Digital Commons Network^™

High-Resolution Mapping Of Hierarchical Greater Sage-Grouse Nesting Habitat: A Grain-Spectrum Approach In Northwestern Wyoming, Robert T. Haynam Iii

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Our overall objective was to create a probabilistic nesting-habitat map for the Jackson Hole sage-grouse population that would have utility as a tool for future research, conservation, and management. The models that we developed for this purpose were specified to evaluate whether sage-grouse may be selecting nesting-habitat characteristics simultaneously at various spatial scales. Our spatially-explicit landscape-scale research was implemented primarily with readily available National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) data. All nesting data was collected from 2007-2010. We tested how a broad range of grain sizes (spatial resolution) of covariate values affected the fit to logistic regression models used to estimate …

Poison In Pink, Sydney V. Cook

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Humans slather, spray, mist, and cleanse their bodies with personal care products like lotion, hairspray, cologne, and shampoo every day. Our cupboards are stocked full of them, but few of us understand what is in those jars and bottles. We trust that if it’s on the shelf at the store, it’s safe. However, this is not always the case, and many personal care products contain chemicals that are harmful to human and environmental health.

My multi-disciplinary Environmental Studies thesis project combines evidenced-based research, interviews, nonfiction narrative, and science communication to create part of a book manuscript intended to educate general …

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 …

Before Abandonment: Social Change In Pre-Colonial Housepit 54, Bridge River Site (Eerl4), British Columbia, Kathryn L. Bobolinski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Housepit 54 at the Bridge River pithouse village in south-central British Columbia provides a glimpse into the complex cultural practices that occurred in this area in the past. This village, which includes approximately 80 semi-subterranean structures, was occupied during four periods, approximately 1800- 1600 cal. B.P., 1600-1300 cal. B.P., 1300-1000 cal. B.P. and 500-100 cal. B.P, firmly placing the site within both a historic and a pre-Colonial context. The two pre-Colonial floors, IIb (1288-1058 cal B.P.) and IIa (1184-1050 cal B.P.), that represent the occupation of Housepit 54 directly prior to the pre-Colonial villages abandonment are the focus of this …

Harvest And Persistence Of Wolf Populations: Variable Effects Of Harvest On Wolf Packs In The Rocky Mountains, Sarah B. Bassing

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Pubic harvest is a common method used to manage populations of wolves (Canis lupus) in North America. Although wolves appear resilient to the effects of harvest management the influences on demography and pack stability are uncertain. Packs generally drive population dynamics for wolves; thus, we were interested in how harvested populations were maintained and how harvest influenced the abundance and distribution of packs. We used noninvasive genetic data collected in Idaho, USA (2008–2014) and Alberta, Canada (2012–2014) to test whether immigration compensated for harvest mortality and helped maintain population densities. We further fit occupancy models to detection data …

Implications Of Rancher Decision-Making Patterns In Douglas County, Washington For Incentive-Based Conservation Of Sage-Grouse, Clancy Jandreau

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Conservationists are increasingly recognizing the importance of private land for the conservation of imperiled wildlife species while at the same time acknowledging the controversies with seeking Endangered Species Act protections. Recent and ongoing government-led efforts to conserve the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) through the Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI) provide an illustrative experiment in applying incentive-based conservation to private lands. However, whether the SGI program works because it provides an alternative to listing has not been empirically researched. In this study I apply a qualitative, exploratory approach to examine SGI participation among ranchers in Washington, a state with high …

Estimating The Effects Of Overstory Retention, Vegetative Competition, And Site Quality On The Height Growth Of Small Ponderosa Pine Trees Using Regression Quantiles, Colin P. Kirkmire

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa C. Lawson) forests in the Inland Northwestern region of the US are increasingly managed under multi-aged silvicultural systems that provide stand structure for wildlife habitat, timber production, enhanced aesthetic, or restoration of presettlement conditions (O'Hara 2005). Partial retention harvest, where an element of the previous stand's overstory structure is retained, is commonly used to achieve a multi-aged stand structure. However, little is known about how ponderosa pine trees in the understory respond to overstory and understory competitive factors following partial retention harvest. The height growth of small trees was hypothesized to be influenced by site …

Disappearing Act, Kate Barrett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Disappearing Act is a manuscript of fiction consisting of four short stories: "Disappearing Act," "California Zephyr," "Lost & Found," and "We Run to the Desert." The collection explores issues pertaining to relationships, sexuality, and the myriad definitions of both platonic and romantic love.

Structural Integrity And Physical Properties Of Ponderosa Pine Over Time After Death Between Vectors Of Mortality, Edward J. O'Donnell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In an era of accelerated climate change, with persistent and increasing disturbance on our landscapes it is important to increase our knowledge of how these natural disturbances effect our lands. This study investigated the changes that take place in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) stems after death when killed by mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) and by fire. Trees killed by mountain pine beetle as well as trees killed by fire were sampled and separated into two age classes, those dead 0-4 years and those dead 4+ years. Data was gathered on the modulus of rupture, modulus …

What The Gringos Brought: A Critical Examination Of A Privately Protected Area In Chilean Patagonia, Elena Louder

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Neoliberal ideology increasingly underscores many mainstream efforts to conserve biodiversity. This research explores this convergence through an in-depth case study of a privately owned park located in Chilean Patagonia. In two complementary chapters, I assess the social and cultural impacts of the project, and examine the role of discourse in the process of communicating and constructing the park. In the first chapter I draw from interview data collected from September through December of 2016 and explore the perspectives of local people with a variety of relationships to the project. In the second I employ a critical discourse analysis of park …

Subjective Experience Of Empathy In Schizotypy Elicited By Literary Fictional Narrative, Christa "Anahata" Neuman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The elaborate and multidimensional systems that are involved in the personal and subjective experience of empathy are largely unexplored. Nevertheless, when empathy is measured as a static trait there is considerable evidence that individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizotypy demonstrate altered and reduced empathic abilities respectively (Thirioux, 2014). The aim of this study was to investigate the effect that the context of reading literary fiction has on a portion of the process of empathic responding in relation to schizotypal traits, taking into consideration personal factors including current mood. A new measure for the use of momentary assessment of empathy was …

Assessing Riparian Ecosystem Condition And Monitoring Recovery From Natural And Anthropogenic Disturbance, Rachel Powers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Riparian ecosystems are the transition zones between river systems and uplands. They provide many valuable ecological functions including creating habitat for wildlife, stabilizing banks from erosion and providing a buffer that prevents excess nutrients from entering streams. Fires and other disturbances alter the function of these ecosystems. Currently, there is a lack of broadly used standardized assessments and monitoring methods in riparian areas within our current water policy framework. This study aims to examine this gap in riparian ecosystem protection by reviewing the assessment methods currently in use, selecting one method for field testing, and analyzing the effort involved in …

The Last Best Hope: Are Voluntary Conservation Agreements Effective Tools For Protecting Imperiled Species?, Sophie B. Tsairis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances, or CCAAs, are little known, voluntary conservation agreements that protect imperiled wildlife on private lands. These agreements have emerged over the past decade and have had mixed results in providing adequate protections for candidate species.

Landowners, private industries, state and federal agencies, and environmental nonprofits, are using CCAAs as tools to eliminate the need for an endangered species listing. An Endangered Species Act listing can lead to land-use uncertainty for private landowners and this threat is the main incentive to enroll in a CCAA. When landowners enroll in CCAAs they are agreeing to provide specific …

An Exploratory Study Of Burial Identification Using Historic Human Remains Detection Dog Alerts And Inorganic Soil Analyses, Britt Schlosshardt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

One point at which forensic science and historical archaeology intersect, and the focus of this thesis, is using the decidedly forensic avenues of trained dogs, probing, and chemical analyses of soils, informed by archaeological survey, to locate burials. Human remains detection dogs have proven to be a nonintrusive and effective method for identifying or confirming historic unmarked burial locations. Inorganic soil analyses have been demonstrated in prior research to show variations in grave soil. For this research, the hypothesis that is explored is that a corpse will chemically alter the soil in or on which it is placed to a …

The Keeping House, Anna J. Blackburn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This collection of poems and short prose is a meditation on questions of boundary and perception. The Keeping House is locus of loss and entrapment, resistance and desire. It embodies the irresistible gravity of the self—both its material and psychical spaces. The speaker grapples with the instability of a world where “shrouds become things, and things become shrouds.” Even knowledge is unreliable. These poems enact a quest for meaning through internal and external landscapes.

Are Maximum Ground Forces And Leg Compression In Phase? A Test Of The Classical Spring Mass Model Of Running Gaits, Seth Donahue

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The mechanical understanding of human running has classically been described as a spring-mass system, with subsequent models predicting the movements of the body’s center of mass and the forces applied by the leg against the ground. A central requirement of any spring system is the phasic relationship between the length of the elastic elements and the forces applied to these structures. Specifically, elastic elements compress under load and extend as the load is released. We tested whether this model applies to individuals with specialization for extreme performance in human gait. Recent work from elite level sprint runners suggest that their …

The Ecology And Evolution Of Avian Alarm Call Signaling Systems, Alexis Chandon Billings

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Communication is often set up as a simple dyadic exchange between one sender and one receiver. However, in reality, signaling systems have evolved and are used with many forms and types of information bombarding multiple senders, who in turn send multiple signals of different modalities, through various environmental spaces, finally reaching multiple receivers. In order to understand both the ecology and evolution of a signaling system, we must examine all the facets of the signaling system.

My dissertation focused on the alarm call signaling system in birds. Alarm calls are acoustic signals given in response to danger or predators. My …

Day Hikers And Bear Safety: An Elaboration Perspective On Communication In Yellowstone National Park, Zachary David Miller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As the National Park Service (NPS) celebrates its 100th year, Yellowstone National Park – the world’s first national park - is dealing with a variety of difficult and complex challenges. Human-wildlife conflict has become a flashpoint for these challenges, as increased visitation results in fewer managers dealing with more people in the park. A recent spate of deaths of day hikers in the park due to grizzly bears set further focus on this point. Yellowstone officials realized that effective communication strategies are more important than ever before.

This research was part of a broader project designed to examine the effectiveness …

Drivers And Feedbacks Of The Fire-Grazing Interaction In The Northern Great Plains, Jacob E. Powell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The fire-grazing interaction is well studied in mesic grasslands worldwide, but research is lacking in semiarid systems. In addition, the fire-grazing interaction reduces the invasion of exotic forage species in mesic grasslands by increasing the scale of grazing selection and may be a tool to control invasive plants in other grasslands. We examined the principal drivers and feedbacks of the fire-grazing interaction on the strength of cattle grazing selection, forage quantity and quality, and vegetation structure and composition in two pastures in northeast Montana at The Nature Conservancy’s Matador Ranch. We also determined the influence of time since fire, within …

Explaining And Monitoring Population Performance In Grizzly And American Black Bears, Jeffrey Brian Stetz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding how environmental factors influence wildlife populations is at the heart of ecology and management. Populations and their habitats are, however, inherently dynamic, which requires monitoring responses to changes in the environment. Beyond quantifying population dynamics, understanding why populations respond as they do may allow improved predictions within and across populations, ideally leading to better management. Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) and American black bears (U. americanus) have been researched in North America for decades, providing excellent opportunities to explore ecological questions involving inter- and intraspecific competition and responses to spatial and temporal variation in resources. The wealth of data collected …

Ground Fires: Essays On Land And Scouting, Matthew R. Hart

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ground Fires is a collection of creative nonfiction probing the social and environmental complexities that marked the narrator’s long membership in the Boy Scouts of America. I grew up a Scout, part of a quirky, adventurous troop in a New England college town. After earning Eagle and graduating high school, I moved west, working for seven summers and a few more seasons at Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico. I led backpacking trips through the mountains and high desert, teaching teenagers about land I knew and loved, land that was changing fast. From bears to wildfire to challenging politics, …

A Biogeographic Perspective On The Impacts And Importance Of Rodent Granivory On Native Vs. Invasive Plants, Jacob Elias Lucero

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

One of the most well-known explanations for the success of invasive plants in novel environments is enemy release, which predicts that 1) invasive plants are limited by natural enemies in the native range but not the non-native range, and 2) native competitors in recipient communities remain limited by their natural enemies. Despite considerable empirical attention, very few studies have tested these basic predictions, especially with respect to generalist herbivores. We tested whether invasive cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) has experienced enemy release from granivorous rodents – an important guild of generalists – using exclosures and experimental seed additions in western Asia (where …

Utilization Of Landsat Imagery To Assess The Impacts Of Oil And Gas Extraction On The Tazovsky Peninsula, Siberia, Nicholas B. Kline

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climatic warming of the Arctic is leading to landscape change through cascading biophysical feedbacks; development, such as oil and gas exploration and extraction, can accelerate or worsen these impacts. Due to restricted access to oil and natural gas fields, in situ environmental impact studies are only allowed in some regions. Satellite imagery analysis provides a mean for assessing impacts in areas with limited access. The Yamburg oil and gas field in western Siberia serves as a case study to assess the effects of infrastructure on an Arctic landscape.

This project quantifies the land-cover disturbance that occurred during the development and …

Involvement Without Panic: Essays On Shakespeare, Woolf, And Munro, John L. Cowden

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis portfolio is comprised of an introductory essay and three essays of literary critique. The introductory essay is a general commentary upon reading, literature, and criticism, and introduces the three subsequent essays. The first essay is on William Shakespeare’s play, Measure for Measure. The second essay is on Virginia Woolf’s novel, The Waves. And, finally, the third essay is on the stories of Alice Munro.

Enclosed From All Sides: Reading Contact And Ambivalence In The Imaginary Al-Andalus Of Hrotsvit's The Passion Of Pelagius And The Song Of Roland, Briana J. Wipf

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim’s The Passion of Pelagius and The Song of Roland have never been read together in terms of their shared engagement with the Muslim other in the Iberian Peninsula, known during the Middle Ages as Al-Andalus. This project is a comparative reading of the texts’ approach to the presentation of an imaginary Al-Andalus as a space of alterity. The texts’ emphasis on imaginative as opposed to accurate portrayals of Andalusian history and Islamic culture suggests their engagement with a process of Christian identity-building, where the “Christian,” as portrayed in each text, is defined against and in comparison to …

Raise Up Lakefog, Dive, Joseph N. Duke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Sympathetic Lightning, Renee C. Branum

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

40 Trees: The Quest To Save Whitebark Pine On The Flathead Indian Reservation, Andrew S. Graham

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

When it comes to managing natural resources in the face of global climate change, sometimes localized action is best. Rick Everett spent a lot of time in western forests - first as a ski patroller and logger and then as an ecologist - before landing as a professor at a tribal community college on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Now he faces a challenging new question: How do you save a tree species that is ecologically valuable to the forest and culturally valuable to Native American tribes, but is being pushed toward extinction by forces varied, deadly and driven by climate …

Performance Measures Of Road Crossing Structures From Relative Movement Rates Of Large Mammals, Adam Andis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent decades, there has been an increase of engineering projects that seek to mitigate the barrier effect roads impose on wildlife by installing wildlife crossing structures that promote permeability of the road corridor. The 41 fish and wildlife crossing structures installed along a 90km stretch of US Highway 93 on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, represent one of the most extensive of such projects in North America. As mitigation efforts are increasingly considered and implemented in road construction projects, the need to assess these structures’ effectiveness grows. This study is the first to compare observations of animal …

Baseline Study Of Recovering Headwater Streams In The Sapphire Mountains, Western Montana, Morgan Vinyard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Many riparian areas in the western United States have been degraded by grazing and logging. In the year 2000, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) re-initiated an effort to identify and characterize reference streams, or least impacted streams in each region of the state. In Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, most streams have been impacted by grazing, irrigation, and timber production. The Montana DEQ has not been able to identify reference streams in the Sapphire Mountains on the east side of this valley. MPG Ranch, located on the west-facing slopes of the Sapphire Mountains and purchased in 2009 by a conservation-minded …