Digital Commons Network^™

Association Between Baseline Field Test Performance And Match Physical Performance In D1 Female Soccer Players, Benito Joel Cecenas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Fitness testing is utilized by numerous soccer programs as a means for evaluation of player physical capacity. Previous literature has shown Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1 (YYIR1) performance is associated with match physical performance in elite adult and youth soccer players. Until now, these relationships have not been investigated in the collegiate soccer setting, despite the YYIR1 being regularly utilized at the collegiate level to determine eligibility for competition, influence playing time, and to assess adaptation to training programs. For these reasons the association between the YYIR1 and match physical performance was investigated in women’s collegiate soccer.

Aims: …

Irrigation In The Western United States: Occurrence, Impacts, And Sustainability, David Granger Ketchum

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Irrigation represents our greatest intervention in the hydrological cycle, accounting for over 80% of extracted freshwater in the Western U.S. Despite its economic and ecological importance, irrigation’s spatial and temporal occurrence, magnitude, impacts on streamflow, and response during water shortages has not been characterized in our region. The major objective of this dissertation was to systematically assess irrigation over the Western US to answer the following questions: 1) Where and when does irrigation occur within the study region? 2) How has the intensity, area, and distribution of irrigation changed over the course of the past 35 years? 3) What impact …

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 …

Evaluating The Use Of Environmental Tracers To Reduce Conceptual Model Uncertainty Of Hydrogeologic Models, Andrew Nordberg, Jon Graham, W. Payton Gardner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Environmental tracer concentrations for CFC12, SF6, and tritium are used in groundwater simulations to assess the ability of these tracers to reduce conceptual model uncertainty due to uncertainty of a site’s geologic and recharge characterization. The resulting groundwater simulations are characterized by site-specific hydrologic and geologic data, and with coordination from a field team with years of knowledge about the site. First-order (conceptual) uncertainty is directly addressed by using a stochastic modeling approach for spatial variability of the proposed subsurface configurations. Simulations of environmental tracer concentrations and water levels are used to assess six alternate conceptual models that are based …

Linking Life History And Population Dynamics Of An Ice-Associated Seabird, The Kittlitz’S Murrelet (Brachyramphus Brevirostris), Michelle Lynn Kissling

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mechanistic understanding of population dynamics requires linking population change and demographic processes. However, for some species, accurate estimation of population parameters can be difficult owing to their life histories, resulting in reduced or biased inference. Mobile species that are not territorial or use dynamic habitats are susceptible to estimation problems arising from variable exposure to sampling, or temporary emigration, and common approaches to account for it like robust design are not feasible. The outcome is a population mismatch whereby the statistical population, or what was sampled, is not aligned with the biological population, which is what we want to know …

Predicting Mountain Lion Resource Selection And Abundance In North America, William Connor O'Malley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The relationship between habitat quality and density is well documented in lower trophic levels but to what extent it can be extended to higher trophic levels is unknown. I tested the relationship between habitat quality, home-range size and density using a wide-ranging, well-studied, top carnivore, the mountain lion (Puma concolor). First, I created a second-order resource selection function (RSF) for mountain lions in their current North American range using GPS collar data from 476 individuals in 20 study sites and remotely-sensed landscape data. I used the RSF and home range estimates derived from collared animals to quantify mountain …

Evaluating The Relative Influence Of Soil Water Potential, Soil Moisture, And Vapor Pressure Deficit On Semi-Arid Vegetation Dynamics, Kayla R. Jamerson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Knowledge of vegetation’s response to soil water availability and atmospheric demand is critical to understanding the impact of climate change on semi-arid ecosystems. However, limited field-based research has been conducted to assess the relative importance of these drivers and previous research has simplified the assessment of soil water availability by relying on soil volumetric water content (VWC) as a primary control on plant growth, which, as opposed to soil water potential (Ψsoil), does not account for the effects of soil texture on plant available water. To address these gaps, we compared remotely sensed indicators of vegetation response to field based …

Synthetic Aperture Radar Observations At Salar De Pajonales, Chile, Michael A. A. Mcinenly

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Remotely sensed microwave radars provide the spatial and temporal coverage needed to improve our understanding of the relationship between moisture content and salt pan mineralogy and, ultimately, climate variability. Moisture content in the surface and near-surface crusts found in salt pan environments, such as salt pan, has a significant impact on the backscatter values recorded by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. This is because moisture affects the dielectric constant and surface roughness of the saline surface, which in turn influences the amount of electromagnetic energy reflected back to the SAR sensor. Changes in backscatter values are attributed to seasonal and …

Facilitating Aquatic Invasive Species Management Using Satellite Remote Sensing And Machine Learning Frameworks, Sean C. Carter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The urgent decision-making needs of invasive species managers can be better met by the integration of biodiversity big data with large-domain models and environmental data products in the form of new workflows and tools that facilitate data utilization across platforms. Timely risk assessments allow for the spatial prioritization of monitoring that could streamline invasive species management paradigms and invasive species’ ability to prevent irreversible damage, such that decision makers can focus surveillance and intervention efforts where they are likely to be most effective under budgetary and resource constraints. I present a workflow that generates rapid spatial risk assessments on aquatic …

Small Area Estimation Of Postfire Tree Density In The Western United States Using An Annualized Forest Inventory, George Chilton Gaines Iii

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildfire activity in the western United States is expanding and concern for the declining extent of postfire tree cover in many western forests is mounting. Accurate estimates of postfire seedling, sapling, and large tree density following wildfire are critical for postfire forest management planning and monitoring forest dynamics. National forest inventory programs, such as the US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, can provide vegetation data for direct spatiotemporal domain estimation of postfire tree density, but sample observations within domains of administrative utility are often few to none. This research investigates indirect domain estimators, which borrow sample data …

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, …

Investigating Surface Temperature From First Principles: Seedling Survival, Microclimate Buffering, And Implications For Forest Regeneration, Robin Rank

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Forests are extremely important ecosystems with large impacts on global water, energy, and biogeochemical cycling, and they provide numerous ecosystems services to human populations. Even though these systems consist of long-lived vegetation, forests are constantly experiencing changes to their extent and composition through the interacting forces of disturbance dynamics and climate change. In semi-arid landscapes like the western United States, patterns of recurring wildfire and subsequent seedling recruitment and forest regeneration are important in establishing the distribution of forests on the landscape. In this context, climate, hydrology, and existing vegetation all act together to limit the current and potential range …

Investigating The Spatial Behavior And Habitat Use Of The Matschie’S Tree-Kangaroo (Dendrolagus Matschiei) Using Gps Collars And Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Uas), Jonathan B. Byers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding the movement patterns and habitat needs of the endangered Matschie’s tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei) is important for their conservation and management. Endemic to the montane cloud forests of the Huon Peninsula in northeastern Papua New Guinea, these elusive arboreal marsupials are tremendously challenging to study using traditional observational methods.

This study is an assessment of novel techniques to overcome the significant challenges to in-situ data collection in remote and rugged tropical cloud forests. Animal locations are remotely tracked using purpose built altitude and motion logging GPS collars and habitat structure data is measured using photogrammetry from small Unmanned Aircraft …

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 …

A Hand-Held Structure From Motion Photogrammetric Approach To Riparian And Stream Asseessment And Monitoring, Joseph M. Dehnert, Joseph Dehnert

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Two of the biggest weaknesses in stream restoration and monitoring are: 1) subjective estimation and subsequent comparison of changes in channel form, vegetative cover, and in-stream habitat; and 2) the high costs in terms of financing, human resources, and time necessary to make these estimates. Remote sensing can be used to remedy these weaknesses and save organizations focused on restoration both money and time. However, implementing traditional remote sensing approaches via autonomous aerial systems or light detection and ranging systems is either prohibitively expensive or impossible along small streams with dense vegetation. Hand-held Structure from Motion Multi-view Stereo (SfM-MVS) photogrammetric …

Nitrogen Dynamics And Transport Along Flowpaths In A Rural Wetland-Stream Complex, Colton Kyro

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Human activities have doubled the rate of nitrogen inputs onto the landscape resulting in elevated nitrogen concentrations in our streams. Anthropogenically applied nitrogen is largely transported to stream networks via groundwater movement. Groundwater discharge occurs in distinct points along a stream but whose influences can often persist far beyond that area due to insufficient biogeochemical removal of imported nitrogen potentially causing alterations in community structure and precipitating large algae blooms. To understand the factors governing nitrogen abundance in a historical polluted stream, I used a mass-balance approach to quantify groundwater-surface water interaction and the magnitude of groundwater nitrogen input and …

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 …

The Influence Of Wildland Urban Interface Areas On Resource Assignments To Large Wildland Fires, Kurt Swimley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

We examine the relationship between U.S. wildfire resource assignments and fire proximity to inhabited areas. Climate change and previous vegetation buildup have enabled more severe fire seasons, while more structures are being developed near vegetated, wildland areas. These changes have contributed to a steep increase in the overall cost of wildfire management, the annual costs of which regularly rise into the billions (NIFC, 2021). Still, the extent to which each driver of suppression costs contributes to the increase in spending is not entirely understood. Previous studies have shown that more suppression resources are allocated to fires near inhabited areas, …

Remote Sensing Approaches To Predict Forest Characteristics In Northwest Montana, Ryan P. Rock

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Remote sensing can be utilized by land management organizations to save money and time. Mapping vegetation using either aerial photographs or satellite imagery and the applications for forest management are of particular interest to the Montana Department of Natural Resources. In 2018, the organization began a pilot program to test the incorporation of raster analysis of remotely sensed data into their inventory program and had limited success. This analysis identified two areas of improvement: the selection method of inventory plots and the imagery used for classification and metrics. This study found that selecting inventory plots using a generalized random tessellation …

Secrets Of Soil: A Geochemical Investigation And Spatial Analysis Of The Early Living Floors Of Housepit 54, Bridge River, British Columbia, Nathaniel Louis Perhay

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This is an exploratory study to assess the ability of using geochemical sampling to give insight into the subsistence behavior of the inhabitants of Housepit 54 and a look at the spatial organization of activity areas on floors IId, IIe, and IIf. The geochemical make-up of soils can give great insights into former actives that have disturbed or occurred in or around the soil. Anthropogenic soils are formed through the complex interplay between humans and natural factors. This geochemical study will use chemical signatures to tease out the daily activities that were performed by the inhabitants of Housepit 54. A …

Development And Application Of A Catchment Scale Sediment Routing Model, Jordan T. Gilbert

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sediment regimes, i.e., the processes that recruit, transport and store sediment, create the physical habitats that underpin river-floodplain ecosystems. Natural and human-induced disturbances that alter sediment regimes can have cascading effects on river and floodplain morphology, ecosystems, and a river’s ability to provide ecosystem services, yet prediction of the response of sediment dynamics to disturbance is challenging. We developed the Sediment Routing and Floodplain Exchange (SeRFE) model, which is a network-based, spatially explicit framework for modeling sediment recruitment to and subsequent transport through drainage networks. SeRFE additionally tracks the spatially and temporally variable balance between sediment supply and transport capacity. …

Modeling Twitter Sentiment As A Function Of Particulate Matter 2.5 For Communities Impacted By Wildfire Across Montana And Idaho, Matthew Kelly

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a known pollutant with clinically detrimental physiological and behavioral effects. We consider Twitter sentiment as a potential indicator for well-being in communities impacted by wildfire-associated PM2.5 across Montana and Idaho spanning 5 years (2014-2018). From these geospatial air quality data and geo-tagged tweets, we trained county level models to examine the power of Twitter sentiment as a function of PM2.5. For all 24 counties sampled, we found between 1 and 8 affective dimensions where a positive �� 2 was detected with a significant F-statistic (�� < 0.05). Specifically, we show that sentiment for anticipation in the wildfire-prone county of Missoula, MT yielded respective training/test set �� 2 of 0.0958 and 0.0686 with a p-value for the F-statistic of 3.09E-07. These analyses support social media sentiment as a potential public health metric by showing one of the first observations of a relationship between PM2.5 and Twitter sentiment.

Attribution Of Soil Surface Temperature Sensitivity To Hydro-Climatic Drivers, Sarah Khalid, Marco Maneta

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by human economic activity are altering the global hydrologic cycle and the energy exchanges at the land surface. In large portions of the western US there is evidence of reduced summertime precipitation and increased air temperatures and longwave irradiation. At local scales, these changes can translate into more frequent and intense extreme land surface temperature events during the summer, with potential impacts on wildfire activity, forest health, soil biochemical cycles, and thermal comfort for human populations. However, because increases in radiation and sensible heat (air temperature) inputs to the land surface are confounded with changes in …

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 …

Drug Policy: The Effect Of Medical Marijuana On Opioid Consumption During The Us Opioid Epidemic, Jonathon David Knudson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The introduction and subsequent over-prescribing of extended-release opioids in the United States resulted in a large rise in both addiction and overdose. Recognition and regulation of these new drugs as addictive did little to control the supply of opioids to Americans while Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and Abuse Deterrent reformulations had limited effect to control the problem. Simultaneously, states like Michigan and Rhode Island legalized medical marijuana through voter referenda opening the door for a new approach to pain management. Recent research has found medical marijuana has proven an effective treatment for conditions such as chronic pain and PTSD and …

A Deep Learning Approach To Mapping Irrigation: U-Net Irrmapper, Thomas Henry Colligan Iv

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Accurate maps of irrigation are essential for understanding and managing water resources in light of a warming climate. We present a new method for mapping irrigation and apply it to the state of Montana over the years 2000-2019. The method is based on an ensemble of convolutional neural networks that only rely on raw Landsat surface reflectance data. The ensemble of networks method learns to mask clouds and ignore Landsat 7 scan-line failures without supervision, reducing the need for preprocessing data or feature engineering. Unlike other approaches to mapping irrigation, the method doesn't use other mapping products like the Cropland …

Using Satellite Observations Of Soil Moisture To Improve Modeling Of Terrestrial Water Cycles, Colin W. Brust

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET) describes the flux of water from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere, calculated as the sum of evaporation from soil and leaf surfaces, and transpiration through plant stomata. ET is the largest terrestrial water flux, returning over half of the precipitation that falls on land back to the atmosphere, annually. Additionally, ET plays a key role in Earth’s carbon, water, and energy cycles, linking them together via the movement of water and CO₂ through plant stomata. Because of its important role in these Earth system processes, it is essential that existing methods of measuring and modeling …

Water For Fish And Farms: An Examination Of Instream Flow Programs In Montana Using Spatially-Explicit Water Rights Data, Anna Leigh Crockett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The state-level institutions governing water use in the western United States have increasingly come under pressure and scrutiny related to their inability to navigate water use conflicts in recent decades. Rapid population growth and shifting public values towards leaving water instream for recreational and environmental purposes pose challenges to Montana water supplies which are predominantly allocated for irrigated agriculture. Additionally, while water scarcity and unpredictable availability are not new dilemmas in Montana, the rate at which climate change is driving shifts in the distribution, timing, and availability of water supplies is unprecedented. Current water policies may not be nimble enough …

Characterizing Burn Severity Of Beetle-Killed Forest Stands Leveraging Google Earth Engine-Derived Normalized Burn Ratios, Sofronio Catalino Propios Iii

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Following numerous studies, a general consensus on burn severity in forests affected by bark beetle outbreaks has not yet been achieved. The purpose of this study is to characterize burn severities in forest stands affected by mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks, especially in relation to “time since outbreak”, vegetation cover, and topographic factors. This study focuses on wildfires that occurred in the northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho and Montana during the 2012 fire season within forested areas that had previously experienced prior MPB outbreaks. Remote sensing techniques were used to quantify and compare the burn severities of MPB-outbreak stands with …

Adaptive Potential To Camouflage Mismatch: Plastic And Evolutionary Responses To A Climate Change Stressor, Marketa Zimova

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Animals that occupy temperate and polar regions have specialized traits that help them survive in harsh, highly seasonal environments. One particularly important adaptation is seasonal coat colour (SCC) moulting. Over 20 species of birds and mammals distributed across the northern hemisphere undergo complete, biannual colour change from brown in the summer to completely white in the winter. But as climate change decreases duration of snow cover, seasonally winter white species (including the snowshoe hare Lepus americanus, Arctic fox Vulpes lagopus and willow ptarmigan Lagopus lagopus) become highly contrasted against dark snowless backgrounds. The negative consequences of camouflage mismatch and adaptive …