Digital Commons Network^™

Conservation In Ecuador's Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor: A Study Of Coproductive Capacities, Gabriel Isaac Oppler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Connectivity conservation, a growing topic across science, policy, and management, is considered an important supplement to protected areas. A diversity of ecological corridors is emerging to restore fragmented landscapes, preserve intact habitats, protect biodiversity, and improve resilience to climate change. Despite increasing expertise and resources for planning corridors, many initiatives face challenges mobilizing science and governance to implement corridors on the ground. In many cases, biophysical science is supplemented with social science to better understand the human elements of connectivity. Similarly, collaboration and partnership are heralded as essential for effective governance of corridors. However, less is known about how these …

Adaptation In Rangeland Social-Ecological Systems: A Mixed-Methods, Cross-Scale Examination Of Factors Influencing Ranchers’ Adaptation To Drought And Climate Change, Ada Parkhurst Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rangeland social-ecological systems (SESs), which make up vast tracts of land on Earth, are critical for safeguarding ecosystem services, producing food and fiber, protecting open space, contributing to local and regional economies, and maintaining cultures and knowledges. Sustaining rangelands, the ranching livelihoods that depend on them, and the suite of ecosystem goods and services they provide hinges on a greater understanding of the social processes that influence ranchers' ability to adapt within these changing systems. In this study, I used a mixed-methods approach to examine factors influencing ranchers’ adaptation to drought and climate change across scales.

In Chapter 3, I …

Sustainability Education At The University Of Montana, Zoe M. Transtrum

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Sustainability education has become increasingly important to prepare the next generation of professionals to address immense challenges such as climate change. Institutions of higher education play a critical role in developing student understanding and perceptions of sustainability through their curricula, specifically in the three pillars of sustainability: ecology, economy, and society. This research paper explores sustainability education at the University of Montana to answer the following questions: (1) To what extent do sustainability-focused and sustainability-inclusive courses at the University of Montana include themes or concepts from all three pillars of sustainability; (2) Do courses at UM impact student understanding, beliefs, …

The Effects Of Climate Change On Six Bird Species Across An Elevational Gradient, Emily Casseday

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Arctic Greening: Characterizing Tundra Vegetation From In-Situ And Remotely Sensed Observations, Shira Ann Ellenson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As the Arctic has warmed at twice the rate of the global average, vegetation productivity has also been increasing. While satellite remote sensing is useful for summarizing Arctic-wide trends, changes in tundra species heights, densities, composition, and distribution can be missed at coarse resolution. Smaller, plot-scale studies are necessary to better understand vegetation dynamics at fine scales occurring on the ground.

In 1995, high-resolution traditional aerial photographs and in-situ measurements of vegetation characteristics were taken at a series of plots established on the Alaskan North Slope. Repeat field surveys in 2021 revealed increases in plant cover for deciduous shrubs and …

January 2022 News Releases, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of University Relations

University of Montana News Releases, 1928, 1956-present

No abstract provided.

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 …

Rancher Perspectives On Livelihood Diversification Options In Montana's Blackfoot River Watershed, Sara N. Schmidt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Blackfoot River watershed in Western Montana, like many rural landscapes across the Intermountain West, has faced a suite of economic, demographic, and social change over the last 40 years. Cattle ranching specifically, a principal land use in the Blackfoot watershed, has faced increasing socioeconomic challenges due to global competition, falling cattle prices, amenity migration, and climate change. Ranch livelihood diversification presents an opportunity to bolster the profitability of ranches in the watershed, while also supporting the well-being of rural communities and conserving the intact, ecologically-significant rangelands upon which ranching depends. The Blackfoot Challenge (BC) is a nonprofit community-based conservation …

The Mountain Home: Spatial And Optimal Foraging Assessments Of Hunter- Gatherer Mountain Landscape Use In The Beartooth Mountains, Montana, Scott William Dersam

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Patterns of cultural mountain adaptations are recorded throughout the Western Cordillera of North America. They demonstrate prolonged and complex uses of these ecosystems over the Holocene. What behaviors or circumstances in the Early Holocene transitioned mountains from inhospitable to reliable territory? This research addresses this question in the Beartooth Mountains of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).

Foraging behaviors dictate hunter-gatherer mobility and habitation patterning. These behaviors are reflected in the spatial arrangement of archaeological activity areas and lithic tools in mountainous ecosystems. Energy-demanding ecosystems, require foraging behaviors and habitation strategies that conserve energy. I assert that to understand the emergence …

The Request Is Not Compatible: Competing Frames Of Public Lands Discourse In The Lolo Peak Ski Resort Controversy, Philip A. Sharp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sharp, Philip, A., M.A., Spring 2022

Communication Studies

ABSTRACT

The Request Is Not Compatible: Competing Frames of Public Lands Discourse in the Lolo Peak Ski Resort Controversy

Co-Chair (in absentia): Steve Schwarze Co-Chair: Joel Iverson

In mid-2003, the United States Forest Service (USFS) received a pre-application for a Special Use Permit to build and operate an all-season ski resort on public lands near Missoula, Montana. The ensuing public deliberation over the possible use of protected lands for outdoor commercial recreational purposes provides a site of rhetorical inquiry. In this rhetorical criticism I analyze and evaluate arguments presented by the USFS, …

Bridging The Gap: Where Indigenous Knowledge And Western Science Come Together To Shape Environmental Stewardship, Bowman Leigh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the era of climate change, humans are grappling with how to ensure that natural resources exist into the future. For millennia, Indigenous people have actively managed the environment, drawing upon deep connections to the land passed down through generations. The Western worldview, on the other hand, sees humans as separate from nature — an attitude that has led to many of the environmental crises we see today.

This portfolio examines places and programs where Western science and Indigenous knowledge (IK) or traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) come together to shape environmental stewardship. Western science and IK/TEK are inherently different ways …

Damming Paradise: Public Power, Free Enterprise, And Tribal Sovereignty In The Mountain West In The Twentieth Century, Jacob T. Schmidt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“Damming Paradise” examines the transformation of the political economy of the Mountain West through the development of hydropower over the course of the twentieth century. Beginning with early attempts to regulate electricity marketing and dam construction, this thesis traces the development of a conservation paradigm which insisted upon full development of water resources and public ownership of hydropower facilities. The author then follows that development through the New Deal and Post War eras, focusing particular attention on the Kerr Dam (now Seli’š Ksanka Qlispe’ Dam) and Hungry Horse Dam on Montana’s Flathead River. “Damming Paradise” then examines the attempt to …

The Syndemic Landscape: A New Paradigm For Montana Suicide Prevention Grounded In Agricultural Renewal, Emory Chandler Padgett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montana has had one of the highest suicide rates in the nation for half a century, and since 2000, it has risen almost 50%. Despite suicide’s alarming persistence in the state, there has been minimal academic study of suicide or mental health specifically in Montana, so this thesis attempts to answer a few questions: Why does Montana have such a high suicide rate? Is there something culturally, historically, or socially unique about Montana that contributes to suicide? Are current prevention efforts helpful, harmful, or lacking? Could a consideration of culture and land benefit an understanding of suicide in Montana? What …

Hunger On The Richest Hill: A Case Study Of Linked Historical And Contemporary Food Insecurity In Butte, Montana, Elizabeth Anne Bett Osborn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

On the “Richest Hill on Earth” or Butte, Montana, a dilemma of food insecurity persists. This dilemma broadly consists of limited access to affordable, healthy, and appropriate nutrition for the city’s urban population. This thesis constructs a historically and contextually-informed understanding of food insecurity in Butte since the city’s establishment in 1864. Food insecurity research largely lacks place-specific consideration of historical events and processes which contribute to and reinforce the root factors contributing to food insecurity. Butte was once a thriving copper-mining boom town yet saw the decline of its primary industry in the late 20^th century. In 2020, …

Lidar-Landsat Covariance For Predicting Canopy Fuels, Margaret D. Epstein

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Managing wildfires in the western United States is becoming increasingly complex. Visualizing and quantifying canopy structures allows fire managers to both plan for fire and track recovery. Light detecting and ranging, or LiDAR can measure forests in three dimensions, but has limited spatial and temporal coverage. LiDAR-Landsat covariance uses machine learning to fill in the spatial and temporal gaps of LiDAR coverage with supplemental Landsat imagery. However, in order to capture real forest dynamics, a model needs to be stable enough to detect long term trends, sensitive to episodic disturbance, and general enough to work on multiple landcovers. The purpose …

Traumatic Brain Injury: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Healthcare Oversight, Charles Robert Brown Gatlin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Introduction: State licensing boards (SLBs) serve as overseers to protect the interests of the public by ensuring that individuals who operate under a license to practice in a state uphold the standards of their profession. However, resolving complaints regarding unprofessional conduct for conditions that necessitate interdisciplinary care, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), may necessitate involvement from SLBs of other disciplines who are most qualified to evaluate the appropriateness of care. To date, there is no single pathway to address complaints regarding the interdisciplinary management of TBI as the mechanisms of the injury are complex, often do not address the …

Quantitative Social Science Methods, Social Networks, And Scalar Mismatches: Advancing Social-Ecological Systems Science Towards Adaptation And Transformation, Holly Kathleen Nesbitt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems to maintain resilience or undergo transformation is increasingly important for navigating global change. Although social interactions and ecological disturbances are often cited as an essential element of social-ecological systems, social interactions are often undertheorized and simplistic, and the relative effects of both social and ecological processes are rarely considered in tandem. In this dissertation, I work towards advancing social-ecological systems research by highlighting opportunities for improved quantitative social science methods, using structurally explicit methods to evaluate the mechanisms underpinning social interactions, and characterizing scalar mismatches in a social-ecological system experiencing a regime shift. In …

Seeding Resilience: An Examination Of The Impacts Of A Seed Saving Network In Western Montana, Christina Leas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Seed saving, a worldwide practice as old as agriculture, continues even in the context of an increasingly industrialized and globalized agricultural system. While some scholarship has focused on informal seed saving practices that continue to thrive in the global South, few studies have examined the dynamics of these practices in the global North, particularly in the American West. Informal seed saving systems have implications for the resilience of agroecosystems. The concept of resilience has become an important framework for conceptualizing agroecosystems as social-ecological systems, both in scholarship and in policy. However, operationalizing the concept of resilience, particularly in agroecology research, …

In The Shadow Of The Megadrought: Opportunities And Challenges For Addressing Loss And Damage From Climate Change In Chile And Eastern Montana, Usa, Elizabeth Grace Tobey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As the impacts of anthropogenic climate change mount, climate- related harms, both economic and non-economic, occur across every inhabited continent and disproportionately affect the world’s most vulnerable people. In response, the Loss and Damage agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has emerged to address those climate-related harms that exceed human capacities for mitigation and adaptation. Significant questions remain regarding how losses and damages emerge across the globe and how Loss and Damage policy will be implemented to address those impacts. This thesis explores two specific questions: (1) national-level Loss and Damage policy mechanisms; and (2) perceptions …

Tales From A Placeholder: A Relational Journey With Land, Place, People And Self, Kalle O. Fox

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The proposed thesis is a collection of place-based, long- and-short-form creative nonfiction essays. The places of interest are where the author spent different amounts of time in during her twenties, including Iceland, Miami and Seaside, Florida, Butte and Missoula, Montana, and a series of National Parks on the western side of the Continental Divide. This thesis is informed what cultural geographer Yi Fu Tuan coined as topophilia: the affective bond between people and place. “Place” and “sense of place,” while each having their own array of definitions in environmental scholarship, are considered interchangeable in the context of my work. A …

Distribution Of Visitor Use Management Research In Us Wilderness From 2000 To 2020: A Scoping Review, William L. Rice, Christopher A. Armatas, Jennifer M. Thomsen, Jaclyn R. Rushing

Society and Conservation Faculty Publications

Visitor use in wilderness has grown over the past several decades, along with research focused on visitor use management (VUM) in congressionally designated wilderness. This scoping review of research published between 2000 and 2020 explores the distribution and representativeness of wilderness VUM research within the context of (a) the federal land management agencies administering wilderness and (b) the geographic distribution of research. Findings indicate wilderness administered by the Bureau of Land Management and US Fish and Wildlife Service were disproportionately understudied compared to both the total acreage of wilderness and number of wilderness areas administered by the US Forest Service …

“La Justicia Ambiental Es Para Ti Y Para Mí”: Translating Collective Struggles For Environmental And Energy Justice In Puerto Rico’S Jobos Bay Communities, Catalina M. De Onis

University of Montana Staff Publications

Rural, coastal communities in the Jobos Bay region of southeastern Puerto Rico confront disproportionate harms as an energy sacrifice zone. This space is constituted by imported fossil fuel dependency, economic and climate injustices, environmental racism, ecocide, US colonialism and imperialism, neoliberalism, and racial capitalism. In response, many grassroots actors mobilize against the toxic assault on their communities to push for alternatives beyond the suffocating status quo via apoyo mutuo [mutual support]. This survival work and movement building occur literally in “the outdoors” and in other intertwined multispecies environments, challenging narrow, oppressive colonial, and consumerist constructs that reduce “the outdoors” to …

“La Justicia Ambiental Es Para Ti Y Para Mí”: Translating Collective Struggles For Environmental And Energy Justice In Puerto Rico’S Jobos Bay Communities, Catalina M. De Onis

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Rural, coastal communities in the Jobos Bay region of southeastern Puerto Rico confront disproportionate harms as an energy sacrifice zone. This space is constituted by imported fossil fuel dependency, economic and climate injustices, environmental racism, ecocide, US colonialism and imperialism, neoliberalism, and racial capitalism. In response, many grassroots actors mobilize against the toxic assault on their communities to push for alternatives beyond the suffocating status quo via apoyo mutuo [mutual support]. This survival work and movement building occur literally in “the outdoors” and in other intertwined multispecies environments, challenging narrow, oppressive colonial, and consumerist constructs that reduce “the outdoors” to …

Spns 101.04: Elementary Spanish I, Dora L. Lacasse

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Spns 101.03: Elementary Spanish I, Clary S. Loisel

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Russ 105y.80: Introduction To Russian Culture, Ona Renner-Fahey

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Grmn 201.02: Intermediate German I, Hiltrudis Arens

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Enst 513.01: Natural Resource Conflict Resolution, Shawn Matthew Johnson

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Spns 101.08: Elementary Spanish I, Manolita López Connor

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Nrsm 513.01: Natural Resource Conflict Resolution, Shawn Matthew Johnson, Travis Anklam

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.