Ph.D. - Geography

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/2064

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 105

Potential for coral reef recovery after historical runoff and land-derived sedimentation in Hawaiian watersheds
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Stender, Yuko; Beilman, David W.; Geography
The loss of coral reefs remains a significant concern worldwide. Runoff and associated terrigenous sedimentation and turbidity are among the key anthropogenic impacts that threaten nearshore coral reefs. While much focus has been placed on the adverse effects of these disturbances, understanding the natural recovery processes of coral reefs post-impacts is limited. This dissertation evaluated the potential for natural coral recovery in three Hawaiian reef systems historically affected by runoff and land-derived sedimentation, including Kawaihae (Pelekane) on Hawai‘i Island, Pīla‘a on Kaua‘i, and Kāneʻohe Bay, Oʻahu. These reefs have documented histories of disturbances linked to watershed modifications, flooding, and shoreline alterations. In this dissertation, three important aspects of recovery potential were examined: (1) how coral settlement varies across environmental conditions associated with proximity to the stream, (2) how regeneration and recovery of damaged tissue in Porites colonies are influenced by environmental, biological, and ecological factors, and (3) how Montipora corals physiologically respond and recover following turbidity exposure. Findings revealed higher coral settlement on the reef distant from the stream mouth, with Porites species dominating across habitats. While tissue regeneration was observed in all colonies at both the reference and impacted sites, it regressed at the impacted site due to scouring and biological interactions. The regeneration was slow but steady across the survey years at the reference site. Laboratory experiments and field observations further demonstrated that turbidity negatively impacts photosynthetic performance; however, coral fragments showed the ability to partially or fully recover when placed in their native reef under favorable conditions. Overall, chronic sedimentation limits recruitment potential, hindering coral replenishment in disturbed areas. Adult corals demonstrate recovery capacity influenced by sediment legacies and specific colony traits. Montipora corals exhibited short-term sediment tolerance, with recovery dependent on subsequent light availability and water flow. This research identifies the environmental thresholds and biological characteristics that influence coral recovery trajectories, providing valuable insights to inform management strategies and community initiatives aimed at restoration and conserving coral reef ecosystems in Hawai‘i.
The critical geopolitics of boundary-making and strategic territorialization in the Ryukyu Islands
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Kohatsu, Tatsuki; Mostafanezhad, Mary; Geography and Environment
Over the past decade and a half, the U.S., China, and their allied military forces andinfrastructures have proliferated throughout the Pacific region. To date, most critical geopolitics scholarship on representations and discourses has been rooted in continental geopolitics, often to the neglect of islands. Popular continental and metropolitan imaginings frame islands as insular, empty, and marginal. However, islands have long been contested spaces where powerful states vie for influence and control, and island residents negotiate the everyday experiences of territorial (re)enforcement. In this dissertation, I argue that everyday material and symbolic geopolitical practices co-constitute islands in ways that reveal territorialization as a relational process through which islands become strategically legible. Drawing on the case of boundary-making in the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa), I examine ethnographic and archival materials to understand how representational and material geopolitical practices shape island space. Since the 1940s, peace-making, military operations, border defense, and development agendas have undertaken territorial (re)enforcement to maintain the islands as Japan’s (and the United States’) strategic border. My multi-sited qualitative work in Okinawa demonstrates that the co-constitution of Okinawa as a strategic site through symbolic and material practices shapes how island spaces and people’s experiences are understood. The symbolic and material practices of territorial (re)enforcement obscure alternative island imaginaries and adverse impacts of the geopolitical maneuvering, thereby reinforcing these islands as a strategic site. This dissertation also illuminates that island residents in the Ryukyu Islands contest, reinterpret, and reimagine boundaries in ways that shed critical light on such territorial (re)enforcement and obscuration in their everyday experiences, livelihoods, and social and spatial relations beyond Japan's current borders. Overall, this study shows that islands like Okinawa are sites where militarization, geopolitics,and island life converge, underscoring the critical role of boundary-making practices in broader Pacific geopolitics. It enriches scholarship on the political geography of islands and everyday geopolitics by demonstrating how islands—and people’s experiences on them—are central to the relational process of strategic territorialization and critical geopolitics. The significant local and regional implications are that intensified geopolitical competition and the prevailing interests of various states in islands indicate the continued need for the critical examination of territorialization as a relational and everyday geopolitical process. Neglecting boundary-making and the strategic territorialization on and around islands risks limiting analysis of the Pacific geopolitics and critical studies of geopolitics and militarization in the region.
Nature, well-being, and meanings of tea across physical and digital spaces
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Pan, Joan; Jiang, Hong; Geography and Environment
This dissertation explores how contemporary tea drinkers create and express well-being throughtea practice across digital and physical spaces. Building on scholarship that has examined tea through history, in religion, poetry and the arts, and contemporary industry discourse that emphasizes tea’s bioactive compounds and physical health benefits, this study advances cultural and visual/digital geography by examining how tea drinkers construct nature-culture connections through embodied, sensory engagement across digital and physical spaces. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach with ethnographic methods, this study examines specialty tea events (a trade show in Las Vegas and two consumer festivals in California and Washington), curated tea blogs by U.S. and Canadian enthusiasts and educators, public Instagram profile posts collected through #tea and #teaculture hashtags, and interviews with tea professionals and enthusiasts. Findings show that tea enthusiasts experience nature through direct sensory practice, such as observing leaves, tasting seasonal variations, and developing awareness through repeated engagement. Consumer festivals provide hands-on learning through tastings and workshops, face-to-face exchanges, and shared experiences with fellow tea enthusiasts. Blogs enable longform narratives for detailed reflection and knowledge-sharing over time. Instagram posts show distinct tea representations; those tagged with #tea emphasize accessibility and broad understandings of tea as beverage, while #teaculture posts maintain more bounded notions of traditional tea through specific tea types, teaware, aesthetics, and vocabulary. These spaces work together, with festival experiences inspiring Instagram posts and blog reflections, connecting tea enthusiast communities online. This recursive relationship shows how meanings accumulate while representations shift across platforms. Through these interconnected spaces, tea enthusiasts construct nature-culture relationships and express well-being at multiple scales—personal (through embodied engagement), interpersonal (sharing and encouraging), and community (building networks of practice and belonging). Tea becomes the nexus where embodied engagement, symbolic connections, and social experiences intersect, creating pathways and points to well-being that demonstrate how contemporary tea culture exists across rather than only within digital and physical spaces.
Toward improved regional rainfall modeling in Hawai‘i: Lessons learned from a multi-method investigation
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Sanfilippo, Kristen; Giambelluca, Thomas; Geography
Reliable regional rainfall projections are critical for effective climate planning in Hawaiʻi, where the combination of complex topography and highly variable climate presents significant challenges for modeling efforts. Unlike the continental United States, Hawaiʻi lacks coordinated, large-scale downscaling efforts, resulting in limited and inconsistent downscaled climate information. This dissertation addresses this gap by evaluating and comparing multiple downscaling approaches to better understand how methodological choices influence future rainfall projections. In doing so, it aims to both improve future downscaling practices and contribute new high-resolution precipitation datasets to the growing suite of climate resources available for the Hawaiian Islands.Chapter 2 uses a self-organizing maps (SOM) framework to classify wet-season circulation patterns and examine how their frequencies may shift under CMIP6 projections. This method links large-scale atmospheric variability to local rainfall and generates a new set of end-of-century precipitation projections (2070–2100). Chapter 3 develops two additional projection sets using multiple linear regression (MLR) and generalized additive models (GAM) with CMIP5 RCP4.5 data, highlighting how differences in statistical techniques affect spatial and seasonal rainfall outcomes. Chapter 4 evaluates the Intermediate Complexity Atmospheric Research (ICAR) model as a simplified dynamical downscaling tool, testing its performance using wind inputs from ERA5, WRF, and SOM-based reconstructions. Together, these studies demonstrate the critical role of method selection in shaping downscaled projections and emphasize the need for transparency and evaluation in regional climate modeling. By contributing new rainfall projections and comparative insights, this work supports more robust and regionally appropriate climate information for resilience planning in Hawaiʻi.
The underestimation of projected effects of climate change on coral reefs
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Setter, Renee O.; Mora, Camilo; Geography
Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to marine ecosystems, yet current assessments may substantially underestimate the magnitude and complexity of these impacts. This dissertation demonstrates three critical ways in which climate risks to marine ecosystems, particularly coral reefs, have been underestimated. Using global climate projections and comprehensive datasets of reef ecosystem and coral species distributions, this research examines limitations in current global assessment approaches. The first study investigates how spatial complementarity among multiple stressors affects projections of environmental suitability for coral reefs globally, revealing significantly reduced timelines of habitat suitability compared to single-stressor approaches. The second study examines how assessment metrics and scales influence our understanding of climate impacts, testing whether conventional ecosystem-level assessments systematically underestimate vulnerability compared to species-level analyses. The third study evaluates migration and adaptation strategies by assessing on a global context the extent to which some suitable habitats will remain available and accessible to marine species under future climate scenarios. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that habitat loss for coral reefs will occur more rapidly, extensively, and with fewer viable survival options than previously projected. This research highlights the urgent need for reevaluation of conservation priorities, enhanced monitoring systems capable of detecting species-level responses, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to preserve coral reef biodiversity and the essential ecosystem services they provide.
The economic value of Hawai‘i beaches, site characteristics, and outdoor recreation time assessed at multiple scales under stated and revealed preference methods (of non-market valuation)
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Peng, Marcus; Szuster, Brian; Geography
As part of an effort to comprehensively assess the economic value of Hawai‘i’s beaches, shorelines, and coastal recreation areas, a series of studies were conducted with recreationists in the state (residents and visitors) based on two surveys. This three-paper dissertation outlines the results of three of the studies in this series and implications for management of coastal recreation sites. When making management decisions concerning outdoor recreation, shoreline access, and preservation of public space, the economic value of the beach is indispensable as an input into any cost-benefit analysis. This dissertation highlights incremental methodological improvements to and adapt contemporary methods, with all three results showing significant natural resource values for the beach itself, beach characteristics, and outdoor recreation time. The first chapter investigates whether beach nourishment, an established beach management measure, is justified depends on its benefits and costs. We applied a discrete choice experiment at Waikīkī Beach on Oʻahu with mixed logit and latent class models to evaluate recreationists’ willingness to pay for changes in beach width and water clarity as well as the preferences for the beach as-is. Our preferred specification indicates heterogeneity among subjects, who have distinct preferences for the recreation site. Based on the beach attendance data, the aggregate willingness to pay justifies beach re-nourishment and runoff control measures. The second chapter applies a joint estimation of stated and revealed preference recreation survey data to estimate the value of major beaches and associated characteristics on Oʻahu, Hawai‘i, including Waikīkī Beach. We make use of a Random Utility Model (RUM) to combine data from a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) and a site choice model for beach recreation, finding a WTP of $0.67 per foot of beach width and $8.45 per foot of underwater visibility. Lastly, the third chapter estimates the value of recreational activities with consideration of substitution effects by conducting a travel cost study of visitors to Hawai‘i with a focus on recreation activity choice and time-use. We apply multiple discrete-continuous extreme value models (MDCEV) to estimate the value of major recreation activities (notably beaches) and their substitutes across the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) based on monetary and time constraints. The results demonstrate a value of $253,855 in recreational benefits per travel party per trip from beaches alone, and a total of $1,420,895 from all discretionary recreational activities per travel party per trip. This work improves on previous non-market valuations of outdoor recreation and the nearshore environment in the region by explicitly addressing tradeoffs and considering substation behavior across alternatives available to the recreationist.
SOVEREIGNTIES OF THE FOREST: WAR, CONSERVATION, AND TOURISM IN YAMBARU, OKINAWA
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2020) Schrager, Sayaka Sakuma; Mostafanezhad, Mary; Geography
The political history of Okinawa charts a winding route – from the independent Ryukyu Kingdom to the annexation by Japan to post-war Occupation by the US, and to the reversion to Japan. Different regimes of sovereign power have territorialized and reterritorialized the islands of Okinawa, leaving behind complex legacies of colonialism, war, and occupation. Scholars have long essentialized Okinawa as a passive victim of Japanese and American empire, but this perspective overlooks Okinawans’ empowered negotiation of sovereignties. This dissertation explores how the people of Okinawa navigate these changing regimes in Yambaru, a forested region in the northern part of Okinawa Island. Yambaru experiences these competing and complementary sovereignties that promote development initiatives through militarism, conservationism, and tourism. My dissertation examines “sovereignties of the forest” by which I refer not just to how the state enacts its sovereignties but also the strategies through which forested communities exert agency. Further, the forest itself has a benevolent presence that supports not only humans but also a vibrant multi-species ecosystem. The sovereignties of the forest encompass not only state power but also the communities and the emergent life of the forest itself. Based on 14 months of ethnographic and archival research in Kunigami village, Higashi village, Ogimi village, and Kushi area in Nago city, I home in on war survival, land use of former military land, and homestay programs as key moments that shape everyday lives. Within these moments, I engage with three central themes: the (in)visibilities of war legacies in Yambaru forest, conservation as a tool for territorial development, and hospitality as a geopolitical enactment. Each of the themes, I argue, reminds us how forested communities remember, narrate, and articulate their lives through mundane practices that navigate multiple sovereignties. This dissertation illustrates how the social, political, and cultural memories of forested communities become sedimented layers of place-making practices that overlay the landscape. Through their engagement with these projects, Yambaru residents challenge linear geopolitical narratives of state power in peripheralized islands. Collectively, these stories and this dissertation seeks to account for the sedimented sovereignties of the Yambaru forest.
Carbon Trapping: Climate Mitigation and Indigenous Resistance in Vanuatu
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Pfalzgraf, Foley C B; Mostafanezhad, Mary; Geography
On March 26, 2016 Hannington Tate, Vanuatu’s Director of the Forestry Department, declared three interrelated initiatives: an annual Tree Planting Day and Forest Week; as well as the ongoing Decade of Reforestation. Yet, Vanuatu’s forests are not considered to be at great risk of deforestation; the Global Forest Resource Assessment records a deforestation rate of 0% in Vanuatu. Yet, this rate obscures complex historical and present currents of forest change. As Vanuatu’s leaders consider reforestation key to their approach to adaptation, mitigation, and development, reforestation is also linked to a global movement towards carbon offsetting, a much-debated natural climate solution that leverages ecosystems and their associated services to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while also addressing societal challenges. As the global scientific community debates the effectiveness of tree-planting for carbon sequestration with discouraging results, political ecologists highlight the unintended social consequences of these programs locally, documenting increased livelihood precarity and elite capture of benefits at the local scale and the creation of new opportunities for accumulation and pollution at the global scale. Alternatively, scholars of science and technology studies reveal how science transforms in service of capital through payments-for-ecosystems services schemes with impacts on environments (in)visible to capital. Common to these frameworks is an attention to history, power, and the relationship between environmental knowledge and governance. Yet, these scholarly frameworks take the arrival of NCS for granted, failing to account for how nations struggle to access funding and must transform to become fundable, and are not well tailored to Pacific Islands contexts and histories. This dissertation leverages a place-based, qualitative, ethnographic research methodology enriched by frameworks in Pacific Islands Studies to contextualize island histories and the impacts of successive waves of colonization and extractions amidst climate mitigation programs. As communities in Vanuatu are planting and protecting trees for the long-awaited arrival of climate finance for adaptation and mitigation, new landscapes, economies, and social relations are brought into being with significant implications for carbon accounting and social justice. Through a multi-sited, patchy ethnography exploring the (un)making of carbon offsets in Vanuatu, insights are generated into the uneven production of s/pacific places through global climate policies, the socio-ecological implications of enterprising nature, the influence of history and colonialism on current climate governance, as well as the possibilities of Indigenous alternatives and home-grown solutions to climate change.
Island Empire: The Hidden Political Geography of American Expansion in the Pacific
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Harden, Meagan Marie; Jones, Reece; Geography
For well over a century, the United States has claimed, occupied, and exploited islands across the world, collectively securing global military dominance while constraining Islanders’ self-determination. Despite post-World War II international norms preventing the formal expansion of the US island empire, government officials created unconventional legal and political affiliations under the rhetoric of strategic importance. Analyzing legislation, court cases, congressional hearings, government reports, and official correspondence, the first half of the dissertation contributes to the disciplines of political and legal geographies by uncovering the contours of a globe-spanning archipelago of American island imperialism. I argue that US island imperialism relies on the practice of spatial abstraction, including the erasure of place-based histories and their reduction to geopolitical strategic importance, which tethers islands to the United States. Channeled into the political and legal statuses of unincorporated territories and compacts of free association, spatial abstraction perpetuates colonial inequality while enabling island militarization.In the second half of the dissertation, I explore how Islanders have leveraged international institutions, national law, and interpersonal encounters to re-map islands, archipelagos, and the oceans that connect them according to Indigenous spatialities. I collect and analyze archived reports, correspondence, speeches, meeting minutes, formal testimonies, petitions, and Palau’s 1979 Constitution to identify assertions of island-specific, ocean-centered political sovereignty. Incorporating interviews and observations from three months of fieldwork in the Republic of Palau, I highlight fissures in military hegemony as Palauans confront the growing US military presence with uncertainty, resentment, and even refusal. By analyzing Islanders’ political agency from intimate to international scales, I show how island spatialities rooted in principles of relationality and planetary interdependence disrupt spatial abstraction and re-map islands, archipelagos, and the oceans that connect them as simultaneously voluminous, dynamic, and interdependent. By rejecting the discourse of strategic importance, this dissertation contributes to the field of Pacific Studies by analyzing how re-mapping space subverts colonial claims and unsettles the very foundations of Westphalian sovereignty.
Indigenous Ecology of Kalapana Hawaiʻi
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2023) McGuire, Gina Maelynn; Jiang, Hong; Geography
This dissertation considers the Kalapana coastline of Hawaiʻi Island from that of several ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) perspectives: lāʻau lapaʻau (Hawaiian healing practice), the plurality of practices and understood entities associated with paʻakai (seasalt) biocultural vegetation communities, and moʻolelo (stories), of kuaʻāina (rural subsiders) of the coastal geography. Attention is given to the unique-ness of coastal geographies within ʻŌiwi and biogeographic scholarship and within processes that establish ola— the lāʻau lapaʻau understanding of wellbeing, and of biocultural abundance. Ola and biocultural abundance are related in reciprocal loops: ola is possible and attained through position within bioculturally abundant systems and places. Likewise, bioculturally abundant places and states are more likely to be sustained or created when ola is being cultivated. This work introduces the concept of coastal care—the reciprocal relationship of care between communities and coasts and the biocultural linkages and diversity of cultural dimensions that contribute to care. Kalapana is unique in its network of biocultural kīpuka (refugia) for both human and non-human entities. These entities are linked through their pilina (relationships), and roles to hold and transfer mana. Mana is the ʻŌiwi term for energy and spirit, which flows like water, without conscience. This ontological and epistemological framework, calls for ecological practices and informed-management frameworks that are awake to ways of knowing that are inherently ʻŌiwi. Thus, ʻŌiwi methods used in this body of work include lāʻau lapaʻau studentship, moʻolelo (story), and a huakaʻi research framework (HRF). To huakaʻi is to follow, to move with direction and purpose, following after a teacher or teachers with a goal in mind. The HRF was paired with systematic vegetation surveying along the coastal edge communities of Kalapana to nuance understandings of this environment and construct fine-scale biocultural narratives of vegetation communities. This understanding was paired with place-based and conservation priority indices to better understand how a coast can be re-mapped from multiple values-systems. Within the Kalapana network of kīpuka, pockets of biodiverse terrestrial and marine communities are held as islands, continuously navigated and connected by kuaʻāina, and their embodied ancestral memory and generational-based care across ever-changing marine and coastal grounds, co-producing these states of biocultural abundances. Highlighted in particular is the importance of coastal care, and its implications for future approaches to defining well-being and biocultural abundances in Hawai‘i and in other Indigenous contexts across Oceania.
Hulihia Nā Kānāwai ʻĀina: The Effects of Post-1893 Land Law Changes On Native Hawaiians - Population Demographics Supplement or Supplant?
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Wright, Michelle Kawēlau; Jones, Reece; Geography
The 1895 Land Act was a culminating step in the effort to remake Hawaiʻi into a settler-colonial landscape. Sanford Dole and the rest of the usurpers utilized white supremacist ideals to create land law changes that enabled white American immigration while dispossessing Native Hawaiians concurrently. The Land Act was an integral part of a systemic racist process designed to supplant Kanaka Maoli in their homeland and disconnect them from ʻāina, a legacy that lives on today. This dissertation, “Hulihia Nā Kānāwai ʻĀina: The Effects Of Post-1893 Land Law Changes on Native Hawaiians – Population Demographics Supplement Or Supplant?,” archivally examines (1) critical steps that the usurpers made immediately after the coup that laid the foundation for a white supremacist agenda, (2) post-coup legislative changes to laws connected to the ownership and use of land, (3) how those land law modifications changed the social, demographic, and economic landscape in Hawaiʻi and continue to impact Native Hawaiians today. The Hawaiian Kingdom’s internationally recognized sovereignty required the usurpers to take specific, unique steps to ensure the success of their white Supremacist settler project. These steps included the 1893 coup, the faux-colonial oligarchical government, and the creation of mechanisms to suppress the swift and long-standing Native Hawaiian refusal to submit to the Provisional and Republic of Hawaiʻi governments. Additionally, this dissertation argues that the usurpers’ white Supremacist project began before the actual coup and was comprised of several incremental policies that taken together altered Hawaiʻi’s landscape. These policies, supported by legislation, included the expansion of immigration by white American settlers, the creation and growth of tourism, and the development of Hawaiʻi as the center of U.S. military control. This study finds that using this three-pronged approach ultimately lured white American settlers here while simultaneously disenfranchising Native Hawaiians socially, demographically, and economically in their homeland. Comprised of seven chapters, this dissertation asserts three interventions. First, it centers Native Hawaiian people and their experiences, whose voices have been overlooked in prior scholarship about this period. Secondly, archival primary documents are used as the sources of knowledge and evidence of change. Documents were gathered from multiple archives across countries and continents to ensure a plurality of critical voices were heard and represented in the text. Lastly, other Native Hawaiian scholars have asserted that the 1848 Māhele was the real start of Native Hawaiians losing their sovereignty. Through this text, I argue instead that the post-coup land law changes were more detrimental to Native Hawaiian land ownership, land rights, and ultimately Kanaka Maoli identity and sovereignty than the Māhele of 1848. The 1895 Land Act forever altered the course of Hawaiian history and land tenure. Native Hawaiians went from being the largest ethnic population segment in Hawaiʻi to a minority in their homeland in 125 years. In addition, Native Hawaiians represent the bottom of the socio-economic scale in nearly every indicator category. How did this happen? How did Native Hawaiians become landless in Hawaiʻi? Was it their fault? The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to explore these questions through an analysis of land law changes from 1893 to 1959 and expose the racist and settler-privileged policies which enabled the dispossession of Native Hawaiian land, rights, and power. As such, this project is not only connected to expanding academic understanding of Hawaiʻi’s post-1893 land law changes but, perhaps more importantly, is also designed to impact Native Hawaiian understandings of this period. Native Hawaiians did not willingly submit to the settler colonial project but were systemically disadvantaged throughout the Provisional and Republic periods. Revealing this history provides an opportunity to affirm the identity and well-being of our Native Hawaiian communities who continue to resist the effects of white American settlement today.
Altermobilities: Everyday Life On The Move In The Western Balkans
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Lubura-Winchester, Borjana; Jones, Reece; Mostafanezhad, Mary; Geography
This dissertation contributes to migration studies from below by focusing on people on the move and their political agency. It conceptualizes processes of altermobilities along the Western Balkan Route (WBR). This dissertation draws on six and a half months of qualitative research (2017-2018) and some field revisits (summers of 2021 and 2022) in Srbija (Serbia) and Bosna i Hercegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina). The ethnographic data collection included semi-structured interviews, structured interviews, participant observation, and follow-ups through social media and smartphone messaging applications. The participants were people on the move, governmental and non-governmental organization staff, and humanitarian volunteers along the WBR. This thesis also blends in an autoethnographic approach to knowledge production—the author’s autobiographical experiences as a former refugee are situated alongside contemporary people on the move to reveal the power of those who are perceived to be powerless. While it is important to discuss the sovereign state’s wrongdoings and condemn border violence to hold states accountable, we must also acknowledge how people avoid these obstacles and reach safe destinations. Myconcept of altermobilities removes negative connotations surrounding people on the move—they are humans who, through solidarity and self-capacity, move forward in the face of state violence. The first chapter situates this study within the critical geopolitics’ theoretical framework and feminist geopolitics conversations. The second and third chapters discuss my autoethnographic knowledge production methods in Srbija and Bosna i Hercegovina, respectively. The fourth and fifth chapters outline the topology of the self-made squats system and the everyday practices people on the move developed along the route. The sixth chapter demonstrates the power of the migrants’ rumors as an everyday lived knowledge and the state’s ineffective attempts at counter-rumors. Chapter seven unravels the web of interconnectedness between people on the move, their things, and places—such assemblages create everyday political subjectivity along the route and elicit (often violent) state reactions. When read together, this dissertation foregrounds people on the move’s wit and resourcefulness in incredibly precarious conditions and times. This thesis introduces three main interventions. Firstly, it humanizes people on the move and tells their stories of survival and altermobilities along the WBR. Secondly, it recenters the researcher into knowledge production; a researcher’s ‘I,’ when combined with the experiences of those researched, can shed light on everyday practices of marginalized people and illustrate how their political subjectivity reimagined sovereign state territories. Lastly, this work considers critical geopolitics through assemblage thinking to explore the power of assemblages (i.e., of people on the move, their things, and places). Each one of these assemblage elements acts in symbiosis to allow altermobilities to occur across the WBR. Crucially, people will move forward—fences, deterrence, and violence at the borders may slow them, but will never stop them. The people on the move involuntarily escaped their homes, and many experienced (extended) violence before embarking. There was no option but to move forward. Nothing could dampen the dream of a safe and secure environment for themselves and their families, not even the potential of death at the border.
The Everyday Geoeconomics of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Fiji: Entrepreneurial Encounters Along the Maritime Silk Road
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Szadziewski, Henryk; Mostafanezhad, Mary; Geography
This dissertation examines how global political economic change interacts with the everyday encounters between Chinese and Fijians in Fiji. Made visible through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s imprint overseas has been at the forefront of such shifts. BRI is a transnational initiative to restructure flows of trade and financial governance with “people-to-people” interactions at its core. Encompassing the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and the ocean-based 21st century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), the initiative links China and the world through a series of infrastructure corridors. Global commentary and scholarship on the BRI are divided. It is often presented as a policy to buttress China’s bid for world hegemony, or as an alternative financing opportunity for emerging economies. In the field of geoeconomics, broadly defined as the strategic use of economic tools to achieve state goals, this increasingly normalized binary narrative overshadows a more nuanced appraisal of a globalizing China, particularly in regard to the movement of Chinese people. This dissertation denaturalizes such binaries through an examination of grounded responses to the Belt and Road Initiative among Fijian and Chinese entrepreneurs in Fiji. By foregrounding peopled accounts over empowered knowledge producers, I demonstrate how a diverse range of non-state actors implement an “everyday geoeconomics” that leverages their own interests within the global political economy. I define “everyday geoeconomics” as the strategic actions deployed by non-state actors to achieve non-state goals within state-led and transnational economic initiatives. In doing so, I contribute conceptual and methodological tools for scholars to better address the geoeconomics of BRI in the Pacific and beyond. I focus on encounters between Fijians and Chinese entrepreneurs in the context of the MSR in Fiji. The emphasis on non-state actors in Fiji offers new perspectives on Chinese presence in Oceania. To date, analysis of renewed Chinese interest in Fiji has centered on the regional strategic anxieties of external powers, such as the United States and Australia. This dissertation reverses the scale of analysis to the local exposing a contested field of interests between civil society, the state, and the private sector in Fiji on “Chinese presence.” Since 2005, economic relations between China and Fiji have deepened, while the local response among Fijians has become increasingly conflicted. Host community anxieties over the direct benefits of Chinese economic interventions and presence is contrasted with the anticipated boon of increasing private investment and state-funded infrastructure construction. However, the motivations and outlook of Chinese companies and new migrants in Fiji are frequently subsumed into statist discourses on China. In sum, reliance on analyses that privilege great power competition overlooks the local power competition that plays an important role in determining perceptions of “China in Oceania.” To reflect grounded views, I draw on semi-structured and unstructured interviews among members of civil society, state officials, and private sector actors from the Chinese, Fiji Chinese, iTaukei, and Indo-Fijian communities. These interviews, as well as participant and non-participant observations, were predominately conducted in Suva during four fieldwork visits from 2017 to 2021; however, I traveled across the Fijian Islands speaking to a variety of actors and visiting multiple entrepreneurial sites. Additionally, I draw on a critical discourse analysis of over 2,000 media articles, government documents, and digital media from 2014-2022. This research contests the naturalized geostrategic objectives of the BRI and reveals how grounded views are significant sites of challenge for “geoeconomic” strategy. Further, it critically engages with statist analyses of China’s economic initiatives to highlight the political importance of local scale actors directly impacted by Chinese presence, as well as the transnational spatiality of the Chinese economy and embodied responses to these interventions by rescaling our appreciation of global economic shifts. The work contributes to emerging scholarship on the influence of the everyday geopolitical encounters of China’s Belt and Road Initiative as well as the political geography of the Pacific, and Chinese presence in Oceania.
Somewhere To The West’: Constructed Sovereignty And Everyday Geopolitics In Maritime Borders In The South China Sea
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Beatty, Dylan Michael; Jones, Reece; Geography
This dissertation explores the territorial dispute over the Spratly Islands through multiple scales, including the international, national, provincial, and municipal levels. The dispute officially involves six claimant states—Brunei, China, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. While addressing broader, macro-level aspects of the topic, this project deliberately focuses on communities directly enveloped and affected by the dispute. This includes ordinary civilians, fishers, and military personnel from the Province of Palawan, Philippines. The dissertation traces the everyday geopolitics of the dispute and, consequently, illustrates China’s rise in maritime Southeast Asia. The chapters are individual studies of components of the larger Spratly Island story. However, taken collectively, the dissertation is generally organized in a thematic arc, tracing Kalayaan and the Spratly Islands from an undefined, vague idea towards a built materiality and increased militarization. The conceptual arc is the process of making the marine space progressively more legible, from imagined, to fluid, to solid, and finally, to a fluid-solid hybrid. This latter phase is illustrated by a fluid, swarm territoriality practiced by maritime militia. The dissertation situates its findings within broader literatures on volumetric sovereignty, nationalism, assemblage, and frontier borders. It develops several concepts relevant to political geography. This includes fluid visions of place and territory, deploying sovereignty, and constructing sovereignty. Using qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews, the dissertation shares the everyday experiences of Filipinos who find themselves on the frontlines of the Spratly Island dispute.
Producing fair tuna, reproducing inequality in a small-scale fishing community in Sulawesi, Indonesia
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Simandjuntak, Desiree L.; Suryanata, Krisnawati; Geography
Commodity certification is based on the premise that providing producers with economic incentives will encourage them to follow certain production standards. However, most certified products are sourced from developed economies, marginalizing producers from developing economies in an increasingly competitive market. Fair Trade (USA) incentivizes small-scale fishers to be part of global market, offering above-market price and premium fund for community development. Framing the certification as a form of payment for ecosystem services (PES), this dissertation investigates the implementation of market approach to fishery governance in facilitating environmental and social improvements. It is based on a 9-month fieldwork in Kiapu, a fishing village in Sulawesi, involving non-participatory observations and semi-structured interviews predominantly with Fair Trade-registered and conventional tuna fishers.In offering monetary incentives, Fair Trade assumes a well-functioning market where its above-market price and premium would promote sustainable fishery and development. This vision, however, confronts customary fishing and trading practices on the ground that are shaped by complex, ever-changing ecological processes, social dynamics, and labor relations in small-scale fishing communities such as Kiapu. As a result, the scheme has unintentionally reinforced and reproduced inequalities among supply chain actors. The findings in the study suggest that the appropriateness and effectiveness of incentive-based environmental governance depend on the condition of the target community.
Cloud Water Interception in Hawaiʻi
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Tseng, Han; Giambelluca, Thomas W.; Geography
Tropical montane cloud forests are unique ecosystems generally defined as forests frequently covered in fog. Cloud water interception, the passive capturing of water from passing clouds by vegetation, is an ecohydrological process that may add considerable amounts of water to the ecosystem. Because of their ability in gaining extra water from clouds, tropical montane cloud forests are believed to increase water supply downstream and benefit water resources. However, evidence about the hydrological benefits of conserving and restoring tropical montane cloud forests is still limited. This is primarily because cloud water interception is difficult to quantify over the spatial and temporal scales adequate for most hydrological analyses to answer questions about water resources. Issues in the quantification of landscape-scale cloud water interception exist at multiple levels. First, cloud water interception is highly heterogeneous because it is affected by many factors that are spatially and temporally variable. Also, existing methods that measure cloud water interception are very limited in their representativeness over large areas because the applicable scales are small and limitations in resources and time restrict the sample size practically achievable by individual studies. Lastly, while individual studies have limited capacity to make measurements of cloud water interception, a large proportion of the existing observational data are not comparable due to inconsistent methodologies and measurement uncertainties. Tropical montane cloud forests in Hawaii and around the world, as well as the hydrological benefits they may provide, are especially vulnerable to climate change and land cover change because of the strong dependence of the ecosystem on clouds and cloud water interception. While climate change, land cover change, and species invasion pose immediate threats to these unique ecosystems, an understanding of how cloud water interception influences the ecosystem and the islands’ hydrology and how that may change in response to future conditions is still lacking. This study aims to advance the current field of cloud water interception study by (1) proposing a standardized method to quantify the atmospheric driver of cloud water interception, (2) investigating the causes of cloud water interception variability to identify major factors, and (3) developing a model capable of predicting cloud water interception over the complex montane landscapes of the Hawaiian Islands.Passive fog gauges are one of the most used methods to study cloud water interception; however, the interpretation of fog gauge measurement is not straightforward, and the long lack of a standard for the methodology has caused confusion and prevented almost all meaningful quantitative comparisons between fog gauge data. In order to fundamentally resolve the problem of inconsistency, this study proposed a new standardized fog gauge method, which requires the raw measurements to be calibrated into the standard unit of cloud liquid water content. The calibration of a Juvik-type fog gauge was provided to demonstrate the concept and practicability of establishing a calibration procedure for a fog gauge. Comparing fog characteristics presented in different units showed that the apparent “fogginess” of a site may change drastically before and after accounting for certain sources of uncertainties and highlighted the importance of fog gauge calibration. Calibrated fog gauge was used to quantify cloud water supplied by the atmosphere, represented by cloud water flux, which is a major factor of cloud water interception. Variations in cloud water interception and cloud water flux at five study sites across three major Hawaiian Islands were compared for cloud water interception variability and the effects of climate and vegetation characteristics. At all study sites, cloud water interception added several hundreds of millimeters of water to the canopy. At four out of five sites, the water gained from cloud water interception comprised more than 20% of the total water input to the ecosystem. Cloud water interception correlated with cloud water flux; however, although fog frequency most strongly controls cloud water flux, no simple site characteristics could be found to clearly explain the observed differences in annual cloud water interception between sites. This not only suggests that between-site variability is large relative to the limited sample size but predicting cloud water interception by elevation or generic climatic variables may also be inappropriate. In order to characterize cloud water interception variation over the complex and data-poor landscapes of Hawaii, a cloud water interception model was developed taking the advantage of both empirical and mechanical approaches. The process of cloud water interception is represented as a simple interaction between cloud water flux and the canopy interception efficiency for the cloud water, which depends on the canopy structure. After fitting the model to observational data, the model was tested by trying to predict cloud water interception at the five study sites. The prediction errors decrease when results are aggregated for longer periods. The model predicted annual cloud water interception to be 17% lower than the observations on average but was able to reproduce the relative site differences and monthly fluctuations relatively well. Given its simplicity, the model performed reasonably well compared to other modeling studies. Although proper validation and further improvements of the model, especially the collection of new observational data, are left to future studies, the cloud water interception model developed in this study can have many applications. Depending on the selection of input data, this model may be used to map cloud water interception, project changes under future conditions, and test scenarios and hypotheses about cloud water interception responses to land management and restoration to support a wide range of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.
Mapping Forest Aboveground Biomass In The Brazilian Amazon Using Airborne LiDAR, Landsat Imagery, And Deep Learning
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Zhang, Qian; Chen, Qi; Geography
The Amazon forest is playing a critical role in the global carbon cycle and implementation of Reduce Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). However, the range of possible carbon emissions in this region is broad. Most carbon in the Amazon forest is stored in biomass and biomass can be the potential carbon emission when disturbances occur (e.g., deforestation, degradation, and fires). Therefore, an accurate estimation of biomass can help better predict carbon emissions in the Amazon forest. The biomass estimations of previous studies show little agreement on their values and spatial distributions in this region. In addition, deforestation and degradation in the Brazilian Amazon have changed significantly from large-scale patterns to fine-scale patterns since the early 2000s. However, existing biomass maps for the Brazilian Amazon forests are limited in capacity to capture fine-scale biomass variations due to their coarse spatial resolutions. Besides, due to the high level of biomass and heterogeneity of tropical forests, the commonly used regression models perform worse in tropical forests compared to boreal and temperate forests. Deep learning is a promising way to improve the accuracy of biomass estimations, which are increasing in success across a variety of remote sensing tasks. The application of deep learning models in estimating forest biomass is still in a nascent stage. Given the aforementioned research gaps, this research proposed a deep learning framework to estimate and map aboveground biomass on a fine-scale for the Brazilian Amazon with inventory data, airborne LiDAR data, and Landsat imagery. Three stages are involved in the framework development.In the first stage, a multiplicative power model was developed to link airborne LiDAR metrics with biomass inventory data. To determine the best fitting approach to estimate parameters for the multiplicative power model, three multiplicative power models fitted by nonlinear least-square (NLR), linear ordinary least-square (OLSR), and weighted linear least-square (WLSR) were compared by ANOVA and Tukey’s Test. The results show that significant performance differences existed among the three models at a 99% confidence level. More extreme predictions and lower accuracies were produced by NLR compared to OLSR or WLSR. OLSR had the most accurate prediction performance. Accordingly, OLSR was used to fit the LiDAR-based model that was used in the subsequent stages to calculate biomass for each LiDAR transect in the Brazilian Amazon forests. In the second stage, a deep feedforward fully connected neural network (DNN) model was developed to estimate and map aboveground biomass with airborne LiDAR data and Landsat 8 imagery. The effects of hyperparameter values on the DNN model performances were comprehensively investigated. The results show that the model with Scaled Exponential Linear Unit (SELU) had the best performance compared to other activation functions. Besides, both too large and too small learning rates could not achieve optimal results. The learning rate of 0.001 was chosen for the Adam optimizer. The DNN model with these optimal hyperparameters significantly outperformed the Random Forest model, Support Vector Regression model, and Linear regression model with the R2 of 0.64 and RMSE of 55.7 Mg/ha. This stage provides new insight into the application of deep learning in estimating forest biomass. In the last stage, Landsat time-series imagery was utilized to enhance the relationship between Landsat spectral reflectance and biomass. An RNN-FNN model integrating the long short-term memory network (LSTM) and the fully connected neuron network (FNN) was proposed to capture time dependencies in Landsat time-series data. The RNN-FNN model was compared to the Random Forest model and linear regression model implemented with single-date predictors. The results indicate that the RNN-FNN model significantly outperformed the Random Forest model and linear regression model. The RNN-FNN model yielded an R2 of 0.63 and RMSE of 25.5 Mg/ha with 10-year time-series data (2004-2013). At last, the RNN-FNN model was used to generate a map of biomass density for the study area, which demonstrated the practical value of the proposed model. The proposed framework that bridges inventory data, airborne LiDAR data, and Landsat imagery provides an effective way for forest managers to estimate and understand the spatial distribution of aboveground biomass in the Brazilian Amazon forests. In addition, this research illustrates the value of deep learning in estimating forest biomass and provides practical guidance for future studies on biomass estimations with deep learning.
The mortality transformation in Fiji: a geographic appraisal
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1985) Manning, Grant B.; Geography
Given the world's current rapid rate of population growth there is a need to gain a thorough understanding of the determinants of the mortality transformation in developing areas; a task that has not yet been achieved. In this light, the interplay of vari
Population and change: human-environment interrelations on Mota Lava, northern Vanuatu
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1985) Campbell, John; Geography
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine changing hunan-environnent interrelations on Mota Lava, a small island in the north of Vanuatu. In particular the study focuses upon changes in the hunan-environnent system which have affected the ability of
As Wages Wane: Prefiguring and Resisting Post-Wage Worlds
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Henry, Jacob; Mostafanezhad, Mary; Geography
This dissertation outlines a vision for the ‘future of work’ which accounts for the increasing predominance of wageless life. It takes on two objectives: firstly, it introduces a new conceptual vocabulary to re-tool marxist political economic analysis for wageless times; and secondly, it reassesses the concept of ‘development’ to dislodge its modernization roots and foreground the importance of building intentionally post-wage worlds. This dissertation draws on eighteen months of qualitative field research (2019-2021) which deployed semi-structured interviews, structured interviews, and participant observation in the northern Namibian region of Owambo—an archetypical post-wage space. The first three chapters establish a new conceptual vocabulary to better understand the political economies of wagelessness. I first review how nostalgia for a waged era and the proselytization of modernization-style development have shaped wage-based societies across the globe. However, in an era of financialized capitalism, many of these spaces have been expelled from wage relations, resulting in the explosion of surplus populations and surplus spaces. One specific kind of emergent surplus geography is the post-wage space: these are spaces where wages used to dominate personal economies but now do not. In such spaces, cultural proletarianization—a widespread social pursuit of wages--lingers long after the material elements of a proletariat have vanished. As wagelessness continues to affect populations around the globe, understanding how these empirical post-wage spaces transition into intentionally post-wage societies—where survival does not depend on entering into wage relations—is of the utmost importance to reimagining development for contemporary times. The subsequent three chapters examine the prefigurations toward and resistance to the building of intentionally post-wage spaces. Unemployed youth adopting a ‘musician’ identity and traveling vendors selling their goods at pension distribution points both prefigure an intentionally post-wage society. The youth adopt the unalienated identity marker of ‘musician’ in lieu of waged identities and the vendors demonstrate how a post-wage marketplace can function without exploitation. However, many interests both locally and abroad seek to thwart the development of intentionally post-wage worlds. The village schoolhouse, for example, is a site of curricular geopolitics which continue to promote wage fables in post-wage space. The school is a reproductive space of hidden curriculum that teaches learners to believe in the promises of wages, while falling short of preparing them to actualize their waged hopes. Young people in post-wage space largely believe these hegemonic narratives; however, when faced with structural unemployment, they sometimes begin to withdraw the consent so important for hegemonies to perpetuate. I conclude by advocating for universal, unconditional cash transfers—sometimes called basic income grants—as the best bridging policy to begin the process of building intentionally post-wage worlds in Namibia and beyond.

Browse

Recent Submissions