Fires set by Native Americans were important in shaping and maintaining Willamette Valley prairie plant communities. With fire exclusion after Euro-American settlement in the 1840's, composition of the remaining prairies shifted toward shrub and tree dominance with a concomitant decline in endemic prairie plant populations. I hypothesize that by restoring...
This thesis examines forest history of a portion of the Douglas-fir Region: Soap Creek Valley, a 15,000 acre sub-basin of the Luckiamute River in northern Benton County, Oregon. The primary reasons for the research were to test oral history methodology, document sub-basin scale forest cover pattern changes, and determine basic...
This study explores the role of emotions in extensive hydraulic projects that become part of nation-state building processes and have transboundary impact. The main objective is to investigate how political leadership uses emotional narratives to foster water nationalism in the case of the Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP) in Turkey. The...
Chloride binding in Portland limestone cements (PLC) can be attributed to the chemical reaction between chloride ions and carboaluminate phases to form Friedel’s salt and the physical interaction between chloride ions and calcium-silicate-hydrates (C-S-H). This thesis examines the chloride binding of mortar samples containing varying amounts of limestone, fly ash,...
Question Answering in natural language processing has achieved significant progress in recent years. Yet, training and testing set methodology to evaluate the language models has proved inadequate. Adversarial examples aid us in finding loopholes inside these models and provide insights into their inner workings. In this work, an evaluation based...
Variation in data is abundant and ubiquitous in real-world applications. Managing variation in databases is, however, difficult and has been extensively studied by the database community. Schema evolution, data integration, and database versioning are examples of well-studied forms of database variation with effective context-specific solutions. However, variation appears in different...
The human intervertebral disc is a deceptively simple structure which plays an essential role in human movement. Even slight changes to the disc microenvironment can have far reaching consequences, particularly when these changes result in disc degeneration and herniation. Degeneration is increasingly tied to lower back pain; better understanding this...
The recently emerged Grapevine Red Botch Virus (GRBV) impedes proper berry ripening primarily by reducing sugar accumulation and color development in red-fruited Vitis vinifera L. cultivars. To date, there is no recommended management strategy for virus spread or the impacts of the disease beyond removal and replacement of infected vines....
The integration of low-pressure membrane filtration and aerobic granular sludge (AGS) reactor leads to a novel environmental biotechnological process with strong potential to overcome membrane fouling and demonstrate excellent wastewater treatment performance. However, membrane fouling mechanisms in the AGS based membrane bioreactor (MBR) are lack of systematic elaboration. In the...
First recorded as a problem in 2003, wildfire smoke has been found to affect wine grapes and lead to alterations to a wine’s flavor profile. Smoke can carry organic volatile compounds over vast distances, which can then be deposited on grapes and are absorbed into the grape’s cells. These compounds...
This thesis consists of five chapters: a general introduction, two manuscripts, a collection of published lesson plans, and a general conclusion. The works collected herein are united by the common theme of practical applications in plant breeding. The first manuscript reports a study performed on five malting barley lines grown...
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life for populations all over the world. One population that has been uniquely impacted by the pandemic is the student-athlete population. Over the last two years, universities took safety precautions by first sending students home and moving teaching and learning to a remote format and...
This thesis presents novel feedback and feedforward control system design strategies for active to passive vibration mitigation of residual vibrations on high speed machine tools. Residual vibrations on high-speed machine tools are triggered when the machine axes (table) undergo large accelerations, which induce sudden inertial forces and excite the lightly...
Considering the deadly impacts of commercial motor vehicle (CMV) crashes on road safety, many previous studies have put in efforts to find the determinants of CMV crash injury severities. However, studies examining the impact of the different number of lanes on CMV crash
injury severities are lacking. Besides, the importance...
Walking is the single most universal mode of transportation in the world, but being a pedestrian exposes a traveler to high risk. Historically, pedestrians have consistently experienced disproportionately high rates of fatalities and severe injuries in traffic crashes. Research has probed into factors influencing pedestrian crash injury severity outcomes, but...
To facilitate the design of Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) for flood protection, this thesis expands an existing engineering design methodology to NNBF systems. The existing approach is a Level III reliability method for the performance-based design of traditional coastal engineering systems. The expanded methodology incorporates uncertainties inherent to both...
RF data-driven device fingerprinting through the use of deep learning has recently surfaced as a possible method for secure device identification and authentication. Traditional approaches are commonly susceptible to the domain adaptation problem where a model trained on data from one domain performs badly when tested on data from a...
In eastern Washington and western Oregon, southwest-northeast striking thrust faults and folds of the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt (YFTB) and northwest-striking dextral strike-slip faults accommodate north-south contraction resulting from clockwise rotation of the North American Plate. Though present to the east and west of the Cascade Range, the connectivity...
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...
Estimating how large instream wood (LW) may impact local hydraulics is critical both for mitigating flood hazards and for ensuring intended habitat benefits of the LW are produced. In practice, the design of forms such as LW is limited by a lack of mechanistic tools for estimating how LW features...
One of the most economically important genes in squash (Cucurbita spp.) is the B gene which conditions precocious depletion of chlorophyll in preanthesis fruit. The B genes are found naturally occurring in at least three of the five domesticated species of Cucurbita, including C. pepo, C. maxima and, most recently...
Resident and migratory avifauna in the Willamette Valley, Oregon are heavily influenced by winter conditions and habitat characteristics, especially those of wetlands. As such, it is important to monitor avian communities and environmental factors at wetland sites within the Willamette Valley during winter. Using data from standardized avian point-count surveys,...
This work explores the mechanical properties of single-phase niobium alloy C103 from room temperature to 600°C for the purpose of expanding safe uses of the material into new applications. The study utilizes a symmetrically notched triaxial tensile specimens to manipulate the internal stress field in order to observe the changes...
When pavement markings on roadways are removed, scarring can occur leaving behind traces of where the marking used to be called ghost lines. These ghost lines can confuse drivers on the roadway and divert their attention from the correct lane markings leading them into the false lane. Previous research has...
The Goose Lake Basin, situated on the border of Oregon and California, USA, faces significant challenges from drought, wildfire, and other environmental stressors. This region hosts numerous endemic fish species such as the Goose Lake redband trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss newberri), Goose Lake lamprey (Entosphenus sp.), Goose Lake tui chub (Siphateles...
Given the recent attention to dams in developing countries as a means to efficiently utilize water resources, mitigating the negative environmental and social impacts they have on riparian states is of utmost importance. This thesis presents a global review of how basin countries, through international water treaties (IWT), ensure that...
Listeria monocytogenes is the third most deadly foodborne pathogen in the United States. The young and elderly, as well as pregnant and immunocompromised people are the population most susceptible to serious illness and death from listeriosis infections.
Unlike most foodborne pathogens, L. monocytogenes does not live a solely enteric lifestyle....