This dissertation draws on ethnographic data and political ecological theory to analyze the experience of residents living in the IBM-Endicott Superfund site in Endicott, New York. Combining in-depth narratives and quantitative measures from a household survey, it highlights residents' perceptions of 1) environmental health risk, 2) risk mitigation, 3) deindustrialization...
This thesis merges the fields of Ecology and Anthropology by applying Habitat Suitability Modeling to the relationship between people and plants in the Pacific Northwest. In it, I create and optimize two Maxent habitat suitability models for camas (Camassia spp.) in Oregon. The first model describes the physical environment of...
This capstone study reports on global warming-induced changes to the Colorado subalpine zone climate and disturbance regimes. It assesses the impacts of these changes upon the dominant subalpine tree species and summarizes future species distribution modeling for these and other nearby species potentially suitable for the future subalpine zone in...
Each NWR within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) provides landscapes that contribute to conservation of wildlife and the habitats they depend on at local, regional, and national levels. The Integrated Pest Management Plan (IPMP) for a given refuge is a guide to how...
This dissertation seeks to understand Yi farmers’ livelihoods in the midst of an agricultural transition in Yunnan, Southwest China. This dissertation examines a community’s traditional knowledge related to wild edible plants (WEPs), analyzes socio-ecological vulnerability and resilience in the face of agricultural transition from subsistence farming to cash cropping, and...
The invasive annual grass ventenata (Ventenata dubia) has become an increasing problem within western rangelands. Forage quality of areas infested with ventenata is reduced as its high silica content makes it unpalatable to livestock and wildlife. In the following study, I examined whether significant presence of ventenata affects habitat use...
From the 1960s to 1990s, the water quality of Dian Lake (滇池), China's sixth largest freshwater lake located outside the capital of Yunnan Province, Kunming City, rapidly declined causing livelihood disruption, decreased water availability, and biodiversity loss. Despite significant investments in remediation efforts, only small water quality improvements have been...
In 2003, due to the dramatic growth of economy, China’s National Development and Reform Commission proposed to build 13 dams on the Nu River to fulfill the nation’s rapidly growing demand for hydropower. The 13 dams that comprise the Nu River Project (NRP) are considered among the biggest hydropower development...
“International river basin is defined as an area extending over two or more states determined by the watershed limits of the system of waters, including surface and underground waters, flowing into a common terminus” (Shapiro-Libai, 1969, p. 22). There are 276 international river basins providing almost 60% of global freshwater...
This thesis explore the effects of China's Grassland Contract policy on sedentary and mobile Inner Mongolian pastoralists' attitudes towards cooperation, current grassland management practices, and the future viability of livestock herding in New Barag Right Banner, Inner Mongolia. Semi-structured interviews, a scaled survey instrument, and participant observation were carried out...