Digital Commons Network^™

Eating Insects: A Community Action Toolkit, Lily X. Chumrau, Charlotte Langner, Freya Sargent, Ellen Sears, Mary Mccormick

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The world’s human population has risen exponentially over the last 100 years and is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. Ensuring food security and resource sustainability is of global concern. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization endorses insect farming as an alternative to cattle, pork, sheep, and poultry industries because of their higher food conversion rate. Insect farming requires less arable land, less water, and produces less greenhouse gases than traditional livestock. The practice of eating insects, known as entomophagy, is not a new idea as two billion people around the world include insects in their diets. Unfortunately, …

Fear, Power, & Teeth (2007), Olivia Hockenbroch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Vagina dentata is the myth of the toothed vagina; in most iterations, it serves as a warning to men that women’s vaginas must be conquered to be safe for a man’s sexual pleasure (Koehler, 2017). The vagina dentata myth has been carried forth from ancient ancestors in numerous cultures all over the world (Koehler). It is one of many destructive cultural myths that guides discourses about sex and women’s bodies. In this paper, I explore a recent articulation of the myth, the 2007 film Teeth, and I argue that in this film, the vagina dentata is made more complicated. While …

Water Use In Confined Animal Feeding Operations (Cafos) In Minnesota: Who’S Keeping Track?, Dara Meredith Fedrow

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are highly concentrated feedlots that raise large numbers of livestock with an emphasis on efficiency and maximizing output. Hog and dairy feedlots in Minnesota are shrinking in number, yet growing in size. In hand with the rise of CAFOs, water scarcity is a growing concern as the effects of climate change worsen and the human population increases. Though Minnesota is a state of abundant water, it is not evenly distributed throughout the state raising concerns about sustainable water usage.

This paper describes and analyzes how Minnesota’s water appropriation permit system is overseeing water usage in …

Perceptions Of Vulnerability To Flooding, Hurricanes, And Climate Change On Grand Isle, Louisiana’S Only Inhabited Barrier Island, Lauren Miller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study used in-depth interviews of permanent residents on Grand Isle, Louisiana, a remote barrier island, to better understand their perceptions of structural flood measures, non-structural responses to flooding and hurricanes, and perceptions of vulnerability to flooding, hurricanes, and climate change on a remote barrier island-Grand Isle, Louisiana. Residents' perceptions regarding the various structural measures implemented by the federal, state, and local government appeared mixed. Non-structural responses to flooding risks implemented at the household, community, state, and federal level continue to strengthen resiliency on Grand Isle. According to interviewees, aspects of environmental, rural, and economic vulnerability on Grand Isle impact …

Tourism & Its Impacts On Rural Communities: White Sulphur Springs 2018, Carter Bermingham, Norma P. Nickerson, Megan Schultz

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This study was a collaborative effort between the Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research and the community of White Sulphur Springs, Montana to provide insight into the impacts tourism has on rural communities. Paper surveys on site were completed by 104 visitors. Results show that 55% of respondents were residents of Montana. Of those Montana residents, 96% were from outside of Meagher County. Visitors spent an average of 6.22 nights away from home and 3.60 of those nights were in the town of White Sulphur Springs. Most spending in White Sulphur Springs was on retail goods and services ($17,731). Respondents …

An Estimated Contribution Of Glacier Runoff To Mongolia’S Upper Khovd River Basin In The Altai Mountains, Caleb Gikai Pan, Ulrich Kamp, Munkhdavaa Munkhjargal, Sarah Halvorson, Avirmed Dashtseren, Michael Walther

Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group Publications

In the semiarid climate of northwestern Mongolia, glaciers are critical contributors to water resources, particularly during the dry summer months. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the contribution of glacier runoff in the Upper Khovd River Basin (UKRB) is limited. This study investigates the impact of glacier recession on the UKRB's hydrology in western Mongolia's Altai Mountains. The analysis included glaciological method measurements, satellite-derived glacier extent records, and a simple ice ablation model. Our modeling used a mass balance gradient of 0.50 meters water equivalent 100 m^–1 for the years 2000, 2010, and 2016 and included a sensitivity analysis that applied …

Integrating Snow Science And Wildlife Ecology In Arctic-Boreal North America, Natalie T. Boelman, Glen E. Liston, Eliezer Gurarie, Arjan J.H. Meddens, Peter J. Mahoney, Peter B. Kirchner, Gil Bohrer, Todd J. Brinkman, Chris L. Cosgrove, Jan U. H. Eitel, Mark Hebblewhite, John S. Kimball, Scott Lapoint, Anne W. Nolin, Deana Pedersen, Stine Højlund Pedersen, Laura R. Prugh, Adele K. Reinking, Lee A. Vierling

Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group Publications

Snow covers Arctic and boreal regions (ABRs) for approximately 9 months of the year, thus snowscapes dominate the form and function of tundra and boreal ecosystems. In recent decades, Arctic warming has changed the snowcover's spatial extent and distribution, as well as its seasonal timing and duration, while also altering the physical characteristics of the snowpack. Understanding the little studied effects of changing snowscapes on its wildlife communities is critical. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the urgent need for, and suggest an approach for developing, an improved suite of temporally evolving, spatially distributed snow products to help …

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.

Inquiries Of Entomophagy: Developing And Determining The Efficacy Of Youth-Based Curriculum, Dakota Vaccaro, Kaitlyn Anderson, Lauren Clark, Ellie Gluhosky, Sarah Lutch, Spencer Lachman

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Entomophagy is the human use of insects as food. This practice is exhibited around the world by a variety of cultures with densities highest in the continents of Africa, Australia, and South America. However, entomophagy is not commonly practiced in the United States and as a result many Americans lack the knowledge necessary for understanding, appreciating, and using this practice. As the value of finite natural resources and impacts of food production are recognized by Americans, entomophagy has become a more socially-viable alternative food source because its environmental benefits allow consumers to justify their interest and adoption of the practice. …

Traces: The Realities Surrounding The Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis, 2019, University Of Montana--Missoula. School Of Journalism. Native News Honors Project

Native News Honors Project, 1992-2026

An annual publication that is reported, photographed, edited, and designed by students in the University of Montana’s School of Journalism.

The Effects Of Forest Gaps On Animal Communication Networks, Cedar Arran Mathers-Winn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To avoid predation, many animals have evolved complex systems of anti-predator communication. Alarm calls are a key component of anti-predator behavior in many birds, and can provide detailed information about predators. Additionally, many birds and mammals produce and respond to each other’s alarm calls, creating a complex communication network. Furthermore, individuals may give alarm calls in response to the alarm calls of others nearby, without actually seeing a predator. This makes possible the spatial spread of alarm information, which can result in complex communication networks extending over a large area. However, this requires suitable habitat in which birds will be …

Walking With The Wild: Finding An Ethic Of Compassion In Conservation, Jane Hallie Mcguire

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This collection of five creative nonfiction essays and one poem examines the author's personal encounters with wild life and wild places, primarily through experiences working as a field biologist. Reflections on nature’s fragility, interconnectivity, the autonomy of all living things, and the ethics of conservation are central to each piece. Walking with the Wild invites readers to consider the benefits of integrating compassion and empathy into scientific study, and more generally, into our interactions with the natural world.

"Fenced-In Place": White Settler Colonialism As Opposition To Increased Tribal Management Of The National Bison Range, Brittany Lee Palmer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Since the Tribal Self Governance Act was passed in 1994, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) in western Montana have sought increased management responsibilities at the National Bison Range, which is fully encompassed by the Flathead Indian Reservation. Though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has managed the Bison Range since it was established in 1908, the Tribes assert that they were the original stewards of bison in the area, and have requested both the reinstatement of the National Bison Range to Tribal trust ownership and increased management responsibilities through negotiated Annual Funding Agreements with the Department of Interior. …

Why The Weird Wings? Investigating The Morphology, Function, And Evolution Of Unusual Feathers In Pigeons And Doves (Columbidae), Robert Lawrence Niese

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The feathers of the wing that power flight in birds (the remiges) are morphologically constrained by the demands of aerial locomotion, but peculiar morphologies exist in many taxa in spite of these constraints. In the family Columbidae (pigeons and doves) in particular, we found that atypical remex morphologies have evolved dozens of times and occur in over a third of all species in the family. In members of the genus Columbina, we tested the sound-producing abilities of modified P7 feathers and determined that they are sonations that serve a signalling function during flight. In 56 species we identified a highly-attenuated …

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 …

Eu-U.S. International Education Connections: U.S. Opportunities To Participate In Erasmus Programs And The Case For A Renewed Commitment To Transatlantic International Education Collaboration, Peter N. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abstract The European Union’s suite of Erasmus programs are an ambitious effort to facilitate educational mobility and research across the EU’s 28 member countries and with partners around the world. It is one of the primary means to achieve a sense of European identity among the citizens across the Union, and governmental and educational organizations in the U.S. are keen to learn more about how they can also engage with it. The Departments of State and Education, because of their respective work in international education, are particularly well-positioned to lead that effort. Erasmus is ambitious in its social objectives and …

Community-Centered Sustainable Conservation And Ecotourism Planning In The Bossou Forest Reserve, Guinea, West Africa, Destina Samani

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ecotourism management has evolved over the years towards responsible conservation of the natural environment, sustaining the well-being of local people, enriching personal experiences and increasing environmental awareness. The development of a forest reserve is characteristic of the management–visitor–host community interface and the attendant competing interests in the face of new challenges, ideas and theories. In particular, host community participation in the conservation of the forest space tends to breakdown under weak ecotourism management, partly evident by the imbalanced exploitation of ecosystem services resulting in wildlife and society’s inability to cope effectively with the changes (Walker et al., 2016).

The Bossou …

Mechanisms Driving Territorial And Social Behavior In A Cooperative Carnivore, Sarah Nelson Sells

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Territoriality is a fundamental and conspicuous behavior of numerous species, including many carnivores. Although relatively uncommon, carnivore sociality is likewise a conspicuous behavior where it occurs. Territorial and social behavior are of theoretical, empirical, and conservation interest because these behaviors can strongly shape demographic processes. Natural selection has likely shaped animals to make decisions that maximize benefits and minimize costs, but the mechanisms driving territory selection and social decisions remain uncertain. Our goals were to increase understanding of these mechanisms. We furthermore sought to develop reliable methods to predict outcomes of territorial and social behaviors, absent costly monitoring efforts. Gray …

Genomic Inference Of Inbreeding In Alexander Archipelago Wolves (Canis Lupus Ligoni) On Prince Of Wales Island, Southeast Alaska, Katherine Emily Zarn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Habitat loss and climate change are increasingly resulting in reduction and fragmentation of wildlife populations. Populations that have experienced fragmentation and decreases in abundance are at heightened risk of inbreeding due to reduced opportunities to mate with unrelated conspecifics. Prolonged or extensive inbreeding can result in inbreeding depression via the exposure of deleterious alleles in long runs of homozygosity. Alexander Archipelago wolves (Canis lupus ligoni) on Prince of Wales Island (POW) in Southeast Alaska are a small, isolated population of conservation concern that have experienced habitat loss and high harvest rates, and present an ideal system in which …

An Investigation Of Historic Euro-American Inscriptions At Madison Buffalo Jump, Jay Thomas Vest

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores the cultural significance and interpretive potential of historic inscriptions left behind by primarily Euro-Americans at Madison Buffalo Jump; a Native American bison jump situated in the Madison Valley of southwestern Montana. The inscriptions are analyzed through the lens of Cultural Landscape Theory and their typology, distribution, and content are examined in detail. By looking at these inscriptions in this manner, opportunities for ongoing research are highlighted, the future potential of these types of inscriptions to contribute to a new interpretive is examined, and the challenges of appropriate conservation strategies is considered. This thesis presents the argument that …

Toward A Comprehensive Worldview Measure, Shailee R. Woodard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Worldview is an individual difference construct that has been linked to various behavioral and health outcomes. However, very little is known about how worldviews develop and how worldview beliefs, values, and attitudes coalesce into different worldview factors. One obstacle that has impeded research on worldviews is the lack of a robust worldview measure. The creation of a new, more valid worldview measure will aid in answering these important questions. This research project is the first step in the creation of a more comprehensive worldview measure. The primary aims of Study 1 were to compile existing published worldview measures and reduce …

Causes Of Variation In Dispersal Distance In The Stream Salamander Gyrinophilus Porphyriticus, Brett Rebekah Addis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dispersal is expected to evolve as an adaptive mechanism to optimize individual fitness across the landscape. While there is evidence that active dispersers base emigration decisions (i.e., stay vs. leave) on perceived costs associated with environmental variation and inbreeding, it is less well understood how and whether these same factors influence dispersal distances– a more comprehensive measure of dispersal. More generally, the challenge of quantifying dispersal in the field has resulted in a paucity of data on the fate and fitness of dispersing individuals, leaving us with little understanding of the factors influencing individual variation in dispersal distance.

In my …

Final Vowel Devoicing In Blackfoot, Samantha Leigh Prins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a study of final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot, an indigenous language of Montana and Alberta. Previous research on final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot variously suggests word-final, phrase-final, and utterance-final vowel devoicing processes (e.g. Taylor 1965, Bliss & Gick 2009, Frantz 2017), though, the conditioning environment for this phenomenon had not been a research focus prior to this study. The present study investigates intonation units (IUs) as the conditioning domain for final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot.

Final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot is investigated here by examining the common word-final suffixes –wa (3SG.AN) and –yi (4SG) in two recordings …

Ecological Wonder In Annie Dillard's Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, Mary Morgan Beavers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Through a close reading of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, this thesis presents an argument for the ecological value of a sense of wonder in our engagements with the more-than-human world. The first chapter explores Dillard’s desire to see truly, like the Romantics, and follows her journey of attention into the natural world, analyzing her epiphanic, enchanting, and enlivening experiences of deeply intimate engagement with things both minute and massive. The second chapter considers how Dillard’s practice of close attention opens her perception in a way that allows her to see the full reality of the more-than-human world, including …

The Environmental Imaginations Of Moby-Dick: Technology And Vulnerability In Human/More-Than-Human Relationships, Jensen A. Lillquist

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the twenty-first century, the relationship between the human and the more-than-human is a problem of massive proportions, as we live in an age of climate change, mass-extinction, over-population, and resource depletion. Evaluating how we have arrived where we are and re-thinking the issues at play as we move forward is crucial for future adaptation of human/more-than-human relationships; this is the primary goal of my analysis of the environmental imaginations of Moby-Dick.

I argue that the four primary environmental imaginations—the providential, the utilitarian, the Romantic, and the ecological—that have influenced United States culture since European settlement are represented by Herman …

No Man's Land, Jesse Daniel Durovey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Forever Baby, Carlos Javier Medina

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

“Out Of The Mother . . . And Home To The Mother”: Essays On Medieval Literature And Climate Crisis, Rachel Kuhr Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Triple Double Diamond: Nevada Stories, Kylie Michelle Westerlind

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In a collection of fictional short stories, Triple Double Diamond explores the relationships and grit of people who dwell in the Nevadan landscape. The stories roam between neon cities like Reno and Las Vegas to small high-desert towns like Wells and Gerlach, focusing on the people who live within these places. The people in this collection are restaurant servers, fur trappers, part- time gold miners, gamblers, park rangers, and veterans, and the stories look at the inner lives of these characters.

Anatomy Of Breath, Melissa C. Phelan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.