Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Impacts Of Recreational Aviation On Wildlife: The Physiological Stress Response In White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus) And Associated User Perceptions, Devin W. Landry

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Recreational aviation on public lands may negatively impact wildlife. However, land-use decisions need to balance user need with wildlife impact. We know very little about 1) how back country airstrip use affects local wildlife, or 2) attitudes and perceptions of recreational pilots toward possible management actions. For my Master’s research, I investigated how aircraft activity influenced physiological measures of stress in white-tailed deer, while also modeling how psychometrics such as wildlife attitudes and place attachment predict the willingness of recreational pilots engage in impact-mitigating behaviors. I measured physiological stress through non-invasive sampling of stress hormones in fecal samples (fecal glucocorticoid …

A Comparison Of The Utility Of Craniometric And Dental Morphological Data For Assessing Biodistance And Sex-Differential Migration In The Pacific Islands, Brittney A. Eubank

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Genetic analysis of maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA and the paternally-inherited Y-chromosome yield contrasting pictures of movement of peoples into the Pacific Islands. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is a matrilocal residency pattern practiced by early Pacific settlers, in which Melanesian men were brought into settler communities to intermarry with local women, yielding a higher intrapopulation variance and lower interpopulation variance exhibited in males compared to females. This research investigates the possibility of sex-differential migration in the Oceanic populations of Easter Island, Fiji, Guam, Mokapu, and New Britain through analysis of biodistance based on dental morphological trait frequencies and craniometric measures …

Adaptation On A Budget: How Vietnamese Innovators Are Trying To Design Their Way Out Of Climate Change, Shanti R. Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the rapidly developing Mekong Delta of Vietnam, young innovators are facing a challenge far greater than simply trying to catch up with the wealthier world. In a growing trend, the next generation of Vietnamese is acting under a common understanding: climate change is real, it’s here and the time to respond is growing short.

For over a decade, Southern Vietnam has consistently been ranked by international organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as one of the most vulnerable places in the world to the impacts of climate change. That vulnerability is heightened by the fact that the …

Hazardready – A Geographically Based Natural Hazard Education And Preparedness Web Application, Carson C. Macpherson-Krutsky Ms.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters are inevitable and costly both in terms of lives lost and money spent on recovery. Scientific research on natural hazards is widely shared within the scientific community, but is less often made more widely accessible, as methods or pathways for providing scientific natural hazard information and data in non-technical language are limited. Priorities for imparting hazard information include: 1) scientific accuracy, 2) spatial granularity, 3) integration of information about all relevant hazards, 4) nontechnical content, 5) appropriate preparedness activities, and 6) engagement with existing disaster response and mitigation capabilities. In response to these …

May You Walk In Beauty: The Decline Of Navajo Land And Culture, Jocelyn Catterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The Navajo homeland, Dinetah, is bordered by four mountains that are sacred to the Navajo people: two in Colorado, one in New Mexico, and one in Arizona. Historically, Navajo medicine men have traveled to these mountains to renew prayers and collect medicinal herbs. Today, the mountains, which exist outside of the reservation boundaries, are used for resource extraction and various recreational pursuits. While many Navajo are fighting for the protection of these sacred lands and their traditional culture, others are disinterested. Traditional practices and beliefs are slowly disappearing within the Navajo Nation. The land-use issues associated with these sacred mountains …

A Gis Assessment Of Ecoregion Representation In Chile's Existing And Proposed Integrated Network Of Protected Areas, Jessica Schutz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Chile's state designated protected areas are reported to show representation bias and to be unable to meet conservation goals. Private protected areas are considered an important tool to resolve these issues, which has led to support for increasing the role of private protected areas in Chile and creating an integrated public-private protected area network. But the validity of the capacity of private protected areas to fix Chile's state protected area network bias, and the advantage of creating an integrated protected area network, have not been assessed. This study uses the most recent data on Chile's state, private, and international protected …

Remaking Nature In Montana: Topophilic Considerations Of Wolves And Wolf Trapping, Andrew Myers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In 2011, after nearly forty years of federal protection, the gray wolf was removed from the Endangered Species List in Montana and its management entrusted to the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. The implementation of public trapping seasons in 2012 as a method to control wolf populations has further inflamed an already embroiled debate. The purpose of this research was to investigate how the presence of wolves and wolf trapping impacts human attachments to landscapes of “nature” in Montana by focusing on the following questions: What are the public’s social constructions of wolves? What are the public’s social constructions of …