Dead wood patterns and dynamics vary with biophysical factors, disturbance history, ownership, and management practices. Through field and modeling studies, I examined the current and potential future amounts of dead wood in two landscapes and region-wide in the Coastal Province of Oregon. The objectives of the first study were to...
Large, alluvial rivers are naturally diverse, both in structural complexity and as drivers of landscape dynamics. Floodplains provide a mosaic of habitat types for aquatic, semi-aquatic, and terrestrial organisms and act as the framework for vital chemical processes to occur. In large part, this variety is due to the ability...
Riparian ecosystems provide critical habitat for a broad diversity of aquatic and terrestrial species. However, due to their connectivity along river corridors, and the tendency for people to build roads, infrastructure, and other settlements next to rivers, riparian ecosystems are vulnerable to colonization by invasive plant and animal species. Early...
We live on an Urban Planet. The current unprecedented urbanization is accompanied by intensive land cover transition and demographic shifts from rural to urban livelihoods. Cities serve as cultural, economic, political centers that facilitate wealth creation and innovation of the society, sustaining human from multi-dimensions with large ecological footprints far...
Anthropogenic climate change is threatening biodiversity as I currently understand it. There is now a large body of work highlighting species responses, globally, to this threat. Importantly, responses at the species level emerge from responses at lower levels of biological organization (individuals and populations) across a species’ geographic range. For...
The objective of this dissertation is to enhance the monitoring of forest ecosystems through the utilization of remotely sensed data to address the exigencies posed by the Anthropocene. On a global scale, rising temperatures and fluctuating precipitation patterns have strained forests and produced shifts in natural disturbance regimes. Additionally, the...
This project examines the production histories of two films that Alfred Hitchcock directed, his Hollywood debut Rebecca (1940) and the memorable Psycho (1960). The first chapter explores how Hitchcock succeeded and failed at influencing the picture as he, despite directing the movie, had to follow the vision that his producer,...
This thesis offers a theory of queer materiality as a way of understanding the interconnectedness of freaks, ghosts, and madness in Victorian culture, and how these elements coalesce in Victorian literature to destabilize the knowable materiality of normative social structures and forms of embodiment, leading to the production of queer...
The Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion of southwest Oregon and northern California is greatly departed from its historic, mixed-severity fire regime. This departure manifests in larger wildfires, greater proportions of high burn severity within wildfire perimeters, and decreased diversity of post-fire vegetation successional stages and trajectories across the landscape compared to historical norms....
Marine mammals are top predators that are essential for the health and function of our oceans. These top predators are often affected by various factors that can be detrimental to their populations. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate undetermined causes of deaths and to better understand known diseases in...
