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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Assessing The Climate Water Balance Model’S Ability To Predict Soil Moisture Variability And Species Distribution Of A Forested Watershed In The Northern Cumberland Plateau, Katherine J. Love Jan 2020

Assessing The Climate Water Balance Model’S Ability To Predict Soil Moisture Variability And Species Distribution Of A Forested Watershed In The Northern Cumberland Plateau, Katherine J. Love

Theses and Dissertations--Forestry and Natural Resources

Spatial patterns of moisture and tree species have been studied using environmental gradients, often represented by terrain attributes in GIS. With climate change, GIS terrain variables, which are static as long as the elevation remains unchanged, will not reflect alterations in temperature, water cycle, and atmospheric conditions. In this thesis, the commonly used terrain variables and climate water balance variables were evaluated and compared for their ability to explain soil moisture and tree species distributions in a forested watershed in the Northern Cumberland Plateau. The results suggest that GIS terrain variables generally perform better than climate water balance variables, however, …


The Use Of Improved Technology And Market-Based Incentives To Increase Forest Resource And Biodiversity Conservation In Rwanda, Kelly M. Rayens Jan 2015

The Use Of Improved Technology And Market-Based Incentives To Increase Forest Resource And Biodiversity Conservation In Rwanda, Kelly M. Rayens

Theses and Dissertations--Forestry and Natural Resources

This study evaluated the effectiveness of two distinct approaches to ecosystem conservation in Rwanda’s Nyungwe National Park: cookstove technology adoption and market-based policy instruments. A June 2014 survey of 250 households revealed that use of improved cookstove technology dramatically decreased fuelwood consumption for households in rural Rwanda, but that design, engineering and conflicting policy issues can hamper the widespread use of energy-efficient cooking technology. The second component of this research used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) within a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) framework to explore the options for designing and implementing market-based instruments around the country’s conservation targets, particularly the highly …