Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Montana (4)
- Policy (4)
- Collaboration (3)
- Wilderness (3)
- Agriculture (2)
-
- BLM (2)
- Conservation (2)
- Ecological restoration (2)
- Environment (2)
- Fire (2)
- Forest management (2)
- Forest structure (2)
- Mining (2)
- Religion (2)
- Restoration (2)
- Water conservation (2)
- Water quality (2)
- ACEC (1)
- Adaptive Governance (1)
- Alaska (1)
- Amphibians (1)
- Areas of critical environmental concern (1)
- Assessment (1)
- Bacteroides (1)
- Biogeochemistry (1)
- Bob Marshall Wilderness (1)
- Bolivian (1)
- Business Emergy Analysis and Business Life Cycle Assessment (1)
- COMMUNITY BASED NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (1)
- COMMUNITY FOREST GOVERNANCE (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 45
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Approaches And Tools To Solving Complex Problems In Private Land Conservation, John T. Curnyn
Approaches And Tools To Solving Complex Problems In Private Land Conservation, John T. Curnyn
Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects
The central theme throughout my four portfolio pieces is: approaches and tools that can be used to address complex problems involving private land conservation. I consider the broader human and environmental community health to be factors in successful private land conservation. The first portfolio piece examines a number of studies of conservation easements implemented to improve water quality, as well as their utility in avoiding land use conflict. My second portfolio piece is a reflective paper on my experience conducting a stakeholder assessment for the organization OneMontana. The assessment focused on creating a shared understanding of the issues related to …
Displacement, Place Attachment, And Other Characteristics Of Anglers On The Yellowstone River, Zachary L. Jones
Displacement, Place Attachment, And Other Characteristics Of Anglers On The Yellowstone River, Zachary L. Jones
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Yellowstone River has seen increasing recreational use as Montana has grown and out of state visitation has increased, leading to some locals voicing concerns of crowding. River recreation, as with many outdoor recreational activities, has participants that may be considered to be sensitive to crowded conditions and place a high value on solitude. Considering these perceptions, there is reason to believe that these participants may change their river use patterns if or when the perceived level of crowding exceeds their tolerance thresholds. Further, monitoring efforts conducted at river access sites often do not fully capture users that are already displaced …
Re-Storying Grant Creek: A Case Study Of Relational Dynamics On A Degraded Montana Stream, Seamus Rucci Land
Re-Storying Grant Creek: A Case Study Of Relational Dynamics On A Degraded Montana Stream, Seamus Rucci Land
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration began in 2021, and after a history of contentious ethical debates, ecological restoration is increasingly portrayed as a viable framework for combating environmental degradation and supporting more healthy and stable social-ecological systems. The proposed ecological restoration of Grant Creek, a degraded stream near Missoula, Montana, offers an opportunity to connect a restoration site to the broader, rapidly growing field of restoration practice. It also allows the opportunity to forward the ‘relational turn’ proposed by many in the sustainability sciences as an ontological and methodological means to move beyond positivist portrayals of social-ecological systems, which …
Voices Of The Often Unheard: The Environmental Impacts Of Catastrophic Wildfire Events On Individuals With Developmental Disabilities, Mary Madison Mckenzie
Voices Of The Often Unheard: The Environmental Impacts Of Catastrophic Wildfire Events On Individuals With Developmental Disabilities, Mary Madison Mckenzie
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
The Thomas Fire for a time was the largest wildfire in California history, burning 281,893 acres and destroying 1,063 structures. Within three years, the August Complex Fire, at 1,032,649 acres, almost quadrupled that record. Climate related disasters such as these have impelled social science researchers to heed calls for a paradigm shift in understanding the risks climate change poses to the social world, in particular, disaster risks for vulnerable groups. Existing research tends to focus on disasters such as hurricanes, featuring risks for vulnerable populations by race, class, and/or individuals with disabilities in general, but not for individuals with developmental …
Causes And Consquences Of Fire In Forest Ecosystems Of The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Melissa Jaffe
Causes And Consquences Of Fire In Forest Ecosystems Of The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Melissa Jaffe
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
No abstract provided.
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, …
Examining Natural Resource Conservation: In The Classroom, Through Collaborative Conservation, And Across Public Communication Platforms, Shauni Seccombe
Examining Natural Resource Conservation: In The Classroom, Through Collaborative Conservation, And Across Public Communication Platforms, Shauni Seccombe
Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects
No abstract provided.
Sula Study Revisited: 20-Year Post-Fire Regeneration In The Southern Bitterroot Valley, Montana., Luke Alan Rymniak
Sula Study Revisited: 20-Year Post-Fire Regeneration In The Southern Bitterroot Valley, Montana., Luke Alan Rymniak
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
In the summer of 2000, a number of large fires burned in the southern Bitterroot Valley near Sula, Montana. Research was conducted in 2001 and 2003 in the fire-affected areas of the French Basin and Larid Creek areas in order to investigate the effects of environmental variables, fire severity, and post-fire management on vegetation regeneration. In 2020 these areas were remeasured to understand trends over time by evaluating the impact of these same factors 20 years post fire. The results showed that the effects of environmental variables, fire severity, and post-fire management on vegetation regeneration were varied. The most influential …
Community-Based Deer Management: A Case Study In Missoula, Mt, Taylor Ingle Mudford
Community-Based Deer Management: A Case Study In Missoula, Mt, Taylor Ingle Mudford
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Human development and expansion have led to urban sprawl and fewer, less developed areas suitable for wildlife habitat. Populations of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) have adapted to urban communities; however, their prevalence can lead to myriad of ecological and social issues, necessitating communities to pursue comprehensive urban deer management strategies. These strategies have increasingly been pursued via community-based deer management (CBDM) and are an example of collaborative natural resource management (CBNRM). Despite the growth in urban white-tail deer populations and the interactions with humans, there are few studies that explore the CBDM and the acceptability of diverse deer …
Transboundary Marine Management In The Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape, Lindsey G. Ellett
Transboundary Marine Management In The Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape, Lindsey G. Ellett
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Transboundary conservation aims to facilitate environmental conservation and management at the ecosystem level by operating across political boundaries, through the cooperation of two or more countries. Though there is increased interest and advocation for transboundary conservation initiatives around the world, there remains a limited understanding of how they function on-the-ground. Within this study, I address these gaps in knowledge through two phases of research, both focusing on the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape as a case study site. Phase I involved a policy analysis of Indonesian, Malaysia, and Philippine policies related to fisheries, coastal zones and protected areas, and environmental quality. Through this …
Policy And Collaborative Governance: Case Studies Of Three Wildlife Crossings, Nicholas Maya
Policy And Collaborative Governance: Case Studies Of Three Wildlife Crossings, Nicholas Maya
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Over the last several decades, the number of wildlife-vehicle collisions in North America has significantly increased, driving substantial loss of human life and wildlife and economic costs. The most effective wildlife-vehicle collision mitigation is wildlife crossing structures (undercrossings and overcrossings), with some studies suggesting they can reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions by 97% when paired with wildlife exclusion fencing. However, cost, funding, jurisdiction, land ownership, and local support are limiting factors in constructing these crossing structures. This paper presents case studies of three crossing projects in Snoqualmie, Washington, Teton County, Wyoming, and Summit County, Colorado, to illustrate the similarities and differences in …
Wildlife-Friendly Fence Policy On Federal Public Lands Managed By The U.S. Forest Service And Bureau Of Land Management, Joshua D. Elliott
Wildlife-Friendly Fence Policy On Federal Public Lands Managed By The U.S. Forest Service And Bureau Of Land Management, Joshua D. Elliott
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Many wildlife species are negatively impacted by the presence of fences on the landscape. Climate change is only exacerbating the problem as home ranges shift and species face heightened levels of stress. In recent decades, wildlife biologists have studied these impacts and devised ways of constructing fences to increase habitat connectivity and significantly reduce fence-related injury and mortality rates. Conservationists attempting to address this issue on a landscape level face significant challenges resulting from complex land ownership patterns, specifically across the western United States.
The two largest landowners in the U.S. are the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the …
Water For Fish And Farms: An Examination Of Instream Flow Programs In Montana Using Spatially-Explicit Water Rights Data, Anna Leigh Crockett
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 …
A Deep Learning Approach To Mapping Irrigation: U-Net Irrmapper, Thomas Henry Colligan Iv
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 …
Understanding And Measuring Net Positive Business Strategies, Luke Ruffner Robinson
Understanding And Measuring Net Positive Business Strategies, Luke Ruffner Robinson
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Despite their attempts to mitigate ecological impacts through sustainability initiatives, businesses are a major cause of the world's ecological problems. Some progressive businesses are attempting to move beyond “net zero” in terms of achieving neutral environmental impacts and instead are now pursuing a goal of net positive. Net positive refers to the idea that business activities could contribute value-added benefits to earth’s ecological systems, for example, by using technologies that sequester and store carbon. However, except for a handful of high-profile corporate case studies, little is known about how companies are developing their strategies to become net positive and …
Managing Forest Disturbances: Effects On Mule Deer And Plant Communities In Montana's Northern Forests, Teagan Ann Hayes
Managing Forest Disturbances: Effects On Mule Deer And Plant Communities In Montana's Northern Forests, Teagan Ann Hayes
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) are frequently the focus of population and habitat management in the western United States. Land and wildlife managers use disturbance to reset forests to earlier successional stages and improve the quality and quantity of forage available to mule deer. However, the effects of management practices on nutrition and selection vary widely, so the implementation of management practices raises ecological as well as management-related concerns. This work investigated how disturbance from wildfire, prescribed fire, and timber harvest influences the spatial and temporal distribution of nutritional resources in mule deer summer range, and therefore, how the …
Learning From Wilderness Fire: Restoring Landscape Scale Patterns And Processes, Julia Kittleson Berkey
Learning From Wilderness Fire: Restoring Landscape Scale Patterns And Processes, Julia Kittleson Berkey
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Wilderness areas, because they are managed to be “untrammeled by man,” often offer the best approximation of intact, undisturbed ecological patterns and processes. In the case of wildland fire, this means that wilderness areas often provide the only landscapes where fire has been managed to play an active, ecosystem role. As a result, these wilderness areas offer unique lessons both in terms of wildland fire management as well as the ecological consequences that result from this management approach. For these reasons, an in-depth history of fire management in the wilderness areas of the Northern Rocky Mountains is provided to highlight …
Modeling Hydrologic Impacts Of Tribal Water Rights Quantification And Settlement On The Flathead Indian Irrigation Project, Jordan Andrew Jimmie
Modeling Hydrologic Impacts Of Tribal Water Rights Quantification And Settlement On The Flathead Indian Irrigation Project, Jordan Andrew Jimmie
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) of the Flathead Reservation are a federally-recognized group of tribes (Kootenai, Salish, and Pend d’Oreille) located in western Montana. On the reservation lies the expansive Flathead Indian Irrigation Project (FIIP), which supplies irrigation water to approximately 127,000 acres of tribal and non-tribal agricultural land. The 1904 Flathead Allotment Act opened “surplus” land to non-native homesteaders without tribal consent, initiating the land ownership fragmentation observed on the reservation today. This legacy, combined with historically unquantified tribal reserved water rights and the antiquated state of the FIIP infrastructure, including water losses from unlined earthen canals, …
Prioritizing Parcels For Conservation Easements Using Least-Cost Path Analyses Of Land Ownership: Case Study Within Theorized Grizzly Bear Migration Corridors Of Western Montana, Joseph H. Offer
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
As the world’s human population has grown and converted large natural habitats to human dominated landscapes, the planet’s biodiversity has decreased. To combat the loss of biodiversity from human development, many conservation professionals champion the concept of conservation corridors between intact habitats. Conservation corridors, made up of protected land, serve as a connection for wildlife populations to intermix genetics and, subsequently, help reduce the risk of extinction. The ideal geographic location of corridors is generally determined through geographic information system modeling using biophysical conditions and theorized animal movement. However, the resulting corridors are often expansive and protecting entire corridors is …
Difference In Physical Traits Of Rocky Mountain Tailed Frogs In Burned And Unburned Streams, Daniel M. Franz
Difference In Physical Traits Of Rocky Mountain Tailed Frogs In Burned And Unburned Streams, Daniel M. Franz
Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts
No abstract provided.
Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Nitrogen And Carbon Biogeochemistry In A Wetland-Stream Sequence, Patrick E. Hurley
Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Nitrogen And Carbon Biogeochemistry In A Wetland-Stream Sequence, Patrick E. Hurley
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Studies of aquatic ecosystems often segregate streams from the influential ponds, lakes, and wetland zones that act as important transitions between terrestrial and fluvial systems. Across the aquatic landscape, these zones interact to form linked ecosystems that function as discrete nutrient processing domains, shifting biogeochemical signals due to spatial and temporal variability in hydrologic and biologic controls. Using a mass-balance approach, we profiled nutrient dynamics along a 23-km wetland-stream sequence over three seasons. Hydrologic, morphologic, and biologic conditions, as well as landscape attributes, were quantified to determine potential controls on biogeochemical cycling in a tributary of the Upper Clark Fork …
The Quest Of Vision: Visual Culture, Sacred Space, Ritual, And The Documentation Of Lived Experience Through Rock Imagery, Aaron Robert Atencio
The Quest Of Vision: Visual Culture, Sacred Space, Ritual, And The Documentation Of Lived Experience Through Rock Imagery, Aaron Robert Atencio
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This document will approach the multifaceted concepts that arise through the study of rock art and the cultivation of culture and belief through vision. Through this document the audience will encounter conceptual ideas regarding belief systems, ritual, experience, cognition, sacredness, and space/landscape — and how these are all essential dynamics that take place in the processes that cultivate the Shoshone visual culture. This document will employ an anthropological lens on the mentioned subject matters, while also approaching these concepts with an interdisciplinary curiosity of how they intermingle; creating a cohesive experience that focuses on these processes which empowered these people[s] …
Through The Eyes Of Locals: A Changing Climate In Bolivia, Jacob D. Rex
Through The Eyes Of Locals: A Changing Climate In Bolivia, Jacob D. Rex
Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts
Deforestation and Agricultural Land-Use Change in Bolivia as a Function of Socio-Economic Realities.
This research combines semi-structured interviews of key informants and local participants, as well as field observations, which were conducted between January and April of 2019 in the Departments of Santa Cruz & Chuquisaca.
An Assessment Of Fecal Water Contamination In The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Daniel Paul Pendergraph 5024527
An Assessment Of Fecal Water Contamination In The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Daniel Paul Pendergraph 5024527
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Wilderness water sources are often defined as pristine or high quality due to the lack of point source pollution. Non-point source pollution from recreation to water resources can be extensive and is well-studied in protected areas globally. Bacterial contamination, specifically fecal bacteria, poses a significant threat to human health because of the risk for outbreaks of illness and disease. Water sources in designated Wilderness areas are particularly vulnerable to fecal water contamination due to high volume of backpackers and lack of backcountry waste facilities. To estimate the occurrence of fecal water contamination in Wilderness water resources, an exploratory analysis was …
Policy Analysis: Alaska Salmon Hatcheries, Jessica Eller
Policy Analysis: Alaska Salmon Hatcheries, Jessica Eller
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Using an adapted Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) - Evaluation, this study analyzes policy regulating Alaska salmon hatcheries to evaluate its effectiveness at sustaining wild salmon runs.When Alaska became a state in 1959, its salmon industry was suffering from years of overfishing. Runs were at an all-time low, prompting constitutional drafters to mandate management of salmon via the sustained yield principle. The hatchery system that operates today and is responsible for a third of the commercial catch each year was put in place in the 1970s to help supplement depressed salmon runs. The effects of hatchery salmon on wild salmon populations …
40 Years On The International Flathead: An Assessment Of Transboundary River Governance, Jedd Sankar-Gorton
40 Years On The International Flathead: An Assessment Of Transboundary River Governance, Jedd Sankar-Gorton
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Global population growth, climate change, and industrialization, are putting extreme pressures on worldwide freshwater supplies (Cosens 2010). Of the global freshwater supplies, transboundary water sources play a crucial role in sustaining populations. Over 40% of humans on Earth rely on a transboundary river or lake for access to water, and 90% of the world’s population lives in countries that share bodies of water with at least one other country (UN 2008). Taken together, the motivations for improving governance of transboundary water systems have never been stronger. To meet the challenges associated with transboundary water governance, researchers working at multiple scales …
Integrating Fire And Forest Planning: A Review Of National Forest Plan Revisions, Hailey Graf
Integrating Fire And Forest Planning: A Review Of National Forest Plan Revisions, Hailey Graf
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
No abstract provided.
A Decade Of Governing The Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (Bcca): Community Involvement And Landscape Connectivity Through Public Private Partnerships, Alexander A. Barton
A Decade Of Governing The Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (Bcca): Community Involvement And Landscape Connectivity Through Public Private Partnerships, Alexander A. Barton
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
In recent decades, non-governmental organizations have acquired and established community forests and conservation areas in the U.S. However, there have been few empirical studies on their governance. This study focuses on the Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (BCCA) in the Blackfoot watershed of Montana, created in 2005. The BCCA is a 41,000 acre mosaic of private, state, and federal lands, including 5,600 acres known as the “Core” located near Ovando mountain and owned by the Blackfoot Challenge, a local watershed organization and leader in grassroots conservation. This research examined the definitions, activities and lessons learned over the past decade with regard …
Understanding The Food Water Nexus: Characterizing The Impact Of Climatological Anomalies On Agrosystems, Patrick M. Wurster Jr.
Understanding The Food Water Nexus: Characterizing The Impact Of Climatological Anomalies On Agrosystems, Patrick M. Wurster Jr.
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Climate variability at global and regional scales is escalating with increased atmospheric carbon and is expected to magnify the intensity and duration of meteorological extremes, especially droughts. From the many environmental stresses that diminish crop production (e.g., soil salinity, frost, soil erosion) drought is one of the most prevalent. This study focuses on the sensitivity of three key crops produced in the northwestern United States to climatological anomalies, while controlling for attribution using anomalies in price. The study differs from similar studies in that we focus on variability in production which captures both yield (tonnes/ha) and cropping area (ha), as …
Multi-Scaled Approaches For Protecting Montana's Watersheds And Water Resources, Elizabeth Yoder
Multi-Scaled Approaches For Protecting Montana's Watersheds And Water Resources, Elizabeth Yoder
Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects
The central theme carried among my four portfolio pieces is: using scientific and governmental approaches to conserve watershed health. For the purposes of this portfolio, I define watershed health as a very general term that describes the state of water quantity and quality that is available for human and ecosystem needs in a watershed. I see each of my portfolio pieces focusing on a different scale and method (i.e., science or government, including different levels of government, local, state and federal) for conserving watershed health. My first portfolio piece reviews water quality degradation caused by pharmaceuticals and personal care products …