Preservation of rare plant species often requires establishment of new populations. Survivorship surveys are the most common method of post-introduction monitoring. However, they provide an incomplete picture of establishment success. This study is an attempt to develop a model for determining establishment success by determining the factors affecting recruitment in...
Brachypodium sylvaticum (Huds.) Beauv. is an invasive grass that can be found in forest
and prairie communities throughout the Willamette Valley, Oregon. It can out-compete
native species of grasses and forbs and become dominant in a broad range of habitats.
This study investigated if there were differences in vegetation structure...
Purposeful introductions of exotic species for rehabilitation efforts following wildfire are common on rangelands in the western U.S., though potential ecological impacts of introduced species in novel environments are often poorly understood. One such introduced species, Kochia prostrata (L.) Schrad (forage kochia) has been seeded on over 200,000 ha throughout...
Oceanic density overturns are commonly used to parameterize the dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy. This method assumes a linear scaling between the Thorpe length scale L[subscript]T and the Ozmidov length scale L[subscript]O. Historic evidence supporting L[subscript]T ~ L[subscript]O has been shown for relatively weak shear-driven turbulence of the thermocline;...
The effect of non-zero, but small, viscosity and diffusivity on the marginal stability
of a stably stratified shear flow is examined by making perturbations around the
neutral solution for an inviscid and non-diffusive flow. The results apply to turbulent
flows in which horizontal and vertical turbulent transports of momentum and...
The Taylor–Goldstein (T–G) equation is extended to include the effects of small-scale
turbulence represented by non-uniform vertical and horizontal eddy viscosity and
diffusion coefficients. The vertical coefficients of viscosity and diffusion, A[subscript V] and K[subscript V],
respectively, are assumed to be equal and are expressed in terms of the buoyancy...
A new theory of shear instability in a turbulent environment is applied to eight days of velocity and density profiles from the upper-equatorial Pacific. This period featured a regular diurnal cycle of surface forcing, together with a clear response in upper-ocean mixing. During the day, a layer of stable stratification...
Open Educational Resources (OER) are increasingly used
in the higher education landscape as a solution for a variety of
copyright, publishing and cost-prohibiting issues. While OERs are
becoming more common, reports of usability tests that evaluate how
well learners can use them to accomplish their learning tasks have
lagged behind....
Industries such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), continue to employ fewer women compared to men. These professions that are traditionally considered more masculine sustain gender-imbalanced work forces and are also unattractive to women at an academic level. This thesis explores the hypothesis that performance can be a powerful...