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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
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Re-Modeling The Interior: Spatial Methods And Policy Revisions To Improve Inventory And Designation Of Blm’S Areas Of Critical Environmental Concern, Amy H. Katz
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages a vast amount of public land in the western United States, most of which they currently manage for multiple uses. Specific conservation and management of these lands could mitigate climate change impacts and contribute to the global initiative to conserve 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030. Particularly, the agency can achieve this through more effective administration of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), a designation that is prioritized under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). To do so requires updated regulations that set clear parameters around inventory and designation, …
Buffalo In The Mountains: Mapping Evidence Of Historical Bison Prescence And Bison Hunting In Glacier National Park, Kyle Langley
Buffalo In The Mountains: Mapping Evidence Of Historical Bison Prescence And Bison Hunting In Glacier National Park, Kyle Langley
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This study explores 10,000+ years of bison presence and bison hunting within Glacier National Park. Despite significant faunal evidence of bison presence in the area, few people today associate bison with Glacier National Park. Previous archaeological studies have found bison faunal remains and evidence of bison hunting throughout the eastern half of the park going back thousands of years. Furthermore, local tribes such as the Kootenai and Blackfeet maintain oral traditions that detail ancestral hunting strategies and practice in the region. This project reviews all of these sources to contextualize the archaeological signatures of bison and tell the story of …
Mapping Ethnophysiographies: An Investigation Of Toponyms And Land Cover Of Missoula County, Montana, Emily L. Cahoon
Mapping Ethnophysiographies: An Investigation Of Toponyms And Land Cover Of Missoula County, Montana, Emily L. Cahoon
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This thesis investigates the ethnophysiography of Missoula County, Montana via place names. Toponyms and landscape have been observed to have a relationship that can be studied through many lenses. Ethnophysiography, the study of how language and landscape relate to each other via human conceptualization, is a lens that was applied to this thesis because it recognizes the embodied information that toponyms carry and investigates landscape accordingly. Thus, the following research seeks to understand if ethnophysiographic diversity exists between toponyms in the Salish and English languages of Missoula County, Montana by analyzing place names and land cover in GIS and analyzing …
Change Is The Only Constant: A Snowpack Retention Analysis And Climate Vulnerability Road Map For The Skalkaho Creek Sub-Basin, Zachary Freeman Goodwin
Change Is The Only Constant: A Snowpack Retention Analysis And Climate Vulnerability Road Map For The Skalkaho Creek Sub-Basin, Zachary Freeman Goodwin
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Climate change is impacting the whole of North America, although the impacts differ depending on regional geography. In the Intermountain West, climate change is contributing to lower overall snowpack totals and diminished late season streamflows. These changes will likely contribute to vulnerabilities in how much water is available to irrigators, municipalities, and fisheries dependent upon a consistent yearly flow of meltwater. This paper explores how snowpack retention has changed via the NASA dataset Daymet, which provides gridded estimates of weather parameters including Snow Water Equivalent in the Bitterroot River Basin of western Montana. This analysis showed that snowpack retention from …
A Cartographic Workflow Manual For Endangered Species Conservation, Martin P. Viereckl
A Cartographic Workflow Manual For Endangered Species Conservation, Martin P. Viereckl
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
In response to global consumer demand for rare and exotic wildlife products, poaching of endangered species has become pervasive around the world (Eliason 1999). Despite the enactment of CITES, and other international efforts to protect vulnerable species from overexploitation, the global market for illegal wildlife products is estimated as high as $20-billion a year industry (Wyler 2008). Within important wildlife habitat sites, law enforcement struggle to curb rampant poaching that threatens the ultimate survival of many endangered species (Jachmann 2008; Rowcliffe 2004). Law-enforcement agencies responsible for protecting wildlife from poachers often lack geospatial tools that could greatly improve the effectiveness …
Chipping Through Time: The Evolution Of Lithic Spatial Organization At The Bridge River Pithouse Village, British Columbia, Ethan P. Ryan
Chipping Through Time: The Evolution Of Lithic Spatial Organization At The Bridge River Pithouse Village, British Columbia, Ethan P. Ryan
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Archaeological investigations at Housepit 54 within the Bridge River site have, to date, exposed 15 discreet floors primarily dating to ca. 1500-1000 cal. B.P. In this thesis, the spatial distributions of lithic artifacts from every floor are examined. Questions will be addressed specifically towards formation processes and the potential relationships between the patterning of lithic distributions as they relate to hearth-centered activity areas or domestic areas and fluctuations in estimated population. In addition, this thesis explores spatial organization as a cultural trait or concept that can be transmitted through time. Using the same methodological and theoretical approach for each floor, …
Coupling Biophysical Complexity And Forest Metabolism In A Floodplain Landscape, Peter Davis
Coupling Biophysical Complexity And Forest Metabolism In A Floodplain Landscape, Peter Davis
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Floodplains are biophysically complex systems that are considered among the most productive and biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Until recently, quantitative assessment of the relationship between complexity and terrestrial production has been constrained by technological limitation. To address how floodplain biophysical complexity and ecosystem function are related, I employed remote sensing, GIS, and spatial analyses to quantify and couple metrics of complexity and terrestrial production, as well as explore the relationship among complexity, vegetation structural diversity, and terrestrial primary productivity. The study site is a 6.75-km by 1.75-km portion of the Bitterroot River floodplain near Carlton, MT upon which 551 sample …
Exploring The Potential For Geographic Transportation Modeling To Improve Food Assistance: A Case Study Of The Missoula Food Bank, Mary Buford French
Exploring The Potential For Geographic Transportation Modeling To Improve Food Assistance: A Case Study Of The Missoula Food Bank, Mary Buford French
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Over the last ten years, the Missoula Food Bank has seen a greater need for its services leading to funding shortfalls. To meet the needs of an increasing number of clients with a limited budget, the Missoula Food Bank must look for ways to modify its operations while increasing efficiency of its services. As the Food Bank budget is used to acquire food and currently also transport it from warehouse locations to the food pantry in a crowded space, reducing distances and transport cost of hauling food would in turn free up funds to obtain more food. At the same …
Spatial Patterns And Physical Factors Of Smokejumper Utilization Since 2004, Tyson A. Atkinson
Spatial Patterns And Physical Factors Of Smokejumper Utilization Since 2004, Tyson A. Atkinson
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This research examines patterns of aerial smokejumper usage in the United States. I assess landscape and environmental factors of their deployment using a detailed nine-year record of smokejumper activity in combination with terrain, fuels, and transportation network data. Specifically, the research seeks to identify commonalities in location (proximity), terrain, fuels, fire occurrence, and accessibility of smokejumper actions that inform current usage and identify opportunities for improved utilization. Terrain parameters (steep, rugged, inaccessible) of the western U.S. were classified and a baseline travel time grid was created (30 meter resolution). Fires in which smokejumpers responded were compared with all fires that …
The Influence Of Environmental Variables On Predicting Rare-Plant Habitat In The Nez Perce National Forest, Thor Burbach
The Influence Of Environmental Variables On Predicting Rare-Plant Habitat In The Nez Perce National Forest, Thor Burbach
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Habitat suitability modeling is widely-used in both biogeography and ecology to characterize the biophysical requirements and distribution of plant and animal species. Many of these modeling efforts use different variants of essentially the same topo-climatic variables (elevation, slope, aspect, precipitation, and temperature). However, these commonly used variables may not sufficiently explain the distribution of rare-plant species, which may have additional habitat needs. The aim of this project was to determine guidelines for selection of variables to include in statistical modeling efforts to predict suitable rare-plant habitat. Additionally, how background extent, data resolution, sample size, and various ranking criteria effect environmental …
Impacts Of A Teacher Geospatial Technologies Professional Development Project On Student Spatial Literacy Skills And Interests In Science And Technology In Grade 5 – 12 Classrooms Across Montana, Jeffrey Willard Crews
Impacts Of A Teacher Geospatial Technologies Professional Development Project On Student Spatial Literacy Skills And Interests In Science And Technology In Grade 5 – 12 Classrooms Across Montana, Jeffrey Willard Crews
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This study utilized participants in a teacher geospatial technologies professional development project. Data was collected on the impact this professional development model, and the corresponding classroom implementation of the curriculum, had on student spatial literacy skills and students' interest in science and technology. Twenty teachers from across Montana with demonstrated competency in the use of geospatial technologies were selected for participation in this project. These twenty teachers were broken into two cohorts, cohort one served as the experimental group and cohort two served as the control group. Students within these classrooms ranging in grades 5 - 12, took two assessments, …
Geodatabase Design For Resource And Land Management Gis: Missoula Field Office Blm Case Study, Mark English
Geodatabase Design For Resource And Land Management Gis: Missoula Field Office Blm Case Study, Mark English
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in the process of improving their geographic information system (GIS). The main intention is to upgrade their data and present their employees with the geospatial means necessary to accomplish their resource and land management responsibilities. Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI„µ) designed the geodatabase model, which provides multiple advantages in organization, management, and maintenance of geographic data. The geodatabase model implements advanced relationships between geospatial features and database tables, creates platforms available in organization and editing, and instills GIS functionality to ensure data integrity. The main goal of this work is to investigate the …