Digital Commons Network^™

A Model For Determining Drivers Of Phenology In Western United States Rangelands, Joseph R. St. Peter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Plant phenology has long been used as an indicator of climate. Recent changes in plant phenology are evidence of the influence of climate change. Modeling plant phenology has become an effective tool to understand the impacts of climate change. Using machine learning techniques I developed a modeling process for accurately predicting phenology across a diverse landscape. This model uses individual site data to set site specific climate thresholds for plant phenology. This model also identifies the limiting factors to vegetation phenology for rangelands in the western United States. NDVI remotely sensed data was used to quantify land surface phenology and …

Sacred Zones: Examing Wilderness In Yellowstone, Maine And Russia, Lily S. Vonderheide

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis seeks to examine issues of resource conservation and recreational access in three regions of immense historical and ecological significance: Yellowstone National Park, the North Woods of Maine, and the protected nature reserve system of Siberia. By applying a combination of direct professional experience, current research and ongoing environmental policy action, the thesis attempts to provide an accurate picture of current and future challenges facing the three regions. Part I, “Yellowstone Paradox,” traces the roots of Yellowstone’s restrictions on recreational boating access in a post-WWII discourse of consumer recreation, the development of a sustainability ethic and its deployment as …

La Manzana Mordida: Sexo Y Religión En El Cine De Luis Buñuel, Micaela Downey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

La extensa y variada obra fílmica de Luis Buñuel permite observar la repetición obsesiva de motivos, imágenes y objetos que constituyen lo que podría denominarse el universo personal de Buñuel. La proliferación de zapatos, pies, cajas misteriosas y armas de fuego (sin olvidar los tambores de Calanda, los insectos y las gallinas) ha atraído la atención de la crítica convirtiéndolos en objetos detallados de análisis. Este ensayo no intenta proponer una “obsesión” más, sino reparar en un motivo que, a pesar de su recurrencia (y, por lo tanto, de su importancia) ha pasado inadvertido: la reescritura de la historia bíblica …

The Last Wolves Of Isle Royale, Kasey Rahn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Isle Royale National Park, located in Michigan, is home to a wolf population that is in decline due to complications from inbreeding. Scientists and managers struggle to decide whether to intervene. Some scientists promote bringing new wolves to the island to restore the population because they say the decline is human-caused. Others promote “watchful waiting.” To date, the National Park Service has not interceded and is currently undergoing a management planning process. The issue raises questions about what it means to manage wildlife in an era of change. Should humans intervene to protect wildlife in the face of climate change …

The Effect Of Mulch And Watering On Tomato Yields And Potential For Adoption During The Dry Season In Nanjara Village, Tanzania, Emily A. Okal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Drunken Path: Discerning Women's Voices And Participation In The Informal Economy Of Illegal Manufacturing Of Prohibition Alcohol In The Historical And Archaeological Record, Kelli M. Casias

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis puts the Prohibition years in Anaconda and Butte, Montana, into historical, and sociocultural context to discover an engendered narrative of liquor law violators between the years 1923 and 1926 and to investigate the scope of the local informal, illegal, illicit economic systems dictating the distribution of illegal liquor during that era. The transference of the means and modes of production, as envisioned by Karl Marx, and collective social resistance serve as the theoretical frameworks for analysis and examination of three case studies. The first, Poacher Gulch is a remote mining site in western Montana, was the subject of …

Linking The Effects Of Risk Factors On Annual Calf Survival To Elk Population Dynamics In The Bitterroot Valley, Montana, Daniel R. Eacker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The recolonization of gray wolves (Canis lupus) in multiple carnivore systems has been correlated with declining recruitment of juvenile ungulates, but the importance of wolves relative to other established carnivores is uncertain. The realized effect of carnivores may depend on compensation from forage and winter weather severity, which may mediate juvenile vulnerability to predation. Also, in high predation systems, the importance of juvenile recruitment may be reduced for ungulate population dynamics. We first tested for the effects of risk factors on annual elk (Cervus elaphus) calf survival and estimated cause-specific mortality rates. Secondly, we investigated the …

Maximal Femoral Artery Blood Flow During Cycle Ergometry, Tucker W. Squires

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

MAXIMAL FEMORAL ARTERY BLOOD FLOW DURING CYCLE ERGOMETRY

Chairperson: Matthew Bundle Ph.D.

The delivery of oxygen to working muscle in order to support aerobic respiration has long been recognized as one of the critical elements conferring endurance performance. Oxygen is transported from the environment to the active cells by the cardiovascular system, which is classically understood to deliver progressively greater amounts of gas to support increased levels of aerobic metabolism. However, the vast majority of existing studies have used modes of exercise that activate relatively small volumes of muscle and consequently have relatively small demands for oxygen delivery. We measured …

Selective Solid Phase Extraction Of Uranium Using An Aminophosphonic Acid Functionalized Composite Material, Ranalda Tsosie

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Uranium is an element of interest because it is an abundant source of concentrated energy. In 1948 the US offered money for uranium ore mined in the US, which created a mining boom in the southwest that included the Navajo Reservation. During the late 1960s the demand for uranium decreased and many mining operations shutdown and left behind a legacy of contamination. As a result many Navajo communities have numerous water sources that exceed established maximum contamination levels for uranium and other toxic metals. These contaminations are a direct result of abandoned Cold War uranium mines and mill waste sites …

The Regulation Of Mucosal Immunity By Inflammatory Mediators, Bryan Joseph Simons

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite massive efforts to develop effective therapeutic options for the treatment of asthma, disease prevalence continues to increase. Approximately 300 million people worldwide have been estimated to be affected by asthma, and it remains a leading cause of childhood hospitalization. While environmental as well as genetic causative agents have been identified, the heterogeneous nature of the disease has proven difficult to effectively treat. Asthma is characterized as chronic inflammation of the airway characterized by increased airway hyperreactivity, increased goblet cell hyperplasia, and airway remodeling. While these effects are traditionally regarded to be mediated through the actions of CD4+ Th2 cells, …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Ipad Usage On Elementary Mathematical Skills And Attitudes, Grant Patrick Swicegood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Currently, many schools are implementing one-to-one initiatives, where the goal is to give every student in a classroom a tablet or laptop computer. However, there is a dearth of research backing up the assumption that they significantly improve student learning. This study explored the effects of these new instructional devices by focusing on two second-grade classrooms implementing a one-to-one iPad program. Specifically, it investigated how iPad usage affects student and teacher attitudes toward mathematics, student mathematics performance in and out of app environments, the instructional purposes for which iPads are used in the classroom, and implementation issues of the technology. …

Aerodynamics, Kinematics, And Ecology Of Slow Flight In Birds, Kristen Elizabeth Crandell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The overarching goal of my dissertation is to elucidate the force production mechanisms of slow flight in birds. Slow flight is extremely energetically costly per unit time, yet highly important for takeoff and survival in birds. However, at slow speeds it is presently thought that most birds do not produce beneficial aerodynamic forces during the entire wingbeat: instead, they fold or flex their wings during upstroke, prompting the long-standing prediction that the upstroke produces trivial forces. Here, I examined the kinematics, aerodynamics, skeletal drivers, and potential ecological influences of force production in flight. In chapter one, I establish that wings …

Does Migration Matter? Causes And Consequences Of Migratory Behavior In Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, Derek Benjamin Spitz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite their potential conservation importance, the demographic implications of migratory behavior remain poorly understood. Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis sierrae; hereafter “Sierra bighorn”) are federally-endangered and partially migratory. In summer, Sierra bighorn share high-elevation summer ranges, but in winter some individuals migrate to lower elevation for winter while others remain resident at high-elevation. Lower elevations have better forage in winter, but these areas also carry an increased risk of predation from Sierra bighorn's primary predator, the cougar (Puma concolor). We should therefore expect differences in winter conditions to result in demographic differences between migrants and residents.

First, I developed …

Groups And Mortality: Their Effects On Cooperative Behavior And Population Growth In A Social Carnivore, David E. Ausband

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cooperative breeding refers to the cooperative care of related, or even unrelated, young. Helpers can increase the survival or reproduction of the breeders in the group which increases helper fitness indirectly. We have a poor understanding of how mortality, particularly human harvest, affects cooperative breeders. Given their complex social structures, territorial defense that relies on group size, and persistent harvest regimes, gray wolves (Canis lupus) are an ideal species for studying the ecological relationships between mortality, group size and composition, and population growth in a cooperative breeder.

Chapter 1: How does group size affect vital rates of individuals and population …

Cultural And Ecological Relationship Between The Nisqually Indian Tribe And Plants Of Mount Rainier National Park, David Alan Hooper

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Throughout the history of the National Park Service, the question of whether Native AmericanÆs still have rights to traditionally used natural resources found within park lands has been debated. This debate is largely held in political, legal, and philosophical arenas, but there are ethnographic and ecological questions that need to be addressed in order for policy makers to make informed decisions. Addressing these questions also provides insight into how cultures develop sustainable harvesting practices. One of the parks that has been addressing traditional plant harvesting is Mount Rainier National Park, which has been working with the Nisqually Indian Tribe to …

Population Differentiation And Habitat Selection Of A Montane Red Fox Population In The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Patrick Cross

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montane red fox (Vulpes vulpes) populations across the western United States are genetically and morphologically distinct from foxes at lower elevations. These montane populations also share a preference for subalpine forest habitats. One hypothesis is that they stem from boreal forest-associated ancestors that expanded during the Pleistocene when boreal forests extended farther south than they do today. Forest habitat selection may therefore aid the persistence of native populations surrounded by non-native conspecifics. Alternatively, this behavior may be an avoidance mechanism in response to competition with larger coyotes (Canis latrans), or a product of the fox's natural adaptability. The red fox …

The Piegan View Of The Natural World, 1880-1920, Rosalyn R. Lapier

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation is a new interpretation of the stories told by the Piegan people (now known as the Blackfeet) from 1880-1920, about their relationship with the natural world. It is a history of the transition to reservation life, the economy of the reservation, individual Piegan who told stories, the ethnographers who recorded the stories and what those stories tell us about Piegan views of the natural world. It is a blend of different methodologies within history: archival research, ethnohistory, oral history and first-person narrative. This new interpretation argues that although the transition to reservation life was difficult, the Piegan worked …

Stories Of Contaminated Waste Dump Sites In Amskapi Pikuni Blackfeet Country, Kimberly L. Paul

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abstract:

Significant health disparities affect much of the American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) and Native Hawaiian (NH) populations of America_.^3,6,10,11,14 Inequalities in health care and delivery of services for these populations are a contributing factor to disparate health conditions.² Lack of equity in areas such as social services¹⁸, education, environmental contaminants^5,7,8,17, historical trauma¹ and acute poverty[a1] [KP2] ^{16, 19} strongly influence health conditions⁴. People residing within the remaining tribal lands of the Northern Plains experience markedly higher incidence of disease than other ethnicities within this nation¹⁰, ultimately …

The Bioscience-Industrial Complex, Radical Materialist Aesthetics, And Interspecies Political Ecologies: The Unforeseen Posthuman Future In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein And Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam Trilogy, Sarah Sydney Lane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project traces how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, science fiction novels from the Romantic and contemporary literary periods respectively, contest the problematic relationships between subjecthood, science, ecological health, and patriarchal, capitalist societies by crafting radical materialist alternatives to such a system and its dualistic and destructive interpersonal/interspecies relations. Through the theoretical framework of ecofeminism that recognizes the conceptual linkages between women and nature in Western systems of thought, as well as psychoanalytical feminist critiques of the masculinization of scientific epistemology, this project examines the developmental and ontological overlaps between literary “masculine” and “scientific” subjects socialized under …

The Ethics Of Mourning: The Role Of Material Culture And Public Politics In The 'Book Of The Duchess' And The 'Pearl' Poem, Tarren Andrews

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project is a socio-historic analysis of two late 14^th century dream visions: Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and the Pearl poem. Utilizing Robert Pogue Harrison’s concept of objectifying grief through ritualized communal mourning, this thesis examines the ways in which mourning literature functioned as consolatory device, and a form of public performance for the powerful patrons who commissioned the pieces. By engaging with pre-existing communities of grief, material culture, and courtly discourse these poems perform the work of mourning while simultaneously enacting modes of public performativity that stress the ethics of grieving, and suggest that, for royal patrons, …

The Mountains And The Men, Caitlin Macdougall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Good Reasons, Rachel Mindell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

It Looks Something Like This, Courtney M. Bird

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

What Is A Hole Made Of: Queer Identity And Grief In Autobiography Of Red And Red Doc>, Rachel Mindell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Sun House, Max Kaisler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Melville's Mardi And The Book Of Mormon, Giordano Lahaderne

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

While Melville’s Mardi has long remained a puzzle to both readers and critics, scholars agree that his third novel marked a significant turning point in his writing career. It is with Mardi that Meville realized the novel as a form suited to grapple the various philosophical and religious questions he would famously explore in his following book, Moby Dick. Although scholars have already pinpointed many various sources for Mardi, this thesis examines the heretofore overlooked connections between Melville’s third book and the esoteric volume of American scripture, the Book of Mormon.

The first chapter of this thesis examines …

Epigenetic Changes After Prenatal Environmental Tobacco Smoke Exposure And Asthma, Sonja Christensen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Allergic asthma affects over 300 million people worldwide. Multiple factors have been shown to alter an individuals' susceptibility to this allergic airway disease such as exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), endotoxin, and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Prenatal exposure to these contaminants, especially ETS, has been shown to increase risk for an individuals’ asthma risk, however, the mechanism by which this happens is still unknown. Epigenetic alterations, particularly DNA methylation patterns, have been introduced as a proposed mechanism. The goals of this project were to use a house dust mite (HDM) murine model of asthma to determine the methylation alterations …

Disturbed Waters – A Montana Chemist Searches For The Source Of A Persistent Poison, Kindra Mcquillan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In December 2008, when Montana's great Clark Fork River tested its historic banks for the first time in 100 years, a crowd of hundreds gathered to watch the removal of Milltown Dam at the confluence of the river with the Big Blackfoot. After a century of pollution from Butte's copper mines, the river was undergoing the nation's largest­yet restoration project, the Upper Clark Fork River Superfund Complex.

But in a windowless laboratory a mile away, University of Montana chemist Heiko Langner had troubling news. Toxic methylmercury flowed through the river at concentrations of concern, undetected and undermining the project. It …

Effects Of Road-Stream Crossings On Populations Of The Idaho Giant Salamander (Dicamptodon Aterrimus), Richard K. Honeycutt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Habitat disturbances affect wildlife populations through numerous mechanisms, and determining specific components of habitat disturbances affecting those populations is challenging. For example, a single disturbance can both change local habitat conditions and impose limitations on dispersal of animals. Both of these components can negatively affect biological responses, such as body condition, local movement patterns, or survival. Culverts are a habitat disturbance having both of these components. Culverts affect local habitat conditions by increasing sediment levels in downstream reaches, negatively affecting animals downstream of culverts. Culverts also impose limits on dispersal by blocking passage of stream organisms to upstream reaches, negatively …

An Environmental Toxic Model Of Parkinson's Disease: The Fruit Fly, Jennene Lyda

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder with no known specific cause; although genetic risk factors and/or environmental exposure are thought to be involved. The etiology of PD is currently unknown, although the combination of non-genetic components such as environmental exposures, the accumulation of exposure, and gene-environment interactions are thought to play a major role. However, despite this knowledge it is important to develop better models that parallel PD pathophysiology to further understand the mechanisms underlying dopaminergic neuron (DaN) damage. The use of mammalian models to study the degenerative processes in PD has been the most common …