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Escaping The Extinction Vortex: Identifying Factors Affecting Population Performance And Recovery In Endangered Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, Heather Elizabeth Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

An extinction vortex is one of the greatest threats to endangered species; when demographic, environmental, and genetic stochasticity interact with each other and with deterministic factors, such as habitat quality, to reinforce the demise of a small population. To successfully escape an extinction vortex and enable species recovery, all processes that affect endangered populations should be comprehensively assessed and incorporated into conservation plans. For my dissertation, I worked in conjunction with California Department of Fish and Game to develop a comprehensive research program to guide recovery efforts for federally endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the rarest subspecies of mountain sheep …

Expanding The Role Of Criterion A2 In Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Daniel Evan Dewey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Posttraumatic stress disorder is a psychiatric construct that refers to symptoms that may follow exposure to a traumatic event. The current definition of a traumatic event differentiates between the objective event, criterion A1, and an individual’s subjective response, criterion A2. This study investigated the importance of criterion A2 and other intense negative emotions in the development of PTSD. Self-report measures were used to determine the presence or absence of the event criteria A1 and A2, PTSD symptoms, and intensity of emotion type at the time of an event. Criterion A2 emotions at the time of the event were associated with …

Do Traditional Sociological Variables Apply The Same In American Indian Communities? A Comparison Of The Effects Of Social Disorganization, Social Bond, And Social Learning Variables On Delinquency And Substance Use Among Merican Indian, White, And Other Race Youth, Wendy Linn Running Crane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The history and current situations of American Indians are unique and important arenas to forward the study of crime and delinquency. There may be no better group available to study the combined effects of concentrated disadvantage, social disorganization, and abrupt societal change than the modern day American Indian community. But do traditional variables constructed to test sociological theories fit the study of this population? Findings from hypotheses testing the differences in overall effects of social control, social disorganization, social bonding, and social learning variables on delinquency and substance use suggest that there are differences in their ability to account for …

Double Sampling For Coarse Woody Debris Estimations Following Line Intersect Sampling, Allissa Corrow

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Coarse woody debris (CWD), an essential component of healthy forests, has typically been defined as dead and down, large woody material. Quantification of this resource provides a useful metric for assessing wildlife habitat, fuel loading, and more recently, carbon sequestration. Although many CWD sampling methods exist, accurate estimation is difficult and expensive. Double sampling incorporates auxiliary data that is positively correlated with the attribute of interest as a means of reducing sampling costs and/or increasing estimation precision. The present study investigated double sampling applications to the common CWD sampling technique, line intersect sampling (LIS). We identified aggregate length as a …

Fierce Flames And The Golden Lotus: Case Studies On The Madness And Creativity Connection, Reuben Jay Swindall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A historical/biographical analysis of the connection between creativity and a variety of psychoses including: syphilis, epilepsy, schizophenia and manic-depression/bi-polar disorder. The figures examined are Gustave Flaubert, Hector Berlioz, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.

Geographilia In Children's Urban Spaces: Investigating How Children Explore Outdoor Places And Connect With Natural Objects., Jeanine Sandra Garella

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

ABSTRACT Garella, Jeanine Sandra, M.A., Autumn 2010 Geography Geographilia in Children’s Urban Spaces: Investigating How Children Explore Outdoor Places and Connect With Natural Objects Chairperson: Jeffrey A. Gritzner The benefits children receive from outdoor play time are well documented by scholars across many disciplines. Interacting within an unstructured natural setting can foster physical, social, emotional, and spiritual growth. The lessons learned in such an environment not only help children reach developmental milestones; they also play an important role in the formation of beliefs and attitudes used in decision-making processes later in life. This is a significant point to make when …

Uncertainty Monitoring In Sprague-Dawley Rats (Rattus Norvegicus), Leslie Anne Angel

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Comparative psychologists have explored the metacognitive capabilities of rhesus monkeys, a capuchin monkey, an orangutan, a dolphin, pigeons, and rats. Previous research with rats has demonstrated inconsistent results (Foote & Crystal, 2007; Smith & Schull, 1989). In the current study, two Sprague-Dawley rats were tested in a tone-length discrimination task in which they were prompted to press one of two levers indicating "short" or "long" depending on the duration of a tone. They also had the option to opt out of some trials. If the subjects knew when they did not know the answer to the task, they were expected …

Research View, Winter 2010

Research View

Contents of this issue include:

From Mice to Men: Damage-reducing stroke drug moving to human trials

Voluntary Kin: Researcher studies friends who become like family

Hot Topics: Native American Research Lab hunts answers at the edge of life

Protein Picture: Research offers magic carpet ride to the atomic level

Campus to host major undergraduate research conference

Vision 2010

Vision

No abstract provided.

Money Does Grow On Trees: A. B. Hammond And The Age Of The Lumber Baron, Gregory Llewellyn Gordon

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Two highly contrasting views inform our view of America's Industrial Era (1877-1920). The "captains of industry" thesis holds that America's industrial and economic might depended on creative capitalists freely pursuing individual wealth. The opposing "robber baron" perspective holds that the capitalist free-market system engendered a great disparity of wealth and resulted in social and environmental costs while accruing benefits to the few.

In seeking to understand the Industrial Era historians have traditionally looked toward the top echelon of American businessmen: Rockefeller, Gould, Morgan, and the like, largely ignoring the scores of second-tier capitalists. The era of "laissez-faire" capitalism, however, was …

Sustaining A Conservation Legacy? An In Depth Perspective On The Interagency Bison Management Plan And The Potential For Collaboration, Jason Alan Brininstool

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Bison management within Yellowstone National Park (YNP), and the later recognized Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), has been a contentious issue since the mid-1900s. At the same time the efforts of Congress and the National Park Service to literally bring the bison back from the brink of extinction qualifies the Yellowstone herd as a symbol of western heritage and culture, the wilderness standard, and one of the greatest victories of the early conservation movement in the United States (Schullery 1986). Currently, there are more than 150,000 bison in the United States, mostly contained in heavily managed reserves or on private ranches. …

Catechin, A Novel Root Exudate Of Centaurea Stoebe, Exhibits Pleiotropic Effects On The Soil Microbial Community And Individual Soil Isolates, And Undergoes Chemical Changes With Numerous Abiotic Factors From Soil, Jarrod Leroy Pollock

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Allelopathy has been studied for (±)-catechin, a root exudate of spotted knapweed, as a plausible mechanism that facilitates knapweed invasion in North America. Phytotoxic effects are observed in invaded fields as well as greenhouse experiments when employing catechin or growing spotted knapweed, demonstrating similar effects on native plant species. However, many studies ignore the impact of catechin on microbial populations in soil. Understanding the impact of catechin on microbial processes will greatly aid our understanding of how spotted knapweed invasion can alter soil chemistry and biological processes. Chapter 2 will address the impact of soil and media parameters on catechin …

Are Black Bears Declining In Montana? Inference From Multiple Data Sources In The Face Of Uncertainty, Julie Ann Beston

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Carnivores are managed both to maintain populations and reduce conflict with humans, but data-based decision-making is difficult due to the expense of data collection. When new fieldwork is impossible, we can benefit from available data in assessing populations. I used demographic and harvest data to assess the population status of black bears (Ursus americanus) in Montana.

I conducted a hierarchical Bayesian meta-analysis of black bear demographic studies to evaluate geographic structuring and estimate vital rates and population growth rate. Adult survival is higher in the west than the east, but the reverse is true for fecundity. The mean …

Causes And Consequences Of Prolonged Dormancy: Why Stay Belowground?, Jennifer R. Gremer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Prolonged dormancy is a stage in which mature plants fail to resprout during the growing season and instead remain alive belowground. Though it is relatively common, the causes and consequences of this intriguing stage have remained elusive. In this dissertation, I investigate the causes and consequences of prolonged dormancy in a long lived perennial herb, Astragalus scaphoides.

First, I use a combination of demography and ecophysiology to study the proximate mechanisms associated with prolonged dormancy. Analysis of a long-term demographic dataset indicates that both endogenous factors (e.g. age, condition, and history) and exogenous factors (e.g. climate and spatial variation) are …

Post-Course Environmental Behavior Change Of Wild Rockies Field Institute Participants, Theodore Rosenberger Morrison

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In light of the environmental crisis facing the world, the need for citizens to behave in an environmentally responsible manner is critical to finding lasting solutions. After conducting and analyzing 20 in-depth interviews with alumni of the Wild Rockies Field Institute (WRFI), this study found that despite elevated pre-course levels of environmentally responsible behavior most participants reported an increased level of post course environmental behavior change. Post-course impacts ranged from a change of, or further investment in academic and career goals, lifestyle choices, empowerment, ethical development and political activity. Participants reported these outcomes were influenced by a variety of course …

Small Bird My Heart, Carrie Ojanen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A poetry thesis in lyric and narrative form.

Taming The Wild: On Womanhood, Nation And Nature In Ann-Marie Macdonald's Fall On Your Knees And The Way The Crow Flies, Yvonne Michelle Hammond

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project evaluates the work of Canadian author and playwright Ann-Marie Macdonald in the context of links between ecocritical, feminist and post-colonial perspectives; it seeks to understand how broader definitions for gender provide an alternative to the patriarchal binaries that limit both individual and national identities. Part of the Canadian conscious is an anxiety that questions not only the way difference impacts their culture, but also how these differences speak to a lack of a homogenized national identity. This study focuses on Macdonald�s novels Fall on Your Knees (1996) and The Way the Crow Flies (2003) , in order to …

Sabotage! And Other Stories, Gregory Elliott Luther

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This is a collection of short stories written from 2008-2010.

Camas, Winter 2010

Camas

Photographs / David Estrada -- Photographs / Doug Davis -- Photographs / Beth Gibson -- Illustrations / Katherine Molter -- Photography / Skyler Suhrer, Bailey Edelstein, Jayme Feary, Doug Connelly -- Palimpsest / George English Brooks -- Was Not / Rose Postma -- Fourth of July / Molly Damm -- Western / Brett Defries -- A Day is a Lifetime / Charlotte Beard -- Her Willapa July / Maya Jewell Zeller -- How to Draw an Albino Coyote / Sherry O'Keefe -- The Banana Slug on the Totem Pole / Robert Michael Pyle -- The River, On the Rising Tide …

The Legal Needs Of Farmers: An Analysis Of The Family Farm Legal Needs Survey, A. Bryan Endres, Stephanie B. Johnson, Donald L. Uchtmann, Anne H. Silvis

Montana Law Review

The Legal Needs of Farmers

Recent Decisions Affecting The Montana Practitioner

Montana Law Review

Recent Decisions

Stewardship In West African Vodun: A Case Study Of Ouidah, Benin, Hayden Thomas Janssen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Indigenous, animistic religions inherently convey a close relationship and stewardship for the environment. This stewardship is very apparent in the region of southern Benin, Africa. The Fon peoples of this region practice a traditional religion termed Vodun, which manifested from the 17th century slave trade, and subsequently migrated to the Caribbean and Americas where it transmuted into Voodoo, among other religions. The migration of pre-colonial religious canon to the Western Hemisphere has garnered ample study; however, the pioneering religion, Vodun, has received far less scholastic attention, despite Benin’s recognition of Vodun as a national religion. In this thesis, I contend …

The Biogeography Of Ageratina Adenophora: A Mexican Trans-Global Invader, Heather Marie Evans

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Evans, Heather, Master of Science, May 2010 The Biogeography of Ageratina adenophora: A Mexican Trans-Global Invader Co-Chairman: Dr. Jeffrey Gritzner Co-Chairman: Dr. Ragan Callaway Invasive plants are a global problem often resulting in negative impacts upon populations of native plants and the environments in which they grow. Invasive plants inhibit native species and take over areas where they have been introduced. These invasive species create ecological problems for wildlife foraging, as they often transform the vegetation of native habitats resulting in conditions unsuitable for grazing. In addition, invasive plant species pose problems for humans in the areas of health, economics, …

The Effct Of Low-Level Lead On Serotonin Expression In The Developing Mouse Superior Olivary Complex And Somatosensory Cortex, Sunyoung Park

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Low-level Pb exposure is a risk factor for neurobehavioral and cognitive deficits in both humans and animals. These neurological dysfunctions have been associated with deficits in auditory temporal processing. The developing central nervous system is particularly susceptible to Pb exposure, and Pb decreases the immunoreactivity of serotonin (5-HT) and VMAT2 in the lateral superior olive (LSO). During early developmental, "non-serotonergic" sensory neurons, including LSO neurons and thalamocortical neurons of the somatosensory system, transiently take up 5-HT from the extracellular environment through the transient expression of the serotonin reuptake transporter SERT. Maintenance of appropriate 5-HT levels is important for development of …

Scale And Source Of Geospatial Data For Wildfire Risk Assessments: Comparing National Data With Local Data In The Deschutes National Forest, Julie Marie Gilbertson-Day

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Widespread use of geospatial data in environmental decision-making tools such as wildfire risk models has called attention to questions of availability, quality, and currency of input data layers. As wildfires are modeled with growing confidence and knowledge of how resources respond to fire is increasing, challenges must be addressed before geospatial data are acquired and used to represent resources of high value in wildfire risk assessments. Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Research Station and the Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center of the USDA Forest Service employ a framework for assessing wildfire risk to a range of human and ecological …

The Development Of An Artist, Lori Jean Wheeler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The goal of my final creative project was to receive instruction in the area of the visual arts, create a body of work that would be displayed in an art gallery or other appropriate setting, and emerge publicly as an artist. This goal was important to me for two reasons. The first reason was that for many years I had suppressed my own need to create and express myself through art for various reasons: lack of instruction and fear of stepping out of the box and expressing myself creatively. My final creative project has led to an awakening of my …

Population Dynamics Of The Columbia Spotted Frog (Rana Luteiventris): Inference From Long-Term Demography, Rebecca Marie Wahl Mccaffery

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Worldwide extinctions of amphibians are at the forefront of the biodiversity crisis, with climate change figuring prominently as a potential driver of continued amphibian decline. Changes in both the mean and variability of climate conditions may affect amphibian populations in complex, unpredictable ways. However, few studies have evaluated effects of climate change on individual vital rates and subsequent population dynamics of amphibians. I investigated the population dynamics of a high elevation population of the Columbia spotted frog (Rana luteiventris) in relation to climate variation over a ten-year period.

I documented an increase in survival and breeding probability as severity of …

“The Season Of Famine” As A Challenge To Food Security In Northern Rural Togo: Addressing Seasonal Hunger Through Household Coping Strategies, Jennifer Gorsegner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Improved understanding about food security has led researchers to develop increasingly holistic approaches to studying the effects of household food insecurity. This research, based in the remote prefecture of Dankpen in Togo, West Africa, presents insights into the lives of rural subsistence farmers, the role of population pressures, and the effectiveness of both international and national development work. Originally I wanted to identify positive deviants who were food secure living in the Dankpen prefecture. I conducted group interviews in five villages surrounding the prefectural capital, Guérin-Kouka in December 2009 and January 2010. There was combined total of 61 men and …

Chinese Classifier Acquisition: Comparison Of L1 Child And L2 Adult Development, Jiang Song Gong

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The context of this thesis is the long-debated issue of whether or not adult second language (L2) development is basically similar to child first language (L1) development. The thesis approaches the issue through research dealing with L1 acquisition of Chinese classifiers and a pilot study of L2 adult classifier acquisition. First, evidence that children acquire specific classifiers earlier than measure classifiers is discussed and explained in light of existing language learning theories. With the aim of providing comparable data regarding L2 adult classifier acquisition a pilot study was conducted in which nine adult English-speaking learners of Chinese were tested on …

A Comparative Financial Analysis Of Fast Pyrolysis Plants In Southwest Oregon, Colin Brink Sorenson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

There are millions of acres of forestland in the Western United States that could benefit from fuel reduction treatments to improve forest health and reduce wildfire fuels. These treatments generate forest residues that are typically piled and burned. However, with increasing concerns about energy security, high oil prices, air quality from pile burning and climate change, there is great interest in examining ways to economically use these residues as a renewable energy source. Pyrolysis of forest biomass is one method that shows promise, though the financial feasibility of doing so has not been previously investigated. This study presents the expected …