Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-68).

Thesis--Universidade de São Paulo. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-214).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1973. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliography.

Land use change is one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity, and agricultural intensification has severely affected farmland birds in Europe. As a rapidly declining long-distance migrant and obligatory brood parasite, the common cuckoo Cuculus canorus is an interesting species on which to investigate the impacts of land use on birds. My thesis focuses on understanding the causes and mechanisms behind cuckoo declines in Britain by exploring relationships between land use, cuckoos, their hosts and adult cuckoo prey. Cuckoo population trends vary between habitat types, resulting in changes to cuckoo-habitat associations. There was little evidence of preference for semi-natural or agricultural habitats where cuckoos were widespread before their declines began, but they were strongly selective of semi-natural grass, heath and woodland by the 2000s while avoiding farmland. This suggests that female cuckoos specialised in parasitizing dunnocks (Prunella modularis) are now scarce while meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis) cuckoos have been retained in semi-natural habitats. However, as habitat cover had a consistently stronger statistical effect than host abundance on the presence or retention of cuckoos, the availability of other resources may limit current cuckoo distribution. The probability of cuckoo presence increased with the abundance of known cuckoo prey, predominantly large, hairy moth caterpillars. These species have undergone greater declines than other moths and their population trends also vary by habitat: abundance has increased in semi-natural habitats but declined in improved grassland and woodland. Therefore changing prey abundance may be a key driver of cuckoo declines in farmland. Although fundamental questions on the causes of cuckoo declines remain unanswered, maintaining semi-natural habitats as a stronghold for cuckoos in Britain might be an effective conservation strategy in the immediate future. However, measures adopted under agri-environment schemes which increase moth abundance may offer long-term mitigation of cuckoo declines while benefiting other insectivorous species.

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The tension between conservation objectives and local people’s need for visible livelihoods is complex and often difficult to resolve.  In 2000, the Knuckles Conservation Area was established to include a protected area and a buffer zone to be used for management and restoration.  Prior to this decree, small tracts of land in the buffer zone were used for vegetable cultivation by villagers to supplement production from their titled agricultural plots.  An ethnographic approach was used in seven villages to explore how households have adapted their livelihoods in response to the change in land, and to examine the factors that may help understand the differences in the livelihood activities chosen.  The fundamental needs of the local people in their use of natural resources were not addressed when cultivation in the buffer zones was banned in 1990, creating shortfalls in production for some households, but stimulating others to diversify and invest in higher value crops in their own plots.  Physical, financial, human, and natural assets other than land were important to households as they responded to and coped with change.  Long-term livelihood strategies are dependent on more than just access to assets; the variability of farm and non-farm livelihood activities observed between households is explained by social and cultural factors.  Power relations within the community, personal characteristics of actors such as motivation and risk taking, and local laws and modes of governance all influence, to varying degrees and in complex and multiple ways, how households transform and utilise their assets.  The ability to transform assets is also dependent on the dynamics of the household: age and gender, status, social standing, and caste.  When conservation initiatives are implemented, programmes need to cater for variability among households in terms of their capacity to adapt to reductions in access to land, and in terms of their aspirations for diversifying their livelihood.

The fall out from the Quincentennial anniversary of the "discovery" of the Americas has yet to settle. One of the key issues still in need of address concerns the nature of the social and environmental change wrought by colonialism. Until recently, research in this field has been determined by a series of antiquated myths, largely creations of Eurocentric Renaissance and Romantic philosophies. This study aims to provide a more objective insight into the degree of regional Colonial impact by focusing on an archival reconstruction of post-Conquest social and environmental change in the highlands ofMichoacan, west central Mexico. Archival evidence suggests that the Spanish encountered an already degraded landscape in this region, reflective of several centuries of pre-Hispanic settlement and exploitation. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, little evidence emerges to suggest that there was an immediate and deleterious environmental impact following European contact, despite the introduction of livestock and plough technology to an area where they had hitherto been absent. Indeed, tangible evidence of ecological disturbance in the area does not emerge until the 18th century - a period recognised to have been one of population recovery and resource monopolisation. A detailed survey of litigation documents suggests that this period witnessed an acceleration in the number of indigenous claims for land reinstatement, concomitant with a marked increase in the number of references to infertile and degraded territory and apparent heightened concern over water sources. It is here argued that de-intensification of land use in the wake of indigenous depopulation and the imposition of conservative land use practices accounts for the negligible environmental impact in the early post-Conquest period. By the later 17th and 18th centuries, progressive climatic drying, population expansion, resource monopolisation and social inequality had combined to create a period of acute resource stress and landscape instability and consequent civil unrest. It was this untenable situation that was to play itself out in the Wars of Independence that characterised the first two decades of the 19th century.