An eddy covariance system and micrometeorological station was deployed at two locations along the coastline of Hudson Bay during the summers of 2005 and 2006 to document and to understand mass and energy fluxes in high-latitude intertidal and near-shore environments. Despite the proximity of these two zones, it was found that they exhibited distinctly different characteristics. The near-shore zone was a sink for CO2 with an average uptake of -0.11 μmol·m-2·s-1 and the intertidal zone tended to be a source of CO2 with an average efflux of 0.04 μmol·m-2·s-1 with considerable variability due to the action of the tides. Sensible heat fluxes in the near-shore zone tended to be small and negative and both latent and sensible heat fluxes were significantly enhanced in the intertidal zone. Significantly, increasing wind velocities did not appear to play a role in the enhancement of these fluxes and onshore winds were observed to be unusually dry. As such, key differences were observed that stood in contrast to the results and the conclusions of other flux studies conducted in similar high-latitude coastal-marine environments. It is suggested that these differences could only be understood in the context of the proximity of these areas of living and dead kelp, their respective differences in water depth and the occasional occurrence of a sea-breeze effect that may have implications for the observed fluxes in these areas.

It has been said that the only thing constant in life is change. Whether it is a change in the seasons, in a stage of life or in one’s thinking, change is a part of the ebb and flow of living. Educational institutions are not immune from change, and indeed, should model the learning process and be the very places where practices and procedures are continuously being examined, revised, and enhanced. This qualitative study uses Michael Fullan’s Six Secrets of Change (love your employees; connect peers with purpose; capacity building prevails; learning is the work; transparency rules; and systems learn) as a filter through which to view the process of educational change. Nine school principals stratified across Early Years to Senior Years schools were interviewed to reflect on their personal experiences with facilitating educational change within their work contexts. The data collected from the interviews was collated according to each of the six secrets to discover what commonalities might exist. Each of the six secrets was discussed by presenting the supporting data and some generalizations were drawn. Data from the interviews indicated that all six secrets were evidenced in varying degrees.

Climatic change has been observed in many locations and has been seen to have dramatic impact on a wide range of ecosystems. The traditional method to analyse trends in climatic series is regression analysis. Koenker and Bassett (1978) developed a regression-type model for estimating the functional relationship between predictor variables and any quantile in the distribution of the response variable. Quantile regression has received considerable attention in the statistical literature, but less so in the water resources literature. This study aims to apply quantile regression to problems in water resources and climate change studies. The core of the thesis is made up of three papers of which two have been published and one has been submitted. One paper presents a novel application of quantile regression to analyze the distribution of sea ice extent. Another paper investigates changes in temperature and precipitation extremes over the Canadian Prairies using quantile regression. The third paper presents a Bayesian model averaging method for variable selection adapted to quantile regression and analyzes the relationship of extreme precipitation with large-scale atmospheric variables. This last paper also develops a novel statistical downscaling model based on quantile regression. The various applications of quantile regression support the conclusion that the method is useful in climate change studies.

Global climate models predict changes in precipitation patterns in many areas of the world. Extreme precipitation in particular is poorly represented in climate models and there are significant difficulties involved in assessing the frequency and severity of future extreme precipitation events. In this study, several methods have been reviewed and compared for estimating projected changes in Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves, commonly used in urban hydrology. A theoretical approach based on geostatistical considerations is employed to derive reasonable areal-reduction factors that make it possible to compare gridded model data with observations. The mean value method and QQ-mapping have been used to remove biases from modeled data. A simple scaling model has been developed to construct IDF curves using the bias-corrected modeled data for the control and future climate. To investigate uncertainties in predicted changes, different simulations from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) have been analyzed.

No description available.

No description available.

This portfolio presents the results of a project that examined the development of environmental management in a large multi-national corporation over a four year period. The aim of the project was to "institutionalise" environmental management, in other words to ensure that environmental management was considered part of normal business practice and not a well intentioned afterthought. This was achieved through an in-depth case study using action research methods to facilitate and record organisational change simultaneously. The research demonstrated that previous accounts of environmental management in industry have failed to provide an adequate analysis of the changes required to institutionalise environmental management. This is shown to be partly attributable to the dominance of the quantitative, outsider-based research methods. The research makes three principal contributions to knowledge: Identifying and describing four different levels of change required for the institutionalisation of environmental management in a comprehensive study Identifying factors affecting the institutionalisation of environmental management in an industrial setting Demonstrating the usefulness and validity of insider-based methodologies for environmental management research. In this Portfolio it is argued that the institutionalisation of environmental management requires change at multiple levels and that the observation and further clarification of these levels can be achieved through insider-based research methods. At a practictioner level, it is recommended that industrial managers reconsider their strategies for achieving the institutionalisation of environmental management. In particular, company-wide employee awareness programmes and/or policy driven management systems only go part way towards achieving an institutionalised approach. An approach,in line with existing organisational roles, culture and objectives is recommended. Further, as environmental management becomes considered as part of normal business practice, it is recommended that researchers identify the boundaries between environmental and other management research to reflect industrial practice.

This thesis sets out to account for the relative failure of Total Quality Management (TQM) experiments installed in the NHS between 1990 and 1994. In the study, only two NHS pilot sites in a large sample of hospitals and community services were found to have made significant progress on implementing TQM. Whilst most of these TQM sites made more progress on structured quality improvement than a group of non-TQM NHS quasi-controls, all were outperformed by two commercial TQM companies in the sample. The analysis is based on 850 semi-structured interviews carried out with a wide range of staff as well as documentary analysis, non-participant observation, and feedback workshops at selected sites. In accounting for the results, the thesis tests eight propositions about the application of rationalistic private sector models of change to a complex public sector organisation like the NHS. The analysis demonstrates the limitations of such approaches when they are not adapted to take account of the technical, systemic and behavioural differences between the two sectors. It can also be said that funding for the NHS experiments, whilst substantial, was an order of magnitude lower than that in the commercial companies. Similarly, support both centrally and locally in the NHS was not sufficient to provide for rigorous pre-planning and monitoring of progress. Numerous other changes being made at the same time were mostly incompatible with TQM principles and hindered progress on coherent change. Leadership commitment to, and understanding of, TQM was much weaker in the NHS than in the commercial companies. The requirement to move towards collective, userdefined, measures of quality met with opposition from staff groups who were used to their own individualistic and professional conceptions of quality. This led to NHS TQM sites being unable to demonstrate the organisation-wide changes that are said to be hallmarks of TQM.

No description available.

No description available.