The purpose of this research study is to understand the characteristics of the people arrested for felony charges and transferred into the Broward County Felony Mental Health Court (FMHC) program. This research project will review previously collected data on the subjects who participated in the FMHC program between January 2007 and September 2008, and who were diverted to a residential dual-diagnosis program. Problem-solving courts have been developed in many states as a way to effectively restore offenders and reduce recidivism (Stefan & Winick, 2005). The goal of mental health courts is to prevent criminal behavior and recidivism by accommodating necessary mental health services to those who need it. However, most offenders placed in a mental health program commit new violations or offenses. A frequent question that is raised when evaluating mental health courts is whether they are successful in allocating resources for mentally ill defendants, as well as whether jail diversion programs are effective in preventing recidivism or rehabilitating mentally ill offenders. The difficulty to find answers for those questions may be due to the diversity of each jurisdiction's population, complexity of mental illnesses and differences in each unique jail diversion program. Some reports state that in contrast to drug courts, current mental health courts seem to lack resources to assess the participation of services mandated (Steadman, Davidson & Brown, 2001.) In this current study, the data collected on the subjects is comprehensive and include criminal, family, trauma, abuse and psychiatric histories. The levels of compliance were taken from re-arrests records including new crimes and violations of probation for up to two years after entering the jail-diversion program. This study is seeking to investigate the relationship between recidivism and different diagnoses, types of trauma experienced as a child as well as trauma scales from the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI.) It is hypothesized that elevated scores on trauma scales as well as early exposure of abuse will be related to high recidivism among a subset of participants in the mental health court program.

Relatively little is known about either the biological (i.e., predation) or physical (i.e., current, sedimentation) effects that artificial reefs may have on surrounding benthic infaunal communities. Following deployment of artificial reefs (concrete boulders) between the first and second reefs off Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 30 October 2009, sediment cores were taken at 4 distances along three replicate 10-m transects on 13 and 26 September 2013, and 24 and 25 May 2014 at each of four artificial reef sites and four of their adjacent natural reef sites using SCUBA. Infauna (>0.5mm) were extracted from the sediment and identified to the lowest possible taxonomic level. Statistical analysis (PRIMER, PERMANOVA, SIMPER) focused on four main variables: type of reef, year, site, and distance. Type of reef, year, and site was significantly different between samples, while distance did not affect density. There is a clear separation of communities between the artificial and natural reefs. From 2013 to 2014, a slight shift occurred between communities suggesting the artificial reef community composition became slightly more similar to the natural reef. All four artifical reef sites were more taxonomically distinct at the phylum and class level then the natural reef, which had higher diversity, higher species richness and more low-density taxa. This two year study provides insight on infauna communities four and five years out from deployment, but follow up monitoring in 3-5 years could shed light on whether these patterns of shift to more similar assemblages between reefs will continue as the artificial reef matures. Environmental data collection including longer time-series datasets, longer transects, and physical and geological data could provide more knowledge of how the artificial reef infaunal communities are changing over time.

The survival rates of pre-emergent sea turtle hatchlings are critically dependent upon temperature. This study aimed to determine if changes in air temperature can explain some of the variability in hatching success observed over a 12 year period for loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) nests in Broward County. Air temperature data for the hatching seasons of 1999 to 2010 were obtained from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center’s Fort Lauderdale beach station. The loggerhead sea turtle hatching data collected by the Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program from the same time period was examined to assess the potential effects of air temperature on the hatching success and the incubation duration. Mean yearly incubation times were analyzed for trends and compared to mean nesting season temperatures. The relationships between the incubation durations and mean seasonal and intra-seasonal air temperature fluctuations as well as the relationship between hatching success and air temperature was tested for significance. The hatching success was also compared to the incubation times in order to establish if shorter incubation durations, were related to lower hatching success rates. There have been large fluctuations in the average daily hatching success rates ranging from 10 to 100% over the twelve years examined in this study in Broward County. Significant decreases in incubation durations were apparent during times of increasing average air temperatures. In five of the twelve seasons there was also a significant relationship between the hatching success rates and the average air temperature, in which lower hatching success rates were evident during times of higher average air temperatures. There was a significant correlation between the incubation durations and the hatching success rates in six of the seasons as well, suggesting that lower hatching success rates are related to shorter incubation times. The pattern in average yearly hatching success rates were significantly related to the average monthly air temperatures in July suggesting that lower hatching success rates during the month of July were a result of higher temperatures during this time of the hatching season. A better understanding of the effects that air temperature has on loggerhead sea turtle clutches in Broward County can provide future insights for the fluctuating survival rates of sea turtle clutches and if the changes are natural or the result of conservation efforts.

The threatened Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) migrates seasonally to warm-water refugia throughout the state of Florida due to metabolic requirements from low thermal conductance. Broward County’s two power plant refugia, Port Everglades (PEP) and Lauderdale (LPP), are known heavily-utilized aggregation sites for the Atlantic sub-population. Broward County collected relative abundance counts via aerial surveys from 2004–2013 siting 31,418 manatees during 169 surveys within 18 defined waterway zones. Counts during manatee wintering seasons were significantly different from January 2005-March 2008 and November 2008-March 2013, likely related to flight path and frequency standardization. Mean percentage of adults (90.12%) to calves (9.88%) demonstrates a higher usage by cow-calf pairs than other aggregation sites. Counts of manatees traveling south to Miami-Dade County comprised only 0.83% of all aerial counts, contrary to the theory of the extensive usage of Biscayne Bay foraging grounds. The LPP zone had 57.21% of all manatees with Port Everglades Inlet zone accounting for 23.88% and the South Fork New River zone with 5.95%. This study provided a baseline for pre-construction distributions prior to Port Everglades plant reenergization. With PEP construction now finished and LPP planned for reenergization in the next 10 years, monitoring data studies be compared to these baseline data to better assess the impact of the disruption of Broward County’s main refugia sources.

Broward County, Florida is a popular tourism destination. Due to its popularity, much of the shoreline has been modified and natural habitats were replaced with infrastructure such as houses, condominiums, resorts, and restaurants. The same Broward County beaches utilized by tourists and residents are important for three species of nesting sea turtles, including the Leatherback, Dermochelys coriacea, Loggerhead, Caretta caretta, and Green, Chelonia mydas, Turtles. The Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program (BCSTCP) collects yearly data in order to study these endangered reptiles. Increased anthropogenic effects including further coastal development (public & private), public beach events, public beach access, as well as natural events, have caused these important nesting beaches to erode and narrow. In an effort to control this erosion damage, Broward County has performed a number of beach nourishment projects. This study found yearly fluctuations in sea turtle hatching and emergence success rates, and years of beach nourishment projects significantly decreased these rates. Yearly hatching data available from Broward County concludes that beach nourishment, as well as hurricanes and tropical storms cause decreases in sea turtle hatching and emergence success rates in Broward County. Additionally, nest depth and sea turtle size increases the hatching and emergence success rates from females that are not too large or too small that nest in Broward County.

Sea turtles face many threats to their populations globally. Loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) are listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List as Endangered. In Florida, loggerhead and green sea turtles nest along the coastline during April-September. Mechanical beach cleaning is an aesthetic service performed daily on some beaches in Florida to clean the wrack line and/or the entire beach of debris. Alterations made to beaches by methods such as mechanical beach cleaning have the potential to impact sea turtle nesting, hatching, and emergence success. Generalized linear mixed models were performed to investigate the impacts of mechanical beach cleaning on nesting, hatching and emergence success of loggerhead and green turtles from 1997-2015 in Broward County, Florida. The results showed mechanical beach cleaning had an effect on nesting success, however, hatching and emergence success were not affected by mechanical beach cleaning. These results indicate that mechanical beach cleaning cannot solely be used to determine sea turtle management or conservation guidelines in Broward County.

Some climate models predict that, within the next 30-50 years, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) will frequently exceed the current thermal tolerance of corals (Fitt et al. 2001; Hughes et al. 2003; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007). A potential consequence is that mass coral bleaching may take place (i) during warm El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events which are predicted to occur in some regions more frequently than the current 3-7 year periodicity (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999; Sheppard 2003) or (ii) perhaps as often as annually or biannually if corals and their symbionts are unable to acclimate to the higher SSTs (Donner et al. 2005, 2007). Global data also indicate an upward trend toward increasing frequencies, intensities, and durations of tropical hurricanes and cyclones (Emanual 2005; Webster et al. 2005). As coral communities have been shown to require at least 10-30 years to recover after a major disturbance (e.g. Connell 1997; Ninio et al. 2000; Bruno & Selig 2007; Burt et al. 2008), it is possible that future coral communities may be in a constant state of recovery, with regeneration times exceeding the periods between disturbances. Life history traits (e.g. reproduction, recruitment, growth and mortality) vary among species of hard corals; thus, gradients in community structures may have a strong influence on susceptibilities to disturbance and rates of recovery (Connell 1997; Ninio & Meekan 2002). Taxa which are more susceptible to bleaching and mechanical disturbance (e.g. tabular and branching acroporids and pocilloporids) may experience continual changes in population structure due to persistent cycles of regeneration or local extirpation, while the more resistant taxa (e.g. massive poritids and faviids) may display relatively stable population structures (Woodley et al. 1981; Hughes & Connell 1999; Baird & Hughes 2000; Marshall & Baird 2000; Loya et al. 2001; McClanahan & Maina 2003). Determining whether resistant coral taxa have predictable responses to disturbances, with consistent patterns over wide spatial scales, may improve predictions for the future affects of climate change and the composition of reefs (Done 1999; Hoegh-Guldberg 1999; McClanahan et al. 2004). The work presented in this dissertation describes the spatial and temporal patterns in community structures for high latitude coral assemblages that have experienced the types of natural disturbances which are predicted to occur in tropical reef systems with increasing frequency as a result of climate change. The primary area of focus is the southeastern Arabian Gulf, where the coral communities are exposed to natural conditions that exceed threshold limits of corals elsewhere in the world, with annual temperature ranges between 14-36°C (Kinzie 1973; Shinn 1976) and salinities above 40 ppt. Two additional regions are included in this study for comparisons of high latitude coral community structures. The northwestern Gulf of Oman is adjacent to the southeastern Arabian Gulf (i.e. the two bodies of water are connected by the Strait of Hormuz); however, the environmental conditions are milder in the Gulf of Oman such that the number of coral taxa therein is threefold that found in the southeastern Arabian Gulf (i.e. 107 coral species in the Gulf of Oman compared to 34 species in this region of the Arabian Gulf (Riegl 1999; Coles 2003; Rezai et al. 2004)). Broward County, Florida is geographically remote from the Gulfs and, therefore, serves as a benchmark for testing whether consistent patterns in community structures exist despite different climatic and anthropogenic influences. The coral communities within the southeastern Arabian Gulf, the northwestern Gulf of Oman, and Broward County, Florida have been exposed to recurrent elevated sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, sequential cyclone and red tide disturbances, and frequent hurricanes and tropical storms, respectively. These disturbances and other impacts (e.g. bleaching episodes, disease outbreaks, anthropogenic stresses) have affected the more susceptible acroporids and pocilloporids, resulting in significant losses of coral cover by these families and shifts towards massive corals as the dominant taxa. During the post-disturbance scarcity or absence of branching and tabular corals, the resistant massive taxa have become the crux of the essential hard coral habitat for fish, invertebrates and other marine organisms. Because recovery to pre-disturbance community structures may take decades or may not occur at all, it is vital that scientists and resource managers have a better understanding of the spatial and temporal ecology patterns of the corals that survive and fill in the functional gaps that are created by such disturbances. To aid in this understanding, this dissertation presents spatial and temporal patterns for the coral assemblages which have developed after the respective disturbances. Spatial ecology patterns are analyzed using graphical descriptions (e.g. taxa inventories, area cover, densities, size frequency distributions), univariate techniques (e.g. diversity indices), distributional techniques (e.g. k-dominance curves) and multivariate techniques (e.g. hierarchical clustering, multidimensional scaling). Temporal comparisons at monitoring sites within the southeastern Arabian Gulf and northwestern Gulf of Oman describe the coral population dynamics and are used to create size class transition models that project future population structures of massive corals in the recovering habitats.

Reproductive success in loggerhead (Caretta caretta) sea turtles is strongly dependent on the effective placement and internal conditions of their nests. Embryos rely on optimal incubation conditions for proper development and growth, which determines how many hatchlings will emerge from the nest. The internal microclimate of each nest is delicately balanced and can be easily influenced by external environmental conditions. This study was designed to examine several environmental variables and determine their effects on sea turtle nesting numbers, hatching success, and incubation conditions in Broward County Florida. Over a span of 25 years (1991-2015), the Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program has collected data on each sea turtle nest laid in Broward County. This data was analyzed and plotted to visualize nesting and hatching trends, and regressions were fitted to make comparisons to historic air temperature, sea surface temperature, precipitation, and lunar illumination data. These regressions were tested for significance, and each environmental variable was found to have varying levels of impact on sea turtle nesting and hatching behavior. Of the environmental variables considered in this study, analyses suggest that sea turtles are most responsive to temperature, with sea surface temperature serving as the best proxy for predicting nesting behaviors. Air temperature over the incubation period was found to be the best indicator for hatch success percentage. Air temperature, sea surface temperature, and precipitation averages all significantly affected the length of the incubation period. The regression models created in this study could be used to examine the interactions between climatic variables, and to indicate what impacts can be expected by these various environmental factors. This information could be used to estimate the future effects of climate change on sea turtle reproduction, and to predict general reproductive success and future population trends.

Urbanization is a fundamental reality in the developed and developing countries around the world creating large concentrations of the population centering on cities and urban centers. Cities can offer many opportunities for those residing there, including infrastructure, health services, rescue services and more. The living space density of cities allows for the opportunity of more effective and environmentally friendly housing, transportation and resources. Cities play a vital role in generating economic production as entities by themselves and as a part of larger urban complex. The benefits can provide for extraordinary amount of people, but only if proper planning and consideration is undertaken. Global urbanization is a progressive evolution, unique in spatial location while consistent to an overall growth pattern and trend. Remotely sensing these patterns from the last forty years of space borne satellites to understand how urbanization has developed is important to understanding past growth as well as planning for the future. Imagery from the Landsat sensor program provides the temporal component, it was the first satellite launched in 1972, providing appropriate spatial resolution needed to cover a large metropolitan statistical area to monitor urban growth and change on a large scale. This research maps the urban spatial and population growth over the Miami – Fort Lauderdale – West Palm Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) covering Miami- Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties in Southeast Florida from 1974 to 2010 using Landsat imagery. Supervised Maximum Likelihood classification was performed with a combination of spectral and textural training fields employed in ERDAS Image 2014 to classify the images into urban and non-urban areas. Dasymetric mapping of the classification results were combined with census tract data then created a coherent depiction of the Miami – Fort Lauderdale – West Palm Beach MSA. Static maps and animated files were created from the final datasets for enhanced visualizations and understanding of the MSA evolution from 60-meter resolution remotely sensed Landsat images. The simplified methodology will create a database for urban planning and population growth as well as future work in this area. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection