LSU Geography 2010

My foundation project will focus on landscape and the changes of landscape over time. Landscape is defined in the Human Mosaic as all of the building forms that cultural groups create inhabiting the Earth. A cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape and uniquely reflects the culture that created it. I have identified nine A. Hays Town homes in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and one in Jackson, Mississippi. A. Hays Town was known for incorporating traditional Creole architecture into these homes. I am comparing his modern day work from the 20th century to historical homes and businesses still standing in New Orleans from the 18th century. I will be comparing how the landscape has changed over time and why certain architectural features have evolved while some remain. A. Hays Town was heavily influenced by Spanish and French architecture. Spanish features include his signature courtyards and fountains. His French influence is shown through raised stairs outside of homes and...

On this map I have created a driving route and used polygons to section off plots of land as a focus. I have divided up my investigation into 6 places. The 6 places I have chosen are "Highland Road Homes", "LSU Lake Homes", "Downtown Highland", "The Bottoms", "Garden District", and "Government/Florida Blvd Homes". Through Lewis's article  Axioms  I have investigated these places using The Axiom of Landscape as Clue to Culture. Within the Clue to Culture Axiom, I am focusing on The Regional Corollary and the reasons one part of Baton Rouge looks so different from another part of Baton Rouge. By examining the Highland Road homes and LSU Lakes homes and comparing them to the "Downtown Highland" and the "Bottoms" there is a striking difference between the homes and style of homes. One of the reasons for this is the old, large plantation homes created off Highland. Many of these homes are historical and...

This is the map I will use as my guide during my field project. On this map I have created a driving route and used polygons to section off plots of land I should focus on during this project. I have divided up my investigation into 6 places. The 6 places I have chosen are "Highland Road Homes", "LSU Lake Homes", "Downtown Highland", "The Bottoms", "Garden District", and "Government/Florida Blvd Homes". I will use Lewis's article Axioms  to investigate these places. The axiom I will be focused on is The Axiom of Landscape as Clue to Culture. Within the Clue to Culture Axiom, I am focusing on The Regional Corollary and the reasons one part of Baton Rouge looks so different from another part of Baton Rouge.

Place is impacted by, responds to, and changes through natural disaster. In 2010 Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital city, was impacted by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 Mw. This destroyed many buildings and features, and the way the global community responded effected people's viewpoint of Haiti as a place. There were over 220,000 reported fatalities from this disaster. One of the buildings destroyed was the Palais National. This is the Haitian equivalent of the U.S.'s "White House". This building was completely ruined, as can be seen through images on the attached map. This presidential home was left as rubble, and not demolished or cleared until two years later in 2012. The National Penitentiary was also effected severely by the 2010 Earthquake. This natural disaster damaged the penitentiary building holding Haiti's most wanted criminals. Once the building was destroyed, many dangerous felons were able to escape the prison. It is recorded that more...

This map depicts the travels of a slave ship corralling to the weather patterns of hurricanes in the year 1898. This shows the stops and routes the slave ship had to take in order to avoid hurricanes and leave according to weather patterns. Categories of hurricane severity and mapped according to symbol and color. The pushpin symbols locate positions of the slave ship per day and the color depicts the number of slaves who died that day during the travels. The slave trade ports are marked on the map as well. All of this information shows the movement of people across regions. This is defined as mobility. In Garreau's The Human Mosaic , mobility is described as the movement of people, ideas, practices, and technologies around space. In this map, we can see the movement of people and goods across the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean acts as a permeable barrier. A permeable barrier is a barrier that allows part of the innovation wave to move through, but acts to weaken the co...

Mobility is defined by The Human Mosaic as  understanding how and why different cultural elements move through space and locate in particular settings. In the readings of  North American Odyssey,    stimulus diffusion is discussed and exemplified through the expansion of rice farming techniques in Africa to the Carolinas and Georgia Lowcountry through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Many of the techniques, such as sluice gates, were carried over from Africa to the United States. The Atlantic Ocean acted as a permeable barrier by allowing the   spread of ideas through, while also filtering out certain methods of rice farming. Time-Distance Decay is also a reason for the spread of these ideas filtering out.  When examining the fields, I came across findings that the rice plantations in the Carolinas and Georgia Lowcountry are larger than the rice fields in Africa. I averaged the perimeters of the rice fields as well as their area in meters squared...

The map I created is a map of Garreau's "Dixie" divided into sub-regions based off Linguistic dialects. I created the sub-region names from an article in The Washington Post titled " What dialect do you speak? A map of American English". The map I was most influenced by was Robert Delaney's map of "Dialects and Subdialects of American English in the 48 conterminous states", where he named and separated sub-regions off of distinct dialects. For my map, I used his sub-region names and edited certain dialect names I thought could be changed. I changed "Louisiana" to "Louisiana/New Orleans" since the sub- region did not encompass Louisiana as a whole. These names are based off of geographic features of the regions, such as mountains or proximity to the coast. Names are also based off of the historical features of each sub-region. Taking this rough layout of sub-regions, I deeply dove into other internet sources researching ind...

Garreau's chapter on Dixie and the empirical evidence I have mapped roughly resemble each other. The highest compacted population of places named "Dixie Automotives" is within Garreau's boundaries of Dixie. There are some outliers I have previously deleted. Upon further inspection I discovered places in Canada being named "Dixie Automotives" due to being on a Dixie Highway, not for cultural reasons. In order to get a better understanding of where the boarder of Dixie is located, I could search for streets named after confederate generals or another empirical trait related closely to Dixie's cultural identity. This type of map is centered around formal regions. The Human Mosaic's definition for a formal region is described as culturally homogeneous and having one or more traits in common. On this map, we are mapping the trait of the term "Dixie". A formal region also has a core-peripheral and boarder zones. This is very prevalent in th...

This map displays the population of Vietnamese born immigrants in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. This map displays the lessening number of Vietnamese born immigrants as well as shows the sense of community the Vietnamese immigrants share. In an article, it is discussed that nowadays many younger generation Vietnamese are moving away to find opportunity elsewhere. This relates to the last map exercise by seeing a Vietnamese community see present where the backyard gardens were before Katrina. This shows their success in rebuilding.

When I started LSU in 2016, I was a Political Communications Major. Now- going into my junior year- I still am a Poli Comm Major, but I have added a Geography major as well! I am now pursuing a Dual Degree, because I fell in love with geography during my time at LSU.  Geography is a passion I have found. I love exploring different cultures, learning about nature/human interaction, and technology. I am taking Geography 2010 because it encompasses all of these interests of mine, and I am very excited to broaden my cultural horizons!