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Quality Assurance Plan For Monitoring White-Tailed Deer In The Heartland Inventory And Monitoring Network, United States National Park Service, Heartland Inventory And Monitoring Network

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

In accordance with guidelines set forth by the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Division, a quality-assurance plan has been created for use by the Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network in the implementation of the White-tailed Deer Monitoring Protocol (HTLN 2018). This quality-assurance plan documents the standards, policies, and procedures used by the Heartland Network for activities related to the collection, processing, storage, analysis, and publication of monitoring data. The policies and procedures documented in this quality-assurance plan complement the quality-assurance plans for other monitoring activities conducted by the Heartland Network and supplement the National Inventory and Monitoring Division …

Assessing The Impacts Of Ghana’S Oil And Gas Industry On Ecosystem Services And Smallholder Livelihoods, Michael Acheampong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ghana discovered oil and gas within its shores in commercial quantities in the year, 2007. This discovery was hailed as a potential turn around for the country’s economic destiny. While this optimism may have been well-founded, there has been a relative lack of appreciation of the potential adverse implications of the industry on traditional smallholder livelihoods, and the critical ecosystems that form their basis. In many countries, discovery of natural resources results in negative environmental and social outcomes, due to the loss of local livelihoods and environmental degradation. Deterioration of local livelihoods occurs through several biophysical pathways, both simple and …

Elucidating The Role Of Neighborhood Deprivation In Hypertensive Disorders Of Pregnancy, Kelly M. Winter

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examined risk factors for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) — specifically whether neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation exacerbates individual socioeconomic disadvantage (deprivation amplification) to increase the likelihood of developing HDP. To select the optimal areal unit at which to investigate HDP, geographic proxies for neighborhoods were explored.

A thematic review qualitatively examined nontraditional neighborhood boundaries identified through internet sources. Data from 2008–2012 Miami-Dade County, Florida birth records (n=121,421) and the U.S. Census Bureau were used for the remaining analyses. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) analysis empirically compared the proportion of HDP prevalence explained by six areal …

The Spatial And Temporal Domains Of Modern Ecology, Lyndon Estes, Paul R. Elsen, Timothy Treuer, Labeeb Ahmed, Kelly Caylor, Jason Chang, Jonathan J. Choi, Erle C. Ellis

Geography

To understand ecological phenomena, it is necessary to observe their behaviour across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Since this need was first highlighted in the 1980s, technology has opened previously inaccessible scales to observation. To help to determine whether there have been corresponding changes in the scales observed by modern ecologists, we analysed the resolution, extent, interval and duration of observations (excluding experiments) in 348 studies that have been published between 2004 and 2014. We found that observational scales were generally narrow, because ecologists still primarily use conventional field techniques. In the spatial domain, most observations had resolutions ≤1 m2 …

Linguistic Political Ecology With The Ngäbe Indigenous People Of Panama, Ginés A. Sánchez Arias

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Indigenous communities from all corners of the globe live in uncertain times. From the vantage point of their “remote" lands, they undergo some of globalization’s most harmful externalities. Their homes become increasingly harder to maintain as extractive industries, development schemes, clandestine land grabs, and national bureaucracies encroach creating new colonial lands. First by assimilation, and then integration, these processes systematically undermine indigenous culture and autonomy. In place of such destructive coloniality, indigenous societies shelter unique ecological and linguistic knowledge that continues to serve their progress. This research applies lessons learned from studying with Ngäbe communities of western Panama, towards a …

Dawoud Island Protected Area -Rosetta Branch (An Ecological Study), Awad Abdel Maboud Salem, Salem

Journal of the Faculty of Arts (JFA)

Egypt has a total of 35 natural reserves which are usually listed in accordance with the criteria defined all over the world. These cover more than 97000 square kilometers, which represents 9.7 % of total land area. Prime Minister's decree no. 1969 of 1998 declared the 144 islands of the River Nile as reserves. 30 of these islands are located in Rosetta branch and 19 in Damietta branch, as wetlands, with an area of 160 km². They harbor unique flora and are regarded as great reservoir of rare genetic diversity, and, therefore, have special biological significance. Dawoud Island, in the …

Remote Sensing And Spatial Metrics For Quantifying Seagrass Landscape Changes: A Study On The 2011 Indian River Lagoon Florida Seagrass Die-Off Event, René Dieter Baumstark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s seagrasses are ecologically important marine environments which have suffered major degradation caused by increasing anthropogenic pressures. A 2011 seagrass die-off event caused by an algal bloom in the Florida Indian River Lagoon (IRL) was particularly severe with a majority of seagrass lost in areas such as the Banana River. An understanding of how this coastal marine environment changed is an important step toward better managing resources for conservation. Modern tools and methods provide new opportunities to study these changes at the landscape scale, a scale that informs on the larger more comprehensive state of a system. Classified satellite imagery …

Science At Engineer Cantonment, Hugh H. Genoways, Brett C. Ratcliffe, Carl R. Falk, Thomas E. Labedz, Paul R. Picha, John R. Bozell

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

Conclusions

It is our contention that Thomas Say, Titian Peale, Edwin James, and their colleagues of the Stephen Long Expedition of 1819–1820 were heavily engaged in scientific research, which took the form of the first biodiversity inventory undertaken in the United States. This accomplishment has been overlooked both by biologists and historians, but it should rank among the most significant accomplishments of the expedition. The results of this inventory continue to inform us today about environmental, faunal, and floral changes along the Missouri River in an area that is known to be an ecotone between the deciduous forests of the …

Landscape Transformation During Ceramic Age And Colonial Occupations Of Barbuda, West Indies, Allison Bain, Anne-Marie Faucher, Lisa M. Kennedy, Allison R. Leblanc, Michael J. Burn, Rebecca Boger, Sophia Perdikaris

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

This research documented the history of landscape transformation on the island of Barbuda in the Lesser Antilles, Caribbean through cross-disciplinary research approaches. Excavations confirmed a human presence for the seasonal exploitation of conch meat and other mollusks during the Archaic Age (c.3000–500 BC), but more substantial impacts to terrestrial ecosystems likely began during the Ceramic Age (c.500 BC–AD 1500). Our combined sedimentary and charcoal records revealed that human-induced environmental transformations began with Ceramic Age peoples as they cleared vegetation for settlements and gardens with intentional burning. Sedimentary charcoal indicated a dramatic decline in fire during post-Ceramic Age abandonment, continuing through …

“Beyond Sisterhood There Is Still Racism, Colonialism And Imperialism!” Negotiating Gender, Ethnicity And Power In Madagascar Mangrove Conservation, Manon Lefèvre

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Understanding women’s experiences of mangrove forest conservation in the Global South is important because mangrove forests are a crucial defense against climate change, and are also increasingly the targets of global climate change policies. The intervention of postcolonial feminist theory combined with feminist political ecology has the potential to bring forward women’s seldom-heard experiences of climate change in these valuable ecosystems. This work supports previous feminist political ecology scholarship focused on understanding women’s complicated relationships to the environment and the gendered effects of climate change policies, while challenging dominant conservation discourse around women as a monolithic group. This thesis focuses …

Vulnerability Of Protected Areas To Human Encroachment, Climate Change And Fire In The Fragmented Tropical Forests Of West Africa, Francis Kwabena Dwomoh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Upper Guinean region of West Africa is home to some of the most globally significant tropical biodiversity hotspots, providing ecosystem services that are crucial for the region’s socio-economic and environmental wellbeing. Nonetheless, following decades of human-caused destruction of natural habitats, protected areas currently remain the only significant refugia of original vegetation relics in landscapes that are highly fragmented. Aside from having strong geographic variation in land use, climate, vegetation, and human population, the region has also experienced remarkable biophysical and socio-economic changes in recent decades. All these factors influence the fire regime and the vulnerability of forests within protected …

Accounting For Spatial Autocorrelation In Modeling The Distribution Of Water Quality Variables, Lorrayne Miralha

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Several studies in hydrology have reported differences in outcomes between models in which spatial autocorrelation (SAC) is accounted for and those in which SAC is not. However, the capacity to predict the magnitude of such differences is still ambiguous. In this thesis, I hypothesized that SAC, inherently possessed by a response variable, influences spatial modeling outcomes. I selected ten watersheds in the USA and analyzed them to determine whether water quality variables with higher Moran’s I values undergo greater increases in the coefficient of determination (R²) and greater decreases in residual SAC (rSAC) after spatial modeling. I compared non-spatial ordinary …

From Rhetoric To Response: Climate Change, Conflict, And Development In Karamoja, Uganda, Daniel Abrahams

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the broad question: How do the discourses of climate change and conflict travel across time and space to become policy, programming, and ultimately a development initiative that exist on the ground? To answer this question, I broke the research into three separate papers. The first examines how the US policy community approaches, understands and seeks to address the discourses of climatesecurity. The second examines the ways in which climate change affects conflict outcomes in Karamoja, Uganda. And the third, using the efforts of Mercy Corps in Karamoja as a case study, examines the realities and opportunities in …

Managing Mining Pollution: The Case Of Water Quality Governance In The Transboundary Kootenai/Y, Ashley Juric

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis addresses current water quality management challenges in the transboundary Kootenai/y River Basin, and how these challenges are shaped by historical, economic, political, and social factors. The water quality of this basin, both in the United State and Canada, has been severely affected by coal mining that has occurred in British Columbia over the last hundred years and continues to be threatened by several proposed mining expansion projects. The goals of this research are to uncover the forces shaping water management and to determine the potential for interested and affected parties to participate in crafting water quality protection measures. …

Analysis Of Land Use/Land Cover Change Impacts Upon Ecosystem Services In Montane Tropical Forest Of Rwanda: Forest Carbon Assessment And Redd+ Preparedness, Mcard Joseph Mlotha

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Changes in forest cover especially changes within tropical forests, affect global climate change, together with ecosystems and forest carbon. Forests play a key role in both carbon emission and carbon sequestration. Efforts to reduce emissions through reduced deforestation and degradation of forests have become a common discussion among scientists and politicians under the auspices of the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD Programme). This dissertation research assessed the impacts of land use land cover change upon ecosystem services from a protected area focusing on forest carbon distribution and vegetation mapping using remote sensing and …