The forest health of the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon and Washington has sustained great impacts primarily caused by disease and insect epidemics. In order to restore forest health and reduce fuel loads, management tools like prescribed fire and mechanical chinning are being tested by forest managers in the region'...
Protected area creation, including creation of marine reserves (MRs), is increasingly molded by ecosystem based management (EBM) that integrates biological and social information in the pre and post establishment phases. Collecting social data from large and representative samples of the public (as opposed to other stakeholder groups) before establishing a...
Few studies analyze the relationship between ecological knowledge and public preferences for natural resource management options. The Central Cascades Adaptive Management Area (CCAMA) and McKenzie watershed of western Oregon provides an opportunity to examine the relationship. This research project employs a mixed model approach to explore public knowledge of forest...
Forests of the Inland West have been experiencing forest health problems arising from over a hundred years of fire suppression, logging, grazing, and mismanagement. Rural communities, meanwhile, have seen escalating unemployment, an exodus of young families, and a dearth of middle-income jobs. The objectives of this thesis are to: 1)...
Higher education is faced with ever-increasing challenges, which require fundamental changes in order to ensure its relevance in the future. Business leaders and academic scholars urge organizations to continuously reshape and renew through learning and innovation to assure viability and sustainability. Organizational climate serves as a foundation that can promote...
Three research questions are addressed in this study: (1) To what degree do residents
support/oppose various aspects of water resources protection? (2) What factors explain
residents' attitudes? and, (3) How do attitudes vary between participants and nonparticipants
of place-based groups (watershed councils and neighborhood
associations)? The population of interest is...
Intact sagebrush communities in the Great Basin are rapidly disappearing due
to invasion of non-native plants, large wildfires, and encroachment of pinyon pine
and juniper woodlands. Land management options include the use of prescribed
fire, grazing, herbicides and mechanical treatments to reduce the potential for
wildfire and restore plant communities....
Innovation is a critical component for long term success of an organization. However, being innovative is rarely easy. Successful implementation of any innovation (product, process, or business system) can heavily rely on the functionality of the current innovation system in a given industry. An innovation system is composed of policies,...
This study addresses the question: "What are the incentives and disincentives for conflict prevention and mitigation in the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), and how do they factor into Reclamation's management of water in the western United States?" Incentives and disincentives for conflict prevention (i.e., actions taken to avoid conflict) and...