This study measures the recreational boating use in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Improved access conditions to the Sound over the last decade coupled with a statewide increase in outdoor recreation participation among both resident and out of state tourists have made the Sound a focal point for recreational boating in...
Previous research in South Fork Hinkle Creek suggested that coastal cutthroat trout exhibit an aggregated spatial pattern across multiple spatial scales. To evaluate the persistence of the observed abundance patterns and identify factors that affect those patterns, half-duplex passive integrated transponders (PIT-tags) were implanted in 320 coastal cutthroat trout (>...
The City of Pittsburgh, formerly the capital of the American steel industry, suffered economic and social collapse in the late 1980s and 1990s. Since then, it has experienced an economic renaissance supported by the tech and medical care industries. However, despite the surprising recovery of the city, collapsed tax bases...
Logging residue (slash) consists primarily of the branches and treetops of harvested merchantable timber; excluding snags, downed logs, and stumps. Residues may be scattered about the harvest unit, concentrated in slash-piles (SP), or both depending on the harvest method and equipment used. Accurate estimates of residue biomass are useful to...
State-owned forestland in P.R. China has long been an important source of natural resources for communities. The Chinese government has undertaken several conservation initiatives with the intent to restore degraded landscapes and conserve biodiversity, while simultaneously improving the quality of life for rural people. Using Yaze Village, Pingwu County, Sichuan...
The Steller Sea Lion Research Initiative was passed in 2001 to provide funding to help scientists determine causes and solutions for the population crash of Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus). In response to need to understand population dynamics of Steller sea lions, NOAA Fisheries has spearheaded a large-scale, range-wide research...
Marine debris is a chronic and increasingly pervasive problem for coastal regions around the world. Debris poses environmental risks, threats to wildlife, and degradation of the natural environment. Recent research has shown the advantages of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) for detection and recognition of marine debris, including the ability to...
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also known as drones, are an increasingly popular method of collecting surveying and mapping data. Two common drone-based mapping techniques are lidar and structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry, and a frequently-heard (yet nearly impossible to answer) question is: “which is better?” The most common metric for...
Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) is an efficient, effective, and precise measurement tool rapidly growing in popularity in a wide variety of fields. Use of TLS data often requires aligning multiple scans for a more complete model of a scene or object, a procedure known as scan registration. Each scan setup...
For the first objective of this thesis, we attempt to understand the role of water flow and directionality in determining steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and spring/summer and fall Chinook (O. tschawytscha) migration patterns within the Columbia River Estuary and plume by integrating recent advances in biotelemetry and environmental observation and forecasting...