MSc., Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / Sodic soils are salt-affected soils which are high in sodium in relation to magnesium and calcium. Commonly called sodic sites in the Kruger National Park (KNP), these patches exhibit unique functional characteristics due to the high levels of sodium which cause surface crusting, cracking and the dispersion of clay particles. The aim of this study is to use satellite imagery to map sodic sites in the KNP at different spatial and spectral scales, giving the best option for a repeatable, semi-automated classification. The resultant map of sodic sites for the KNP will be used as a management tool and for future research projects. A field test for sodicity was necessary to collect sufficient ground truth samples for robust accuracy assessment of the image classification. Sodic soils are identified by measuring EC, pH and SAR which are highly variable within site and between testing methods, and therefore not useful for rapid ground truth classification of sodic soils in the field. The sodium level at which clay particle dispersion takes place varies between soils, but is measurable in the field using the Emerson dispersion test. Laboratory tested sodic soil sites from previous research re-tested in this study showed positive results for dispersion of clay particles in water. The physical properties of sodic sites described in the literature and observed in the field were applied to classify sodic sites in the KNP in the field using a decision tree, together with results from the dispersion test and the observed presence of the grass species Sporobolus iocladus. Landsat 7 and SPOT 5 imagery cover the whole park, with ASTER, CAO hyperspectral, LiDAR and black and white orthophotos available for selected areas. The topography elements of crest and footslope were derived from the STRM 90m digital elevation model (DEM). Image preprocessing to top of atmosphere reflectance was performed where necessary and visual enhancement techniques and transformations were applied to derive the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and other indices. Spectral signatures were checked against spectral signature libraries, and the class separation was tested using the cluster analysis of spectral signatures. MODIS NDVI averages placed the imagery in phenological context. Object-based image analysis using eCognition was applied to classify the sodic sites of the Shingwedzi and Ripape River catchments. The input imagery was segmented into ecologically meaningful patches and classification accuracy was assessed using the field samples collected using the decision tree to identify four classes: sodic sites (bare and woody), river sand, riverine vegetation and savanna areas. Comparison of the accuracy assessments for the Shingwedzi study site showed that the Landsat 7 and SPOT 5 classification algorithms gave an overall kappa index accuracy of 89% and 78% respectively, and a sodic site kappa index of 90% and 89%. Validation results using the ground truth samples gave an overall kappa index accuracy of 61% for Landsat 7 and 52% for SPOT 5, with a sodic site kappa index of 49% and 39% respectively. The classification algorithms were applied to the Ripape study site for Landsat 7 and SPOT 5 with repeatable results for the SPOT 5 imagery of 88% overall kappa index and 81-93% kappa index for sodic sites using similar seasonal imagery in the wet to early dry season. The Landsat 7 classification algorithm was applied to the entire KNP based on the repeatability results of 56% overall kappa index and 60% sodic site kappa index for the Ripape site. The quest for a repeatable algorithm to classify sodic sites from satellite imagery has been met by the SPOT 5 imagery using scenes acquired at similar seasonal stages. The late wet season or early dry season imagery was used to apply the classification algorithm with the best success. Changes in size or shape of sodic sites over time requires very high resolution imagery and further studies to understand where the edge of sodic sites are detected from imagery, and how the phenology of the vegetation growing on these sites affects detecting any change in size of the sodic site.

Typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

The mapped area, which includes the eastern part of the Richmond and the western part of the Naomi peak quadrangles, Utah-Idaho, is located in the central part of northern Utah and southeastern Idaho. It is located along the eastern side of Cache Valley and western side of the Bear River Range. Cache Valley is in the Basin and Range province and the Bear River Range is in the Middle Rocky Mountain province. The mapped area is about 8.6 miles long, in the north-south direction, and 7.8 miles long, in the east-west direction. The Mutual Formation of Precambrian age is the oldest stratigraphic unit exposed in the mapped area. It consists of purple and brown quartzite. The Brigham Formation of Early Cambrian age and the Langston Formation of Middle Cambrian age overlie the Mutual in stratigraphic succession. The Salt Lake Formation of Tertiary age unconformably overlies older rocks; it is also faulted against the Mutual Formation. A major landslide of Precambrian, Cambrian, and Ordovician formations is present in the southern part of the mapped area. It is unconformably overlapped by the Salt Lake Formation. The Lake Bonneville Group of late Pleistocene age is present in Cache Valley and overlaps older rocks along the western side of the Bear River Range. The Precambrian and Cambrian stratigraphic units, except for those of the landslide, dip eastward and form the western flank of the Logan Peak syncline. A small disharmonic asymmetrical anticline, in the Langston and Ute Formations of Cambrian age, indicates eastward movement. Two beddingplane faults locally eliminate the basal Naomi Peak Limestone Member of the Langston Formation. A major normal fault, which is nearly vertical, extends along the base of the Bear River Range. Another normal fault, which is probably nearly vertical, parallels the western edge of the foothills. The folding and bedding-plane thrust faulting involve eastward movement and occurred during the Sevier orogeny. This orogeny began during late Jurassic time and extended into the early part of the Tertiary Period. Basin and Range normal faulting began early in the Tertiary Period. The normal faults produced great relief between Cache Valley and the Bear River Range. The landslide surface is thought to have formed as a west-dipping thrust fault. Reversed movement on this fault, due to removal of support on the valley side, produced the major landslide. (58 pages)

The purpose of this study was to examine the changing relationship between the National Park Service and the residents of Wayne County, Utah. In 1937, Capitol Reef National Park was created as a result of the efforts made by local residents looking for a solution to their economic problems. Over the next five decades, the anticipated economic upturn spurred by the National Park did not develop. Instead, the relationship between the parties involved underwent a radical change because of conflicts over private landholdings, grazing and mineral rights, expansion, development, and road building. While this study does trace the growth of Capitol Reef into a national park, it is not an administrative history of the site. Its focus is on failure of the Park to live up to the expectations of its early supporters and the resulting deterioration of the relationship between local residents and the National Park Service.

Under the background of worldwide transition towards sustainability, Chinese government has begun to advocate nationwide sustainable-industrialization through initiating Eco-industrial Parks (EIPs) since last decade. While EIP projects are widely carried out by both central and local governments, the standards for EIP planning and management promulgated in China are considered to be inefficient and incomprehensive in this study. Due to the challenge of economy-environment conflict China confronts and the consequent narrow definition of China's EIPs which focuses mainly on environmental performance, a main limitation of the standards is the unbalanced considerations between the three basic foundations of sustainable development (SD) concept - economic growth, social development, and environmental protection and restoration. By reviewing several leading assessment tools being used internationally, as well as analyzing the specific issues existing during industrial development in China, this research intends to develop a synthetic and advanced indicator system, to evaluate China’s EIP performance. This system comprises 34 indicators that integrate four broad aspects of 'economic development', 'social development', 'environmental management', and 'administration'. For each indicator, detailed measurement and criterion are proposed for evaluation and implementation. Additionally, a case study of Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area (TEDA), a certificated EIP, is conducted to illustrate the application of this assessment system. The proposed indicator system is supposed to fill in the gap in EIP performance evaluation in China, from a view of the internationally perceived understandings of EIP and SD concepts. Although future studies are still needed to test and improve its feasibility and accuracy in terms of both indicator selection and criteria setting, this system provides a generic framework for EIP assessment work in China and is expected to drive China's EIP movement towards a more sustainable approach.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger describes humour as a response to human 'thrownness' in the world. This thesis argues that there is a form of humour which can be usefully described as postmodern humour and that postmodern humour reflects the experience of being 'thrown' into postmodernity. Postmodern humour responds to and references the fears, fixations, frameworks and technologies which underpin our postmodern existence. It is further contended that South Park is an example of postmodern humour in the way that it exhibits a carnivalesque postmodern narrative impulse which attacks the meta-narrative style explanations of contemporary events, trends and fashions offered in the popular media. South Park's carnivalesque humour is a complex critique on a society in which television is a primary instrument of communication, a centre-piece to many people's lives, and a barometer of contemporary culture, while at the same time drawing attention to the fact that the medium being satirised is also used to perform the critique. A large portion of this thesis is devoted to examining and interrogating the discursive properties of humour as compared to seriousness, an endeavour which also establishes some interesting links to postmodern philosophical discourse. This can be succinctly summarized by the following: 1. Humour is a form of discourse which simultaneously refers to two frames of reference, or associative contexts. Therefore humour is a bissociative form of discourse. 2. Seriousness is a form of discourse which relies on a singular associative context. 3. The legally and socially instituted rules which govern everyday life use serious discourse as a matter of practical necessity. 4. Ambiguity, transgression and deviancy are problematic to serious discourse (and therefore the official culture in which it circulates), but conventions of humorous discourse. 5. Humorous discourse then, challenges the singularity and totality of the official discourses which govern everyday life. Subsequently, humour has been subjected to a variety of controls, most notably the 'policing the body' documented in the writings of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault. 6. Humour can therefore be understood to function in a manner similar to Jean-Fran ois Lyotard's concept of little-narrative's, which destabilize the totality of official meta-narratives. Furthermore, this thesis proposes strong links between the oppositional practices of the medieval carnival, as outlined by Mikhail Bakhtin, and the produced-for-mass-consumption humour of South Park. However, it also demonstrates that although South Park embodies the oppositional spirit of the carnival, it lacks its fundamentally social nature, and therefore lacks its politically resistant potency. More specifically it is argued that the development and prevalence of technologies such as television, video/DVD, and the internet, allows us to access humour at any time we wish. However, this temporal freedom is contrasted by the spatial constraints inherent in these communication/media technologies. Rather than officially sanctioned times and places for carnivalesque social gatherings, today, individuals have the 'liberty' of free (private) access to carnivalesque media texts, which simultaneously help to restrict the freedom of social contact that the carnival used to afford. Further to this, it is argued that the fact that South Park, with its explicit derision of authority, is allowed to circulate through mainstream media at all, implies asymmetric conservative action on the part of officialdom. In this sense it is argued that postmodern humour such as South Park is allowed to circulate because the act of watching/consuming the programme also acts as a deterrent to actual radical activity.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to document vegetation on "The Island", a Research Natural Area at the confluence of the Crooked River and the Deschutes River in central Oregon's Juniperus occidentalis Zone and to compare the results with an earlier study reported in 1964 from 1960-'61 data. Present-day comparisons were also made between "The Island" vegetation and three nearby sites. Percent cover and constancy of major tree, shrub, grass, and forb species were considered along with percent cover of litter, moss/lichen, rock and bare ground. Climatic data from the Metolius, OR Station were examined, and the literature of succession especially succession in the juniper and sagebrush steppe of the Great Basin was reviewed. Data from 1992-'93 show more woody vegetation on "The Island", both tree and shrub, than was measured thirty years ago. The only tree species present is Juniperus occidentalis, while major shrub species are Artemisia tridentata and Purshia tridentata. Grass cover appeared to be less, with a more even mix of the native perennial bunchgrass species Agropyron spicatum, Festuca idahoensis, Poa sandbergii, and Stipa thurberiana, than in the past when Agropyron spicatum and the alien annual grass, Bromus tectorum dominated. The two plant associations identified in the 1964 report by Driscoll, Juniperus occidentalis / Artemisia tridentata / Agropyron spicatum and Juniperus occidentalis / Purshia tridentata / Agropyron spicatum were still identifiable, but the shrub, Artemisia tridentata appeared to be entering areas where Purshia tridentata had dominated in the past study. The present-day comparison sites showed many similarities with sites on "The Island." The comparison sites in the Juniperus occidentalis / Artemisia tridentata / Agropyron spicatum association measured slightly more tree and shrub cover but similar grass cover when compared to "The Island." The comparison site in the Juniperus occidentalis / Purshia tridentata / Agropyron spicatum association had more tree cover and more Purshia tridentata cover, but less shrub cover generally and more grass cover than the same association on "The Island." Forbs represented less than one percent cover on all study sites. The differences recorded in 1992-'93 from that of the study thirty years ago may reflect successional processes at work and a lack of any major natural fires in the system. / Graduation date: 1996

The U.S. National Park Service has recognized visitor health and safety as an important component of protected area management. Despite this recognition, research investigating visitor health and safety issues in national parks is lacking. In order to improve the understanding of the factors contributing to visitor injuries, the purpose of this study was to: 1) identify the distribution of injuries in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, 2) examine the relationship between visitor factors and the severity of visitor injuries in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, 3) examine the relationship between environmental factors and the severity of visitor injuries in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and 4) determine the effectiveness of sign placement and indirect supervision on controlling visitor injuries in the park. Data for this study consisted of 5,947 incident reports recorded in Hawaii Volcanoes between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 2002. The results found that even though 26% of the injuries in the park occur in frontcountry regions, 53% of all visitor injuries took place at the Eruption Site. As well, 130 of the 268 (49%) fatalities occurred on roadway environments and 1,179 of the 1,698 (69%) severe injuries occurred at the Eruption Site. Logistic regression analysis used to examine the relationship between visitor factors and injury severity in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park found that female visitors, visitors wearing minimal footwear and clothing, and visitors carrying no flashlight and minimal drinking water are factors significantly associated with fatal injuries. Visitors wearing minimal footwear and clothing, visitors carrying no flashlight and minimal drinking water, visitors entering restricted areas, visitors with pre-existing health conditions, and visitors aged 50-59 years of age are factors significantly associated with severe injuries. Logistic regression analysis found no built environment factor to be significantly associated with visitor fatalities or severe injuries. However, darkness and rugged terrain were significantly associated with visitor fatalities. Chi-square tests of independence found the combined treatment of sign placement and indirect supervision to have no effect on reducing the frequency and severity of visitor injuries at the Eruption Site.

No description available.