MFA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Rain & Otherwise is a poetry compilation that examines intimacy through various modes of the human experience. Among these experiences are themes of grief, existentialism, gender and sexuality, weather and global warming, space (micro v. macro), and familial lineage. This project aims to push the bounds of meaning and form through understatement, fragmentation of punctuation and space, and primarily sound as it relates literally to the ear and figuratively through interpreted meanings. This project is a result of the times we all find ourselves in, and ultimately strives to comfort the anxious souls of the era.

Committee: Caryl Pagel (Advisor); Chris Barzak (Committee Member); Catherine Wing (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, EECS - Electrical Engineering

The ionosphere occupies a privileged position in the geospace system, perturbed by space weather in the magnetosphere above and by terrestrial weather in the electrically neutral atmosphere below, which enables its use as a tool for detection of geophysical signatures in adjacent systems. Ionospheric measurements have been a subject of interest since the dawn of radio. Today, the increased availability of computing power and data storage stands to enable significant strides in frontier questions in aeronomy. However, the costs of constructing and maintaining measurement networks limits the density and cadence of available measurements. This work describes the design and deployment of a modular, low-cost sensing network which uses the well-established technique of Doppler measurement of the carrier signals from atomic-clock beacon stations, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology stations WWV and WWVH, as a proxy measurement for change in virtual ionospheric height. Four sections are presented: An introduction to the citizen scientists of the amateur radio community, the results of a pilot experiment conducted on the occasion of WWV's hundredth anniversary, documentation of hardware, and the data collected by the stations deployed at the time of writing. This community-supported network of stations act together as a meta-instrument to address the problem of undersampling in the geospace environment.

Committee: Christian Zorman (Advisor); Steven Hauck III (Committee Member); David Kazdan (Committee Member); Francis Merat (Committee Member) Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences; Electrical Engineering; Remote Sensing

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2015, Environment and Natural Resources

Northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus; hereafter, bobwhites) are gallinaceous gamebirds that were once ubiquitous across the eastern United States, but have declined throughout the 20th century. This research was conducted to evaluate the impact of woodlot edge-feathering and land use change on density and survival of bobwhites in Midwestern agricultural landscapes. I examined covey density, survival, and habitat use on 4 private-land study sites in southwestern Ohio to further understanding of winter ecology of bobwhites in relation to habitat characteristics and targeted woodlot edge management. Non-breeding season survival rate was at levels capable of stabilizing the population during the moderate winter of 2012 – 2013 (Ŝ = 0.393, 95 % CI = 0.215 - 0.596), but was well below the stabilizing rate during the severe winter of 2013 – 2014 (Ŝ = 0.075, 95 % CI = 0.037 - 0.145). I did not find a relationship between macro- and microhabitat characteristics and weekly survival outcomes during weeks with snow cover, although bobwhites restricted habitat use to areas of high woody stem density with increasing snow depths. This and persistently low survival rates in severe winters suggest that habitat conditions are homogenously poor and are not capable of stabilizing bobwhite populations, even at currently low densities. I examined the predicted probability of use and usable space by examining the proximity of focal habitat types. Loss of early-successional habitat features on the Fee, Thurner, and Wildcat study sites reduced their predicted probability of use and resulted in a net decline in usable space. Targeted successional management of woodlot edges (i.e. edge-feathering) on the Peach Orchard study site increased the predicted probability of use and the proportion of usable space. A reduction in the extent and mean predicted probability of use for herbaceous habitats on Fee indicate that loss of herbaceous habitat resulted in a coarser-grained (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Robert Gates (Advisor); Steven Matthews (Committee Member); Stanley Gehrt (Committee Member) Subjects: Ecology; Environmental Science; Forestry; Natural Resource Management; Wildlife Conservation; Wildlife Management; Zoology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Geodetic Science and Surveying

In this study, we demonstrate three environmental-related applications employing altimetry and remote sensing satellites, and exemplify the prospective usage underlying the current progressivity in mechanical and data analyzing technologies. Our discussion starts from the improved waveform retracking techniques in need for altimetry measurements over coastal and inland water regions. We developed two novel auxiliary procedures, namely the Subwaveform Filtering (SF) method and the Track Offset Correction (TOC), for waveform retracking algorithms to operationally detect altimetry waveform anomalies and further reduce possible errors in determination of the track offset. After that, we present two demonstrative studies related to the ionospheric and tropospheric compositions, respectively, as their variations are the important error sources for satellite electromagnetic signals. We firstly compare the total electron content (TEC) measured by multiple altimetry and GNSS sensors. We conclude that the ionosphere delay measured by Jason-2 is about 6–10 mm shorter than the GPS models. On the other hand, we use several atmospheric variables to study the climate change over high elevation areas. Five types of satellite data and reanalysis models were used to study climate change indicators. We conclude that the spatial distribution of temperature trend among data products is quite different, which is probably due to the choice of various time spans. Following discussions about the measuring techniques and relative bias between data products, we applied our improved altimetry techniques to three environmental science applications with helps of remote sensing imagery. We first manifest the detectability of hydrological events by satellite altimetry and radiometry. The characterization of one-dimensional (along-track) water boundary using former Backscattering Coefficient (BC) method is assisted by the two-dimensional (horizontal) estimate of water extent using the Moderate Res (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: C.K. Shum (Advisor); Michael Durand (Committee Member); Christopher Jekeli (Committee Member); Jiyoung Lee (Committee Member); Song Liang (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Science

Master of Science, Miami University, 2012, Computational Science and Engineering

Because of deficiencies in sampling resolution and storage space, the plasma line frequency component of the incoherent scatter radar (ISR) spectrum has been neglected in experimentally verifying ionospheric parameters. Several incoherent scatter theories were independently developed with confirmation from low resolution data in the 1960s that used the plasma line resonant frequency and plasma line peak intensity to derive ionospheric parameters. Now that higher resolution measurement techniques exist, this thesis investigates three methods for obtaining plasma line resonant frequency, peak intensity, and spectral width. Following this study, several salient features endemic to the ISR experiment performed on January 15-17th, and January 22nd of 2010 are presented and analyzed.

Committee: Qihou Zhou PhD (Advisor); Jade Morton PhD (Committee Member); Chi Hao Cheng PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Aeronomy; Electrical Engineering; Plasma Physics