The Impact Of Local Tax Burdens On In-Migration In The Intermountain West, 2011-2020, Katharine Johanna Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study examines the role that local tax revenues and spending played in migration to cities in the Intermountain West from 2011 to 2020. Decades of research on migration to the region have examined migration responses to natural amenities and socioeconomic characteristics of cities, counties, and states in the region. However, despite prior findings’ indications that local fiscal factors play as important of a part in migration decisions as local amenities do, little research has examined the role that local taxes and spending, in addition to natural amenities, have had on migration decisions in the Intermountain West. Almost 90 percent …

The Effect Of Place Attachment And Leisure Identity On Stewardship Participation In The Rattlesnake National Recreation Area And Wilderness, Elena Rene Thomas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As outdoor recreation participation increases in the U.S., and many communities in the American West are experiencing rising amenity migration, park and protected area managers face significant challenges to balance both providing for visitors’ desired experiences and protecting the natural resources on which these experiences depend. Confronted with declining management capacity, agencies are increasingly looking to engage both newer and established recreationists in stewardship behaviors to help maintain these areas and improve human-environment relationships. One barrier to community involvement in stewardship efforts is the need to better understand the connection between recreationists’ antecedent conditions and their motivations to steward. Past …

All Hat & No Cow, Jesse Blumenthal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My thesis work, All Hat & No Cowhas been an exploration of End Stage Capitalism and Art/life in the American post-industrial Intermountain West. The research has been presented in one suite with three parts; a Sonic Ecosystem, Community Collaborative Foundry, and Mobile Blacksmithing School. Each of these activities present windows into ongoing (some career long) projects that comprise a diverse practice; different tracks on the same album. The three parts in the suite include technological progressions via the materials and process as the narrative arcs of societal “progression”. Structural welding, architectural blacksmithing, andcommercial foundry work emerged out of industrial …

Predictive Spatial Modeling Of Wildfire Occurrence And Poaching Events Related To Siberian Tiger Conservation In Southwest Primorye, Russian Far East, Conor N. Phelan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) populations worldwide have been drastically reduced in number over the past several decades. The Primorye region of the Russian Far East remains one of the final strongholds for the estimated 400 Siberian tigers remaining in the wild. As a flagship species, Siberian tigers play a crucial socio-economic role in helping agencies and non-profits to motivate, fund, and implement broader conservation efforts. Even while defended by organizations such as the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Siberian tigers in Primorye face an onslaught of threats to their continued existence. Profound land use changes due to the …

Volunteering For Vegetables: Community Agriculture And The Prospects For Building A More Democratic Food System, Kali Orton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Scholars and activists hold varied ideas about what a more just and equitable food system might look like. Food democracy, one of these alternative food system theories, centers around the idea that all people should have equal opportunity to meaningfully contribute to the shaping of their food systems. Community farms, due to their socially-oriented qualities, present one possibility for people to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to function as food citizens and build food democracy.

This research explores and seeks to inform food democracy theory through case studies of two urban community farms – one in Missoula, Montana, and …

Sms Parent Action Intervention (Span): A Pilot Study To Assess The Feasibility Of Using Text Messaging To Promote Child Health On An American Indian Reservation, Julia M. Malich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abstract

Purpose: Childhood obesity and its associated health risks are widely recognized as a major public health crisis in the United States (Johnson & Johnson, 2014; Proctor, 2008; Rogers et al, 2013; Vinci et al, 2016) and worldwide (Elías-Boneta, Toro, Garcia, Torres, & Palacios, 2015). Among children in low-income families, American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) children have the highest prevalence of obesity (21.1%) compared to other racial/ethnic groups (14.74% overall) (Pan et al, 2015). Parents play an important role in introducing healthy foods and encouraging physical activity in young children (Birch & Ventura, 2009; Lindsay et al., 2006; Natale et al., …

Beyond The Bike; Identity And Belonging Of Free Cycles Members, Caitlyn Lewis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A qualitative analysis was conducted at the community bicycle shop, Free Cycles, in order to examine participants’ identities and belonging within a community of practice. Semi-structured interviews with 19 members of the community and 50 hours of participant observation were conducted. Data analysis followed the grounded theory methodology of Strauss and Corbin (1990). Four research questions were proposed to examine the ways participants at Free Cycles identified with the bicycle-related practices of bicycle riding and maintenance, co-constructed the collective organizational identity, and developed a sense of belonging within the community amongst other members. The constructs of identity and belonging were …

School Change For Sustainability, Ryder Delaloye

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The welfare of current and future generations is diminished due to unprecedented levels of ecological degradation that is a result of accelerating levels of per capita consumption. Sustainability education is being widely embraced as an applied strategy for addressing both unchecked consumption and environmental degradation (Brown, 2003). Yet, little is known about how schools adopt and implement sustainability education. The means by which to engage and foster sustainability education is not well researched. This qualitative research study seeks to address the following research question: How did students and faculty at each school site go about the process of creating and …

Participatory Web Gis Design – A Sustainable Recreation Decision Support System For Missoula County, Nathanael R. Wold

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sustainable recreation ensures that local communities benefit from the effects of recreation. A recreation decision support system (RDSS) is a common way for people to gather information about an area they are about to visit. This research explores: 1) how well can local representatives’ knowledge concerning appropriate recreation behaviors be incorporated into a WebGIS that will serve as a RDSS, 2) what layers, activities, and information do participants want to include in a RDSS, and 3) how well does the ArcGIS Online perform in incorporating representatives’ knowledge of areas of significance for a RDSS?

Recreationalists in Missoula County, Montana, have …

Assessing Household Drinking Water Needs: Reaching Many One Water Filter At A Time In Los Robles, Nicaragua, Erinkate E. Springer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water quality and water scarcity have dominated international health and environmental management initiatives for decades because of the devastating impacts poor water quality has on child mortality and general public well-being, particularly in developing countries. Non-profit organizations, private utilities, and government agencies have invested significant financial resources and time to increase access to improved water sources in low-income countries. However, the sustainability of water improvement project benefits have been disappointing due to a lack of community and household capacity to operate and maintain introduced water systems. This paper evaluates a community/household based water improvement project introduced by a small non-governmental …

'This Disc Is Not For A Bird Bath, It's For My Tractor': Exploring Gender, Sustainable Agriculture, And Networks In Western Montana, Eva Kathryn Rocke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Women’s presence in agriculture as farmers, consumers, advocates, and activists has become ever more apparent over the last two decades as census data, popular media, and academic literature increasingly reflect their work. Many of the farmers in western Montana practicing sustainable agriculture are women and have built relationships with other women farmers in the region through existing agriculture-focused organizations like Homegrown and the Western Montana Growers’ Cooperative. Even with the strong presence of these organizations, some women farmers feel there is potential for the formalization of a women farmer network in western Montana that would increase the opportunities for socialization …

Community Resilience Training Project Proposal, Delyla Wilson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Community Resilience Training (CRT) Project Proposal is a design for the creation and implementation of a multi-level, adaptive curriculum designed to improve community resilience to disasters and other major disruption. Grounded in chaos theory and the complexity paradigm of disaster response, the CRT program is designed to provide information at the community level to promote change throughout the disaster preparedness, response, relief, and recovery process. The CRT project incorporates permaculture technology, wilderness medicine protocols, community organizing skills, and transnational advocacy competencies with traditional community knowledge to create a culturally specific training curriculum. Through the research process, community knowledge and …

Assessing Ethnobotanical Knowledge And Resources To Develop A Sustainable Management Plan For The Lokaro Reserve In Southeast, Madagascar, Ashley Davis Lehman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This research assessed ethnobotanical knowledge in two villages and locally important plant resources in an adjacent private, littoral forest, the Lokaro Reserve in southeastern Madagascar. Two hundred and five plant species were identified through “walk-in-the-woods” interviews with three local experts (an ombiasa, a traditional healer) and two material healers who identified four distinct vegetation communities within the Reserve (lowland forest, higher forest, grassland, and rocky coast). I collected herbarium specimens and identified all plant species found in the four vegetation types through use of random sample plots. I gathered information about local plant uses through a village map-making exercise in …

Cultural Characteristics Of Western Educational Structures And Their Effects On Local Ways Of Knowing, Cheryl L. Woolsey Des Jarlais

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This critical ethnography is a study of how the interfaces between Western educational structures and Native cultural structures function in the daily operations of a privately owned school in a Native community, how these functions have evolved, drawbacks and strengths of both Western and Native cultural structures, and current challenges in relating to the mixtures of philosophy, value systems and socialization expectations of these systems.

The review of literature exposed a variety of assumptions regarding individualism, bureaucratization, homogenization, universalism, meritocracy, and rationalization reflected in Western educational structures. The study done at Valley Grove Mission School illuminated the assumptions and expectations …

Moving Boxes Closer To Home: The Role Of Sysco Corporation In Food System Localization, David Scott Kennedy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Increasing demand for local food by foodservice establishments creates new opportunities and challenges for the local food movement. While there is considerable potential for local suppliers to sell more product volume closer to home, the business needs of foodservice establishments may not be compatible with direct marketing approaches that have fueled the growth of the movement. Foodservice establishments typically rely on distributors to provide them with the majority of their food. Drawing on the success of direct marketing, new indirect marketing approaches that link producers and consumers through intermediaries are increasingly advanced within food system localization. The dominance of SYSCO …

Nomad School, Laura Penelope Baquero

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Baquero, Laura, M.A., Autumn 2006 Fine Arts A Journey of Self Transformation Dr. James Kriley Dr. Randy Bolton As a result of social and family expectations I was pushed to pursue a lifestyle where my passion and talent for the Arts did not have a place. Nomad School is a personal and artistic research project in which I took a life changing experience of living in a nomad community, to develop a body of work that would tell the story of my personal transformation into the artist that I always wanted to be. I used journals and sketchbooks as my …

The Role Of Trust And Ownership In Community Wildfire Protection Planning In West Central Montana, Paul R. Lachapelle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Community-Based Monitoring A Strategy For Public Engagement In Natural Resource Issues, Paul BeìLanger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Play Matters| Playground Hoop, Streetball, And Possibility In Racialized, Contested Terrain, Rich Roberts

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Sawtooths To Selkirks| Connecting The Wild In Idaho, Montana, And British Columbia, Joshua W. Burnim

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Examining The Built Environment Of Missoula's Central Business District., Jill M. Patrick

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Open Space In Dupont Washington, Bonnie Chisholm Gee

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Migration And Development On Niue Island, Joslin Annelies Heyn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Housing Can Be Both Green And Affordable| Innovative Projects Demonstrate How, Elizabeth V. Hands

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Resource Advisory Councils: An Investigation Of Factors Contributing To An Effective Government-Mandated Collaborative, Camisha Booth

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in collaborative decision making processes in natural resource management, especially in the Western United States. Collaborative groups have had some remarkable successes, primarily through local, place-based groups. Realizing the potential in collaboration, many government agencies are beginning to utilize them in attempts to reduce public dissatisfaction with land management decisions. There are, however, critics of collaboration and many are concerned with government attempts at utilizing this form of public participation.

Resource Advisory Councils (RACs) are an example of a government mandated collaborative process. RACs consist of 15 members from three specific …

A Plan For Success, Barbara A. Kearley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Community Participation Within The Usfs's Stewardship Contracting Pilot Program A Comparative Study, Bobby Grillo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

"Just Trying To Spread The Groove" Creating And Sustaining Community Online At Phishhook.Com, Daniel J. Lair

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Conservation Preservation And Restoration Plan For The Alta Ski Area Alta Utah U.S.A., Rebecca F. Lawrence

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Approaches In Natural Resource Decision-Making: A Southeast Alaskan Perspective, Kimberly S. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.