict detection process. Early detection provides opportunities for transportation agencies to make proactive design decisions, avoiding expensive utility relocation and preventing utility breaks/accidents. Automatic detection eases the burden of utility coordinators and utility permitting engineers, from manual identification of utility conflicts. Illustrative examples of a utility and highway project are used to demonstrate the performance of the framework in automatic detection of potential utility conflicts.</p><p>

<p>Quantifying groundwater recharge is of crucial importance for sustainable groundwater management. While many recharge quantification techniques have been devised, few provide spatially and temporally distributed estimates for regional-scale water resource assessments. In this study, a GIS-based and USGS-developed recharge quantification tool ? the Soil Water Balance (SWB) model ? was applied to produce fine-tuned recharge constraints and document spatial and temporal dynamics of recharge. SWB has, as of yet, been tested solely in coastal and continental temperate-humid climate zones. This study expands testing of SWB to a Mediterranean climate zone, focusing on Catalina Island, California. Catalina has experienced significant water supply issues due to a prolonged drought. Using available climate, land use/land cover and hydrology data, the SWB model yields annual recharge values for the time period 2008-2014 of 0.05 mm/year to over 82 mm/year. Results of this thesis provide information on spatial and temporal patterns of groundwater recharge on Catalina Island.

<p> Hydrologic connectivity in the Atchafalaya River Basin has been dominated by anthropogenic structures for the past 50+ years. To better understand how these structures have affected the Basin, two techniques were used to assess the hydrologic connectivity within tracts of land near Bayou Sorrel. The first technique used historical and current aerial imagery to create a canopy change map in ArcMap 10.3. Three classifications&mdash;full canopy, partial canopy, and open water&mdash;were used for the analysis. The canopy change map showed that from 1957 to 1998, &ldquo;full canopy&rdquo; decreased by 18%, &ldquo;open water&rdquo; increased by 4%, and &ldquo;partial canopy&rdquo; increased by 26%. The second technique used tree-ring width and ring-to-ring carbon isotope measurements on seven bald cypress trees (<i>Taxodium distichum </i>) to test whether or not evolution of a regional distributary channel has a measurable effect on tree growth. Neither the carbon isotope data nor the tree-ring widths correlated with channel evolution, but tree-ring width did correlate with monthly temperature during the growing season, suggesting an overarching climate signal on tree-ring growth at this site. Frequent flooding at the site may be responsible for the lack of any correlation between tree-ring carbon isotope measurements and channel evolution or climate; however, additional work to test the effect of flooding on tree stress is needed. I conclude that canopy change maps can be a useful tool for assessing changing hydrology within the Atchafalaya River Basin.</p><p>

<p> Despite a rising interest in intermittent river systems, landscape influences on long-term wetting and drying patterns of streamflow are not well understood. There has been a significant increase in the presence of intermittent rivers worldwide due to climate change and subsequent increases in groundwater abstraction, and these effects are intensified in already arid regions such as the American Southwest. Consequently, the spatial extent of wet and dry reaches of Arizona&rsquo;s Agua Fria River, Cienega Creek, and San Pedro River has been documented by citizen scientists for several years. Citizen science involves the use of trained members of the public for data collection, and the analysis of datasets produced from citizen science projects have become a huge asset to the scientific community. Here, we synthesize the most current data (1999&ndash;2016) to determine what stream and valley characteristics act as drivers for patterns of surface water flow. Geologic, geomorphic, and land cover characteristics of these rivers were analyzed via aerial imagery and Digital Elevation Models within ArcGIS 10.3 in conjunction with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool model. Principal Component Analysis was used in order to assess trends across sites. A set of landscape intermittency metrics was produced and then further analyzed using Multiple Linear Regression. We found that land cover had a significant (p-value &lt; 0.01) positive correlation with reach average (i.e., the proportion of channel wet). Physical watershed and channel characteristics each had a negative correlation with both intermittency metrics (i.e., wet/dry status and reach average). However, their results were not significant to the 0.05 level. This study begins to shed light on the drivers of landscape intermittency patterns of desert streams and demonstrates the utility of citizen science in regard to the study of intermittent river systems.</p><p>

<p> In recent decades, there has been an increased awareness of the concentration of the poor in rural and underdeveloped areas and increased attention to scaled economic and multi-dimensional assessments as tools for targeting rural poverty. While this has led to new forms of development intervention in previously neglected regions across the Global South, in Morocco this system of poverty reduction continues to exclude key sites and stakeholders. This thesis asks how local state offices and non-state actors participate in or disrupt the structural systems of development in Morocco and what potential these local communities have for contributing to standardized knowledge production of poverty and development. I use participatory mapping workshops, interviews, and &ldquo;studying up&rdquo; strategies to answer questions of access &ndash; physical and social &ndash; to development planning and interventions. My findings indicate that the Moroccan rural development complex is structurally exclusionary to remote rural communities. The state and its partners have portrayed rural spaces as quickly rising out of poverty thanks to their decentralized and participatory development schemes, yet incongruently, local recipients in the least accessible areas live in spaces devoid of interventions. With all development practices inherently tied to state standards, any oversight or exclusion by state targeting is magnified by the same oversight of its development partners. The scale of targeting and evaluation in international metrics has contributed to this neglect, and the unfortunate result has been a feedback loop of inaccessibility for remote rural pockets of the country. I explain why one spatial indicator, village accessibility to social services, is an appropriate addition to poverty assessments and development targeting, drawing from my conversations with villagers in rural Tinghir Province and the results of my geospatial analysis.</p><p>

<p> Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology combined with high-resolution differential Global Positioning Systems (dGPS) provide the ability to measure coastal elevation with high precision. This study investigates the use of LiDAR data and GIS to conduct time-series analyses of coastal sediment volume shifts during the 2006-2007 El Ni&ntilde;o winter, Summer of 2007 and following 2007-2008 La Ni&ntilde;a winter in the Oceanside Littoral Cell (OLC). The OLC, located in Southern California, spans from Dana Point to La Jolla and includes over 84 km of coastline. The ability to quantify sediment volume changes contributes to the scientific understanding of the role El Ni&ntilde;o storms play in the OLC sand budget. This study provides a method to analyze LiDAR data to evaluate coastal geomorphologic changes over time. Additionally, identifying specific areas of coastal beach erosion associated with historical El Ni&ntilde;o events can aid beach managers, planners, and scientists in protecting the valuable coastline. LiDAR datasets were prepared and formatted which included ground classifying millions of elevation points. Formatted datasets were inputted into an Empirical Bayesian Kriging (EBK) model, creating high-resolution, 1-meter grid cell, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). The EBK model also incorporated uncertainty into the workflow by producing prediction error surfaces. LiDAR-derived DEMs were used to calculate sediment volume changes through a technique called DEM differencing. Results were visualized through a series of maps and tables. Overall results show that there was a higher rate of beach sediment erosion during the 2006-2007 El Ni&ntilde;o winter than the 2007-2008 La Ni&ntilde;a winter. Sediment accretion was evident during the intermediary Summer of 2007. Future applications of this study include incorporating bathymetric datasets to understand near-shore sediment transport, evaluating sediment contribution through cliff erosion, and conducting decadal scale studies to evaluate long-term trends with sea level rise scenarios. </p>

No description available.