Suicide is a leading cause of death amongst adolescents, and transgender and gender diverse youth are at especially high risk for suicidal ideation and attempt compared with cisgender peers. Using established ideation-to-action models of suicide and the Minority Stress Model, this project used the 2019 results of the Oregon Healthy...
This study investigates the microstructure and mechanical properties of an austenitic Oxide Dispersion Strengthened (ODS) steel produced by the Laser Directed Energy Deposition (LDED) process using powder feedstock atomized with elemental yttrium. The Microstructure of the samples was characterized by electron microscopy, and mechanical properties were measured using a tensile...
The growing urban development and the inadequate installation of settlements has caused environmental challenges such as landscape destruction, loss of urban tree biodiversity, therefore, the objective of this study was to identify the ecosystem services of urban trees in the 'Monumental Zone' of the city of Iquitos, in the Peruvian...
Over the last 150 years, Oregon white oak habitat in the Willamette Valley has been converted to support grass crops, orchards and vineyards, cities, and conifer forests, nearly extirpating it from the Willamette Valley. Yet Oregon white oak offers many ecosystem services to the Willamette Valley and its residents. Recent...
The City of Bend’s current urban forest management strategy consists of a series of city codes and ordinances, tree protection and planting standards, and two different plans created by the Bend Park and Recreation District. The analysis of these documents, as well as review of existing management approaches in Boise,...
This research explores the prospects of legislation in Michigan to authorize statewide use of Overdose Fatality Review Teams (OFRTs) to address the escalating opioid crisis. OFRTs consist of multidisciplinary teams that collaborate for overdose prevention. These teams operate on a local to statewide level and are comprised of individuals from...
Although newly independent Central Asian states in 1991, including Kyrgyzstan, started developing their own foreign water policies, Kyrgyzstan’s independence period demonstrated the challenges of determining foreign water policy independently. The conceptual framework of a two-level game was applied in the study to understand and answer the question about how domestic...
The electric power grids of countries across the globe rely on load and generation forecasting to know when, where, and how much resources need to be dispatched to sustain proper grid operation. Because of this, forecasting needs to be highly accurate to avoid unnecessary resource dispatch which can be costly....
The study collected data using ARCGIS Field Maps from a field survey of plants at six (6) sites in Fairfield County, CT. The sites included three (3) urban and three (3) suburban locations. A primary goal of this study was to determine whether there are differences in the extent of...
High-speed police pursuits occur daily across the United States. On average, one person dies per day as the result of a police pursuit. In certain contexts, it might be acceptable to society for a police officer to engage in a high-speed pursuit. The ends could justify the means. For example,...
The COVID-19 pandemic became the deadliest epidemic since the Influenza pandemic in the early 1900s. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). Every government level across the United States had differing responses to COVID-19, and politicians have been the center of attention for their role in COVID policy support or...
The Oregon coast faces complex environmental and social challenges, such as the threat of a regionally disastrous Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) earthquake and tsunami. Researchers are united in their assertion that the CSZ is new, the region is due for a quake, and to mitigate this hazard society must collaborate...
Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) comes in a huge assortment of fresh and dried varieties, including snap beans, kidney beans, and pinto beans. Together, these and other market classes provide a third of the daily dietary protein in some cultures, particularly in Africa, Asia, and developing nations in the Americas....
Relatively little is known about how various factors influence snow water storage in forested mountain landscapes in maritime (warm winter) climates. This study took advantage of multiple snow data sources including long-term data, synoptic sampling, remote sensing, and modeling to examine factors influencing snow dynamics in the H.J. Andrews Experimental...
Stable oxygen and stable carbon isotopes of foraminifera are widely applied in paleoceanographic reconstructions. Oxygen and carbon isotopes are typically measured using pooled sample analysis (i.e., the combination of several shells) or single-shell analysis (typically restricted to heavier shells that weigh above 10 µg). With pooled sample analysis, where many...
Nuclear material monitoring systems have long been established at ports of entry. However, there are no standard systems for monitoring points of interest within the country. Therefore, the use of a network of radiation sensors deployed throughout an area of interest is being investigated within this thesis. Before full scale...
There could be a geospatial and socio-ecological intersection between climate change, energy production, and sustainable fisheries management in the United States. Marine renewable energy generation efforts are currently being planned, studied, and initially implemented in the country as a response to climate change. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is...
Daikon, mizuna, mizspoona, and komatsuna are novel Asian vegetables for which a market exists in Oregon, especially in the organic sector. However, these crops are currently not grown widely in the area, despite the favorable growing environment of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Little is known about the appropriate application level of...
SpotFinder is the mobile frontend of a parking system that helps drivers find a parking spot on campus. (The backend piece of the parking system was developed by others in the lab as part of a previous project.) Finding parking can be viewed as both a search problem and a...
Tree equity is a quickly growing subsection of the urban forestry, environmental justice, urban planning, and broad natural resources fields. This concern surrounds whether or not trees have been historically planted and maintained equitably across different regions within a metropolitan area. The significance of urban trees is only now being...
The thyroid is an organ at risk during a radiological release involving a nuclear power plant due to the radioactive iodine released into the atmosphere. Potassium iodide tablets are commonly used to protect the thyroid during radioactive iodine exposure. Seventeen states currently provide potassium iodide to the public before an...
The law commonly referred to as Title IX, which was passed in 1972, called for an end to sex-based discrimination in educational and federally-funded settings. Before long, it became particularly associated with the quest for equality for women’s sports. As Title IX was a major catalyst in advancing and even...
In the past fifty years, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have become alarming global pollutants. In 2019, the United States (U.S.) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ultimately classified them as emerging contaminants and established an action plan to address PFAS and protect public health through developing, identifying, monitoring, and remediating current...
The impact that Andrew Tate has on his audience paired with the platform he holds has made Andrew Tate one of the most infamous names related to misogyny and “male empowerment”. His ability to connect to his audience and convince them of the superiority of his beliefs allows him to...
Climate change will require families to withstand and adapt to potentially novel impacts in their forests, requiring both ecological and social resiliency. When facing a future of complex and uncertain conditions, family forest owners need more information on the magnitude and direction of change, which can be best accomplished through...
Wave energy converters (WECs) show promising potential to significantly contribute to global renewable energy goals. Numerous WEC designs have been proposed and investigated, but wave energy conversion technology has yet to reach convergence in the same way wind or solar has. Of the designs currently in existence, surface-piercing WECs are...
The City of Wilsonville, Oregon (City) located between Portland and Salem on Interstate-5 was historically a small farming community that has grown into a thriving city. The development required to meet the population growth and diverse industries of the area has led to increased development and urbanization. These changes in...
Populated and developed areas at the fringes of or intermixed with undeveloped landscapes are referred to as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). There are many unique benefits associated with living in the WUI that understandably attract people to move to them. However, there are also potential wildfire-related risks particular to...
Wind power forecasting provides valuable insights for demand response, energy market operation, and plant control optimization. Probabilistic approaches—which capture uncertainty in these complex systems by representing predictions as probability distributions—represent a growing area of research in wind energy science. However, their applications for wind-based hybrid systems, particularly those focused on...
River ecosystems throughout the arid southwestern U.S. are imperiled. Water management infrastructure, climate change, unsustainable water use, and political conflict harm the region's aquatic and riparian ecosystems. This case study surveys one such desert river, an endemic fish species, and conservation efforts in southwestern Utah. The analysis focuses on the...
It is well documented that microplastics and semi-synthetic particles (<5 mm) pervade the marine environment, with their ingestion by marine fauna eliciting global concern. While fishes exposed to microparticles in a laboratory setting have exhibited both sub-lethal and lethal effects, the diversity in material, morphology, and size of these contaminants...
Oregon has one of the five highest homeless occupancy rates in the U.S., according to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (2021). Using the current governor of Oregon’s (Tina Kotek) plan to decrease homelessness, which focuses primarily on housing developments and strategies, this study will first examine the merits of permanent...
Null networks are a type of random graph that is favored for the analysis of a wide variety of real-world networks, including gene-regulatory networks, food webs, and species co-occurrence matrices. As a hypothesis-generating tool, null networks are invaluable because they can reveal network motifs and unusual large-scale properties of networks...
Humans have always been fascinated with whales; from prominent features in mythology, to stories of terrifying monsters on the high seas, to globalized utility, to symbolic wildness and radical environmentalism, to figures and statistics, how have human relationships with whales been understood throughout time? Because humans have a need to...
I conducted a field study using gray wolf and mountain lion urine to investigate white-tailed deer and mesopredator behavioral responses to novel predator cues in a natural setting and to see if any changes in wildlife activity correspond to changes in the local biodiversity of a wetland environment. I created...
Production of fresh produce takes place outdoors, and therefore, is exposed to many routes of contamination (e.g., soil, contaminated water, manure, etc.) by human pathogens. Although precautions are taken to reduce this risk, pathogens can be regularly introduced to produce handling facilities. To manage the risk of cross-contamination from potentially...
Government regulation is an established policy tool for inducing technological innovation in a market. For example, many environmental regulations prescribe performance requirements that industry complies with by innovating aspects of the product design. These design innovations might include updated components, new functionality, or a revised product architecture. However, the effect...
Oregon’s foredunes are part of a dynamic coastal environment that constantly evolves in response to both ecological and physical forces. Invasive beachgrasses have outcompeted native dune grass in the region and have influenced the shape of Oregon’s foredunes via species-specific biophysical feedback mechanisms. As climate change induced sea-level rise will...
Wilderness character monitoring (WCM) is an interagency strategy created in 2008 in collaboration between the four federal land management agencies that manage designated wilderness (Forest Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management) and other contributors (Landres et al. 2008a). The reports created from this...
Managing invasive species is vital to preserving native species and maintaining the integrity of environments and ecological roles. Rats are one of the most prolific and intrusive invasive species that have successfully cohabitated with humans over centuries as we have expanded and advanced our societies. Thus, rats have historically been...
The accumulation of fuels in fire prone landscapes, and changing climatic conditions, have resulted in increasingly volatile fire behaviors. As a result, social and operational risk, management expenditures, and budgetary requirements for responsible agencies are increasing. The United States Forest Service (USFS) manages 193 million acres across the United States...
Successful pruning relies on accurately identifying the 3D structure of tree branches and leaders. However, this task is arduous in an agricultural setting due to the complexity of scenes, the presence of clutter, and variable weather conditions. This project addresses these challenges by leveraging advancements in 2D image segmentation and...
Oregon State University campus grounds have long been admired for their beauty and the diversity of over 65,000 individual woody plants that grace the 570 acres of campus. The woody plant collection has provided a living learning laboratory for the university and surrounding community for decades. The campus grounds include...
The following pages set out to document the German far-right since 1945, along with the responses from the German government and the experience of minorities that extremists tend to target. This study finds that the German government’s heavy-handed response to visible far-right political parties as early as the 1950s consequently...
Aligning Real-Time Networks (RTNs) with the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) is crucial to ensure accuracy, consistency, interoperability, and long-term data integrity for geospatial applications. However, the effectiveness of different alignment methods as well as the need for monitoring approaches to maintain alignment consistency with the NSRS have not yet...
This paper identifies 51 best practices of interpretive programming in relation to the topic of climate change and applies those practices to interpretive programs delivered by Natural Lands, a Pennsylvania environmental non-profit organization, and specifically at the Glades Wildlife Refuge, one of Natural Lands’ nature preserves. The best practices are...
The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has emerged as a method of understanding how stories and evidence are portrayed within policy arenas to support policy discussions and what end goals these policy narratives aim to meet. This study applies the Narrative Policy framework to policy narratives used to discuss and share...