Thesis--Northwestern University. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographies.

Thesis (MSc. (Honours)) -- University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 1998. / "A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a degree of Master of Science (Honours), Faculty of Environmental Management and Agriculture, University of Western Sydney - Hawkesbury." "January 1998" Bibliography: leaves 207 - 227.

This thesis is a landscape ethnography examining conflicting epistemologies and land use values in the Athabasca region of subarctic Canada. Based on 18 months of fieldwork in Fort McMurray, Alberta with the Fort McMurray Métis community and peatland scientists, I analyse oil sands reclamation as a site of encounter between Indigenous and settler peoples. I show how reclamation, a process of reconstructing ecological integrity of a post-extractive landscape for future use, is a historically contingent activity that centres on settler colonial ideologies of productivity. I argue that this ideology spurred a process that I call 'making productive land' which seeks to 'improve' upon or transform the Athabasca region from Indigenous homeland into settler territory or 'useful' land. Weaving archival documents with experiential material from ethnographic fieldwork, I analyse the Athabasca region as a multilocal and multivocal place to demonstrate that Indigenous communities such as the McMurray Métis hold their own definitions of land use that exist alongside, beyond, against, and entangled with settler notions of productivity. I conclude that, for Métis community members, reclaimed areas in fact represent a diminished experience of place or an unproductive landscape. For reclamation to be successful for Métis community members, I contend that reclamation policy and practice must expand beyond purely scientific and resource-based utility narratives to involve a relational element of healing and Métis notions of use that transcend settler colonial ideals of 'productive' land.

Presented as the author's thesis: Zugl.: Hohenheim, Univ., 2009.

Vast progress has been made in detecting rates of tropical deforestation, yet the relationship between visible patterns of forest change, multi-scalar human processes and the underlying drivers associated with them is poorly understood. Building on satellite imagery, a household livelihood survey and semi-structured interviews, this research scrutinised changes of forest cover from the mid-1990s to 2015 in a municipality located in southeastern Mexico and investigated the proximate causes and underlying drivers of change at the household and community levels. Emerging evidence indicated that, contrary to the persistent narrative of deforestation for the region, forest cover change is highly dynamic including periods of deforestation and forest recovery. Moreover, a close examination of 24 communities showed forest cover gained terrain, while the agricultural frontier retracted. Drawing on a comparison between the household survey and previous analyses, it could be inferred that forest resurgence was produced by the decrease in the farming area and the increase in the abandonment of farming activities by some communities. Associated with the adaptation of households was the development of formal and informal institutions at the community level in response to macro-global forces linked to the implementation of forest conservation strategies, environmental degradation, market liberalization and increased urbanization. Overall, this research adds not only to our understanding of the complexity of land-use and cover change in emerging globalized economies but also exemplifies the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of tropical forest systems, which challenges partial models of deforestation and policies designed to reduce it. The research may be focused on a narrow region of the globe, nevertheless, the insights and recommendation provided may be useful to further forest conservation schemes in other tropical regions.

No description available.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional and Community Planning / Eric A. Bernard / The Kansas High Plains region is a key global agricultural production center (U.S. G.S, 2009). The High Plains physiography is ideal agricultural production landscape except for the semi-arid climate. Consequently, farmers mine vast groundwater resources from the High Plains Ogallala Aquifer formations to augment precipitation for crop production. Growing global population, current policy and subsidy programs, declining aquifer levels coupled with regional climatic changes call into question both short-term and long-term resilience of this agrarian landscape and food and water security. This project proposes a means to simulate future irrigated agriculture land use and crop cover patterns in the Kansas High Plains Aquifer region based on coupled modeling results from ongoing research at Kansas State University. A Cellular Automata (CA) modeling framework is used to simulate potential land use distribution, based on coupled modeling results from groundwater, economic, and crop models. The CA approach considers existing infrastructure resources, industrial and commercial systems, existing land use patterns, and suitability modeling results for agricultural production. The results of the distribution of irrigated land produced from the CA model provide necessary variable inputs for the next temporal coupled modeling iteration. For example, the groundwater model estimates water availability in saturated thickness and depth to water. The economic model projects which crops will be grown based on water availability and commodity prices at a county scale. The crop model estimates potential yield of a crop under specific soil, climate and growing conditions which further informs the economic model providing an estimate of profit, which informs regional economic and population models. Integrating the CA model into the coupled modeling system provides a key linkage to simulate spatial patterns of irrigated land use and crop type land cover based on coupled model results. Implementing the CA model in GIS offers visualization of coupled model components and results as well as the CA model land use and land cover. The project outcome hopes to afford decision-makers, including farmers, the ability to use the actual landscape data and the developed coupled modeling framework to strategically inform decisions with long-term resiliency.