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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 …

All In Due Time: Multi-Trait Assessment Of Elk Acclimation To Translocation, Ellen Marie Pero

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildlife translocation – the intentional movement of animals – is a crucial conservation tool for restoring species and halting global biodiversity decline. However, this practice is challenging for wildlife, and animals must adjust to their release landscapes for restoration to be successful. The period following release is a vulnerable time for translocated wildlife and determining when and how animals eventually acclimate following releases allows researchers to efficiently tailor post-release management to each species’ needs, thus maximizing the success of translocations while minimizing costs of an already expensive conservation practice. In this dissertation, I investigate changes in the physiological, behavioral, and …

Harvesting Forest Biomass In The Us Southern Rocky Mountains, Lucas Patrick Townsend

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and other mixed conifer forests of the United States southern Rocky Mountains (SRM) evolved under a low-severity, high-frequency fire regime. With the arrival of Euro-American colonists, fire was excluded from most forests, causing stands to grow dense and become prone to uncharacteristic high-severity crown fires. To combat wildfire threat, restoration treatments are frequently used to restore historic stand structure and function, effectively reducing high-severity fire risk. However, these treatments may be costly and little information is available regarding the forest operations used in the SRM. In this thesis, five forest operations were studied in 2017 to …

Nostalgic Restoration: Recovering Washington's Coastal Resources, Carly Vester

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

We have a penchant for assigning value to our resources. In many cases this value makes the recovery of degraded and damaged resources justifiable. But when this value cannot be quantified, when our resources have emotional rather than economic value, the story changes. “Nostalgic Restoration: Recovering Washington’s Coastal Resources” focuses on two editorial pieces and one short film of coastal resource recovery, solely for the relationship between people and resources.

Washington’s only native oyster, the Olympia oyster (ostrea lurida), once covered more than 20,000 acres across the Puget Sound. Due to pollution and overharvesting, only 5% of the …

Stream Restoration Effects On Hydraulic Exchange, Storage And Alluvial Aquifer Discharge, Christine M. Brissette

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Stream restoration is increasingly being considered as a climate change mitigation tool, altering the storage and exchange capacities of streams and their adjacent alluvial aquifers. While previous research has shown that added geomorphic complexity and increased width-to-depth ratios can enhance hydraulic exchange and alluvial aquifer storage, few studies have used field data to link these changes in form to baseflow generation. In this paper, we quantify the effect of stream restoration on nested scales of hydraulic exchange and temporal patterns of alluvial aquifer recharge and discharge. Our work compares a restored and degraded reach on Ninemile Creek, Montana following extensive …

Growth Response Of Whitebark Pine (Pinus Albicaulis) Regeneration To Thinning And Prescribed Burn Release Treatments, Molly L. Mcclintock Retzlaff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) plays a prominent role throughout high-elevation ecosystems in the northern Rocky Mountains. It is an important food source for many birds and mammals, as well as a major player in high-elevation watershed maintenance, both slowing snowmelt and stabilizing soils. Whitebark pine is vanishing from the landscape due to three main factors – white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) invasions, mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks, and successional replacement by more shade-tolerant tree species historically controlled by wildfire. In the past century, human activity such as fire suppression has altered these …

Long-Term Impacts Of Fuel Treatments On Tree Growth And Aboveground Biomass Accumulation In Ponderosa Pine Forests Of The Northern Rocky Mountains, Kate A. Clyatt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In western North America, many low-elevation, dry forest types historically experienced frequent, low-severity fires. However, European settlement and fire suppression policies have contributed to over a century of fire exclusion, substantially altering forest structure and composition. There is considerable interest in restoring fire resilient characteristics to these forests through fuel reduction treatments. One limitation of current research on the impacts of fuel treatments is treatment longevity, as few studies have been able to quantify long-term responses to commonly applied treatments. This research evaluated tree growth and aboveground biomass responses 23 years after treatment in two silvicultural installations with different underburning …

The Role Of Funding Programs In Promotion Of Best Management Practices For Effective Stream Restoration, Tracy R. Wendt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Large amounts of money are spent on stream restoration projects across the United States every year. Restoration researchers and professionals commonly recommend a suite of Best Management Practices (BMPs), including project goals, objectives, monitoring, consideration of future conditions, adaptive management, and public reporting of results, which are widely recognized as contributing to effective projects. Studies over the last two decades demonstrated that these BMPs were not consistently incorporated into restoration projects, which highlighted the need to improve practices and for funding programs to incorporate BMPs into funding requirements. I reviewed 28 programs that fund stream restoration in the Rocky Mountain …

The Millennial Who Planted Trees, Trevien Stanger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this work of creative non-fiction essays and stories, the author explores ecological restoration through a variety of contexts, settings, and conditions.

Capturing The Benefits Of Restoration: Local Business Utilization And Opportunities For Growth In Northwestern Montana, Chelsea P. Mciver

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Restoration and maintenance of forests and watersheds is increasingly a focus of management on public lands and, in addition to traditional forest management activities, has the potential to contribute to the economic vitality of local, forest-dependent communities. However, research has shown that the extent to which local communities benefit from restoration and management activities is highly variable. This study seeks to understand whether local communities in northwestern Montana are capturing the benefits of these activities on public lands by analyzing federal contracting trends. Specifically, this study 1) characterizes the value and type of federal contracts along with the spatial distribution …

Restoring The "Shining Waters": Milltown, Montana And The History Of Superfund Implementation, David James Brooks

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation is a case study of a dam removal and river restoration within the nation's largest Superfund site. In 1981, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency included Milltown Reservoir on its first list of Superfund sites. Superfund law capped two decades of the federal government's most aggressive environmental legislation. While tracking the national story of Superfund law, my story provides a local view of how individuals, organizations, and agencies shaped the Superfund process. After the EPA designated Milltown a national Superfund site, the environment itself, persistent work within the channels of public policy, and federally-mediated compromise helped restore some shine …

Efficacy Of Riparian Revegetation Projects In The Inland Pacific Northwest, Susan Wall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Riparian areas have been severely damaged by the combined impacts of grazing, river regulation, development and other types of land use, so that many no longer provide key ecosystem functions and services. Revegetation is a common riparian restoration practice, but there is little information available on whether revegetation projects are effective. I reviewed the efficacy of riparian revegetation projects conducted in the inland Pacific Northwest (iPNW) between 1984 and 2007 based upon the Pacific Northwest Salmon Habitat Project (PNHSP) database. I found that 10% of the stream restoration projects in the iPNW included riparian revegetation (1,340 projects), and 11% of …

Assessing Macroinvertebrate Community Recovery In Post Restoration Silver Bow Creek, Montana, Sean Patrick Sullivan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Since the turn of the twentieth century, mining activities have contaminated the floodplain and streambed of Silver Bow Creek, Montana, resulting in a streambed devoid of life and severely contaminated with heavy metals. In the mid nineteen seventies, up-stream water treatment facilities were upgraded and water quality improved, bringing benthic invertebrates back to reaches of Silver Bow Creek. The extent and concentration of toxicants in and around the streams of the Upper Clark Fork River Basin resulted in the designation of over 100 miles of river as Federal Superfund sites. Since 1999 reclamation and restoration efforts have been implemented on …

An Investigation Of Spatial And Temporal Variability In Several Of Montana's Reference Streams: Working Toward A More Holistic Management Strategy, Kathryn Elizabeth Makarowski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water temperature is a physical property that fundamentally affects stream ecology and is considered an important water quality parameter from scientific and legal view points. On global, catchment and reach scales, anthropogenic activities have substantially altered natural stream temperature regimes, impairing these systems’ ability to maintain ecological integrity. Thermal degradation often can be attributed to a variety of human activities, and global climate change, which has been accelerated by the demands of an exponentially expanding human population, will play a central role in defining stream temperature regimes in the future. Natural spatial and temporal variability in stream temperatures adds to …

Changes In Forest Structure And Composition Associated With Unique Land Use Histories: Implications For Restoration, Cameron Edwards Naficy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Many contemporary semi-arid forests of western North America are denser and have a greater proportion of shade tolerant species relative to pre- Euro-American settlement. While many causes have been invoked to explain these changes, the active suppression of fire since the early 1900s has been the most widely studied and cited. However, widespread logging in western North American forests has often predated effective fire suppression and has affected a majority of semi-arid forests. The extent to which historical logging has contributed to uncharacteristically high densities and other changes in contemporary forests have never been adequately quantified. Therefore, true elucidation of …

The Rewilding Of New York's North Country: Beavers, Moose, Canines And The Adirondacks, Peter Aagaard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project examines the restoration histories of beavers (Castor canadensis), moose (Alces alces americana), and wild canines (Canis spp.) within the Adirondack Highlands of northern New York. Devastated by the depredations of nineteenth century woodsmen, the populations of these large mammals rebounded during the twentieth century. Numbering fewer than ten in 1895, the Adirondacks’ remnant beaver population recolonized the region’s lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers over the next twenty-five years, assisted by the presence of prime habitat, a state-enforced moratorium on beaver trapping, and timely reinforcements. Hunters shot the last of the Adirondacks’ moose near Raquette Lake in 1861. Moose …

Influence Of Mycorrhizal Inoculation Treatments On Native Tree And Shrub Survival In A Floodplain, Flathead Indian Reservation, T. Rene Kittle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mycorrhizal inoculum treatments of two marketed products, Mycopak and Biogrow, were tested against forest soil, and a control treatment on biomass and survival of Populus tremuloides, Salix bebbiana, Populus trichocarpa, and Cornus stolonifera during the summer of 2003 and 2004. Because these seedlings are difficult to establish on cobbled riparian floodplains, the species and treatments were tested on two Jocko River floodplains. The Powell site was plowed in the spring of 2003 prior to planting, and the Stranahan site remained unplowed but treated with the broad leaf herbicide 2,4-D amine, in the fall of 2002. Seedlings were planted in the …

Ecological Process And The Blister Rust Epidemic: Cone Production, Cone Predation, And Seed Dispersal In Whitebark Pine (Pinus Albicaulis), Shawn Thomas Mckinney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), a high elevation foundation species, is experiencing population declines throughout the northern part of its range. The introduced fungal pathogen, Cronartium ribicola (white pine blister rust), infects whitebark pine and kills cone-bearing branches and trees. Blister rust has spread nearly rangewide and damage and mortality are highest in the northwest US and southwest Canada. Mortality caused by mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) population upsurges, and successional replacement and loss of regeneration opportunities from fire suppression, are also impacting some whitebark pine populations. Within this dissertation, I present three manuscripts that address the impact of whitebark pine's …

Assessment Of Whitebark Pine Seedling Survival For Rocky Mountain Plantings, Deborah Kay Izlar

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Whitebark pine (WBP) is a keystone species of Rocky Mountain alpine and subalpine areas. A pervasive non-native fungal disease (white pine blister rust), mountain pine beetle infestation, and successional replacement by shade-tolerant competitors following decades of fire exclusion have severely reduced whitebark pine and threaten these high-elevation ecosystems. Land managers are attempting to reverse whitebark pine’s decline by increasing regeneration of rust-resistant trees while restoring successional processes. Restoration efforts include the planting of whitebark pine seedlings and over 200,000 seedlings have been planted on National Forest, BLM and National Park service lands. In this Rocky Mountain (RM) study, select whitebark …

Rhetoric And The Restoration Landscape: Forest Restoration In Environmental Debate, Gregory M. Vranizan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Vranizan, Gregory M. M.S. Autumn 2006 Environmental Studies RHETORIC AND THE RESTORATION LANDSCAPE: FOREST RESTORATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL DEBATE Committee Chairperson: Phil Condon Forest restoration on federal land has become the focus of an ongoing public debate in the West. Interest groups on various sides have engaged in a rhetorical contest to define restoration in ways that accord with their own ideas about the use and management of the nation’s public lands. This study examines the positions taken by different groups and considers the rhetorical claims they make. Disputes over meanings and practices have thus far limited the chances for a …