Maternal mortality is the leading cause of death among women in Nigeria, especially women aged between 15 and 19 years. This research examines the geography of maternal mortality in Nigeria and the role of cultural and religious practices, socio-economic inequalities, urbanization, access to pre and postnatal care in explaining the spatial pattern. State-level data on maternal mortality rates and predictor variables are presented. Access to healthcare, place of residence and religion explains over 74 percent of the spatial pattern of maternal mortality in Nigeria, especially in the predominantly Muslim region of northern Nigeria where poverty, early marriage and childbirth are at its highest, making them a more vulnerable population. Targeting vulnerable populations in policy-making procedures may be an important strategy for reducing maternal mortality, which would also be more successful if other socio-economic issues such as poverty, religious and health care issues are promptly addressed as well.

Buruli ulcer (BU) is an environmental bacterium caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans. Modes of transmission and hosts of the disease remain unknown. The purposes of this study are to explore the environmental factors that are possibly explain the spatial distribution of BU, to predict BU cases by using the environmental factors, and to investigate the impact of land use and land cover change on the BU distribution. The study area covers the southwest portion of Ghana, 74 districts in 6 regions. The results show that the highest endemic areas occur in the center and expand to the southern portion of the study area. Statistically, the incidence rates of BU are positively correlated to the percentage of forest cover and inversely correlated to the percentages of grassland, soil, and urban areas in the study area. That is, forest is the most important environmental risk factor in this study. Model from zero-inflated Poisson regression is used in this paper to explain the impact of each land use and land cover type on the spatial distribution of BU. The results confirm that the changes of land use and land cover affect the spatial distribution of BU in the study area.

Industrial ecology is a field of study that encourages the use of closed-loop material cycles to achieve sustainability. Loop closing requires the movement of materials over space, and has long been practiced in the iron and steel industry. Iron and steel (ferrous) scrap generated in the U.S. is increasingly exported to countries in Asia, lengthening the transportation distance associated with closing the loop on the iron and steel life cycle. In order to understand the environmental cost of transporting this commodity, an activity-based maritime transportation model and a theoretical in-land transportation model are used to estimate emissions generated. Results indicate that 10.4 mmt of total emissions were generated, and emissions increased by 136 percent from 2004 to 2009. Increases in the amount of emissions generated are due to increases in the amount of scrap exported and distance it is transported.

Abstract Though a very influential Texan during the first half of the twentieth century, Amon Carter has yet to receive a full scholarly treatment, a problem which this dissertation attempts to rectify by investigating the narrative of Carter’s life to see how and why he was able to rise from humble beginnings to become a powerful publisher who symbolized boosterish trends within Texas and the New South. Publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, philanthropist, oilman, and aviation supporter, Carter used his power and influence to become a leading booster of his city and region seamlessly making the transition from being a business progressive to New Deal supporter to an Eisenhower Democrat. His connections with corporations like American Airlines and General Motors helped bring aviation and industry to his region, and his ability to work with public and private entities helped inspire his failed attempt to make the Trinity River navigable up to Fort Worth. His own success at building the Star-Telegram into the largest circulating newspaper in Texas encouraged him to expand his media empire into radio and television, while the wealth he gained from his oil activities enabled him to form a philanthropic foundation that would provide support for …

Renewable energy studies are becoming increasingly important as world energy demand rises and current energy sources are increasingly questioned. Solar photovoltaics (PV) are the focus of this study as a renewable industry still in its infancy. This research examines the geography of solar panel installation and manufacturing from 2007 to 2010 in California and New York. California is the larger of the two markets and has implemented more policy support; programs that appear to have increased the pace of installations, reduce the size of the subsidy, and help lower total costs. Similar trends are observable in New York. US based companies are still making solar panels, but foreign competitors, most notably from China and Mexico, are capturing an increasing share of the market.

Twenty four percent of all HIV infections in the United States occur among adults aged 50 and older (mature adults), yet little is understood of the dynamics of HIV infection among this group in Texas. Data from 1999 to 2009 examined the relationship between HIV spatial and temporal patterns affecting socio-economic and demographic variables including poverty, gender, race/ethnicity and mode of exposure. Results revealed highest HIV infection rates among White homosexual men, Black males engaged in IV-drug use, Black female heterosexuals and minorities in poverty. Concentrations of HIV infection among mature adults were located primarily in urban centers of Houston and Dallas and indicated increasing HIV infection rates from 1999 to 2009. These results will assist future allocation of resources by zip code in urban areas for this understudied population.

Residential irrigation efficiency is a long-term concern for any community that faces water supply stress. When ability to raise water prices is constrained, public education and conservation programs can produce reduced water usage. Understanding the factors behind residential irrigation efficiency allows the design of more effective conservation campaigns. Combining site-specific water budgets with usage data for four hundred homes in North Texas enables quantifying efficient irrigation behavior. A survey of homeowners tests for the presence of conservation-positive attitudes and the knowledge required to implement those attitudes. The influence of neighbors’ watering habits is investigated using spatial clustering tools. Findings are analyzed in the context of an attitude, knowledge, and habit model of conservation behavior. The presence of automatic irrigation systems, small irrigated areas, and having knowledge of the amount that one waters one’s lawn are found to contribute to more intensive irrigation. Mixed evidence for small-scale clustering in irrigation intensity is presented.

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) has received increased attention as a new paradigm for geographic information production, while light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data is widely applied to many fields. This study quantitatively compares LiDAR data and user-generated 3D building models created using Google Building Maker, and investigate the potential applications of the quantitative measures in support of rapid disaster damage assessment. User-generated 3D building models from Google Building Maker are compared with LiDAR-derived building models using 3D shape signatures. Eighteen 3D building models are created in Fremont, California using the Google Building Maker, and six shape functions (distance, angle, area, volume, slope, and aspect) are applied to the 18 LiDAR-derived building models and user-generated ones. A special case regarding the comparison between LiDAR data and building models with indented walls is also discussed. Based on the results, several conclusions are drawn, and limitations that require further study are also discussed.

Environmental controls are becoming more and more expensive to implement, so environmental management is becoming more technologically advanced and efficient through the adoption of new techniques and models. This paper reviews the potential for storm water runoff for the city of Denton, Texas and with the main objective to perform storm water runoff analyses for three different land use datasets; each landuse dataset created with a different methodology. Also analyzed was the difference between two North Central Texas Council of Governments land use datasets and my own land use dataset as a part of evaluating new and emerging remote sensing techniques. The results showed that new remote sensing techniques can help to continually monitor changes within watersheds by providing more accurate data.

Retail clinics are walk-in clinics designed for convenience and for servicing minor health issues and certain acute conditions. The model began as a way of bringing both convenience and care to areas that have lower levels of access to primary care resources. With the implementation of Affordable Care Act (ACA) in March 2010, populations that were previously uninsured were now required to have access to some level of health insurance. These populations presented a potential new market for retail clinics. This research shows that post implementation of the ACA, retail clinics tend to locate in areas with higher incomes and, generally, greater access to primary care.

The shopping center has held an important place in the American economy for decades. However, the concept has seen multiple revolution in terms of format. The most recent shopping center concept to gain rapid popularity is the lifestyle center – an outdoor shopping mall made to resemble a pleasant main street setting, with a tenant mix emphasizing dining and entertainment. In other words, the lifestyle center concept is geared toward selling consumers things to do, versus things to buy. This thesis studies the geography of lifestyle centers in the United States in both the large-scale and small-scale view. Results show that lifestyle centers are concentrated into larger urban areas, often with a population of over 1 million. An analysis of spatial agglomeration revealed that lifestyle centers are often several miles away from the nearest traditional mall, indicating that developers do not feel the need to build near established shopping districts where traditional malls lie. Finally, results concerning trade area characteristics show the characteristics of consumers in areas where lifestyle centers have been built. Findings in this study indicate that developers are utilizing a unique approach when selecting sites for lifestyle centers compared to traditional indoor malls.

This study of lithic analysis shifts attention from typological studies to explicitly behavioral analyses, complimenting studies of both intrasite and intersite patterns of variability and change. Analysis of several assemblages from the Placitas Arroyo site complex reveals changing patterns of raw material procurement and selection, core reduction strategies, as well as tool production and discard. The most striking result thus far is the quite uniform emphasis on flake production from well-prepared cores, and the near absence of manufacture or maintenance of bifacial tools, especially projectile points. Associated with common ground stone artifacts, the flaked stone materials may well represent intensive food processing. Regardless, the technological patterns being revealed by this approach illustrate a productive new means to gain insights into changing behaviors in the Jornada Mogollon cultural tradition.

The Red River Cache is an assemblage of 33 bifaces, found in Cooke County, along Cache Creek, a tributary to the Red River. Also found with the cache was a hearth which yielded charcoal for AMS dating which returned an age of 2770- 2710 Cal YBP placing the cache in the Late Archaic. The geologic investigation of Cache Creek established 3 Holocene allostratigraphic units that provide information depositional environments adjacent to the Red River. Lithic analysis explored the production of bifaces during the Late Archaic and compared the cache to regional records. Using both geologic and lithic analysis this thesis investigates the temporal and cultural context of the cache using a geoarchaeological approach.

This analysis of faunal remains from eleven archaeological sites in the northern San Juan region, extensively occupied by the Ancestral Pueblo people until they leave the region by AD 1300, explores the effects of resource intensification of small wild and domestic resources leading up to this regional depopulation. By examining multiple lines of evidence, in addition to faunal abundance, causal factors are identified to address changes in abundances through time. In particular, age- and sex-based mortality are examined for lagomorphs (jackrabbits and cottontails) and domesticated turkey, respectively, to test hypotheses generated using the prey and patch choice models. Analyses of these resources follow a systematic paleontology which provides explicit identifications made of five sites from a large study area, Goodman Point Pueblo Unit. These data are integrated with those from large village sites from the encompassing central Mesa Verde region. The results of both analyses help clarify why the Ancestral Pueblo people left southwestern Colorado. During the final twenty-year occupation period, the results of this study support a shift from reliance on turkey husbandry to intense exploitation of locally available garden resources (i.e. cottontails).

Understanding spatial perspectives on the spread and incidence of a disease is invaluable for public health planning and intervention. Choropleth maps are commonly used to provide an abstraction of disease risk across geographic space. These maps are derived from aggregated population counts that are known to be affected by the small numbers problem. Kernel density estimation methods account for this problem by producing risk estimates that are based on aggregations of approximately equal population sizes. However, the process of aggregation often combines data from areas with non-uniform spatial and population characteristics. This thesis presents a new method to aggregate space in ways that are sensitive to their underlying risk factors. Such maps will enable better public health practice and intervention by enhancing our ability to understand the spatial processes that result in disparate health outcomes.

Plastic deposition in hydrological systems is a pervasive problem at all geographic scales from loci of pollution to global ocean circulation. Much attention has been devoted to plastic deposition in marine contexts, but little is known about inputs of plastics into local hydrological systems, such as streams. Any attempt to prevent plastic litter must confront people’s behaviors, so archaeological concepts are used to distinguish between various cultural inputs (e.g., littering) and non-cultural forces (e.g., stream transport) that affect litter patterns on the landscape. Litter surveys along Hickory Creek in Denton, TX, are used to assess these factors.

When an earthquake happens, one of the most important tasks of disaster managers is to conduct damage assessment; this is mostly done from remotely sensed data. This study presents a new method for building detection and damage assessment using high-resolution satellite images and LiDAR data from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A graph-cut method is used for building detection due to its advantages compared to traditional methods such as the Hough transform. Results of two methods are compared to understand how much our proposed technique is effective. Afterwards, sensitivity analysis is performed to show the effect of image resolution on the efficiency of our method. Results are in four groups. First: based on two criteria for sensitivity analysis, completeness and correctness, the more efficient method is graph-cut, and the final building mask layer is used for damage assessment. Next, building damage assessment is done using change detection technique from two images from period of before and after the earthquake. Third, to integrate LiDAR data and damage assessment, we showed there is a strong relationship between terrain roughness variables that are calculated using digital surface models. Finally, open street map and normalized digital surface model are used to detect possible road blockages. Results of …

Within the past few decades, commuter rail routes in several major metropolitan areas have been implemented to provide an alternative to automobile transportation. Urban planners in these cities are looking to commuter rail to mitigate congestion and pollution. However, research on the impacts of commuter rail development on the surrounding retail landscape is still needed. In metropolitan Dallas-Fort Worth, the Denton County Transportation Authority recently opened its new A-Train light rail service linking suburban Denton and downtown Dallas. This thesis examines urban changes that occurred in the years before and after the A-Train line's 2011 opening, with a focus on restaurant and retail development in the vicinity of the A-Train stations in Denton County. This analysis evaluates changes in retail density and type, the population surrounding stations, and municipal initiatives that shape the retail landscape of station vicinities. This was done by gathering field data, retailer listings, population data, and conducting interviews with local businesses and city planners. The findings suggest that A-train stations have had a differential impact on the surrounding landscape, depending on the existing retail landscape, the types of retailers present, and the current state of municipal infrastructure that promotes accessibility. Overall, results suggest that urban planners …

Rapid Bioassessment Protocols integrate a suite of community, population, and functional metrics, determined from the collection of benthic macroinvertebrates or fish, into a single assessment. This study was conducted in Dallas County Texas, an area located in the blackland prairie eco-region that is semi-arid and densely populated. The objectives of this research were to identify reference streams and propose a set of metrics that are best able to discriminate between differences in community structure due to natural variability from those caused by changes in water quality due to watershed impacts. Using geographic information systems, a total of nine watersheds, each representing a different mix of land uses, were chosen for evaluation. A total of 30 metrics commonly used in RBP protocols were calculated. Efficacy of these metrics to distinguish change was determined using several statistical techniques. Ten metrics were used to classify study area watersheds according to stream quality. Many trends, such as taxa presence along habitat quality gradients, were observed. These gradients coincided with expected responses of stream communities to landscape and habitat variables.

This study is a test of a methodology to predict changes in elevation and shoreline position of coastal wetlands in Trinity Bay, Texas, in response to projected sea level rise. The study combines numerical modeling and a geographic information system. A smoothing technique is used on a United States Geographical Survey (USGS) digital elevation model to obtain elevation profiles that more accurately represent the gently sloping wetlands surface. The numerical model estimates the expected elevation change by raster cell based on input parameters of predicted sea level rise, mineral and organic sedimentation rates, and sediment autocompaction rates. A GIS is used to display predicted elevation changes and changes in shoreline position as a result of four projected sea level rise scenarios over the next 100 years. Results demonstrate that this numerical model and methodology are promising as a technique of modeling predicted elevation change and shoreline migration in wetlands. The approach has potential utility in coastal management applications.

The Nature Conservancy of Texas (TNC) is concerned with the amount of shoreline erosion taking place at its Mad Island Marsh Preserve (MIMP), located in Matagorda Bay, Texas. The MIMP is a 7,100 acre nature preserve that borders the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and is eroded by waves generated by barge traffic. TNC is concerned that erosion will shorten Mad Island Bayou which may increase the salinity of Mad Island Lake; with detrimental effects on lake and marsh habitats. This study uses GPS technology to map the current shoreline and GIS to determine ten year erosion rates (1995 - 2005). Results show that erosion is occurring at various rates along the shoreline as well as along the oxbow bend in Mad Island Bayou.

The Aubrey Clovis site is one of the oldest late-Pleistocene sites in North America, dated to ~11,550 B.P., and contains two camps with a range of lithic debitage, numerous hearths, and excellent faunal preservation. Couched in rules of classification, a series of artifact distributions are analyzed with qualitative and quantitative techniques, including maps produced in a geographic information system (GIS) and tests of artifact associations using correlation statistics. Theoretical and methodological protocols are promoted to improve spatial analysis in archaeology. The results support the short-term occupation interpretation and expose the differential patterning among bone, stone, and raw materials distributions. The spatial structure and diverse content of the site challenge models of Clovis-age people as strictly big game hunters.

Assessing the impact of climate variability on water resources is one of the difficult tasks in planning the future growth of North-Central Texas. This study defined twelve extreme climate scenarios. Data from each scenario was input to a hydrological model (HEC-HMS) to calculate watershed runoff to Lake Ray Roberts. Model parameters are determined using Geographic Information System (GIS). The water balance was calculated for current and future water demand and resulting change in the volume and level of this reservoir. The results indicate certain climate scenarios decrease in volume. Thus, local governments should plan alternative water management strategies during droughts.

Denton County's unique cultural and natural landscape has undergone dramatic transformations during the past two centuries due to agricultural, urban and suburban processes which accelerated the loss and removal of native habitat and wildlife. This research sought out to identify the remaining natural areas which retain their natural features and support wildlife. Research methodology included fundamental principles of Conservation Planning, Geographical Information Systems, and Habitat Evaluation Procedures for identifying remnant functional landscapes and wildlife corridors. The final results suggest that Denton County's rural landscape retains the functional properties and elements suitable for habitat conservation and wildlife corridors, while also pointing to the fundamental obstacles to conservation posed by continued growth and private landownership.