An Exploration of Digital Sketch Mapping, Interview and Qualitative Analysis to Document a Therapeutic Landscape in Whatcom County

Recent literature cites interest toward utilizing new technologies to unify methods within geography. One area showing promise towards fulfilling this goal is qualitative GIS (QGIS), which combines the methods of social/cultural and spatial/analytical geographers. QGIS research combines sketch maps with GIS and qualitative research methods to uncover “hidden geographies” found within the individual geo-narratives of individuals and within groups of individuals. This thesis explores the merits of using newly developed technology for digital sketch maps acquisition, computer assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) and qualitative geographic information system (QGIS) analysis for the discovery of “hidden geographies”. The case study demonstrates the utility of touchscreen technology to collect sketch maps and the complementary effect of combining social/cultural and spatial/analytical methods to visualize the hidden geography within the therapeutic landscape of student veterans in Whatcom County, Washington. This exploration also suggests direction for further research using digital sketch map acquisition for gaining insights into other socio-spatial processes that are not captured by traditional geographical analysis methods

Expertise in map comprehension: processing of geographic features according to spatial configuration and abstract roles

Expertise in topographic map reading is dependent on efficient processing of geographical information presented in a standardised map format. Studies have supported the proposition that expert map readers employ cognitive schemas in which prototypical configurations held in long term memory are employed during the surface search of map features to facilitate map comprehension. Within the experts’ cognitive schemas, it is assumed that features are grouped according to spatial configurations that have been frequently encountered and these patterns facilitate efficient chunking of features during information processing. This thesis investigates the nature of information held in experts’ cognitive schemas. It also proposes that features are grouped in the experts’ schemas not only by their spatial configurations but according to the abstract and functional roles they perform. Three experiments investigated the information processing strategies employed by firstly, skilled map readers engaged in a map reproduction task and secondly, expert map readers engaged in a location comparison exercise. In the first and second experiments, skilled and novice map readers studied and reproduced a town map and a topographic map. Drawing protocols and verbal protocols provided insights into their information processing strategies. The skilled map readers demonstrated superior performance for reproducing contour related data with evidence of the use of cognitive schemas. For the third experiment, expert and novice map readers compared locations within map excerpts for similarities of boundary extents. Eye-gaze data and verbal protocols provided information on the features attended to and the participants’ search patterns. The expert group integrated features into their cognitive schemas according to the abstract roles they performed significantly more frequently than the novices. Both groups employed pattern recognition to integrate features for some of the locations. Within a similar experimental design the second part of the third experiment examined whether experts also integrated the abstract roles of remote features and village grouping concepts within their cognitive schemas. The experts again integrated the abstract roles of physical features into their schemas more often than novices but this strategy was not employed for either the remote feature or grouping categories. Implications for map design and future Geographic Information Systems are discussed

Climate in architecture: revision of early origins

This dissertation expands the comprehension of the history of climate in architecture by examining the evolution of the architectural meanings, uses, representations, and simulations of climate between 1800 and the present by means of a historical critical analysis of two scientific artifacts that attempted to model climate for the first time in the fields of geography and architecture. The Naturgemälde (1799 – Alexander von Humboldt) was a type of infographic image that simulated conceptually climate as a global system. The Climatron (1954 – Victor Olgyay) was a laboratory machine that physically simulated climate to test building scaled-models. Primary data was collected in the places where both artifacts were created, and where related archival materials are currently held. The method of analysis compared the models against each other, against contemporary computer simulations of climate for architects, and against their early theoretical foundations. The dissertation reflected on the universality of science in architecture and the role of the places and the technology involved to produce knowledge about climate, while challenged the concept of climate in architecture. It endeavored to find more holistic scientific approaches to design-with-climate that consider hard data alongside art. The tangible outcomes are four articles advised by one of the committee members according to their expertise: MODELS OF CLIMATE AND WEATHER explains the attempts to simulate conceptually and materially climate and weather in order to reduce their complexity to a human scale; ARCHITECTURAL INSIGHTS FROM EARLY DRAWINGS OF CLIMATE AND WEATHER: NATURGEMÄLDE, ISOTHERMS, CLIMATE PORTRAITS, AND THE BIOCLIMATIC CHART, reflects about the paradox of drawing climate and weather; PACKAGING NATURE FOR ARCHITECTS: EARLY ORIGINS OF DESIGNING WITH NATURAL MORPHOLOGY AND CLIMATE, focuses on how ideas travel from environmental sciences into architecture; and UNDERSTANDING THE CHARACTER OF PLACE: HUMBOLDT’S PHYSIOGNOMY OF NATURE, VICTOR OLGYAY’S BIOCLIMATIC REGIONALISM AND THE OUTLINE OF A PHYSIOGNOMY OF CLIMATE examines, from an architectural standpoint, the role of the beauty of climate in the understanding of the character of a place

Designing Carolina: The construction of an early American social and geographical landscape, 1670-1719

This study explores the promotion, population and settlement of the Carolina lowcountry and evaluates the colony\u27s pioneer years, the period before an English-dominated plantation society achieved supremacy. Many designers participated in the construction of proprietary South Carolina\u27s social and geographical landscapes. The explorers and propagandists who first characterized the colony for European audiences developed the region in the minds of potential emigrants. their recruitment campaigns determined in part the people who colonized the province. The Lords Proprietors and their agents, who devised an elaborate settlement program set forth in the Fundamental Constitutions and other land policies, influenced how Carolina evolved physically and socially. The planters and surveyors who lived and worked within this system reshaped it to serve their own ends, thus altering the complexion of the colonial lowcountry landscape. Finally, the European and Indian cartographers who drew maps of the southeastern region created and interpreted the imagined and actual geography of Carolina.;Despite the small number of private papers surviving from the proprietary period, extant records reveal a considerable amount about white Carolinians\u27 approaches to and occupation of lowcountry lands. The sources examined in this study include exploratory narratives and promotional literature, correspondence and journals of colonial officials, land warrants and grants, surveyors\u27 guidebooks and plats, and historical maps of southeastern North America. Indeed, the public records dating from 1670 to 1710 are particularly suited to a geographic interpretation of South Carolina.;In one sense, the story of South Carolina\u27s first settlement and initial development suffers from the tendency of scholars to read history backwards from the fully-evolved plantation societies of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to apply predominately economic interpretations to the colony\u27s earliest years. This dissertation takes another approach and concentrates on the creation of the colony both in perception and practice. as the first comprehensive analysis of the conceptualization, peopling, and construction of social and geographical landscapes in South Carolina, it integrates the history of a single southern colony within the broader contexts of early American and Atlantic world histories

Placing Birds On A Dynamic Evolutionary Map: Using Digital Tools To Update The Evolutionary Metaphor Of The Tree Of Life

This dissertation describes and presents a new type of interactive visualization for communicating about evolutionary biology, the dynamic evolutionary map. This web-based tool utilizes a novel map-based metaphor to visualize evolution, rather than the traditional tree of life. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the conceptual affordances of the traditional tree of life as the dominant metaphor for evolution. Next, theories from digital media, visualization, and cognitive science research are synthesized to support the assertion that digital media tools can extend the types of visual metaphors we use in science communication in order to overcome conceptual limitations of traditional metaphors. These theories are then applied to a specific problem of science communication, resulting in the dynamic evolutionary map. Metaphor is a crucial part of scientific communication, and metaphor-based scientific visualizations, models, and analogies play a profound role in shaping our ideas about the world around us. Users of the dynamic evolutionary map interact with evolution in two ways: by observing the diversification of bird orders over time and by examining the evidence for avian evolution at several places in evolutionary history. By combining these two types of interaction with a non-traditional map metaphor, evolution is framed in a novel way that supplements traditional metaphors for communicating about evolution. This reframing in turn suggests new conceptual affordances to users who are learning about evolution. Empirical testing of the dynamic evolutionary map by biology novices suggests that this approach is successful in communicating evolution differently than in existing tree-based visualization methods. Results of evaluation of the map by biology experts suggest possibilities for future enhancement and testing of this visualization that would help refine these successes. This dissertation represents an important step forward in the synthesis of scientific, design, and metaphor theory, as applied to a specific problem of science communication. The dynamic evolutionary map demonstrates that these theories can be used to guide the construction of a visualization for communicating a scientific concept in a way that is both novel and grounded in theory. There are several potential applications in the fields of informal science education, formal education, and evolutionary biology for the visualization created in this dissertation. Moreover, the approach suggested in this dissertation can potentially be extended into other areas of science and science communication. By placing birds onto the dynamic evolutionary map, this dissertation points to a way forward for visualizing science communication in the futur