This study is an ethnographic investigation of residential turnover, organizational memory, and the persistence of Lost Valley, an Oregon ecovillage founded in 1989. Literature on organizational turnover, memory, and persistence is reviewed and integrated with scholarship on intentional communities and ecovillages, generating a theoretical framework for data collection and analysis....
The objective of this dissertation is to enhance the monitoring of forest ecosystems through the utilization of remotely sensed data to address the exigencies posed by the Anthropocene. On a global scale, rising temperatures and fluctuating precipitation patterns have strained forests and produced shifts in natural disturbance regimes. Additionally, the...
Cultivated plants are often living artifacts that can aid in evaluation of historic or cultural landscapes. However, a working definition for “culturally significant plant” is currently lacking in the guidance literature for the cultural resource management practitioners. Based on a review of the literature on cultivated plants as indicators of...
With the increasing international focus on transboundary cooperation as a part of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Framework, there is global recognition of transboundary water cooperation as a tool for improved governance and management of transboundary surface and groundwaters. Yet, there is not an agreed upon definition of transboundary water...
Environmental crime around the world, such as trafficking in illegal timber, is directly related to political instability. Traffickers exploit weak, fragile, and chaotic political circumstances to illegally extract high-value commodities, challenging the extent to which conservation goals are achievable in resource rich developing countries. Rosewood is the largest traded endangered...
In this thesis, the spatial patterns of vegetation and soils of reference and restored tidal marshes were compared to determine the extent to which restored sites differ from the reference site after 40 years of restoration. Vegetation surveys of 1m x 1m plots were conducted along previously-established transects of salt...
Developing accurate predictive distribution models requires adequately representing relevant spatial and temporal scales, as these scales are ultimately reflective of the relationships between distributions and influential environmental conditions. In this research, we considered both spatial and temporal scale and the influence each has on predicting broad-scale distributions of two disparate...
Montane meadows in the Cascade Range of Oregon have been declining due to tree establishment since records began. Montane meadow complexes in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest shrank by 60 to 75% from 1949 to 2005, but fine scale temporal and spatial processes of tree establishment in these meadows are...
Reservoir systems in the western US are managed to serve two main competing purposes: to reduce flooding during the winter and spring, and to provide water supply for multiple uses during the summer. Because the storage capacity of a reservoir cannot be used for both flood damage reduction and water...
Illuminated contour lines, where line width and color are varied based on an angle of illumination, date back to the mid-nineteenth century, but their effectiveness compared to conventional contour lines has not been fully examined. Currently, illuminated contour lines are not widely used in computer-based cartography because they are not...