Digital Commons Network^™

Micro-Topological Effects On Redox-Sensitive Nutrient Availability Of Manganese, Iron, Sulfur, And Phosphorus, Lindsey C. Ruhl

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The working hypothesis for this study was that small elevation differences in field depressions affect the availability of redox active nutrients because the bottom of the depression remains waterlogged and in reducing conditions longer than the edge of the depression. Mn, Fe, S and P availabilities were investigated in a field depression with a 20 meter radius and 0.5 meter depth on a flood-prone, organic vegetable farm. One depression (Depression 1) was sampled seven times during three field seasons (May 2012-June 2014). The last two dates included sampling in an additional three depressions to allow a comparison among depressions on …

Lake Trout Spawning Site Use In Lake Champlain & The Development Of The Binomial Rolling Residence Test, Victoria M. Pinheiro

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Lake trout populations were extirpated from the lower four Great Lakes by 1960 and from Lake Champlain by 1900. The decline of lake trout populations fueled a wave of restoration-based research that spanned the Great Lakes and filled in many of the gaps in our knowledge of lake trout behavior and ecology. However, remarkably little is known about lake trout spawning behavior, even less about sex-specific differences in spawning site use. Lake trout use specific spawning sites, and may return to the same site year after year. More males are caught on spawning sites than females and are present at …

Exchange Mechanisms In Macroscopic Ordered Organic Magnetic Semiconductors, Naveen Rawat

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Small molecule organic semiconductors such as phthalocyanines and their derivatives represent a very interesting alternative to inorganic semiconductor materials for the development of flexible electronic devices such as organic thin field effect transistors, organic Light Emitting Diodes and photo-voltaic cells. Phthalocyanine molecules can easily accommodate a variety of metal atoms as well in the central core of the molecule, resulting in wide range of magnetic properties. Exploration of optical properties of organic crystalline semiconductors thin films is challenging due to sub-micron grain sizes and the presence of numerous structural defects, disorder and grain boundaries. However, this can be overcome by …

The Role Of Motivation And Curriculum In Shaping Pro-Sustainable Attitudes And Behaviors In Students, Kathleen Bamford

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Sustainability is an area of growing pertinence as our future and the future of our planet depends on its acceptance and application. Determining patterns in pro-sustainable attitudes and behaviors, and revealing motivations behind these behaviors have important implications for the future of sustainability education. The primary objective of this study is to discover the relationships between educational experience and sustainability attitudes and behaviors in elementary school students. A secondary objective is to determine the motivation behind pro-sustainability behaviors and to establish the role this plays in educational programs. The study utilizes mixed methodology through two modes of data collection: 1. …

New Insights For The Future Of Lake Champlain: Practical Approaches And Useful Tools For Grappling With Uncertainty And Weighing Trade-Offs In Watershed Management., Philip Halteman

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The effective management of non-point source nutrient pollution continues to prove elusive. Though the scientific literature is unequivocal that all anthropogenic land uses contribute to non-point source (NPS) pollution, variable levels of contribution over time and across location and complex relationships between cost and effect make finding technologically effective management solutions difficult. In addition, these solutions are implemented in a world of scarce resources, diverse and often competing concerns and values, and intense public scrutiny. Clearly, making the best possible decision about how to manage NPS pollution under these conditions is not simple. My overarching goal was to develop and …

Monitor: Automation Tools For Landscape-Scale Acoustic Monitoring, Jonathan Edward Katz

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Climate change coupled with land-use change will likely alter habitats and affect state parameters of the animal populations that dwell in them. Affected parameters are anticipated to include site occupancy and abundance, population range, and phenophase cycles (e.g., arrival dates on breeding grounds for migrant bird species). Detecting these changes will require monitoring many sites for many years, a process that is well suited for an automated system. We developed and tested monitoR, an R package that is designed for long-term, multi-taxa automated passive acoustic monitoring programs. monitoR correctly identified presence for black-throated green warbler and ovenbird in 64% and …

Reverse Engineering The Human Brain: An Evolutionary Computation Approach To The Analysis Of Fmri, Nicholas Allgaier

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The field of neuroimaging has truly become data rich, and as such, novel analytical methods capable of gleaning meaningful information from large stores of imaging data are in high demand. Those methods that might also be applicable on the level of individual subjects, and thus potentially useful clinically, are of special interest. In this dissertation we introduce just such a method, called nonlinear functional mapping (NFM), and demonstrate its application in the analysis of resting state fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) from a 242-subject subset of the IMAGEN project, a European study of risk-taking behavior in adolescents that includes longitudinal …

Discourse As Social Process In Outdoor Recreation And Natural Resource Management: Arguing, Constructing, And Performing, Monika Marie Derrien

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the language-based, discursive processes through which meanings and experiences are socially constituted in outdoor recreation and natural resource environments. Language use and discourse are seen as interactive, constructive processes, approached through the theoretical perspectives of argumentation, social constructionism, and performance.

Three qualitative studies, based in data collected at Acadia National Park and forest-related sites throughout Vermont, comprise this dissertation. The first study uses rhetorical analysis to examine the ways National Park Service managers and community leaders argue for the meanings and management of dark night skies in and around Acadia. The second study examines how national park …

How Wildlife Information, Recreation Involvement And Demographic Characteristics Influence Public Acceptability Of Development, Jessica Espenshade

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Increasing development like roads and houses will alter the future landscape of Vermont. Development provides important resources for people and society, but also results in consequences for wildlife and opportunities for recreation. Managing development requires information on the public's acceptability of development and how acceptability is shaped by information on various consequences. In this study, I examined three questions: 1) What is the public's acceptability of development? 2) Does wildlife information influence public acceptability of development and 3) Is the maximum amount of acceptable development influenced by views about wildlife, involvement in recreation, and demographic factors? I surveyed 9,000 households …

An Embodied Approach To Evolving Robust Visual Classifiers, Karol Zieba

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

From the very creation of the term by Czech writer Karel Capek in 1921, a "robot" has been synonymous with an artificial agent possessing a powerful body and cogitating mind. While the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics have made progress into the creation of such an android, the goal of a cogitating robot remains firmly outside the reach of our technological capabilities. Cognition has proved to be far more complex than early AI practitioners envisioned. Current methods in Machine Learning have achieved remarkable successes in image categorization through the use of deep learning. However, when presented with novel …

Investigation Of A Ring Fragmentation Reaction For The Synthesis Of Tethered Aldehyde Ynones And Medium Sized Cyclic Ynones And Ynolides, Ali Bayir

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The fragmentation of γ-silyloxy-β-hydroxy-α-diazoesters to provide tethered aldehyde ynoates was discovered and developed in Prof. Brewer's laboratory. This reaction is a Lewis acid mediated heterolytic cleavage of the Cβ-γ bond of a γ-silyloxy-β-hydroxy-α-diazocarbonyl functional group array contained in a ring compound.

This dissertation describes a further study of this ring fragmentation reaction and application of this fragmentation to the preparation of synthetically useful organic molecules. The purpose of this dissertation work was three fold. The first objective was to extend this ring fragmentation reaction to the synthesis of tethered aldehyde ynones by fragmenting various γ-silyloxy-β-hydroxy-α-diazo ketone compounds. The second objective …

Early Adoption Dynamics Of Private Sustainability Governance Initiatives: A Case Study Of The Marine Cultured-Pearl Industry, Julie Nash

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

We are witnessing a time of unprecedented human impact on the natural environment. Coral reefs, one of the most biologically diverse and productive ecosystems, are at the forefront of enduring these human impacts. Despite widespread recognition of coral reef degradation, counter measures have not reached a scale to offset the threat. The magnitude of this and other environmental issues call for a deeper understanding of the role the private sector can play in sustainable development.

In response to environmental pressures and the shortcomings of global-scale governance, private sustainability governance initiatives have developed. In the last decade, these initiatives have flourished, …

Get Real: An Examination Of The Real Food Challenge At The University Of Vermont, Jennifer Porter

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The Real Food Challenge (RFC) is a national student movement that is trying to harness student power to shift $1 billion'roughly 20% of college and university food budgets across the country towards local, ecologically sound, fair, and humane food sources, what they call "real" food, by 2020. The University of Vermont (UVM) was the fifth university in the country to sign the Real Food Campus Commitment, pledging to shift at least 20% of its own food budget towards "real" food by 2020. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the implementation of the Real Food Campus Commitment at UVM. …

Numerical Simulations Of Reacting Flow In An Inductively Coupled Plasma Torch, Maximilian Dougherty

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In the design of a thermal protection system for atmospheric entry, aerothermal heating presents a major impediment to efficient heat shield design. Recombination of atomic species in the boundary layer results in highly exothermic surface-catalyzed recombination reactions and an increase in the heat flux experienced at the surface. The degree to which these reactions increase the surface heat flux is partly a function of the heat shield material. Characterization of the catalytic behavior of these materials takes place in experimental facilities, however there is a dearth of detailed computational models for the fluid dynamic and chemical behavior of such facilities. …

The Molecular Evolution Of Non-Coding Dna And Population Ecology Of The Spiny Softshell Turtle (Apalone Spinifera) In Lake Champlain, Lucas Edward Bernacki

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

ABSTRACT

Spiny softshell turtles (Apalone spinifera) occur at the northwest limit of their range in Lake Champlain. This species, although widespread across North America, is listed as threatened in Vermont due to habitat destruction and disturbances of anthropogenic origin. The population of spiny softshell turtles in Lake Champlain is isolated from other North American populations and is considered as an independent management unit. Efforts to obtain information on the biology of spiny softshell turtles in Lake Champlain precede 1936 with conservation measures being initiated in 1987.

Methods of studying spiny softshell turtles in Lake Champlain have included direct …

Management By Crisis: Land Trust Conservation Engagement And Methods In Vermont, Louise Sopher Lintilhac

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Planning a future for the landscapes we live in can be a daunting challenge for many communities in Vermont. Conservation initiatives affect the quality of life for all community members and can be difficult if not impossible to change in the event of poor planning. Through examining stakeholder relationships with land trusts I have explored the complexities of planning processes used by land trusts in Vermont for conservation initiatives

The study involved one statewide land trust, the Vermont Land Trust, and two community land trusts, the Stowe Land Trust and the Duxbury Land Trust. I used qualitative methods including document …

Using Stable Isotope Analysis To Estimate Black Bear (Ursus Americanus) Diet In Vermont, Eliese Antona Dykstra

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The black bear (Ursus americanus) is an iconic species with cultural, economic and ecological importance in Vermont, USA. Bears exhibit a highly variable diet, and few studies have described bear diet in the state. Information on diet may provide insight into foraging behavior, thus allowing managers to better assess patterns of human-bear conflict. My objectives were to estimate the relative contribution of food items to bear diet and how factors including sex, habitat, food availability, and nuisance status describe patterns of consumption. I collected samples from bears and major food groups including C3 plants, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), corn (Zea …

Ordering And Reordering: Using Heffter Arrays To Biembed Complete Graphs, Amelia Mattern

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this paper we extend the study of Heffter arrays and the biembedding of graphs on orientable surfaces first discussed by Archdeacon in 2014. We begin with the definitions of Heffter systems, Heffter arrays, and their relationship to orientable biembeddings through current graphs. We then focus on two specific cases. We first prove the existence of embeddings for every K_(6n+1) with every edge on a face of size 3 and a face of size n. We next present partial results for biembedding K_(10n+1) with every edge on a face of size 5 and a face of size n. Finally, we …

The Interplay Between Deformation And Metamorphism During Strain Localization In The Lower Crust: Insights From Fiordland, New Zealand, Kathryn Elise Dianiska

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis, I present field, microstructural, and Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) analyses of rock fabrics from high strain zones in exposures of lower crustal Cretaceous plutons at Breaksea Entrance, Fiordland, New Zealand. The interplay between deformation and metamorphism occurs across multiple scales at the root of a continental arc. I show a series of steps in which retrogressive metamorphism is linked to the accommodation of deformation.

I define three main phases of deformation and metamorphism at Breaksea Entrance. The first phase (D1) involved emplacement of dioritic to gabbroic plutons at depths up to 60 km. The second phase (D2) …

Subsistence Under The Canopy: Agroecology, Livelihoods And Food Sovereignty Among Coffee Communities In Chiapas, Mexico, Margarita Fernandez

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

One of the most pressing challenges facing the world today is how to sustainably feed a growing population while conserving the ecosystem services we depend on. Coffee landscapes are an important site for research on agrifood systems because they reflect global-scale dynamics surrounding conservation and livelihood development. Within them, we find both what is broken in our global agrifood system, as well as the grassroots struggles that strive to change the system by building socio-ecologically resilient, sustainable livelihoods. Research shows that smallholder shade coffee farmers steward high biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services. At the same time, studies in the …

Using The Past As The Key To The Present: Informing Coastal Resource Management With Geologic Records, Benjamin D. Dejong

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Rising sea levels present an ongoing threat to communities and resources around the Chesapeake Bay, east coast, USA, where tide gauges indicate that the relative rise of sea level is approximately twice the rate of average, eustatic sea-level rise. This has significantly compromised the health and viability of salt marsh habitat on the Eastern Shore during the 20th century, and the biologists who are charged with managing coastal resources in the coming decades need to understand the nature and causes of high rates of regional sea-level rise to develop suitable adaptation plans.

Dated geologic deposits and geophysical models suggest that …

The Impact Of Ecosystem Services Knowledge On Decisions, Stephen Mark Posner

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The need to protect diverse biological resources from ongoing development pressures is one of today's most pressing environmental challenges. In response, "ecosystem services" has emerged as a conservation framework that links human economies and natural systems through the benefits that people receive from nature. In this dissertation, I investigate the science-policy interface of ecosystem services in order to understand the use of ecosystem service decision support tools and evaluate the pathways through which ecosystem services knowledge impacts decisions. In the first paper, I track an ecosystem service valuation project in California to evaluate how the project changes the social capacity …

Burst Pressure Properties And Ex Vivo Analysis Of Alginate-Based Hydrogels For Tissue Sealant Applications, Patrick Nelson Charron

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Lung diseases, cancers, and trauma can result in injury to the connective tissue lining the lung, i.e., the pleura. Pleural injuries lead to pneumothoraxes or pleural effusions, i.e., air or fluid leaking out of the lung respectively, and potential lung collapse - an immediately life threatening condition. While several bioengineered soft tissue sealants exist on the market, there is only one sealant FDA-approved for use in pulmonary surgery. In addition, very limited techniques are presented in the literature for characterizing the burst properties of hydrogel tissue sealants. For my thesis, I proposed to develop a protocol for characterizing the burst …

Promoting Time In Nature For Children: Investigating The Role Of Provider Nature Relatedness, Lindsey Gauderer

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Research has shown that time spent in and exposure to natural environments has numerous benefits for children, both physical and mental. At the same time, children face many barriers to obtaining time in the outdoors and today's youth spend less time outside than previous generations. Initiatives such as health care provider prescriptions for outdoor activity aim to encourage exposure to nature as a health intervention for children. In order to enhance the potential for success of programs such as these, factors influencing their implementation need to be assessed. This study aims to explore the impact that provider connectedness to nature, …

Effect Of Rainfall Events On The Thermal And Moisture Exposure Of Underground Electric Cables, Andrew Fuhrmann

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Cable ampacity analysis is generally performed assuming constant worst-state environmental conditions, which often correspond to a dry soil condition or to a condition with uniform ambient soil moisture content. The characteristic time scale of thermal variation in the soil is large, on the order of several weeks, and is similar to the time scale between rainfall events in many geographic locations. Intermittent rainfall events introduce significant transient fluctuations that influence the thermal conditions and moisture content around a buried cable both by increasing thermal conductivity of the soil and by increasing the moisture exposure of the cable insulation. This paper …

Studies Toward The Total Synthesis Of Subincanadine E, Corinne Marie Sadlowski

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Progress towards a concise total synthesis of subincanadine E is reported. This natural product was first isolated from the Picralima nitida cell suspension culture line in 1982 under the name pericine and later in 2002 from Aspidosperma subincanum as subincanadine E. It is the most potent compound of its class with in vitro cytotoxicity against both murine lymphoma L1210 and human epidermoid carcinoma KB cells (LD50, 0.3 ug/mL and 4.4 ug/mL, respectively) and was found to be six times more potent than codeine as an opiate agonist in a 3H-naloxone binding study (IC50, 0.6 umol/L).

The first-generation synthesis produced an …

Lexical Mechanics: Partitions, Mixtures, And Context, Jake Ryland Williams

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Highly structured for efficient communication, natural languages are complex systems. Unlike in their computational cousins, functions and meanings in natural languages are relative, frequently prescribed to symbols through unexpected social processes. Despite grammar and definition, the presence of metaphor can leave unwitting language users "in the dark," so to speak. This is not problematic, but rather an important operational feature of languages, since the lifting of meaning onto higher-order structures allows individuals to compress descriptions of regularly-conveyed information. This compressed terminology, often only appropriate when taken locally (in context), is beneficial in an enormous world of novel experience. However, what …

The Champlain Sea/Lake Champlain Transition Recorded In The Northeast Arm Of Lake Champlain, Usa-Canada, Ashliegh Theresa Belrose

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Sediment accumulated on a lakebed archives information about past climate and changes in the regional environment. Previous studies (Burgess, 2007; Koff, 2011; Palmer, 2012) in the Northeast Arm of Lake Champlain, specifically Missisquoi Bay and Saint Albans Bay, showed a period (~9,400 - 8,600 yBP) of elevated organic matter deposition in both bays, indicating a productive event that pre-dated any possible anthropogenic influence. However, the record was abruptly cut off and any documentation representing the span of time leading up to this event was not found. The elevated organic matter levels were explained as being the result of a warm, …

Experimental Investigation And Analysis Of High-Enthalpy Nitrogen Flow Over Graphite, Andrew Lutz

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The high-enthalpy flow generated by hypersonic vehicles traveling within the Earth's atmosphere inherently delivers an elevated heat flux to the vehicle surface. In addition to conductive heating, the liberated energy generated by various exothermic chemical reactions occurring at the vehicle surface further augment the total heat load. Quantifying the rates at which these reactions take place is imperative and remains a significant challenge as developers attempt to design the next generation of thermal protection systems.

This study focused on nitrogen recombination and carbon nitridation, as these reactions are ubiquitous to the most aggressive atmospheric re-entry trajectories in which carbon-based ablative …

Using Empirical Mode Decomposition To Study Periodicity And Trends In Extreme Precipitation, Noah Pfister

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Classically, we look at annual maximum precipitation series from the perspective of extreme value statistics, which provides a useful statistical distribution, but does not allow much flexibility in the context of climate change. Such distributions are usually assumed to be static, or else require some assumed information about possible trends within the data. For this study, we treat the maximum rainfall series as sums of underlying signals, upon which we perform a decomposition technique, Empirical Mode Decomposition. This not only allows the study of non-linear trends in the data, but could give us some idea of the periodic forces that …