Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Jason Brody / As global development trends continue, planners and social scientists of the future will have an increasingly pressing responsibility to effectively and sensitively address and interact with informal development. This report seeks to provide theoretical research to expand the knowledge base of planners and social scientists with respect to informal development. It aims to begin to explore and explain how informal development and living conditions interact, and to understand what the role of the planner and social scientist should be in interfacing with informal development in the future. Through case study this report considers two distinct typologies of informal settlements in order to compare and contrast factors in each settlement‘s history and development, living conditions, and overarching administrative relationships to identify trends in the development and manifestation of informal settlements.

Master of Science / Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering / Ronaldo G. Maghirang / Military training lands can be significant sources of fugitive dust emissions due to wind erosion. This study was conducted to determine dust emission potential of soils due to wind erosion as affected by off-road military vehicle disturbance. Multi-pass traffic experiments using two types of vehicles (i.e., wheeled and tracked) were conducted on six soil textures at four military training facilities: Fort Riley, KS; Fort Benning, GA; Yakima Training Center, WA; and White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), NM. Prior to and after the preselected number of vehicle passes, soil samples at three locations were collected with minimum disturbance into trays. Adjacent to the location where tray samples were collected, a Portable In-Situ Wind Erosion Lab (PI-SWERL) was used to measure dust emission potential. The tray samples were tested in a laboratory wind tunnel (with sand abrader) for dust emission potential using a GRIMM aerosol spectrometer and gravimetric method with filters. Comparison of the PI-SWERL (with DustTrak™ dust monitor) and wind tunnel (with GRIMM aerosol spectrometer) measurement results showed significant difference in measured values but high correlation, particularly for soils with high sand content. Wind tunnel tests results showed that sampling locations significantly affected dust emissions for the tracked vehicles but not for the light-wheeled and heavy-wheeled vehicles. Also, soil texture, number of vehicle passes, and vehicle type significantly affected dust emissions. For the light-wheeled vehicles, dust emissions increased as the number of vehicle passes increased. From undisturbed conditions to 10 vehicle passes, there was a significant (P<0.05) increase in dust emissions (297%) on average for all light-wheeled vehicle tests. From 10 to 25 passes and 25 to 50 passes, an additional 52% and 62% increments were observed. For the tracked vehicle, for the straight section sampling location, dust emission increased as the number of vehicle passes increased. However, for the curve section, dust emissions at any level of pass were significantly higher than initial condition; beyond the first pass, no significant increase was observed.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Geography / Lisa Harrington / In the United States, rationales for corn ethanol policies have included national energy security, air pollution abatement, clean technology development, and climate change mitigation. The ostensible benefits of corn ethanol have been used to justify the transfer of federal funds toward corn and ethanol production subsidies, consumption mandates, and import restrictions, plus substantial research and development efforts. Public and private sector funding has also focused on efforts to commercially develop biofuels from advanced technology using cellulosic biomass. Despite decades of public and commercial interest, cellulosic ethanol has failed to commercialize, corn ethanol remains heavily dependent on subsidies, and each of the alleged benefits of ethanol has been hotly disputed. This research examines the links between interest groups and rationales for biofuel policies. Drawing from Foucauldian discourse analysis, the research identifies key discourses supporting and opposed to biofuel development, and their relation to broader issues in environmental and energy politics. This approach involved a detailed review of newspaper archives, policy documents, Congressional bills, committee hearings and debates, governmental and non-governmental reports, and scientific research findings. It reveals how a powerful coalition of agricultural interests succeeded in harnessing biofuel discourses to popular public and political environmental and energy concerns. The primary discourses identified were Environmental Bureaucracy, Free Markets, Ecological Modernization, and Limits. A common element in the first three of these was Techno-Optimism. A Limits discourse opposed ethanol expansion, primarily based on a narrative of competition for agricultural land, and stood apart from other discourses in its mistrust of science and technology to resolve environmental problems. The research concludes that Foucauldian discourse analysis provides a useful tool for examining key shifts in policy debates, for clarifying the relationship between scientific knowledge and discursive power, for understanding divisions within environmental discourse, and for revealing the importance of scale in environmental public policy process.

Master of Science / Department of Horticulture, Forestry & Recreation Resources / Greg Davis / Urban environmental pollution continues to be exacerbated by a number of factors relating to human population growth including sewage discharged directly into the urban rivers designed with concrete-sealed riverfronts. This has left a number of rivers with deteriorated water quality. Where a riverfront could be the highlight and magnet of the city, it may instead become a stain and waste place. In 1969 American landscape planner McHarg proposed the landscape planning theory, “Design with Nature." His primary argument was that natural processes provide self-regulatory functions that need to be reflected in our plans and designs. Ecological design aims include restoring or promoting natural processes and automatic (bio-physical, regenerative, and adaptive) stabilizers. A wide range of scientific knowledge is available to help guide the designer, but designers usually have limited time to complete their designs. Unfortunately, much of this information is diffusely dispersed in research literature and not easily collected and synthesized by the design community. The purpose of this review is to help provide a synthesis of current thought and to help establish the basis for principles that can aid the designer, offering easy-to-understand design guidelines related to the use of aquatic plants in ecological redevelopment along urban riverfronts. This report focuses on using aquatic plants as the main material to help solve two key problems along riverfront developments: water pollution and flooding. As such this report can serve as a guide for the designer helping them to select aquatic plants using an ecological design approach for the redevelopment of urban riverfronts. It also addresses the essential need to adapt designs based on local site problems and requirements. Since this report provides a review and a basis for where to start in designing with aquatic plants in ecological redevelopment of urban waterfronts, it should not be considered as an exclusive source for the designer but rather a complement to local guidelines and information to derive design solutions.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow / In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Timber Culture Act (1873) and the development of the field of scientific forestry shifted the social conception of trees from a cultural icon, into living technological tools. Beginning with the antebellum publications of George Perkins Marsh, who argued for the preservation and restoration of forests for the benefit of all, scientists, railroad developers, and plains settlers advocated for the cultural importance of trees as a living tool. Assured by railroad-boosters, the budding Forestry Bureau, and pro-tree legislators that rainfall would follow their planting efforts, waves of emigrants who relocated to the grasslands from the eastern forested areas planted millions of trees in an attempt to afforest the open prairies, creating traceable environmental and social changes over time. Environmental historian Elliott West asserts, “Only people have tried on a massive scale to move imagined environments out of their heads and to duplicate them in the world where others live,” and the grasslands of Kansas is one of these environments. This thesis argues that the scientific field of forestry developed a system of prairie tree planting (afforestation) aimed at altering the environment of the Great Plains with artificial forests and created a technological construction of the Kansas environment. The enactment of the Timber Culture Act was a watershed moment because it elevated the social conceptions of trees to that of a living tool and created the need for a national Forestry Bureau. Primary source documents reveal that the general perception held in the nineteenth century was that the natural environment and climate was malleable. The development of profit-centered tree farms furthered the idea that forests were like any other manageable crop. The changes over time in the forest cover of Kansas resulted in an altered ecology and the introduction of invasive species, but most importantly, it altered the cultural perception of how Kansas should look.

Master of Science / Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering / Naiqian Zhang / A real time wireless, optical sensor network was tested for long-term, remote monitoring of suspended sediment concentrations (SSC) in streams. The sensor and control board assembly was calibrated using a two-stage calibration procedure, including a pre-calibration conducted in the laboratory to adjust the sensitivity of the sensor and a field calibration using grab samples to establish an effective statistical model to predict SSC from the sensor signals. The assembly was installed in three military bases around the United States. These bases were Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Benning, GA; and Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD. The types of water bodies and watersheds varied greatly among the sites, which allowed the sensor to be tested under versatile conditions for potential widespread use. The results show that the sensor was capable of measuring SSC at each watershed independently. The calibration model developed for each sensor can be used to predict SSC from real-time sensor data. A data processing algorithm was developed to lessen the effect of fouling and clogging on sensor signals, along with eliminating anomalies in the data gathered. The results of this study displayed meaningful prediction data that can be used to estimate SSC in a stream over a long period of time. Information obtained in this study can be used as a launching point for future work and understanding of stream processes.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow / This thesis recreates the relationship between humans and their physical environment in Fort Scott, Kansas between 1850 and 1920 and uses the poetry of J.S. Penny, a contemporary amateur poet living and writing in Fort Scott, as an essential primary resource. Settlers came to this area in southeastern Kansas in the 19th century for its timber-lined streams, high precipitation, and rich soil. The Missouri River, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad was extended through Fort Scott in December of 1869. The arrival of the railroad transformed the town. The natural resources which had been a mark of identity for the people of Fort Scott became commodities to be sold in national markets. Manufacturing and industry boomed, but population would eventually plateau in the early 20th century, creating a small industrial city that had maintained a strongly rural sense of community. Penny’s poetry provides a personal, emotional response to the rapid changes to the landscape around him. Some of his poems on the local landscape directly note specific changes in the local ecology, while some demonstrate Penny’s religious connection the natural world—a common perspective during his time. Other pieces show us Penny’s observations of how his neighbors reacted to the weather and environment in Fort Scott. Penny, like many Americans in the early 20th century, saw the history of his home as one of agrarian development and westward expansion over an empty landscape; the Jeffersonian and Turnerian roots of his perspective are evident in his poetry. With Penny’s poetry, we can create a more complete environmental history of Fort Scott by understanding how Fort Scott residents related to the land around them.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Geography / Kevin Blake / With their windswept ridges and wind-rent skies, prairies and plains have often been denigrated as nothing but nothing—empty, meaningless, valueless space. Mountains and forests, oceans and deserts have been praised and protected while vast expanses of undulating grasslands have been plowed under, grazed over, used, abused, maligned. Once the largest ecosystem on the North American continent, wild prairies now persist mainly in overlooked or unwanted fragments. In part, it’s a matter of psychology; some people see plains as visually unpleasing (too big, too boring) or physically alienating (too dry, too exposed). It’s also part economics; prairies seem more productive, more valuable as anything but tangles of grass and sage. But at heart, it’s a matter of sociocultural and individual biases; people seeking bucolic or sublime landscapes find “empty,” treeless skyscapes flat and dull, forgettable. Scientific, social, and especially aesthetic appreciation for plains requires a different perspective—a pause in place—an exploration of the horizon as well as an examination of the minutiae, few people have strived to understand and appreciate undifferentiated, untrammeled space. This research seeks to change that by example, using conscientious, systematic reflection on first-hand experience to explore questions fundamental to phenomenology and geography—how do people experience the world? How do we shape places and how do places shape us?—in the context of plains landscapes. Written and illustrated from the perspective of a newcomer, a scholar, a National Park Service ranger, a walker, a watcher, a person wholly and unabashedly in love with wild places, the creative non-fiction narratives, photoessays, and hand-drawn maps address themes of landscape aesthetics, sense of place, and place-identity by tracing the natural, cultural, and managerial histories of and personal relationships with Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, Kansas’s Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research Station, and Wyoming’s Fossil Butte National Monument. Prosaic and photographic meditations on wildness and wilderness, travel and tourism, preservation and conservation, days and seasons, expectations and acceptance, even dreams and reality intertwine to evoke and illuminate the inspiring aesthetic of spacious places—Zen of the plains.

Master of Landscape Architecture or Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Timothy Keane / Kansas City is expecting a 25% growth in population by 2050. This design proposal promotes West Bottoms as a potential area to house some of the new population, and more importantly supply a live and work community for these people. West Bottoms is also home to major industry in Kansas City as well as an up and coming art culture. West Bottoms has great potential for a community that allows the existing and new population to be a part of a live-work-play community with the vacancies in the area. The projected population growth is expected to promote sprawl, further increasing the average driving time to the city. West Bottoms currently has few connections to the downtown and offers few reasons to come to the area. These connections are mainly major bridges or highways. Another issue West Bottoms faces is flooding problems from OK Creek and Turkey Creek, which lead into the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. Finally, post and present industrial soil contamination threatens the groundwater. When mixed with flooding concerns, this contamination is potentially harmful for the health of downstream cities. Drawing inspiration from travels, Kansas City charm, plants, art, and water storage, case studies were researched. Themes from each case study were quantified. These themes paired with inventory and analysis of the West Bottoms provided the basis for the design proposed here. The successional design of the area will progress from a contaminated landscape to a landscape that holds floodwater. The final design holds all of the stormwater from the 100 year 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24 hour rain events. The final design incorporates areas of learning, a variety of paths and seating, a live-work-play community, clean and creative industry, and an art culture that sustains the excitement for the timeline of succession. Overtime this landscape will evolve into a new destination for Kansas City using an integrated solution remediating the soil and holding flood waters as an amenity for the new population.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Environmental Design & Planning Program / Lee R. Skabelund / The Restorative Urban Design (RUD) calls for a new urban design and planning approach targeting environmentally responsible re/development of urbanized areas through ecologically responsive impact mitigations. If implemented in a systematic manner, such re/developments can help move urban areas toward the successful restoration of the natural environment of which they are an inseparable part. The RUD model advocates more rigorous assessment and mitigation of urban impacts by carefully evaluating the environmental performance of urban re/developments within five primary dimensions: Atmosphere (emissions, pollutants, ozone depletion); Hydrosphere (stormwater, domestic water, wastewater); Lithosphere (land use, land cover, food and wastes); Ecology (habitat resilience, biodiversity, population and resources); and Energy (renewability, reduction and efficiency, transportation). The model relies on a scenario-comparison process in order to evaluate and optimize the performance of urban re/development projections through four critical scenarios, which are respectively: 1) Natural Baseline (NBASE); 2) Historic Progression (HPROG); 3) Trajectory Forecast (TFORE); and 4) Restorative Projection (RPROJ). The RUD Case Study illustrates how the principles and strategies of Restorative Urban Design can be applied specifically to a typical (densely developed) urban area, namely River North District in Chicago Metropolitan Area. The case study focuses exclusively on mitigation of a single critical human impact on the natural environment: Anthropogenic CO₂ Emissions. The case study focuses on the design assumptions by which the restorative urban re/development scenarios might exceed beyond the full mitigation of emissions into the global remediation by 2040. The restorative projections illustrate that only a certain portion of emissions can be effectively mitigated onsite (5 to 55%), and that the remainder of projected emissions (45 to 95%) need to be mitigated offsite in order to achieve the necessary sequestration and storage. The restorative research suggests that the mitigation of major human impacts on the natural environment – not only CO₂ emissions but also other major impacts – are likely to require significant urban transformations. Moving beyond the strategies of preservation and/or conservation, the restorative approach asserts that comprehensive environmental restoration is achievable if urban impacts are adequately estimated and then entirely mitigated onsite as well as offsite through a systematic process of urban re/development.