Populated and developed areas at the fringes of or intermixed with undeveloped landscapes are referred to as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). There are many unique benefits associated with living in the WUI that understandably attract people to move to them. However, there are also potential wildfire-related risks particular to...
At a time when environmental conditions are rapidly changing, understanding how thermal extremes impact wildlife is imperative to fully understanding the consequences of climate change in natural ecosystems. While many organisms are currently impacted by rapidly warming and more erratic environmental conditions, identifying and investigating model species whose life histories...
With the rapid advancement of educational technology and the need for personalized, engaging content to accommodate diverse learning needs, Virtual Reality (VR) holds promises for the present and future. However, VR applications suffer from challenges, including usability concerns, lack of pedagogical value, and evaluation standards. This thesis focuses on two...
A seasonal hair-loss syndrome of native deer began to occur in the Pacific Northwest United States in the mid-1990s. Clinical manifestations of the disease typically include large numbers of chewing lice on Columbia Black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) and Columbia White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus leucurus). Expenditure of energy responding to...
Nutrient limitation constrains tree growth in many managed forests. Nitrogen (N) is the most common limiting nutrient, but high N supply can shift limitation to other nutrients, particularly phosphorus (P) and the base cations calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and potassium (K). As different soil minerals have different capacities to supply...
This dataset includes species richness of native plants, pollinators and birds as well as 13 proxies for ecosystem services representing timber production, culturally-valued plants and animals, and regulating services tied to forest productivity. The data were collected from an experiment conducted in the Oregon Coast Range USA that sought to...
Society derives many critical and irreplaceable values from forests. With a growing global human population and rates of consumption, forests are under increasing pressure to provide all these values simultaneously. To meet societal demands for wood products, tree plantations are becoming increasingly common and are replacing native forests. Yet, forests...
Two key challenges emerge when initiating individual-tree growth models for bare ground or very young plantations. Both involve the need for a list of individual trees with known or predicted size and known expansion factor (number of trees per unit of area represented by each tree). In the case of...
Animal weapons are thought to have evolved to compete for reproductive opportunities within a species. Across the diverse weapon-bearing taxa, several evolutionary trends have emerged: (1) increasing complexity and relative size across ontogeny, (2) sexual dimorphism, and (3) higher levels of random deviations from symmetry (i.e., fluctuating asymmetry) than non-weaponized...
In this thesis, we first examine the principle hypotheses behind the improved exotic growth of select timber species, and the evidence for each, with special focus on studies which examine growth between several ranges of a species. We find that literature suggests environmental factors directly tied to net primary production...
Advances in mobile autonomous vehicles for oceanographic sensing provide new opportunities for passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals. Acoustically equipped mobile autonomous platforms, including gliders, deep-water profiling floats, and drifting surface buoys can survey for a variety of marine mammal species over intermediate spatiotemporal scales. Additionally, such mobile platforms may...
Estimating volume gains in genetically improved stands at rotation age is challenging because first-generation progeny tests in Douglas-fir were typically established to measure the relative growth performance of individual trees from open-pollinated parent trees. The overall goal of this dissertation research was to improve growth simulation of genetically improved Douglas-fir...
Nitrogen (N) fertilizer is a commonly applied silvicultural treatment in intensively managed Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco] plantations. When attempting to maximize average growth responses through fertilization, landowners experience difficulty prioritizing stands for treatment based on the likely magnitude of response and return on the operational investment. Field trials were...
As the global demand for natural resources increases, more land will be intensively managed for the production of commodities such as timber, with potential consequences to biodiversity, ecological functioning and ecosystem services provided to society. Although there is strong consensus that intensive land management practices can negatively affect biodiversity, less...
The scarcity of wireless spectrum resources and the overwhelming demand for wireless broadband resources have prompted industry, government agencies and academia within the wireless communities to develop and come up with effective solutions that can make additional spectrum available for broadband data. As part of these ongoing efforts, cognitive radio...
Forest vegetation management (FVM) is an important component of reforestation in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of vegetation management on planted conifer growth and survival. However, few reports have been published on the long-term effects of FVM treatments on total ecosystem biomass accumulation and aboveground...
The contribution of delayed adaptive reiteration to crown maintenance was explored across a wide range of adjacent open space conditions in early-mature (approximately 60 year old) Douglas-fir located on the eastern slope of Oregon’s Coast Range. The stands had experienced uniform thinning in 1964-65 and 1980-81 to release dominant and...
Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) are important economically, ecologically, and culturally as an indigenous species in western Oregon. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) observed declines in black-tailed deer populations since the late 1980’s and attributes these declines to reduction in quality and availability of habitat, following the...