This phenomenological study explores the effects that an interdisciplinary program of study at a community college has on students once they transfer to a four-year institution. Interdisciplinary approaches have been proposed as a way of meeting the complex thinking skills needed for 21st Century learning. Because interdisciplinary learning is complex,...
Measurements on growth traits up to 41 years of age
from 68 progeny sites in eight first-generation breeding
zones of coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii
[MIRB.] FRANCO var. menziesii) in the US Pacific Northwest
were used to investigate age trends of genetic parameters
and to determine optimum age of selection. Heritabilities...
The end of the Cold War brought about changes within international political relations that resulted in expanded interest in global civil society. Such developments, like globalization and democratization, have encouraged the growth of social and political organizations. Political scientists have found that these inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations have a significant...
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musicians include Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Elton John, Bob Geldof, Joan Baez, Pete
Urban stormwater runoff contains pollutants that have a detrimental effect on pond water quality and watershed water quality. Stormwater best management practices (BMPs), such as a constructed wetland, can treat these pollutants through processes like infiltration, adsorption, and plant uptake. It is hypothesized that the surface-runoff fed pond at Bruce...
The current generation of scientists will be asked to mitigate climate change, stall biodiversity loss, and protect ecological communities. These are tasks that require a knowledge of both ecological and social systems to be undertaken successfully. Therefore, my dissertation spans the fields of community ecology and social sciences in an...
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CHAPTER 1 – GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Alissa J. Rickborn1 and Bruce A. Menge1
1
In real-time control systems, the value of a control decision depends not
only on the correctness of the decision but also on the time when that decision
is available. Recent work in real-time decision making has used machine learning
techniques to automatically construct reactive controllers, that is, controllers
with little...
Climate and terrestrial vegetation have had mutual feedbacks for nearly five hundred million years, yet both are now departing from recent historical norms, with uncertain implications for forest ecosystems. This dissertation outlines the current and potential future climate responses of lichen and bryophyte communities in the United States as part...
Background: Social interaction among peers on a campus of higher education has long been considered an important part of the college student experience, in particular for the first-term students transitioning into college life. Students who socially connect with peers on campus tend to persist at higher rates, while other benefits...
This dissertation describes patterns in epiphytic macrolichen community composition along a nitrogen deposition gradient in the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada in California. This region is part of the largest federal air quality Class 1 designated air-shed in the western United States, covering the entire crest of the Sierra...
Understanding and predicting how regional to global scale processes affect macroalgal populations and communities requires elucidating the mechanisms underlying observed patterns. This dissertation identifies some of the underlying mechanisms that produce complex multi-scale responses of macroalgae across space and time by delineating the role of key local environmental drivers and...
Tidal marshes are dynamic ecosystems that are threatened by climate change and sea-level rise. To characterize baseline condition and historic climate sensitivities, and improve projections into the future, new methods are required that integrate data from the field and remote sensing platforms. Marsh elevation response models can be calibrated with...
Forage availability, diets, distribution, and productivity were
compared for Roosevelt elk, Cervus elaphus roosevelti, using improved
(i.e. seeded, fertilized, and grazed) and untreated areas of the Oregon
Coast Range. Seasonal forage availability was substantially different
on 1-year-old improved and untreated clearcuts, but the differences
diminished by clearcut age 4 and...
The Washington State Department of Natural Resources' Comprehensive Tree-Volume Tarif Tables are a set of preconstructed local volume tables. This can increase "on plot" efficiency since only diameters are necessary to obtain volumes after the proper table for the given diameter/height relationship is accessed. The tables are accessed and indexed...
A rural watershed containing a protected forest area in the north
and a small rural community in the south was monitored for numbers of
fecal indicator bacteria as well as the incidence and origin of the
enteric pathogen Salmonella. Isolation of Salmonella only occurred
once in the protected watershed, while...
The purpose of this study was to design an objective-based
Anonymous Screening Process (ASP) for selecting the
most qualified finalists for non-tenured administrative
employment searches in public higher education. The intent
was to design a viable employment process that substantially
meets equal opportunity mandates, the dual aim of the
Federal...
This study examines the link between policy-induced
changes in the relative prices of Mexican and U.S. frozen
vegetables and their shares of the U.S. market. Several
scenarios were examined in order to assess the impacts on
quantities demanded of both U.S. and Mexican produced
frozen vegetables caused by changes in...
The concept of a prestressed cylindrical shell was investigated. In particular, a cylindrical shell constructed from coiled pressurized tubing was analyzed. This analysis was concentrated in two main areas, the first involved the failure modes of the prestressed cylinder. Both the buckling and yielding behavior of the tube walls was...
The rotating flighted cylinder (RFC) was investigated
as a potential wastewater treatment deVice. A RFC is a
rigid tube with a helically-wound fin attached to the interior
surface and operates by flowing wastewater through
the tube as it rotates.
An 8-inch and 24-inch
diameter RFC was tested for
solids-liquid
separation,...
The variability of selected physical, chemical, and morphological
soil properties in two landtype mapping units on'the Rogue River National
Forest in southwestern Oregon was studied.
The objectives of the study were (i) to quantify soil variability
in several soil resource inventory mapping units, (ii) to explore methods
of describing soil...
Air temperatures and soil temperatures at the surface, two inches,
and four inches under a grass cover were recorded over a 93 day period.
These data were used along with other temperature data from bare soil
in the construction of three sets of models for the prediction of
maximum and...
The study of aldehydes in diesel exhaust is important because
of their relationship to diesel odor, to air pollution, and to the development
of a theory of combustion. Therefore, a study is made
of the low order aliphatic aldehydes using gas chromatography in
conjunction with standard wet chemical tests.
The...
Succession and organization of rocky intertidal zone surfgrass beds
(Phyllospadix scouleri Hook) were examined experimentally at two sites
on the Oregon coast. The interaction of three attributes of the plant
-- high persistence, high preemption, and slow recovery -- strongly
influences the organization of surfgrass beds. Permanent plots indicate
that...
In the mountains of central and southern California, high elevation wilderness areas lack epiphytic lichens that can be used to inform us about atmospheric deposition in multiple ways. Epiphytic lichens are capable of accumulating elements proportionally to the local atmospheric concentration, establishing them as commonly used biomonitor of key elements....
One of the tasks of inequality reasoning is to determine the relationship between two quantities for any given set of qualitative constraints. For implementation of this kind of reasoning, Simmons [1] has provided a technique called the "graph search" (GS). This paper briefly reviews GS technique, then presents an implementation...
The endangered Hawaiian common gallinule (Gallinula chloropus sandvicensis) is an endemic Hawaiian waterbird that occurs only on O‘ahu and Kaua‘i. Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) supports the largest population of Hawaiian gallinule on either island and is also one of the highest producers of commercially grown taro in the state....
The Symbolic Probabilistic Inference (SPI) algorithm was developed by Bruce D' Ambrosio for efficient calculation of prior probabilities in belief nets [2]. Although the complexity of the SPI algorithm compares favorably with other approaches to probabilistic inference [5], its actual running time is still prohibitively long even for moderately sized...
In November 1990, Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 5,
placing an ultimate ceiling on local property tax rates of 1.5% of
market value (excluding specific levies for capital expenditure). Any
resulting shortfalls in local education revenues are to be made up by
transfers from state funds, at the expense of...
Probabilistic inference using Bayesian networks is now a well-established approach for reasoning under uncertainty. Among many e ciency-driven tech- niques which have been developed, the Optimal Factoring Problem (OFP) is distinguished for presenting a combinatorial optimization point of view on the problem. The contribution of this thesis is to extend...
Ecosystems are facing increasing threats from human related activities, such as overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, species invasions, and diseases, among others. While oceanic islands provide natural laboratories to understand ecological and evolutionary process, they are also particularly vulnerable to these impacts, given their usual isolation from the mainland and the...
The stability of a limpet-dominated community was
assessed in a experiment in which an consumer was
temporarily removed. Compared to unmanipulated plots,
the limpet-exclusion plots developed greater algal
abundance and altered species composition of both algae
and barnacles. The community was not perturbed beyond
its capacity to recover, since the...
Two different types of Phosphorodiamidate Morpholino Oligomers (PMOs) were used to
inhibit growth in pure cultures of Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium and in mouse
macrophages infected with S. typhimurium. Both PMOs were 11 bases long and
complementary to bases 6-16 of acyl carrier protein mRNA. A membrane-penetrating
peptide, (RXR)4XB, was...
Functional traits of vascular plants have been an important component of ecological studies for a number of years; however, in more recent times vascular plant ecologists have begun to formalize a set of key traits and universal system of trait measurement. Many recent studies hypothesize global generality of trait patterns,...
In recent years, our ecological knowledge of tropical dry forests has increased dramatically. However, whole components of the ecosystem, like lichenized fungi, remain mostly unknown. Crustose lichens in these forests are so abundant, that they are responsible for the characteristic appearance of a “white bark forest” during the dry season....