Many nations that invest in aquaculture and fisheries for improved nutrition and food security are located in areas prone to natural disasters, such as typhoons. While all residents are vulnerable to the effects of disasters, research suggests that women are disproportionately affected at all stages of disaster management: preparedness, response,...
The Oregon State University (OSU) Advanced Plant Experiment (APEX) is a one-fourth height, one-half time scale, reduced pressure integral systems test facility designed to model the long-term cooling capabilities of the emergency core cooling systems of the Westinghouse AP600. This study provides a brief description of the APEX test facility,...
This study, based on Brunswik's (1952, 1956) lens model,
examined the judgment policies employed by 67 art students
and faculty when they evaluate instruction. Four groups of
subjects, non-art majors, undergraduate art majors, graduate
and bachelor of fine arts students, and faculty members, judged
a series of 35 hypothetical teacher...
In 2021, Oregon’s legislature passed House Bill 2021 with relative ease. House Bill 2021 is a mandate for the state’s two largest utilities to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation on a decreasing scale, reaching 100% below baseline levels by 2040. This ambitious piece of legislation, meant to reduce the...
Disturbance and microclimate interact to play a central role influencing the composition and structure of plant communities. In this thesis, I examined plant community composition and structure twenty years after high severity wildfires with and without post-fire management (salvage logging, fuel treatment, tree planting, and shrub release) under contrasting microclimatic...
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David E. Hibbs
Disturbance and microclimate interact to play a central role influencing
Riparian areas that can be used as reference sites on which to base goals of vegetation restoration have not been documented in the Oregon Coast Range. I examined the composition and distribution of unmanaged riparian overstories in the central Oregon Coast Range along nine streams which have experienced minimal disturbance...
Hardrock mining is associated with severe environmental and economic costs. Of particular concern is acid mine drainage which has contaminated several thousand kilometers of streams across the United States representing a formidable danger to watershed health. Given the high risks of this activity, ensuring high regulatory standards may be an...
In recent years, model-free Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) has become an increasingly popular alternative to more traditional model-based or optimization-based control methods in solving robotic legged locomotion. However, deploying RL in the real world can be a significant undertaking. Constructing reward functions which compel controllers to learn the desired behavior...
A branch mortality dating technique and whorl
sampling strategy were implemented to model five-year
crown recession from data collected on temporary
plots. Twenty-eight Douglas-fir from two levels-of-growing-
stock studies in Oregon and Washington were
first dissected to validate the proposed dating
technique and assess alternative sampling strategies.
Branch mortalities in...