Temperate forests are an important global carbon sink. However, various environmental disturbances can impact carbon sequestration capabilities of these forests. In 2021, a record-breaking defoliation, caused by the spongy moth (Lymantria dispar L., formerly knows as the gypsy moth) occurred in eastern North America. In this study, we assess the impact of this spongy moth defoliation on carbon uptake in a mature oak-dominated temperate forest in the Great Lakes region in Canada, using eddy covariance flux data from 2012 to 2022. The forest is more than 90 years old and known as CA-TPD site in the AmeriFlux and global FLUXNET networks. Study results showed that prior to spongy moth defoliation the forest was a carbon sink with mean annual gross ecosystem productivity (GEP) of 1,367 ± 104, ecosystem respiration (RE) of 1,201 ± 145 and, net ecosystem productivity (NEP) of 197 ± 74 g C m−2 yr−1 over the 2012–2020 period. However, due the defoliation in the early growing season in 2021, GEP declined to 959 g C m-2 yr-1 and RE increased to 1,345 g C m-2 yr-1 causing the forest to became a large source of carbon with annual NEP of -351 g C m-2 yr−1. This large decline in annual NEP was a result of both reduced GEP (30%) and elevated RE (12%). However, in 2022, forest carbon fluxes recovered to pre-infestation levels, with a GEP value of 1,671 g C m-2 yr-1, an RE value of 1,287 g C m-2 yr-1, and an NEP value of 298 g C m-2 yr-1, indicating that the forest was once again a large carbon sink. This research demonstrates that major transient natural disturbances such as the 2021 spongy moth defoliation can have a significant impact on forest carbon dynamics in a future warmer climate. The extent to which North American temperate forests will remain a major carbon sink will depend on the severity and intensity of these disturbance events and rate of recovery of forests following the disturbance. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Temperate deciduous forests play an important role in carbon sequestration from the atmosphere. However, the impact of climate change, extreme weather, and disturbance events can alter the extent to which these forests sequester carbon, in some cases shifting their role from being a carbon sink to becoming a carbon source to the atmosphere. In 2021, a spongy moth infestation severely defoliated a mature oak-dominated temperate forest north of Lake Erie, Ontario, Canada, turning the forest from a carbon sink to a carbon source. Our analysis indicates that meteorological conditions during the early spring might have influenced the severity of this infestation. Specifically, the prevalence of dry and warm weather conditions enabled the moth to survive and thrive longer. This study shows the significant influence of natural disturbances on forest carbon dynamics as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change. The future role forests play in carbon sequestration will be determined by the severity of disturbance events and the effectiveness of forests to recover in the aftermath of these events.

This dissertation describes research investigating the potential for using Landsat data to identify and characterize woody canopy cover on reclaimed coal-mined lands through three separate studies. The objective of the first study was to assess whether surface coal mines in the forested central Appalachian regions of the US can be separated from the other prevalent forest-replacing disturbances through analysis of an interannual chronosequence of Landsat images. Disturbances were classified using descriptors of the disturbance/recovery trajectories: disturbance minimum, recovery slope and recovery maximum. Three vegetation indices (VIs) (normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI; tasseled cap greenness/brightness ratio, TC G/B; and inverse of Landsat band 3, B3I) were used to analyze multitemporal trajectories generated using both pixels and objects. Classification accuracies using objects were better than those obtained using pixels for all VIs. The highest object-based classification accuracy was achieved using TC G/B (89%), followed by NDVI (88%) and B3I (80%). The objective of the second study was to evaluate performance of a woody canopy cover (including both native and invasive species) estimation method based on the 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD) protocol for both mined and non-mined areas of the central Appalachians. Potential explanatory variables included raw and derived bands from leaf-on and leaf-off Landsat scenes plus terrain descriptors. Results show that the model developed to estimate canopy cover for mines (R2 = 0.78, Adj. R2 = 0.77, RMSE = 16%) is more robust than the models developed for non-mines, mixed, and all areas combined. The objective of the third study was to determine whether four disturbance/recovery parameters (recovery time, disturbance minimum, recovery slope, and recovery maximum), alone or in combination with variables identified in the second study, enable robust estimation of woody canopy cover on reclaimed surface coal mines. Of the disturbance/recovery parameters, only recovery time made a significant contribution to the model (R2 0.45, Adj. R2 0.44, RMSE 14%). Addition of leaf-on and leaf-off NDVI improved the R2 to 0.54 (Adj. R2 0.53, RMSE 13%). Analysis of Landsat data has strong potential for identifying reclaimed mines and characterizing the extent to which woody canopy has recovered post-reclamation. / Ph. D.

The development of Property Technologies (PropTech) has been shown to have a disruptive effect within the traditional real estate sector. This study is aiming to provide an up-to-date overview of the PropTech landscape of the binational Öresund Region, and to analyse to which extent it can be characterised as a cross-border innovation ecosystem, a concept used as the key point of the theoretical framework. The analysis was conducted in the light of the stages of the real estate value chain to categorise the actors, and of the knowledge-intensive business services to explain among other the industry’s location patterns. The main findings of the study are that the Öresund PropTech industry is bringing together diverse companies while being characterised by a significant unbalanced between the Swedish and the Danish side in favour of the latter, in terms of both number of actors and range of activity. There is at the moment no sufficient evidence to qualify it as a cross-border innovation ecosystem, as the emerging PropTech network in the area is still to be structured. Coupled with this paper, the contribution of this research work is also including an interactive map accessible online.

Denna studie syftar till att synliggöra och utforska vilka möjligheter och utmaningar som finns vid implementering av ekosystemtjänster istadsplanering. Studien bygger på Nacka kommuns arbete med ekosystemtjänster. Empiriskt har en intervjustudie genomförts med berördatjänstemän och ledande politiker kring kommunens praktiska arbete med att förhålla sig till och använda ekosystemtjänster i stadsplanering. Detempiriska materialet analyseras och sätt i relation till tidigare forskning inom frågan. Resultatet visar att det finns både möjligheter ochutmaningar i Nacka kommun med att implementera ekosystemtjänster i stadsplanering. Det framkommer att kommunikation, samverkan ochkunskap är tre viktiga faktorer för en lyckad implementering. För att kommunen ska ha en långsiktig stadsplanering där ekosystemtjänster spelaren viktig roll, krävs en kontinuerlig dialog mellan tjänstemän och politiker, liksom politisk enighet. Ett framträdande projekt är Grönytefaktornsom innefattar mestadels möjligheter med att integrera ekosystemtjänster i stadsplanering.

Humanity's interactions with the supporting environment are, to state the obvious, complex. Humanity's industrial activities effect the environment over time and space, and the same activities even produce different results in different locations. Since the complexities of these interactions may preclude the successful use of eco-performance metrics, humanity may need a means of informing environmental management decisions that accounts for changes with time, spatial patterns and local uniqueness. The objective of this effort is to interface engineering and ecological systems models to better estimate environmental impacts by modeling the dynamic, spatially explicit and location dependent changes caused by industrial activities. Building upon previously developed, dynamic, spatially explicit, location specific ecosystem modeling software, a technical framework for estimating the impacts of industrial systems in ecosystems is developed. Ecological disturbances endemic to engineering systems are integrated into these existing ecosystem models. The results of these integrations are discussed, and from these results, the potential for estimating impacts using dynamic, spatially explicit and location based modeling is evaluated. In other words, one learns the result of placing industrial plants in mother natures garden.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-85). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Fisheries managers have the potential to significantly improve reef fish management in the Gulf of Mexico through the use of ecosystem-based approaches to fisheries management. Ecosystem-based approaches are needed to address the effects of fishing on trophodynamic interactions, to better account for ecosystem-scale processes in model projections, and to recognize the short and long-term biomass tradeoffs associated with making regulatory choices. My research was concentrated around three objectives: (1) characterizing the trophodynamic interactions between Gulf of Mexico fishes, in order to construct an invaluable tool (a Gulf of Mexico Atlantis model) to be used in ecological hypothesis testing and policy performance evaluation for years to come; (2) predicting ecological indicators for the Gulf of Mexico that both respond to fishing pressure and are robust to observational error, and; (3) evaluating the performance of an ecosystem-based policy options for managing reef fish species in the Gulf of Mexico. To accomplish these objectives, a spatial, trophodynamic ecosystem model- Atlantis, was employed to represent the Gulf of Mexico marine ecosystem. To characterize trophic interactions between modeled species, I applied a maximum likelihood estimation procedure to produce Dirichlet probability distributions representing the likely contribution of prey species to predators’ diets. This provided mode values (the peak of the distribution) and associated error ranges, which describe the likely contribution of a prey item in a predator’s diet. The mode values were used to parameterize the availabilities (diet) matrix of the Gulf of Mexico Atlantis model. Investigating trophic interactions was useful for determining which species within the Atlantis model were data rich, and justified the emphasis on reef fish species and their prey items in subsequent analyses. Once parameterized and calibrated, I used the Atlantis model to project ecological indicators over a 50 year time horizon (2010-2060) under varying levels of fishing mortality. Principal component analysis was used to evaluate ecological indicator trajectories in multivariate space, to rank indicators according to how well they describe variability in ecosystem structure (termed ‘importance’), to reveal redundancies in the information conveyed, to quantify interannual noise and to determine how robust indicators are to observational error. Reef fish catch, Red snapper biomass, King mackerel biomass and Species richness indicators ranked the highest in terms of importance and robustness to error and in having low levels of interannual noise (i.e., requiring less frequent monitoring). I then used a management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework in Atlantis to evaluate some of these same indicators under an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management – using robust harvest control rules to manage reef fishes. I found that this ecosystem-based policy option was able to maintain higher reef fish biomass, catch and ecosystem-wide biodiversity under any given level of fishing mortality when compared to a status quo management approach. These results suggest that harvesting under the HCRs encourages an alternative ecosystem state with a more Pareto-efficient tradeoff frontier than the status-quo policy. A potentially reduced extinction risk for reef fish is plausible under this ecosystem-based policy option. This research provides a quantitative look at the fishery performance and ecological tradeoffs associated with various policy options. MSE methodology using ecosystem-based policy performance metrics is also demonstrated. Tool development and findings from this research should aid in the development of ecosystem-based policies for this region.

Text in English / The role that locally relevant services and content can play in the development of societies cannot be underestimated. The proliferation of mobile phones in Africa’s developing countries is a significant enabler, which provides access to such locally relevant services and content. Mobile applications have the potential to support the development of the African continent through bolstering the main mechanisms of innovation, inclusion and efficiency. This has been demonstrated by instances of increased literacy, improved access to health care, banking, crowd sourcing and provision of farming and/or agricultural assistance. Successful cases of such mobile-based services include Kenya’s M-Pesa, which has allowed millions of rural people, who do not have access to traditional banking facilities, to send and receive money as well as pay utility bills and school fees. The development of similar innovative and locally relevant mobile-based solutions, which is currently considered to be in its infancy, is key to improving the lives of people in developing countries. This study identifies the essential components of an innovation ecosystem, for the development and presentation of a Mobile Applications Innovation Ecosystem Framework for Botswana. An innovation ecosystem enables effective interaction amongst entrepreneurs, companies, universities, research organisations, investors and government agencies towards maximising economic impact and potential. To gain a practical understanding of the context in which locally relevant mobile-based services can be developed, the study adopted a pragmatic research approach. Through combining the 4Cs Framework for ICT and the systems theory’s Triple Helix Model of Innovation, the study proceeded to develop the framework using a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology. DSR guided the identification of the components, which make up the mobile applications innovation ecosystem within government, industry and higher education sectors, as extracted from the literature review. This process facilitated initial framework designs, which were demonstrated to and evaluated by conveniently sampled stakeholders from relevant helices. Thereafter a synthesised framework was presented for evaluation by knowledgeable professionals from the mobile applications innovation ecosystem. The study contributes to the theoretical knowledgebase by presenting a theoretical framework for understanding ICT4D innovation frameworks and mobile applications / School of Computing / Ph. D. (Information Systems)

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When exploiting an area, important ecosystem services can be lost, and an ecosystem service analysis gives a clear picture of how a plurality of values are affected. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the detailed development plans for two properties in Laholm municipality will affect the ecosystem services, and what compensation measures that may be implemented. A qualitative method was used where literature search, interviews, question answers, observation and ESTER 2.0 were included. The results suggest that that the supporting ecosystem services on both properties and the cultural ecosystem services on one of the properties will be negatively affected by the exploitation. However, the cultural ecosystem services on one of the properties will be positively affected. Laholm municipality does not actively work with the mitigation hierarchy and compensation measures. Possible compensation measures to create could be ponds and meadow patches, planting of flowering trees and placement of benches and picnic tables. A collaboration with Båstad municipality would further be beneficial for protecting the landscape and promoting biological diversity across municipal borders. / Vid exploatering av ett område kan viktiga ekosystemtjänster gå förlorade och med hjälp av en ekosystemtjänstanalys får man en tydlig bild över de många olika värden som påverkas. Syftet med studien är att ta reda på hur detaljplanerna för två fastigheter i Laholms kommun kommer påverka ekosystemtjänsterna, samt undersöka möjliga kompensationsåtgärder. I studien användes en kvalitativ metod där litteratursökning, intervjuer, frågesvar, observation och ESTER 2.0 inkluderades. Resultatet visar att de stödjande ekosystemtjänsterna på båda fastigheterna och de kulturella ekosystemtjänsterna på en av fastigheterna kommer påverkas negativt av exploateringen. Däremot kommer de kulturella ekosystemtjänsterna på en av fastigheterna påverkas positivt. Skadelindringshierarkin och kompensationsåtgärder är inget Laholms kommun arbetar aktivt med. Möjliga kompensationsåtgärder att skapa skulle kunna vara dammar och ängsplättar, plantering av blommande träd samt utplacering av bänkar och picknickbord. En samverkan med Båstad kommun hade vidare varit fördelaktigt för att skydda landskapsbilden och främja en biologisk mångfald över kommungränserna.