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Economics (Econ), Montclair State University

Course Descriptions

No abstract provided.

Earth And Environmental Studies (Eaes), Montclair State University

Course Descriptions

No abstract provided.

Historic Sediment Accretion Rates In A Louisiana Coastal Marsh And Implications For Sustainability, Rebekah Perkins Smith

LSU Master's Theses

Deltaic marshes of the Mississippi River in Louisiana disappeared at a rate of 88 km2 annually from 1956 to 2000 (Barras et al. 2003) as marshes become inundated by sea water. Marsh surface elevation varies spatially and temporally due to fluvial sediment deposition, resuspension, erosion, compaction, sea level rise, and organic matter accumulation and decomposition. If net accretion from sediment deposition and/or peat production is insufficient, marshes respond to sea level rise by migrating landward. Since human development prevents landward migration of marsh in Breton Sound Basin, Louisiana, marsh sustainability can only be achieved if vertical accretion keeps pace with …

Efforts Of Coating And Testing High Aspect Ratio Microfabricated Nickel Gas Chromatography Columns, Arun Kumar K Paga

LSU Master's Theses

Gas chromatography (GC) is a widely used analytical technique, with applications in the chemical process industry, oil exploration, environmental monitoring, purification of substances, and general organic compound analysis. Although traditional GC’s are widely used they have their own disadvantages like high power consumption and long times for analysis. Several laboratories are working on the miniaturization of GC’s for rapid and onsite chemical analysis. Many researchers are currently working on the development of microfabricated columns for realizing a hand held GC sensor. Microfabricated nickel columns have been manufactured by Center for Advanced Microstructures & devices (CAMD), Baton Rouge. The columns are …

Resiliency Of New Orleans Following Hurricane Katrina: A Study Of Communities Three Years After The Storm, Lauren Marie Defrank

LSU Master's Theses

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levee failures produced widespread flooding in New Orleans, Louisiana and forced the evacuation of most of the local population. This event allowed for the study of the community’s resilience, or the ability of a system to absorb changes or perturbations and still function. Statistical analysis and case studies were used to study resilience and answer the following questions. Can natural community recovery models be used when evaluating the population recovery of a human community following a disturbance? Given that there are variations in population recovery patterns, what factors account for this difference in recovery? …

Your Land Is My Land: Exploring Land Policy In Tangerang, Indonesia Using Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model, Milla Budiarto

LSU Master's Theses

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic country comprised of over 17, 000 islands with more than 300 ethnic groups and more than 250 different ethnic languages spoken. Due to its land mass size and multifaceted culture, land policy in this country has been ineffective and inadequate in addressing some of the land affairs. One of the indicators of effective land policy is land tenure security, where land dispute incidence is a function of it. Given that the government has very minimal guarantee for land tenure security in this nation, land disputes are inevitable and very common. By the end of …

Creating An Empirically Derived Community Resilience Index Of The Gulf Of Mexico Region, Ariele Nicole Baker

LSU Master's Theses

As coastal areas increase in populations there is an increasing need to determine what community characteristics are most resilient to coastal disasters. This research proposes two methods to quantify community resilience. The factor analysis method results in a weighted additive index model of six variables to derive community resilience. The index places every community in the Gulf of Mexico on a scale from 0-1. The most resilient counties in the Gulf of Mexico region were found to be Hillsborough, FL, Pinellas, FL, Sarasota, FL, Hernando, FL, Okaloosa, FL, Kenedy, TX, and Jefferson, LA with a resilience score of 1. The …

Populations Of Vibrio Vulnificus And Vibrio Parahaemolyticus In Breton Sound And Barataria Bay, Brian William Matherne

LSU Master's Theses

Vibrio vulnificus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus are halophilic gram-negative bacteria that are found in warm coastal waters. These two species are the leading cause of fatal shellfish poisoning. The objective of this study was to determine the population dynamics of V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus as impacted by temperature and salinity in Breton Sound and Barataria Bay of Louisiana. Water samples were collected from each water body along s salinity gradient transect monthly from September 2007 through July 2009. Furthermore, from March 2008 through July 2009 sediment and live oyster samples were collected exclusively from the Breton Sound. The population of …

Effects Of Plant Maturity And Bacterial Inoculum Level On The Surface Contamination And Internalization Of Escherichia Coli O157:H7 In Growing Spinach, Shuaihua Pu

LSU Master's Theses

The incidence of foodborne outbreaks linked to fresh produce has increased in the United States. Particularly noteworthy was the 2006 Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak associated with pre-packaged baby spinach. Factors affecting the contamination of spinach leaves with E. coli O157:H7 are not yet well understood. This study aimed to determine whether E. coli O157:H7 would be present in the aerial leaf tissue of a growing spinach plant when introduced at various plant maturities and different inoculum levels in the growth media in a greenhouse setting. Spinach seeds of a standard commercial variety were sown individually in 8-inch pots, watered daily …

Moderating Effects Of Knowledge, Gender, And Education On The Relationship Between Environmental Value Orientation And Support For Louisiana Coastal Restoration, Meya Voorhies Holloway

LSU Master's Theses

Coastal Louisiana marshes are eroding at a rate equivalent to one football field every thirty minutes. It is vital to understand the perceptions of the American public regarding this issue. I conducted a self-administered mail survey during the spring of 2006. The survey was sent to 4,500 residents living in the Mississippi River Valley. The survey was used to identify respondents environmental value orientations, assess respondents attitudes with regards to support for restoration funding for Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, and to determine if outside moderating effects occurred to make respondents with specific value orientations (Anthropocentric or Biocentric) more likely to support …

Toxicological Monitoring And Protocol Development For Abandoned Pipeline Removal In Louisiana, Forest Christopher Wootten

LSU Master's Theses

Oil/Gas extraction have left Louisiana with a legacy of abandoned infrastructure across the State. Presently, the State has developed guidelines for the removal of abandoned vessels and abandoned on shore facilities. No such guidelines exist, however, for the network of abandoned pipelines present throughout the coastal zone of Louisiana. A pipeline removal was simulated in Lake Calcasieu, LA. The site was chosen because of the presence of many abandoned pipelines and previous work done on sight to remove the on shore infrastructure. In addition, the Calcasieu is an industrial water body, with potentially hazardous pollutants sequestered in the sediments of …

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 37, 2008-2009, Department Of Geography-Geology

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography-Geology

Regional Assessment On Influence Of Landscape Configuration And Connectivity On Range Size Of White-Tailed Deer, W. David Walter, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Henry Campa Iii, William R. Clark, Justin W. Fischer, Scott E. Hygnstrom, Nancy E. Mathews, Clayton K. Nielsen, Eric M. Schauber, Timothy R. Van Deelen, Scott R. Winterstein

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Variation in the size of home range of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) has broad implications for managing populations, agricultural damage, and disease spread and transmission. Size of home range of deer also varies seasonally because plant phenology dictates the vegetation types that are used as foraging or resting sites. Knowledge of the landscape configuration and connectivity that contributes to variation in size of home range of deer for the region is needed to fully understand differences and similarities of deer ecology throughout the Midwest. We developed a research team from four Midwestern states to investigate how size of …

Relating Ten Years Of Northern Raccoon Road-Kill Data To Their Attraction To Sea Turtle Nests, Richard M. Engeman, Alice Bard, Henry T. Smith, N. Paige Groninger

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

One of the primary threats to sea turtle reproduction in Florida is nest predation by Northern Raccoons (Procyon lotor). We examined 10 years of nest deposition data from a high-density sea turtle nesting beach at Sebastian Inlet State Park, Florida, USA, along with data on raccoon road-kills from the adjacent road, and data on park attendance (as an index of local traffic) to make inferences about raccoon activity patterns relative to turtle nesting. Northern Raccoon road-kills diminished during turtle nesting, even though local traffic was higher. Virginia Opossums (Didelphis virginiana), the only other mammal consistently found …

Rural Subdivision Planning In Missoula County, Montana: A Planner's Perspective, John Michael Newman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Missoula County, Montana, located in the western portion of the state along its border with Idaho, consists of the City of Missoula and a number of unincorporated population centers extending outward from the urban area. The former benefits from typical urban services and faces land use planning issues typical of city locales, including public transportation, brownfields and infill development, and enhancement of the urban core. The latter areas, by virtue of their rural nature, are the subject of an entirely different series of land use planning conversations. The unincorporated areas of the county, in towns such as Seeley Lake, Florence, …

Learning Through Nature: Mount Holyoke Environmental Research And Education Center, Sari M. Lipnick

Architecture Theses and Projects

I plan on doing this by creating an area located along a river or body of water that people will be able to interact and learn from its ecosystem and wildlife. I would like this to be a space that allows for the public to come and learn either indoors or outdoors with a variety of tools. By creating two defined areas functioning as elementary learning and university learning it would allow the variety of participants to come into the space and even interact with each other. One goal of mine would be to explore this interaction and control it, …

Private Sector Development In Xinjiang, China: A Comparison Between Uyghur And Han, Tyler Harlan

Sociology Faculty Works

Private sector development has been sluggish in China's west, where ethnic minorities make up a sizeable part of the population. In the northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the state maintains a steady presence in the small but growing private sector, largely populated by Han-owned firms and entrepreneurs. The Uyghurs, one of fourteen recognised ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, primarily reside in the poorer agricultural south where the private sector has made few inroads. Not surprisingly, Uyghurs have little presence in the private sector beyond informal trade. This has considerable implications for ethnic relations in a region already threatened by rising Uyghur-Han …

Policy, Urban Form, And Tools For Measuring And Managing Greenhouse Gas Emissions: The North American Problem, Nicole Miller, Duncan Cavens, Patrick Condon, Ronald Kellett

University of Colorado Law Review

The scale of intervention required to reduce and adapt to the effects of climate change will require action at all levels of government and society. International accords and some federal and state governments are beginning to address greenhouse gas reduction targets, but it is at the local level that most decisions about urban form are made. Yet, urban planners and local decision makers generally lack the tools and means needed to make informed choices about the climate change implications of local growth and redevelopment decisions or to measure the effects of their decisions. While a wide spectrum of tools currently …

Warming Of The Antarctic Ice-Sheet Surface Since The 1957 International Geophysical Year, Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott Rutherford, Michael E. E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso, Drew T. Shindell

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

Assessments of Antarctic temperature change have emphasized the contrast between strong warming of the Antarctic Peninsula and slight cooling of the Antarctic continental interior in recent decades. This pattern of temperature change has been attributed to the increased strength of the circumpolar westerlies, largely in response to changes in stratospheric ozone. This picture, however, is substantially incomplete owing to the sparseness and short duration of the observations. Here we show that significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported. West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1 °C …

Invertebrate Colonization And Plant Architecture: The Influence Of Two Non-Native Milfoil Species, Elizabeth W. Rielly

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if the complexity and surface area of a macrophyte’s

structure has an influence on invertebrate colonization, and to determine the influence of two non-native species on invertebrate colonization. Three plant architectures were compared. Floating leaved plants were represented by the following species: Nuphar lutea, Nymphaea odorata, and Brasenia schreberi. Moderately dissected leaved plants were represented by Potamogeton natans, and highly dissected leaved plants were represented by two non-native species, Myriophyllum spicatum and Myriophyllum heterophyllum. The number of invertebrates/g dry biomass and the number of individuals/m², diversity, evenness, and richness were calculated for …

Seeing The Global Forest For The Trees: How U.S. Federalism Can Coexist With Global Goverance Of Forests, Blake Hudson, Erika Weinthal

Journal Articles

Both international forest and climate negotiations have failed to produce a legally binding treaty that addresses forest management activities - either comprehensively or more narrowly through carbon capture - due, in part, to lack of US leadership. Though US cooperation is crucial for facilitating both forest and climate negotiations, the role of federalism in constraining these trends has been given scant attention. We argue that, as embodied in the US Constitution, federalism complicates the US’s role in creating any legally binding treaty that directly regulates land uses (e.g. forest management). Because federalism reserves primary land use regulatory authority for state …

Wildlifer's Log, Dave Willis

NRM Newsletter

No abstract provided.

A Fuzzy Hierarchical Decision Model And Its Application In Networking Datacenters And In Infrastructure Acquisitions And Design, Michael Khader

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

According to several studies, an inordinate number of major business decisions to acquire, design, plan, and implement networking infrastructures fail. A networking infrastructure is a collaborative group of telecommunications systems providing services needed for a firm's operations and business growth. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is a well established decision-making process used to analyze decisions related to networking infrastructures. AHP is concerned with decomposing complex decisions into a set of factors and solutions. However, AHP has difficulties in handling uncertainty in decision information. This study addressed the research question of solutions to AHP deficiencies. The solutions were accomplished through the …

Environmental Politics In Paradise: Resistance To The Selling Of Vieques, Sherrie Baver

Publications and Research

The most notable instance of a massive and successful social protest in Puerto Rico in recent years has been on the island of Vieques between 1999 and 2003. This was a rare case in which Puerto Ricans were able to overcome their partisan divisions to end the U.S. Navy's 60 years of training on this small, 51- square-mile island off the main island's east coast. Part of the reason for the Vieques victory, including gaining support from some influential U.S. politicians, was that leaders framed the protest in terms of human rights, public health and environmental degradation rather than Yanqui …

Third Report Of The North Dakota Bird Records Committee: 2004-2005, Dan Svingen, Ron E. Martin

The Prairie Naturalist

Since 1979, North Dakota's bird records committee has collected, evaluated, and archived documentations of rare bird occurrences in the state. In 2004 and 2005, this committee resolved 189 rare bird records. On the basis of these record reviews, six species were ad~ed to the North Dakota state bird list: mottled duck (Anas fulvigula), yellow-billed loon (Cavia adamsii), white-tailed kite (Elanus leucurus), little stint (Calidris minuta), glaucous-winged gull (Larus glaucescens), and great black-backed gull (Larus marinus). Four species were added to the list of nesting species within the state: snowy …

Determination Of Partition And Activity Coefficients Using Headspace- Gas Chromatography, Gregory Paul Bullock

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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The Tadpole Of Hypsiboas Atlanticus (Anura, Hylidae) From Northeastern Brazil, Filipe A. C. Do Nascimento, Marcelo G. De Lima, Gabriel O. Skuk, Rafael O. De Sá

Biology Faculty Publications

The tadpole of Hypsiboas atlanticus (Caramaschi & Velosa, 1996) is described from the municipality of Maceió, State of Alagoas, Brazil. At stage 36 the larvae have an overall elliptical body in lateral and dorsal views, oral disc anteroventral, spiracular tube sinistral, and labial tooth row formula 2(1,2)/3(1). The oral disc is surrounded, almost completely (anterior medial gap present) by a single row of marginal papillae. Described tadpoles of the H. punctatus species group can be differentiated by a combined disc oral features. Additional descriptions of H. punctatus (Schneider, 1799) tadpoles from populations throughout South America may be helpful in determining …

“In The Shadow Of A Concrete Forest”: Transportation Politics In Portland, Oregon, And The Revolt Against The Mount Hood Freeway, 1955-1976, Val C. Ballestrem

Dissertations and Theses

In 1955, The Oregon State Highway Department helped usher in the freeway building era in Portland by publishing its plan for 14 modern freeways designed to crisscross the city. A major component of that report was the Mount Hood Freeway, a route designed to pass through southeast Portland, connecting the city to its expanding eastern suburbs. Other freeway routes in the Portland area were given precedence over the Mount Hood Freeway and by 1969, when the route obtained federal interstate status, urban freeways across the nation had become highly controversial. Over the next seven years a struggle ensued pitting those …

The Land Use Stabilization Wedge Strategy: Shifting Ground To Mitigate Climate Change, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article describes how local governments, through the clever application of existing land use techniques, can mitigate climate change. This strategic path follows one developed by Princeton professor Robert Socolow, who identified and described fifteen categories for organizing society’s climate change mitigation efforts. Five of Socolow’s strategic categories fall within the reach of local land use authority: reduced use of vehicles, energy efficient buildings, vegetative carbon sequestration, wind power, and solar power. Through the aggregation of these local land use techniques, significant energy savings and carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction can be achieved. After making some background points, this article describes …

An Investigation Of Spatial And Temporal Variability In Several Of Montana's Reference Streams: Working Toward A More Holistic Management Strategy, Kathryn Elizabeth Makarowski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water temperature is a physical property that fundamentally affects stream ecology and is considered an important water quality parameter from scientific and legal view points. On global, catchment and reach scales, anthropogenic activities have substantially altered natural stream temperature regimes, impairing these systems’ ability to maintain ecological integrity. Thermal degradation often can be attributed to a variety of human activities, and global climate change, which has been accelerated by the demands of an exponentially expanding human population, will play a central role in defining stream temperature regimes in the future. Natural spatial and temporal variability in stream temperatures adds to …