Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Community Adaptations To Wildfire Risk In Central Oregon, Usa: An Empirical Study Of Inclusionary Practices In Collaborative Wildfire Risk Mitigation, Liam Resener

Dissertations and Theses

Adverse impacts of wildfire in Western North America have become increasingly present through the 21^st century, driven by landscape changes imposed by colonists in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Community adaptations to wildfire will be necessary through the 21^st century to restore landscapes and protect the safety and livelihoods of people who live in at-risk areas. Wildfire risk extends across countless environmental and social systems, and individuals have competing ideas about what constitutes that risk and how to best adapt to it. As resources are being allocated to community adaptations, important questions emerge about the values …

Structure-From-Motion Derived Snow Cover In Burned Forests Of The Western Oregon Cascades, Siobhan Ciafone

Dissertations and Theses

Forest fire occurrence in the western US has increased rapidly since the 1980s, and most western US fires occur in the seasonal snow zone. Burned forests influence snow accumulation and melt patterns for years following fire, and understanding drivers of variability in snow cover across a burned landscape at the basin-scale is necessary for accurate hazard prediction and water resource forecasting. Basin-scale surveys of snowpack are possible with remote sensing, but accurate sensing methods such as Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) are often cost-prohibitive. In the last decade, structure-from-motion (SfM), an optical remote sensing technique, has emerged as an affordable …

Collaborative Action In Informal Social Networks Of Wildfire Managers In Northwestern Wyoming, Hannah Lynn Spencer

Dissertations and Theses

Wildfire is a cross-boundary, collective action issue. Previous research has demonstrated the importance of collaborative relationships in wildfire for purposes such as increasing capacity, trading information, and facilitating landscape-scale mitigation projects. However, a stakeholder's location in social networks, as well as personal factors, may impact their collaboration. Furthermore, stakeholders must prioritize their own organizational goals and responsibilities, which may differ from those of their collaborators. I used interview and survey methods to investigate these questions in the context of wildfire management professionals in northwestern Wyoming. For the interviews, I selected 12 individuals with high betweenness centrality who were involved in …

The Impact Of Climate Change On Selected Pnw Watersheds Through The Lens Of Western Red Cedar Habitat, Jordan T. Hamann

Dissertations and Theses

Climate change is a real phenomenon that is exacerbating existing natural processes and developing into a new normal for the planet. This change may be devastating for Pacific Northwest populations of Western Red Cedar (WRC) west of the Cascade Mountain range in the states of Oregon and Washington. WRC is a valuable tree species for reasons both economic and cultural. Dieback among WRC is following an accelerating trend. Since dieback is usually followed by tree mortality, understanding its causes and distribution is beneficial to the overall success of the species going into the future.

Through the use of ESRI's ArcGIS …

Current Vehicle Fleet Inventory And Future Implementation Of A Centralized Electric Fleet At Portland State University, Dane Kovaleski

Environmental Science and Management Professional Master's Project Reports

As the effects of climate change continue to impact the world, many institutions have developed climate action goals to reduce their effects on the environment. Portland State University (PSU) has committed to an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2040. A part of this commitment must include looking at the contributions of transportation on campus to reduce carbon emissions. According to a greenhouse gas emissions report done by the Campus Planning and Sustainability Office in 2016, transportation contributed to 12% of total greenhouse gas emissions on campus.

This project aims to evaluate the management …

Exploring The Relationship Between Green Space And Academic Performance, Audrey Demeaux

University Honors Theses

A growing body of literature is exploring the possibility that the presence of green spaces near schools can work to improve academic performance. Research to date on the relationship between green space and academic performance has shown mixed results. However, some see incorporating green spaces into school layouts as a key alternative strategy for improving academic achievement in the United States. This paper adds to the emerging discourse on the relationship between green space and academic achievement by using open-source data to conduct a regression analysis exploring the possible relationship between green space near K-12 schools and SAT scores in …

The Role Of The Armed Forces Of The Philippines (Afp) In Disaster Response And Adaptation Strategies To Climatic Disasters In Manila, Edmundo Nicolas Jr.

Geography Masters Research Papers

This study described the roles of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in Disaster Risk Reduction Management (DRRM) in Metro Manila and how climate-induced hazards impact the role of the military. It used a qualitative approach, which involved semi- structured interviews among AFP officers and barangay leaders with expertise and experience in DRRM and an analysis of selected policy documents and military doctrine. These methods revealed that: (1) the military acts as a political first-aid, since they are the first responders – thus, the face of the local government – in climactic disasters during peacetime; (2) the military is …

A Gridded Co2 Emissions Inventory For Portland, Or, James Eckhardt Powell

Dissertations and Theses

Here we develop a new high resolution inventory of CO₂ emissions for the three Oregon counties which comprise the bulk of the City of Portland, Oregon, USA. Locally curated and long-running data collection efforts for on-road traffic activity and emission rates are used to model on-road emissions, and a new survey of the area's natural gas network informs the building energy model. The inventory estimates total emissions of CO₂ for each hour of the year 2018 in the on-road, residential, and commercial building sectors at 1 km² resolution. The onroad inventory compares to within 3% with an …