Before 2002, almost all of the approximately 40,000 acres of land in the Wood River Valley, Oregon were used for intensive, flood-irrigated summer cattle grazing, as it had been for over 100 years. Conservation activity in the valley was limited to a couple of wealthy landowners. But a year after...
Societies around the globe are concerned with climate change and supplementing the use of fossil fuels to create cleaner energy. The emergence of marine alternative energy is of scientific, historical, legal, and political interest. The purpose of the three manuscripts comprising this dissertation is to provide research and analysis of...
This essay presents a case study of the Regional Gravel Initiative (RGI) workshop, one instance of policy makers using science to inform decision making for sustainable and streamlined processes. The RGI consists of eight agencies, both federal and state, with responsibilities for informing and issuing permits for mining aggregate on...
Forests of the Inland West have been experiencing forest health problems arising from over a hundred years of fire suppression, logging, grazing, and mismanagement. Rural communities, meanwhile, have seen escalating unemployment, an exodus of young families, and a dearth of middle-income jobs. The objectives of this thesis are to: 1)...