This dissertation has primarily been an exercise in surveying interdisciplinary opportunities for further research within the doctoral program's overarching mandate of Geospatial and Environmental Analysis. To this end I have dedicated my efforts to the investigation of topics and themes that are relevant to my three specializations: physical geography, biogeography, and geospatial science. I share these efforts in the three following chapters, one of which is already published (Chapter 2), and the other two presented as manuscripts suitable for publication. These themes include historical and present hydrological patterns and drivers, hurricane disturbance of coastal forest, and evaluation of a Wisconsin geosite as a possible candidate for UNESCO Geopark designation. I chose study areas located in the eastern United States, including Appalachia, the Gulf Coast, and the Great Lakes region. Every chapter's work has been supported by an interdisciplinary array of methods with which I have striven to generate high-quality research from excitingly novel perspectives. All of my research has been pursued, and each resultant manuscript has been crafted, using methods and techniques from remote sensing and GIS including in-person fieldwork, smartphonesupported geolocation and photodocumentation, pattern analysis, statistical rigor, and indepth review and citation of extant literature. This research was carried out with deliberately minimal budgets that help offset costs of transportation and labor. I offer this dissertation as the ultimate fruits of my labor while here at Virginia Tech, composed of three interrelated yet reasonably stand-alone manuscript chapters that in turn more specifically address questions within the broader fields of biogeomorphology, dendrotempestology, and finally the geohumanities. Chapter 2 was published in an open-source peer-reviewed journal (Land, 2021: https://doi.org/10.3390/land10121333). My coauthors and I intend to publish the remaining two chapters in peer-reviewed journals. Therefore each manuscript herein provides its own Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References sections as set forth in the Table of Contents. Chapter 2 is a recently published study of historical beaver activity and hydrological patterns at the rare and imperiled Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, a high-elevation peatland in the Allegheny highlands of West Virginia. We used Lidar and Geomorphon analysis to reconstruct shifting patterns of surface hydrology associated with Beaver ponds and dams over the past three decades. Beavers play a large role in the formation and maintenance of peatland conditions and our work provides a novel method (geomorphons) for monitoring beaver activity into the future. In Chapter 3, we take advantage of wind-damaged leaning pine trees to reconstruct characteristics of landfalling Hurricane Sally (2020) along the Gulf coast of Florida/Alabama (USA). We employed a smartphone to measure and record the direction of lean on 556 pine trees in five sites in the eyewall-struck region. Using geometric analysis, we were able to locate the geographic center of the storm and the position and size of the area of highest speed winds in Sally's eyewall. We validated our results with independent data from official sources and found that our simple field-based analysis was surprisingly accurate. We think that our low-cost and relatively low-tech approach may be useful to inform hindcasts, provide quality input to models of future stand-damaging events, and even to enhance teaching and outreach efforts. Chapter 4 represents research aimed at producing an inventory and assessment of the Baraboo Hills in south-central Wisconsin (USA) as a potential candidate for a UNESCO Geopark. The basis for designation is a geographical area that contains geological heritage of international significance, but such a park's fuller mission according to its website is to "explore, develop and celebrate the links between that geological heritage and all other aspects of the area's natural, cultural and intangible heritages." We followed a published method, including field study, to inventory and assess 62 sites in and around the Hills for their scientific, educational, and touristic merit, and their risk of degradation. We provide these data and through spatial analysis, a proposed perimeter of the area that would benefit from unified protection. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation has primarily been an exercise in surveying interdisciplinary opportunities for further research within the doctoral program's overarching mandate of Geospatial and Environmental Analysis. To this end I have dedicated my efforts to the investigation of topics and themes that are relevant to my three specializations: physical geography, biogeography, and geospatial science. I share these efforts in the three following chapters, one of which is already published (Chapter 2), and the other two presented as manuscripts suitable for publication. These themes include historical and present hydrological patterns and drivers, hurricane disturbance of coastal forest, and evaluation of a Wisconsin geosite as a possible candidate for UNESCO Geopark designation. I chose study areas located in the eastern United States, including Appalachia, the Gulf Coast, and the Great Lakes region. Every chapter's work has been supported by an interdisciplinary array of methods with which I have striven to generate high-quality research from excitingly novel perspectives. All of my research has been pursued, and each resultant manuscript has been crafted, using methods and techniques from remote sensing and GIS including in-person fieldwork, smartphonesupported geolocation and photodocumentation, pattern analysis, statistical rigor, and indepth review and citation of extant literature. This research was carried out with deliberately minimal budgets that help offset costs of transportation and labor. I offer this dissertation as the ultimate fruits of my labor while here at Virginia Tech, composed of three interrelated yet reasonably stand-alone manuscript chapters that in turn more specifically address questions within the broader fields of biogeomorphology, dendrotempestology, and finally the geohumanities. Chapter 2 was published in an open-source peer-reviewed journal (Land, 2021: https://doi.org/10.3390/land10121333). My coauthors and I intend to publish the remaining two chapters in peer-reviewed journals. Therefore each manuscript herein provides its own Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References sections as set forth in the Table of Contents.

Drawing on traditions of cultural geography and creativity, the environmental humanities, and critical geographic theory, this dissertation includes five articles that develop geopoetics as a sub-field of the geohumanities. It sketches the contours of three modes of geopoetics: as creative geography, as literary geography, and as geophilosophy. Through site-based projects at three Sonoran Desert ecological research and tourism sites, it furthers the use of artistic and literary practice in geohumanities research, employs that practice to interrogate climate change and Anthropocene narratives, and addresses the role of art and literature in environmental issues. In addition, it utilizes the development and teaching of a community course on climate change and poetry as an additional "site" of research, to illustrate the role of arts and humanities approaches to global environmental change. Drawing on the content of the climate change and poetry course, it also includes a close reading of the work of five contemporary Indigenous ecopoets in relation to climate narratives. This dissertation proposes that geopoetics, literally "earth-making," is broadly relevant to questions of socio-ecological futures and is a means to imagine and enact other ways of inhabiting the world.

Recent work in the geohumanities has renewed a call for the inclusion of creative work within the discipline of geography. This dissertation works both creatively and critically to answer that call, and to contribute to the geohumanities generally and the subfield of geopoetics particularly. In the theoretical portion of this work, I draw from and dialogue with creative geographies, emotional geographies, nonrepresentational theory, and post-human geographies, arguing that geopoetics is both theory and practice-based and focuses on how to apprehend the world, how to acknowledge and practice the act of perceiving, and the relationship that grows through the act of perceiving and being perceived. This attendance is an ethical act; it helps to enrich understandings of place and of human relationships to the world. I use this understanding of geopoetics to rethink relationships to place through the embrace of poetic technique, an ethics of care, and an acceptance of situated, autobiographical emotion in practice. I use the work of three philosopher-poets (McKay, Zwicky, Lilburn) to argue that geopoetics is a relational ontology that helps contribute culturally to embodied understandings of ethics, landscape, and environment through its practice of attendance and perception. Separately, all three writers contribute variously to conceptualizations of wilderness, home and place; together, I propose that their work serves to further define geopoetics through the manner by which one attends to the world. I also specifically use Zwicky’s work on lyric to intervene in non-representational theory, clarifying ideas on a body-in-the-world. Attendance, for me, involves emotional, sensory, and philosophical engagement but is focused on the world, not on the perceiver. The creative portion of this dissertation puts the theoretical work into practice, adding to understandings of what geopoetics might do. This creative work is an act of attendance, which has as its root a geography of love and an emphasis on how to perceive. Its inclusion further validates creative practice and the inclusion of creative professionals within the discipline of geography. / Graduate / 2022-08-25