To improve the study and management of Havens Wildlife Management Area (HWMA) in Roanoke County, Virginia, the ecological history of the Ridge and Valley Province of Virginia was investigated. Palynological, paleontological, archaeological, and historical data were synthesized into a comprehensive history of the region's vegetation, fauna, and humans from 25,000 B.P. to Euroamerican settlement. A linear programming model was developed to examine the relationship between the energy demand of a human band and the food resources of HWMA 2,500 years ago. The model was based on the assumption that prehistoric human foraging was impelled by the need to satisfy energy requirements and that prehistoric human foragers strove for maximum energetic efficiency. The model was driven by an objective function, that minimized the cost (expressed in hours of labor) of the human foragers' diet. Constraints on the achievement of this goal were the available metabolizable energy in selected mountain food resources and the energy demand of a 25-person band. The product of the model was a regimen of food resources that met the band's annual energy requirement at the lowest cost. The model predicted that fall was the dominant foraging season on HWMA. Chestnut was the major food resource, satisfying 54% of the bandâ s annual energy demand. Additional primary resources were opossum and raccoon, elk, woodchuck, white-tailed deer, and black bear. Secondary and tertiary resources were passenger pigeon, bitter acorns, hickory nuts, and false Solomon's seal rhizomes. Marginal food resources were wild turkey, Jack-in-the-pulpit corms, eastern cottontail, gray squirrel, sweet acorns, and box turtle. An annual foraging strategy with a fall-winter focus in mountain ecosystems and a spring-summer focus in lowland ecosystems was suggested by the model. A comparison of the model results with an archaeological data indicated that hickory nuts were over represented and chestnuts underrepresented at archaeological sites, and that clothing, not food, limited human population density in upland western Virginia ecosystems. / Master of Science

A computerized system for estimating rainfall values was developed for western Virginia using data from 15 weather stations in that area. This system, called VARAINS for VirginiA RAINfall System, is designed to run on a microcomputer. System programs were created using Borland Pascal, version 7. The system models were developed using study station coordinates, elevation, aspect, distance from West Virginia, distance to the Virginia coast, as well as transformations, as independent variables. Additionally, a distance-weighting variable was developed using the inverse distance to each of the 5 closest study stations. The system provides estimates for annual, seasonal, and monthly rainfall at single or multiple ungaged sites. Rainfall models were validated using comparable periods of record from 3 stations within the study zone not previously used to develop study models. VARAINS was demonstrated using 4 sites occurring on the Havens Wildlife Management Area of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Potential system applications for wildlife management include incorporating system output files into a geographic information system, using Outputs as independent variables in regression analyses of habitat phenomena, and in ecosystem models of interest in endangered species research. Ideas for supplemental research on the model are explored and include testing VARAINS in other areas, evaluating the impact of using fewer years of data in model development, and combining these models with those developed in a recently completed temperature study. / Master of Science