The black-footed ferret is a meso-predator within the Great Plains region of North America. Before the 1900s, black-footed ferret populations were self-sustaining in large ecological patches throughout the geographical range of the Great Plains. During the 1900s, various factors such as the systematic extermination of prairie dogs (the primary food...
Contemporary spiritual tourism impacts many stakeholders including environmental ecosystems, tourists, tourist operators, and community members. Increasingly, in the era of the Anthropocene, there is a need for ethical guidance to inform spiritual tourism so as to mitigate social injustice and environmental degradation. This research project investigates the potential for the...
In Oregon, the effects of climate change on agriculture are already being felt. In the Northwest, climate change impacts agricultural pest pressure, especially insects, whose life cycles are tied directly to weather and climate. The goal of this research was to record and analyze Oregon fruit and vegetable farmers’ relationships...
Rhizopus microsporus is a globally ubiquitous opportunistic human and plant pathogen that is known to harbor endosymbiotic bacteria. Differences between populations of clinical and environmental R. microsporus isolates have yet to be assessed on a global scale. Whole-genome sequence data were used to explore fungal biology and to assess potential...
Copper and iron are essential micronutrients that are required by marine primary producers for a variety of metabolic processes. Over 99% of both copper and iron are bound within organic complexes in the marine environment, however the molecular identity of many of these complexes remains unknown. The speciation of these...
Emerging research shows that individual differences in how people use technology sometimes cluster by socioeconomic status (SES) and that when technology is not socioeconomically inclusive, low-SES individuals may abandon it. To understand how to improve technology’s SES-inclusivity, we present a multi-phase case study on SocioEconomicMag (SESMag), an emerging inspection method...
This thesis challenges South Korea’s state-sponsored and activist-serving narratives about the Korean comfort women, who were forced to work as sex slaves in Japan’s wartime military brothels. Comfort women have provided testimonies about their wartime experiences that have drawn significant attention to the atrocities committed against them by the Japanese...
Coastal stream basins are of great importance to efforts aimed at refining our understanding of the earliest populations that inhabited the ancient Oregon coast. However, geomorphic responses to post-glacial sea level rise in these settings has produced depositional environments that destroy or deeply bury late Pleistocene and early Holocene-age archaeological...
Concrete has been categorized as a key contributor of CO2 (carbon) emissions into the atmosphere. This is mostly associated with the production of ordinary portland cement (OPC). The concrete and cement industries are pursuing a path to reduce their carbon emissions generally in accordance with the climate change goals outlined...
This thesis explores the intricate issues surrounding migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, offering diverse perspectives and insights into its drivers, consequences, and ethical dimensions. Through three comprehensive papers, this research offers a nuanced analysis of the complex dynamics influencing the migration crisis. The first examines the historical and theoretical factors...