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The Civano community of Tucson, Arizona, is built for sustainability. Trees and plants are precious resources in the community and balancing human needs and natural resources. The design of rainwater harvesting systems and the usage of reclaimed water inside the community effectively irrigate plants and save drinking water. This project estimates canopy changes over time and explores the effect of water resources on plant growth for developed areas and natural areas, respectively. This project generates land cover classifications for 2007, 2010, and 2015 using supervised classification method and measures canopy cover change over time. Based on City of Tucson Water “harvesting rainwater guide to water-efficient landscaping”, this project discusses if water supply meets plant water demand in the developed areas of the community. Additionally, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data for developed area and natural area over ten years are compared and provide a correlation analysis with water sources. The results show that canopy cover across the entire community decreased from 2007 to 2010, then increased from 2010 to 2015. Water supply in the developed areas is sufficient for plant water demand. In natural areas plant growth changes dramatically as a result of precipitation fluctuation. In addition, it’s proved that 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD) tree canopy underestimates canopy cover in the Civano community. The final products not only provide the fundamental canopy cover data for other studies, also serve as a reference of water efficient landscaping within a community.

Fingarette thinks what is sacred in Confucianism is the element of human civilization modeled upon holy rite. Eno claims the holiness of Confucian ritual consist in its coherence with cosmic reality, Heaven. But both of them didn't think metaphysics is one intellectual focus for early Confucianism. Nevertheless, we think only in reference to a Confucian metaphysics which provides a sufficient exposition of the most generic features of cosmic reality, what is sacred in Confucianism can be fully clarified. Due to his unflinchingly sociological methodology, Berger's concept of religion as sacred canopy is partial and limited. His concept of "chaos" can't encompass all the cases in world religions, and his understanding of the holy as "the wholly other" deviates from its original expression in Rudolf Otto. Contributing to the innovation of Berger's idea of sacred canopy, Neville thinks religion is human engagement with ultimacy, and one of the most important functions of sacred canopy is cognitive, to know ultimate reality. Keeping to Neville's understanding of sacred canopy, we will analyze two key texts of classical Confucian metaphysics, Yijing and its "Great Treatise"(系辞), to try to illustrate what a Confucian sacred canopy is. Traditionally, shengsheng (生生) is understood as ceaseless creative advance into novelty, a most generic description of cosmic reality in Confucian metaphysics, but this understanding can't include the ultimate ontological creation of the world from nothing by ultimate polarity, which is also enunciated by Great Treatise. In relation to the Decision of Hexagram Qian, we can furthermore parse out four possible ways to understand shengsheng: to create creatures, to create this and to create that, this creates and that creates, and creatures create. They correspond to the four characters in the decision: initiation (元), permeation (亨), harmonization (利) and integration (贞), and indicate early Confucians' reflections about the ontological traits of ultimate reality: Heaven is the initiative, permeative, harmonious and integral creation. Heaven creates being from non-being, initiates the world as a ceaseless creative process; it creates everything, imparts creativity and form into every creature; and then every formed creature itself strives for being and creation in a dynamical relationship with each other. Based upon such a "cosmontology", a Confucian sacred canopy will be finally outlined and the importance of ritual in reference to that canopy will also be illuminated.

Precision irrigation scheduling is one approach that can conserve water by supplying crops with the minimum amount of water needed for sufficient vegetative growth and final crop yield. Improved methods for irrigation scheduling are needed for arid regions that rely mainly on irrigation for crop water needs, and humid regions that supplement water received from precipitation with added irrigation. Methods that directly determine plant physiological responses to water availability have potential to be significantly more sensitive and accurate than indirect approaches like soil moisture measurement. Stomatal conductance is a rapid physiological response to leaf water potential. Stomatal conductance in single leaves has long been calculated using biophysical and energy balance principles. This same biophysical approach can be extended to plant communities using: 1) standard meteorological measurements, 2) accurate measurement of average canopy temperature, and 3) knowledge of canopy architecture. Here we use a model designed to separate the energy balance of the soil and plant canopy for the calculation of stomatal conductance (gC) in row crops. This model is modified for application in row crops which differ in their spatial distribution when compared to more uniform crops such as turfgrass or alfalfa. The energy balance model requires measurement or estimation of the soil and canopy temperatures. Various methods can be used to derive these temperatures, i.e., using a composite temperature of the two and either directly measuring or estimating one of the temperatures to derive the other, or directly measuring both component temperatures. This study compares two methods to determine which one is more appropriate in determining canopy temperature for calculation of canopy stomatal conductance for the measurements taken on the fields studied. By using the necessary environmental measurements, and model modifications, gC was continuously determined for 10 corn and 6 cotton crops throughout the Midwest and Southern United States. This gC value was then compared to a calculated reference gC for a well-watered crop. This reference gC represents the stomatal conductance of a well-watered crop experiencing no water stress. The ratio of the calculated and reference gC is an indicator of crop water status, which is called the stomatal conductance ratio (SCR). The SCR increased closer to one (indicating minimal water stress) after each irrigation or significant precipitation event, and steadily declined until the next irrigation event. Significant drought stress occurred in several of the fields. Daily SCR values were weighted to correspond with growth stage sensitivity to drought stress. These weighted values were highly correlated with yield (r2 values up to 0.79). SCR values for cotton were also highly correlated with yield (r2 values up to 0.96). This biophysical approach has the potential to provide a powerful tool for precision irrigation management. Growers can more efficiently apply water to their crops and more accurately determine when to apply irrigation.

An interaction by exchange with the conditional mean (IECM) micromixing model is coupled to a three-dimensional single-particle Lagrangian stochastic (LS) model to estimate concentration fluctuations in plumes of a passive (i.e., non-buoyant), non-reactive (i.e., no chemistry) tracer dispersing from a variety of source configurations in four neutrally stratified flows: a horizontally-homogeneous wall shear layer flow; a horizontally-homogeneous representation of the Tombstone canopy flow; a three-dimensional inhomogeneous representation of the Tombstone canopy flow; and a three-dimensional inhomogeneous representation of the Mock Urban Setting Trials (MUST) canopy flow. The IECM micromixing model incorporates the combined effects of turbulent and molecular mixing on particle concentration. This allows the numerical estimation of all moments of the scalar concentration field, which is a significant advance over traditional LS models given that concentration fluctuations are a ubiquitous feature of a dispersing plume. The single-particle implementation of the LS-IECM model is based upon a previously reported implementation that used simultaneously computed particle trajectories to estimate the conditional mean concentration field [Cassiani, M. A., Franzese, P. A. and Giostra, U. A.: 2005, A PDF micromixing model of dispersion for atmospheric flow. Part I: development of model, application to homogeneous turbulence and to a neutral boundary layer, Atmospheric Environment 39, 1457-1469]. The model used in this thesis pre-calculates the conditional mean concentration field with an LS model for use with the IECM model, which runs as a separate simulation. The principal advantage of this single-particle approach is the performance increase on parallel computer architecture, which scales directly with the number of processors. The simulations presented in this thesis go beyond those performed with the previous model by considering three-dimensional inhomogeneous flows, as well as one-dimensional horizontally-homogeneous flows. The accuracy of the LS-IECM model was good for the flows with horizontal-homogeneity, and comparable to the results of previous simulations from older models. Rogue velocities in the simulations utilising inhomogeneous flow statistics resulted in acceptable to poor accuracy in these simulations. Suggestions for improvements to the model are made.

Although manipulation of the light regime is a common goal of silvicultural treatments, the specific light conditions created are poorly documented for many forest types and geographic locations. To help quantify effects of silivicultural treatments on light conditions, basal area, canopy structure, and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), collected both instantaneously and across time, were measured in central hardwood forests following silvicultural treatments. These measurements were used to: 1.) investigate the magnitudes of differences in understory percent ambient PAR following implementation of shelterwood and thinning treatments; 2.) document the specific amount and variability of understory percent ambient PAR in shelterwood treatments (mean residual basal area=21 ft2/ac [4.8 m2/ha]), thinning (78 ft2/ac [17.9 m2/ha]), and untreated controls (18 ft2/ac[4.1 m2/ha); and 3.) Examine relationships between: basal area and canopy cover; basal area and measured percent ambient PAR; and canopy cover and measured percent ambient PAR. It was found that greater light levels resulted from greater canopy removals. Indexes of variability in light across time and among locations within a stand were higher in the shelterwood and thinning treatments than in the uncut control. Simple linear regression relationships were observed between basal area and PAR (r2= 0.8784 for instantaneous measurements, r2= 0.9697 for continuous measurements), and basal area and canopy cover (r2=0.8479). Such relationships provide a means for including light management in forest planning and application of silivicultural treatments.

The use of airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) as a direct method to evaluate forest canopy parameters is vital in addressing both forest management and ecological concerns. The overall goal of this study was to develop the use of airborne LiDAR in evaluating canopy parameters such as percent canopy cover (PCC) and leaf area index (LAI) for mixed pine and hardwood forests (primarily loblolly pine, Pinus taeda, forests) of the southeastern United States. More specific objectives were to: (1) Develop scanning LiDAR and multispectral imagery methods to estimate PCC and LAI over both hardwood and coniferous forests; (2) investigate whether a LiDAR and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data fusion through linear regression improve estimates of these forest canopy characteristics; (3) generate maps of PCC and LAI for the study region, and (4) compare local scale LiDAR-derived PCC and regional scale MODIS-based PCC and investigate the relationship. Scanning LiDAR data was used to derive local scale PCC estimates, and TreeVaW, a LiDAR software application, was used to locate individual trees to derive an estimate of plot-level PCC. A canopy height model (CHM) was created from the LiDAR dataset and used to determine tree heights per plot. QuickBird multispectral imagery was used to calculate the NDVI for the study area. LiDAR- and NDVI-derived estimates of plot-level PCC and LAI were compared to field observations for 53 plots over 47 square kilometers. Linear regression analysis resulted in models explaining 84% and 78% of the variability associated with PCC and LAI, respectively. For these models to be of use in future studies, LiDAR point density must be 2.5 m. The relationship between regional scale PCC and local scale PCC was investigated by resizing the local scale LiDAR-derived PCC map to lower resolution levels, then determining a regression model relating MODIS data to the local values of PCC. The results from this comparison showed that MODIS PCC data is not very accurate at local scales. The methods discussed in this paper show great potential for improving the speed and accuracy of ecological studies and forest management.

This study aims to investigate the changes and trend for the official policies, celebration activities, and ceremonies of national holidays¡¦ in Taiwan over the period of 1950 to 2004. The interactions and confrontations among competing authorities in defining the time and space for national holidays, and the process by which they influence Taiwanese people¡¦s collective memory are further studied. The method applied is literature review and historical analysis. The findings show that the formation and development of Taiwanese national holidays¡¦ are the outcomes of a love story and sometime struggles between political and other social powers. Utilizing the uniqueness and the special sphere of time and space, politicians and other groups co-construct a collective memory that serves their own interests. There are affinities between national holidays and religions, as the legitimacy of their existence, activities and ceremonies both come from the ¡§sacred canopy¡¨ provided by the belief system. The later grants the national holidays with sacred values, and thus made the existence, activities and ceremonies of the former possible. However, while the making of national holiday¡¦s collective memory is dominated by political authorities, they have their limitations. As we shall present in the study, there are competing forces in the pursuit of legitimacy. These interventional and balancing factors include economic factors, ideologies of confronting political parties as well as leisure culture. They are actually the most important factors in the changes and development of national holidays. They come from and also reflect on the social change. It is also clear that the ¡§the holiday overset phenomenon¡¨ has started since the Lee Deng Huei period.