Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Niche-Based Modeling Of Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium Vimineum) Using Presence-Only Information, Nathan Bush

Masters Theses

The Connecticut River watershed is experiencing a rapid invasion of aggressive non-native plant species, which threaten watershed function and structure. Volunteer-based monitoring programs such as the University of Massachusetts’ OutSmart Invasives Species Project, Early Detection Distribution Mapping System (EDDMapS) and the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (IPANE) have gathered valuable invasive plant data. These programs provide a unique opportunity for researchers to model invasive plant species utilizing citizen-sourced data. This study took advantage of these large data sources to model invasive plant distribution and to determine environmental and biophysical predictors that are most influential in dispersion, and to identify …

The Expected Total Curvature Of Random Polygons, Jason Cantarella, Alexander Y. Grosberg, Robert Kusner, Clayton Shonkwiler

Robert Kusner

We consider the expected value for the total curvature of a random closed polygon. Numerical experiments have suggested that as the number of edges becomes large, the difference between the expected total curvature of a random closed polygon and a random open polygon with the same number of turning angles approaches a positive constant. We show that this is true for a natural class of probability measures on polygons, and give a formula for the constant in terms of the moments of the edgelength distribution.

We then consider the symmetric measure on closed polygons of fixed total length constructed by …