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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Collaborative And Engaged Research To Strengthen Equity And Adaptive Governance In Co-Managed Fisheries, Gabrielle V. Hillyer Aug 2023

Collaborative And Engaged Research To Strengthen Equity And Adaptive Governance In Co-Managed Fisheries, Gabrielle V. Hillyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Small-scale, co-managed fisheries are found throughout the world and often represent intertwining cultures, societies, communities, economies, institutions, and governments. They face complex issues, derived from ecological and social sources. Solving these issues requires diverse expertise, often developed through engaged methodologies which can facilitate collaborative solution creation between researchers, community members, and others. In this dissertation, I demonstrate the benefits of these engaged methodologies and review how they, when coupled with anticolonial approaches to research, can create more equitable solutions to complex issues. This dissertation focuses on multiple projects within the wild clam fishery in Maine including: (1) the creation of …


Quantifying Spatial Heterogeneity Of Wild Blueberries And Crop Water Stress Monitoring Using Remote Sensing Technologies, Kallol Barai Aug 2022

Quantifying Spatial Heterogeneity Of Wild Blueberries And Crop Water Stress Monitoring Using Remote Sensing Technologies, Kallol Barai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The wild blueberry is one of the major crops of Maine, with significant economic value and potential health benefits. Due to global climate change, drought impacts have been increasing significantly in recent years in the northeast region of the USA, causing significant economic losses in the agricultural sectors. It has been predicted to increase further in the future. Changing patterns of the elevated atmospheric temperatures, increased rainfall variabilities, and more frequent drought events have made the wild blueberry industry of Maine vulnerable, suggesting the adoption of novel approaches to mitigate the negative impacts of global climate changes. Also, wild blueberry …


Assessment Of Historical Climate Variability In Maine With Implications For Future Agricultural Productivity And Adaptation, Carly Frank Aug 2022

Assessment Of Historical Climate Variability In Maine With Implications For Future Agricultural Productivity And Adaptation, Carly Frank

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is a wicked problem with global impacts, one of which being the sustainability of the existing global food system. As temperatures and variability in precipitation are projected to increase, the challenges to agriculture are expected to intensify. This thesis examines the Maine historical climate record over the growing season, in combination with future projections, to assess how conditions have changed and will change with agricultural implications. In this analysis, relevant climatic variables are analyzed, and agriculture-significant measures are derived for Maine’s three climate divisions using four decades of daily and monthly gridded datasets. In addition, this thesis explores …


Sustainability As Justice Engaging With North American Alternative Seafood Networks Through Participatory Action Research, Paloma Henriques Jul 2022

Sustainability As Justice Engaging With North American Alternative Seafood Networks Through Participatory Action Research, Paloma Henriques

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transformations in the ways we relate to the ocean are long overdue given the myriad of anthropogenic problems that exist – from overfishing to plastic pollution and acidification to ‘slavery-at-sea ’ and loss of access and fishing rights. Yet alongside the hegemonic modes of ocean exploitation exist diverse alternative economies, including those associated with alternative seafood networks, that aim to create different and more-than-economic relationships with marine systems. To situate my research within the broader literature, I interpret the widely used Brundtland Report definition of sustainability, “meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to …


Giving Form To Flow: Modeling The Paleohydrological Context For Human Settlement And Water Use In The North-Central Coast Of Peru, Elizabeth Leclerc May 2022

Giving Form To Flow: Modeling The Paleohydrological Context For Human Settlement And Water Use In The North-Central Coast Of Peru, Elizabeth Leclerc

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within coastal Andean archaeology there is a growing emphasis on the roles of hydrology and hydrological knowledge in Andean strategies for water management, settlement, and land use. Hydrological methods can not only help reconstruct past water environments but also illuminate the influence of changing climates and conditions in the Andean highlands on coastal water flows. Through a case study of the Supe River basin in north-central coastal Peru, focusing on the period from 5000 to 3000 calibrated radiocarbon years before present (cal. BP), I review several hydrological methods useful for archaeological study. I then combine these to develop a paleohydrological …


Participatory Modeling Of Tidal Circulation On Maine Mudflats To Improve Water Quality Management Of Shellfish Areas, Gabrielle V. Hillyer Dec 2019

Participatory Modeling Of Tidal Circulation On Maine Mudflats To Improve Water Quality Management Of Shellfish Areas, Gabrielle V. Hillyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over the past decade, researchers have become increasingly aware of the vital role stakeholder knowledge plays in understanding complex social and environmental problems. Incorporating stakeholder knowledge into understanding complex problems allows for greater awareness and identification of community needs and can help build partnerships to support the development of applied research. In this thesis, I demonstrate the value of stakeholder knowledge and research partnerships by focusing on the soft-shell clamming industry in Maine and how a complex collaboration between clammers, municipal officials, representatives from state agencies, researchers, and other partners relied on and build adaptive capacity to address complex water …


Blacklegged Tick (Ixodes Scapularis) Distribution In Maine, Usa, As Related To Climate Change, White-Tailed Deer, And The Landscape, Susan P. Elias May 2019

Blacklegged Tick (Ixodes Scapularis) Distribution In Maine, Usa, As Related To Climate Change, White-Tailed Deer, And The Landscape, Susan P. Elias

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lyme disease is caused by the bacterial spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, which is transmitted through the bite of an infected blacklegged (deer) tick (Ixodes scapularis). Geographic invasion of I. scapularis in North America has been attributed to causes including 20th century reforestation and suburbanization, burgeoning populations of the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) which is the primary reproductive host of I. scapularis, tick-associated non-native plant invasions, and climate change. Maine, USA, is a high Lyme disease incidence state, with a history of increasing I. scapularis abundance and northward range expansion. This thesis addresses the question: “To …


Climate-Driven Migration: Prioritizing Cultural Resources Threatened By Secondary Impacts Of Climate Change, Frankie St. Amand May 2019

Climate-Driven Migration: Prioritizing Cultural Resources Threatened By Secondary Impacts Of Climate Change, Frankie St. Amand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological sites suffer increasingly destructive primary impacts of climate-driven natural hazards, including sea level rise, flooding, and erosion. Action is generally limited to mitigation and salvage of immediately threatened sites, with little attention or forethought given to secondary effects, such as destruction of interior archaeological resources by inland migration of affected populations. The United Nations predicts a growing trend in resettlement of climate-affected communities from areas where in-situ infrastructure adaptations are not economically feasible, legal, or physically possible. While adapting existing urban infrastructure (e.g., abating combined sewage overflows) is a viable option in the primary impact zone (e.g. coastal areas …


Three-Dimensional Bedrock Channel Evolution With Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics, Nick Richmond Dec 2018

Three-Dimensional Bedrock Channel Evolution With Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics, Nick Richmond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bedrock channels are responsible for balancing and communicating tectonic and climatic signals across landscapes, but it is difficult and dangerous to observe and measure the flows responsible for removing weakly-attached blocks of bedrock from the channel boundary. Consequently, quantitative descriptions of the dynamics of bedrock removal are scarce. Detailed numerical simulation of violent flows in three dimensions has been historically challenging due to technological limitations, but advances in computational fluid dynamics aided by high-performance computing have made it practical to generate approximate solutions to the governing equations of fluid dynamics. From these numerical solutions we gain detailed knowledge of the …