DRUM Collection: Geography Theses and Dissertations

A GENERALIZED APPROACH TO WHEAT YIELD FORECASTING USING EARTH OBSERVATIONS: DATA CONSIDERATIONS, APPLICATION, AND RELEVANCE.

2013-04-05T02:33:04Z

Title: A GENERALIZED APPROACH TO WHEAT YIELD FORECASTING USING EARTH OBSERVATIONS: DATA CONSIDERATIONS, APPLICATION, AND RELEVANCE. Authors: Becker-Reshef, Inbal Abstract: In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the demand for timely, comprehensive global agricultural intelligence. The issue of food security has rapidly risen to the top of government agendas around the world as the recent lack of food access led to unprecedented food prices, hunger, poverty, and civil conflict. Timely information on global crop production is indispensable for combating the growing stress on the world's crop production, for stabilizing food prices, developing effective agricultural policies, and for coordinating responses to regional food shortages. Earth Observations (EO) data offer a practical means for generating such information as they provide global, timely, cost-effective, and synoptic information on crop condition and distribution. Their utility for crop production forecasting has long been recognized and demonstrated across a wide range of scales and geographic regions. Nevertheless it is widely acknowledged that EO data could be better utilized within the operational monitoring systems and thus there is a critical need for research focused on developing practical robust methods for agricultural monitoring. Within this context this dissertation focused on advancing EO-based methods for crop yield forecasting and on demonstrating the potential relevance for adopting EO-based crop forecasts for providing timely reliable agricultural intelligence. This thesis made contributions to this field by developing and testing a robust EO-based method for wheat production forecasting at state to national scales using available and easily accessible data. The model was developed in Kansas (KS) using coarse resolution normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series data in conjunction with out-of-season wheat masks and was directly applied in Ukraine to assess its transferability. The model estimated yields within 7% in KS and 10% in Ukraine of final estimates 6 weeks prior to harvest. The relevance of adopting such methods to provide timely reliable information to crop commodity markets is demonstrated through a 2010 case study.

Social Spaces Enabling Girls' Education in India: An Outsider's Study

2013-02-08T03:50:54Z

Title: Social Spaces Enabling Girls' Education in India: An Outsider's Study Authors: Kewer, Patricia Marie Abstract: Education is viewed as central to improving the quality of life in developing countries. Indeed, two United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) respectively call for every child worldwide to receive at least a primary education and the elimination of the so-called "gender gap," favoring boys, at all education levels. India has been striving to meet these MDGs, and has virtually eliminated the gender gap at the primary level. MDG statistics show, though, girls still trailing boys at the secondary level and a much wider tertiary-level gender gap. This research studies, in a spatial context, a purposefully selected group of students--young Indian women who have been challenged not only by gender but also in some additional social, economic, geographical, or other relevant way. Nonetheless, these students are educational success stories. The four study participants all have been schooled in India through at least the undergraduate level and are graduate students in the United States. The research investigates the specific social spaces, and the settings and processes found in or between these spaces, enabling the participants' educations. The role of patriarchy is also explored. Conducted by an "outsider" American woman, the multiple case study is principally qualitative. Feminism, through a geographical lens, provides the theoretical framework. An extensive questionnaire and in-depth personal interviews have been utilized as the main participant information collection tools. Data collected have been coded into categories used to construct participant education narratives. These narratives then have been analyzed to identify and develop research-related themes for each participant and also cross and collective participant themes. The thematic findings identify a number of educationally enabling social spaces, including home, school, and cyber spaces. Other enabling factors, such as mentors, personal agency, and English language ability are also determined. The research clearly shows the importance of identified social spaces in aiding or hindering the participants' educations. Often, too, both positive and negative influences were found in the same space. Furthermore, the education space has served as a link between the home space and the professional work space, and the participants' educations have resulted in spatial, economic, and social mobility.

DETERMINING CONSERVATION PRIORITIES AND PARTICIPATIVE LAND USE PLANNING STRATEGIES IN THE MARINGA-LOPORI-WAMBA LANDSCAPE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

2012-10-12T02:34:32Z

Title: DETERMINING CONSERVATION PRIORITIES AND PARTICIPATIVE LAND USE PLANNING STRATEGIES IN THE MARINGA-LOPORI-WAMBA LANDSCAPE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO Authors: Nackoney, Janet Abstract: Deforestation and forest degradation driven largely by agricultural expansion are key drivers of biodiversity loss in the tropics. Achieving sustainable and equitable management of land and resources and determining priority areas for conservation activities are important in the face of these advancing pressures. The Congo Basin of Central Africa contains approximately 20% of the world's remaining tropical forest area and serves as important habitat for over half of Africa's flora and fauna. The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is currently laying the foundation for a national land use plan for conservation and sustainable use of its forests. Since 2004, the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has led efforts to develop a participatory land use plan for the Maringa-Lopori-Wamba (MLW) Landscape located in northern DRC. The landscape was recognized in 2002 as one of twelve priority landscapes in the Congo Basin targeted for the establishment of sustainable management plans. This dissertation focuses on the development of geospatial methods and tools for determining conservation priorities and assisting land use planning efforts in the MLW Landscape. The spatio-temporal patterns of recent primary forest loss are analyzed and complemented by the development of spatial models that identify the locations of 42 forest blocks and 32 potential wildlife corridors where conservation actions will be most important to promote future viability of landscape-wide terrestrial biodiversity such as the bonobo (Pan paniscus). In addition, the research explores three scenarios of potential agricultural expansion by 2050 and provides spatially-explicit information to show how trade-offs between biological conservation and human agricultural livelihoods might be balanced in land use planning processes. The research also describes a methodological approach for integrating spatial tools into participatory mapping processes with local communities and demonstrates how the resulting spatial data can be used to inform village-level agricultural land use for resource planning and management. Conclusions from the work demonstrate that primary forest loss is intensifying around agricultural complexes and that wildlife corridors connecting least-disturbed forest blocks are most vulnerable to future forest conversion. Conservation of these areas is possible with the development of land use plans in collaboration with local communities.

Impacts of Conflict on Land Use and Land Cover in the Imatong Mountain Region of South Sudan and Northern Uganda

2012-10-12T02:33:41Z

Title: Impacts of Conflict on Land Use and Land Cover in the Imatong Mountain Region of South Sudan and Northern Uganda Authors: Gorsevski, Virginia Abstract: The Imatong Mountain region of South Sudan makes up the northern most part of the Afromontane conservation `biodiversity hotspot' due to the numerous species of plants and animals found here, some of which are endemic. At the same time, this area (including the nearby Dongotana Hills and the Agoro-Agu region of northern Uganda) has witnessed decades of armed conflict resulting from the Sudan Civil War and the presence of the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The objective of my research was to investigate the impact of war on land use and land cover using a combination of satellite remote sensing data and semi-structured interviews with local informants. Specifically, I sought to 1) assess and compare changes in forest cover and location during both war and peace; 2) compare trends in fire activity with human population patterns; and 3) investigate the underlying causes influencing land use patterns related to war. I did this by using a Disturbance Index (DI), which isolates un-vegetated spectral signatures associated with deforestation, on Landsat TM and ETM+ data in order to compare changes in forest cover during conflict and post-conflict years, mapping the location and frequency of fires in subsets of the greater study area using MODIS active fire data, and by analyzing and summarizing information derived from interviews with key informants. I found that the rate of forest recovery was significantly higher than the rate of disturbance both during and after wartime in and around the Imatong Central Forest Reserve (ICFR) and that change in net forest cover remained largely unchanged for the two time periods. In contrast, the nearby Dongotana Hills experienced relatively high rates of disturbance during both periods; however, post war period losses were largely offset by gains in forest cover, potentially indicating opposing patterns in human population movements and land use activities within these two areas. For the Agoro-Agu Forest Reserve (AFR) region northern Uganda, the rate of forest recovery was much higher during the second period, coinciding with the time people began leaving overcrowded Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. I also found that fire activity largely corresponded to coarse-scale human population trends on the South Sudan and northern Uganda side of the border in that post-war fire activity decreased for all areas in South Sudan and northern Uganda except for areas near the larger towns and villages of South Sudan, where people have begun to resettle. Fires occurred most frequently in woodlands on the South Sudan side, while the greatest increase in post-war, northern Ugandan fires occurred in croplands and the forested area around the Agoro-Agu reserve, Interviews with key informants revealed that while some people fled the area during the war, many others remained in the forest to hide; however, their impact on the forests during and after the conflict has been minimal; in contrast, those interviewed believed that wildlife has been largely depleted due to the widespread access to firearms and lack of regulations and enforcement. This study demonstrates the utility of using a multi-disciplinary approach to examine aspects of forest dynamics and fire activity related to human activities and conflict and as such contributes to the nascent but growing body of research on armed conflict and the environment.