GIST

MS Thesis: Habitat Use by Rare Sonoran Pronghorn on Military Training Range
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MS Thesis: Habitat Use by Rare Sonoran Pronghorn on Military Training Range

Distribution of Sonoran pronghorn (Antilocapra americana sonoriensis) on an active Air Force tactical range
Samuel Price

Thesis Chair: Travis Longcore | Thesis Committee: Darren Ruddell, Su Jin Lee

The population of Sonoran pronghorn (SPH; Antilocapra americana sonoriensis), an endangered subspecies within the United States (US), has fluctuated from an estimated 282 individuals in 1994 to 21 in 2002 and back up to over 150 as of August 2014. As the population continues to recover from drought-associated stressors, more SPH frequent the Barry M. Goldwater military tactical range and the United States Air Force (USAF) closes more targets from training for longer periods of time. In this thesis, hotspot analyses are combined with maximum entropy distribution modeling to understand the geographic and seasonal variation in SPH distribution at North and South Tactical Ranges (NTAC, STAC) in the Barry M. Goldwater Range East, Arizona using data from a monitoring effort begun in 1997. Results show hotspots of high densities of SPH near strafing and bombing targets, supporting previous studies using fewer data. In Maxent-derived habitat models, distance from targets had the strongest effect on model performance, followed by slope of the ground. According to the models, distance from roads had no effect on the SPH locations, nor did distance from observer. Prior studies attribute SPH preference for areas near targets to attractiveness of forb growth following disturbance as forage, and high visibility resulting from few tall shrubs or bushes. Output from the distribution model provides a predictive map of habitat use that can be used to evaluate effects of range use on SPH in the future.

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MS Thesis: Mobile Health Data Provide Insight on Rural Health Diagnoses in Africa

Use of GIS for Analysis of Community Health Worker Patient Registries from Chongwe District, a Rural Low-Resource Setting, in Lusaka Province, Zambia

Mine Metitiri

Thesis Chair: Travis Longcore | Thesis Committee: Daniel Warshawsky, Darren Ruddell

The growing accessibility of mobile phones in developing countries has led to increased innovation and utilization of handheld technology in managing health outcomes. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies enabled significant gains in localized data collection methods and increased timeliness in disease surveillance and control programs. Mobile technology has become an important tool for point of care productivity and effective task shifting for Community Health Workers (CHW) in many developing countries. Concurrently, GIS technology has increasingly been utilized in public health research, planning, monitoring, and surveillance within many developing countries and low-resource settings. This has resulted in opportunities for better understanding of spatial variation of diseases and the correlations with environmental factors.

To better understand community needs and burden of illnesses managed by CHWs, a geospatial analysis at the sub-district level was performed on CHW catchment area registries. Risk assessments and cluster analyses were conducted to identify community areas of high incidence of fever and fever related illnesses, malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia in the rural district area of Chongwe, Zambia. Seventy CHWs recorded 7,674 cases were recorded by 70 CHW over a time-period of ten months, of which 3,130 cases were geocoded for geospatial analyses. The 15 rural health center catchment areas contained 141 village areas within 15 rural health center catchment areas. Results were used to create thematic maps illustrating sub-district disease distribution and risks for malaria, pneumonia, and diarrheal illnesses for each village area manage by CHWs. The use of mobile technology integrated with GIS to manage community health data and the application of GIS to analyze community level data may provide further insight into local area disease distribution, variability, and community needs than systems lacking GIS integration.