Despite the importance of fire for maintaining the health of many ecosystems, the social and economic costs of wildfires have risen sharply in recent years. Across the western United States, historical land and fire management practices combined with climate change and modern human development pressures, are contributing to increased wildfire...
Eccentric rate of force development (ECC RFD) is a measure of the rate at which muscles can generate decelerative forces. However, it has traditionally been measured while jumping on force plates, which are not easily accessible or easy to use in a practical setting. With technology advancements it may be...
Greenway trails have become a popular way to connect communities, increase public health and provide ecosystem services. Urban forests provide similar and overlapping benefits as greenways but are often unknown and underfunded. Integrating urban forest management with greenway management could be a way to create synergistic benefits for the community....
Previous studies have utilized different techniques (e.g., contingent valuation and travel cost methods) to understand users and non-users willingness to pay for natural resources, including their use of recreation areas. These techniques enable the calculation of public support, demand, and potential revenue that may influence future policy, conservation methods, land...
The purpose of this thesis is to analyze an abrupt case of climate change in the past as a means to understand the mechanisms that force climate change. By looking to past analogs of climate change, we hopefully will gain an understanding of these events, which could be used to...
The spatial and temporal behavior of invasive species spread implies that optimal management strategies involve decisions over space and time. Dispersal and propagule pressure are two primary drivers of the spatial-temporal ecological process of species invasion. In the case of riparian communities, stream flow drives the dispersal of vegetation propagules....
Sustainable management of the world’s forests is a key component for conserving biodiversity, soil and water resources, mitigating climate change, strengthening economies, and promoting sustainable communities and human well-being, now and in the future. While international cooperation is important, the actual policies and management actions that affect forest conditions and...
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of commodity promotion activities on the United States' hazelnut farmer's economic welfare. Commodity promotion activities, such as generic advertising and research, are the responsibilities of government mandated commodity commissions, such as the Hazelnut Marketing Board (HMB). The HMB is a...
In this dissertation, I combined a scenario-based, standard-response optimization model with a stochastic simulation model to improve the efficiency of the deployment of initial attack firefighting resources on wildland fires in California and the Republic of Korea. The optimization model minimizes the expected number of fires that do not receive...
Spatially explicit ecosystem service valuation (ESV) allows for the identification of the location and magnitude of services provided by natural ecosystems to human activities along with a measure of their significance based upon economic valuation. While ESV has been used to provide new insight into land use management, few studies...