Digital Commons Network^™

Federal Funding Statutes And State-Federal Wildlife Authority: Did Congress Demonstrate A Preference For State Wildlife Management Authority With Pittman-Robertson And Dingell-Johnson?, James Vaughan Branch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937 now known as Pittman-Robertson and Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act of 1950 now known as Dingell-Johnson are federal statutes which stand as the original and perhaps most significant federal funding statutes supporting state wildlife conservation and management. Congress’s decision to pass these statutes may be argued to be a prima facie endorsement of state wildlife agencies (SWA) as the primary managers of wildlife since each statute dedicated substantial federal excise revenue to SWAs. We hypothesized we would find consistent evidence in favor of primary state management authority over wildlife. …

Sharing The Medicine Of Resilience: Honoring The Work Of Dr. Gyda Swaney, Matthew Martin Croxton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

American Indians are a unique population that have been historically understudied in psychology. However, research in this field with this population has been growing and researchers are beginning to explore facets of American Indian mental health. There is a movement for American Indian psychologists themselves to conduct this research and to begin to develop culturally adapted and Indigenous research frameworks. There have been many Native psychologists who have helped push this work forward. One such Native psychologist was Dr. Gyda Swaney (Salish) who was a professor at the in the Psychology Department at the University of Montana and directed and …

Ecological Adaptation And Speciation In Chipmunks, Nathanael David Filer Herrera

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding how evolutionary and ecological mechanisms promote speciation and adaptation is one of the central challenges of evolutionary biology. Recent advancements in theoretical, methodological, and computational approaches now allow biologists to test long-standing questions regarding the evolutionary history of species. This includes the genomic underpinnings of reproductive barriers and adaptive phenotypes, and the contribution of ecology, geography, and demography in the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. While great strides have been made in understanding the genetic and ecological factors that underlie speciation and local adaptation, many open questions remain. My dissertation first seeks to address questions about how we define …

Beaver Dam Analogs (Bdas) Alter Carbon Pools, Fluxes, And Concentrations Of Intermountain Headwater Streams, Hilary Schultz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Beaver dam analogs (BDAs) have emerged as a climate adaptation and restoration strategy for water resource management in the drought-prone Western U.S., yet the focus has been on their influence on water quantity, overlooking effects on broader ecological components. By increasing water residence time and facilitating sediment retention, BDAs have the potential to influence carbon pools, fluxes, and concentrations. To examine the influence of BDAs on instream and riparian organic C and trace gases, we studied three intermountain headwater streams restored with BDAs two years after restoration during the summer of 2021. We found that there were subtle differences in …

High-Frequency Observations Of Riverine Inorganic Carbon Variability Using In Situ Autonomous Sensors, Qipei Shangguan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rivers and streams actively metabolize, emit, transport and store carbon of various forms received from terrestrial environments. Our current understanding of how rivers and streams contribute to the global carbon cycle remains limited, however, in part due to high temporal variability and complexity of inorganic carbon chemistry. In situ autonomous chemical sensors provide powerful tools to observe changes in rivers and streams and enable development of CO2-specific models to quantify riverine processes. In many aspects, our ability to utilize high-frequency sensor measurements remains limited.

This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of inorganic carbon cycling through sensor technology and numerical …

Characterization Of Protein Folding Pathways And Structural Stability, Michael Tyler Rothfuss

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Proteins are large, flexible molecules with an extremely large number of potential conformations. Proteins expressed in cells traverse available conformations to reach a consistent, thermodynamically stable, biologically active structure through a process known as protein folding. The atomic composition of the protein, defined by a sequence of amino acid residues encoded in DNA as a gene, determines the protein folding pathway and ultimate native structure of the protein molecule. Understanding the relationship between the sequence of amino acids and the resulting protein structure has been a central challenge in protein research for decades. To fill this knowledge gap, we test …

Evaluating The Sensitivity Of Crustal Deformation To Bedrock Hydrology In A Mountain Watershed, Brett J. Oliver

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

We evaluate the sensitivity of Earth's elastic deformation to groundwater hydraulic diffusivity using coupled groundwater and elastic deformation models. Seasonal changes in terrestrial water storage cause deformation to the Earth’s crust and deeper interior that is within the observational capacity of GPS instruments. We couple finite difference groundwater simulations with geodetic forward models of crustal displacement to investigate the ability of geodetic deformation to constrain bedrock hydrologic properties. We use MODFLOW-2005 to simulate seasonal changes in groundwater flow and storage, and then use the LoadDef elastic deformation model to forward model surface displacement caused by the change in terrestrial water …

Ecosystem Phosphorus Nutrition: A Soil Process Investigation, Alanna Nicole Shaw

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Many Earth System Models (ESMs) predict a plant fertilization effect associated with elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations that may increase the capacity of the biosphere to store carbon, stabilizing or even reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This could plausibly mitigate global climate change. However, this effect is only possible in the absence of other limiting factors, such as the availability of nutrients like phosphorus (P). Critical uncertainties remain in our understanding of the soil biogeochemical controls of terrestrial P availability including: the response of soil P recycling rates to global climate warming and extent to which occluded soil P is …

Seasonality And Depth Variability In The Microbial Ecology Of A Large, Oligotrophic Lake, Kate A. Evans

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Planktonic microorganisms are the primary drivers of energy flow in aquatic ecosystems, and their ability to rapidly respond to changing environmental conditions makes them key sentinels of ecosystem variability. However, understanding how microorganisms respond to variations in their environment requires improved understanding of microbial physiology and metabolism. Microorganisms that live in fluid environments experience a dynamic world, where resources needed for growth can be scarce or plentiful. In some cases, such variation can be directly linked to the physical movement of water, for example, vertical mixing. Temperate lakes experience strong seasonality in stratification and mixing, so resolving the relationships between …

Montana Kaimin, December 8, 2022, Students Of The University Of Montana, Missoula

Montana Kaimin, 1898-present

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.

Recommendations For Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences In Mathematics, Rommel J. Miranda

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have benefits for course instructors, undergraduate STEM students, and underrepresented students. CUREs consist of five essential components which include the use of science practices, discovery, broadly relevant or important work, collaboration, and iteration (Auchincloss et al., 2014). Over the past decade, a broad range of CUREs have been developed within and across STEM disciplines. However, resources to assist instructors to develop CUREs in mathematics are limited. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the extant literature on course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), especially in mathematics, to provide future directions for reforming …

A Mathematics Pipeline To Student Success In Data Analytics Through Course-Based Undergraduate Research, Kristin P. Bennett, John S. Erickson, Amy Svirsky, Josephine C. Seddon

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper reports on Data Analytics Research (DAR), a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) in which undergraduate students conduct data analysis research on open real- world problems for industry, university, and community clients. We describe how DAR, offered by the Mathematical Sciences Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), is an essential part of an early low-barrier pipeline into data analytics studies and careers for diverse students. Students first take a foundational course, typically Introduction to Data Mathematics, that teaches linear algebra, data analytics, and R programming simultaneously using a project-based learning (PBL) approach. Then in DAR, students work in teams …

Math And The Mouse: Explorations Of Mathematics And Science In Walt Disney World, Elizabeth L. Bouzarth, John M. Harris, Kevin R. Hutson

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Math and the Mouse is an intensive, collaborative, project-driven, study away course that runs during the three-week May Experience term at Furman University and has many of the attributes of a course-based undergraduate research experience in mathematics. We take twelve students to Orlando, Florida to study the behind-the-scenes mathematics employed to make Walt Disney World operate efficiently. Students learn techniques of mathematical modeling (mostly resource allocation, logistics, and scheduling models), statistical analysis (mostly probability, clustering, data collection, and hypothesis testing), and ow management (queuing theory and some beginning ow dynamics) in an applied setting. Through planned course modules, collaborative activities, …

Guest Editorial: Reflections On Course-Based Undergraduate Research, Diana Cheng, John Gonzalez

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Bringing A Cure Into A Discrete Mathematics Course And Beyond, Lipika Deka, Peri Shereen, Jeffrey Wand

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have been well developed in the hard sciences, but math CUREs are all but absent from the literature. Like biology and chemistry, math programs suffer from a lack of research experiences and many students are not able to participate in programs like REUs (Research Experiences for Undergraduates). CUREs are a great alternative, but the current definition of CURE (see [1]) has potential barriers when applied to mathematics (e.g. time, novelty of project). Our solution to these barriers was to develop a math CURE pathway in which students complete "Math CUREs" in targeted courses. After finishing …

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

University of Montana News Releases, 1928, 1956-present

No abstract provided.

Passion-Driven Statistics: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (Cure), Naomi J. Spence, Rachel Anderson, Sherryse Corrow, Susan A. Dumais, Lisa Dierker

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper describes the use of scientific practices in the Passion-Driven Statistics CURE and presents the results of surveys from the implementation of this CURE at three different colleges. Overall, students experienced positive changes in thinking and working like a scientist, personal gains related to research, and gains in research skills, attitudes and behaviors. The Passion-Driven Statistics CURE aims to equip the future STEM workforce with the data analysis skills and reasoning needed across industries.

Graph Theoretical Modeling Of Dna As A Vehicle For A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience, Amanda Harsy

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper outlines a mathematics course centered around the interdisciplinary topic of modeling self-assembling DNA which was used as a venue for a mathematics course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). The structure and logistics of designing and teaching such a course in addition to suggestions and student feedback from the course are also included.

Applied Mathematics Laboratory: A Course-Based Research Internship, Mathew Gluck, Alexei Kolesnikov

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The paper describes the Applied Mathematics Laboratory (AML), a course-based model of undergraduate research engagement in applied mathematics at Towson University. We provide historical background of similar programs at other institutions in the US; describe the implementation and the logic model of the AML; include an example of a recent project; and describe the place of the AML in the context of other course-based student research experiences in STEM.

Montana Kaimin, November 17, 2022, Students Of The University Of Montana, Missoula

Montana Kaimin, 1898-present

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.

W. Org. Res. Councils, Et Al. V. U.S. Bureau Of Land Mgmt., Sawyer J. Connelly, Sawyer J. Connelly

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The United States District Court for the District of Montana granted Plaintiffs summary judgment against BLM and the State of Wyoming. The court ruled that BLM violated NEPA and the APA because it failed to consider alternative leasing programs and the broad downstream impacts of coal, oil, and gas leasing in two Powder River Basin resource management plans. This decision followed WORC I & II, in which the court remanded the same plans to BLM to correct deficiencies. Following BLM’s revisions, Plaintiffs again sued in this case, arguing the revisions were still deficient under NEPA.

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

University of Montana News Releases, 1928, 1956-present

No abstract provided.

Montana Kaimin, October 20, 2022, Students Of The University Of Montana, Missoula

Montana Kaimin, 1898-present

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.

Montana Kaimin, October 13, 2022, Students Of The University Of Montana, Missoula

Montana Kaimin, 1898-present

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.

Friends Of The Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum, No. 40, University Of Montana--Missoula. Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum

Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum (UMZM) Newsletters

From the Curator: Dedication - 25 Years, Founding - 125 Years -- The First Years of UM Museums -- Bird Puzzles with Larry -- iDigBio Summer Internship Report -- Don Pattie on the Beartooth -- 2022 Marmot Madness Report -- Who's in the Museum -- Miscellany

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

University of Montana News Releases, 1928, 1956-present

No abstract provided.

Documents From The September, 7, 2022 Meeting Of The Associated Students Of The University Of Montana (Asum), University Of Montana -- Missoula, Associated Students

Senate Meeting Agendas and Minutes, 2007-Present

Agenda and Minutes from the September 7, 2022 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM). The following resolution(s) were discussed during the meeting:

SB01-22/23-Resolution Expanding the Committee on Equitable Education

Montanan, Fall 2022, University Of Montana--Missoula

Montanan Magazine, 1969-2024

This is the magazine of the University of Montana with news about the University for UM alumni as well as current faculty, students, staff, and administrators. This is volume 39.

Psyx 330.50: Child Development, Edgar Orozco

University of Montana Course Syllabi, 2021-2025

No abstract provided.

Bioo 340.00: Biology And Management Of Fishes, Lisa A. Eby

University of Montana Course Syllabi, 2021-2025

No abstract provided.