In recent years there has been a huge increase in the growth of communication systems such as mobile phones, wireless local area networks (WLAN), satellite navigation and various other forms of wireless data communication that have made analogue frequency control a key issue. The increase in frequency spectrum crowding and the increase of frequency into microwave region, along with the need for minimisation and capacity improvement, has shown the need for the development of high performance, miniature, on-chip filters operating in the low to medium GHz frequency range. This has hastened the need for alternatives to ceramic resonators due to their limits in device size and performance, which in turn, has led to development of the thin film electro-acoustics industry with surface acoustic wave (SAW) and bulk acoustic wave (BAW) filters now fabricated in their millions. Further, this new technology opens the way for integrating the traditionally incompatible integrated circuit (IC) and electro-acoustic (EA) technologies, bringing about substantial economic and performance benefits. In this thesis the compatibility of aluminium nitride (AlN) to IC fabrication is explored as a means for furthering integration issues. Various issues have been explored where either tailoring thin film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) design, such as development of an improved solidly mounted resonator (SMR) technology, and use of IC technology, such as chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) or nickel silicide (NiSi), has made improvements beneficial for resonator fabrication or enabled IC integration. The former has resulted in major improvements to Quality factor, power handling and encapsulation respectively. The later has provided alternative methods to reduce electro- or acoustomigration, reduced device size, for plate waves, supplied novel low acoustic impedance material for high power applications and alternative electrodes for use in high temperature sensors. Another method to enhance integration by using the piezoelectric material, AlN, in the IC side has also been explored. Here methods for analysing AlN film contamination and stoichiometry have been used for analysis of AlN as a high-k dielectric material. This has even brought benefits in knowledge of film composition for use as a passivation material with SiC substrates, investigated in high power high frequency applications. Lastly AlN has been used as a buried insulator material for new silicon-on-insulator substrates (SOI) for increased heat conduction. These new substrates have been analysed with further development for improved performance indicated. / wisenet

This thesis explores the use of feminist participatory action research (FPAR) within women-only youth and community work settings. The project investigated possibilities for flexible sports participation with non-sporty young women. Underpinned by poststructural feminism, the research considers the complex ways that gendered subjectivities are contested and constructed in relation to sporting embodiment and broader power relations. FPAR's, explicit aim is to affect positive social change. It is: participatory; defined by the need for action; and creates knowledge but not for the sake of knowledge alone. FPAR combines the sharing of common experiences of oppression with collective action. By using FPAR within youth and community settings over the course of 12 months, a group of young mums and a group of young women were encouraged to examine their relationship with physical activity and develop physical activity projects that suited their own needs. Research proceeded through three broad phases: interactive group discussion activities; planning of and participating in needs-led physical activity projects; and project evaluations. This project sought to find new ways of understanding young women’s engagement in physical activity and open up safe spaces for them to consider and experiment with new subjectivities and physically active subject positions. The thesis illuminates the highlights and challenges of implementing physical activity through participatory action research in youth work settings. Findings from the study outline the ways in which young women’s ‘non-sporty’ subjectivities are constructed in relation to discursive practices of gender. Young women’s critical reflections of previous experiences of physical activity revealed the workings of conflicting perceptions of valued emotional capital. The participatory projects provided opportunities for cross-field experiences, which shifted the social field of physical activity, and readdressed relations of power.

Understanding the relationships between biodiversity and climate is essential for predicting the impact of climate change on broad-scale landscape processes. Utilizing indirect indicators of biodiversity derived from remotely sensed imagery, we present an approach to forecast shifts in the spatial distribution of biodiversity. Indirect indicators, such as remotely sensed plant productivity metrics, representing landscape seasonality, minimum growth, and total greenness have been linked to species richness over broad spatial scales, providing unique capacity for biodiversity modeling. Our goal is to map future spatial distributions of plant productivity metrics based on expected climate change and to quantify anticipated change to park habitat in British Columbia. Using an archival dataset sourced from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite from the years 1987 to 2007 at 1km spatial resolution, corresponding historical climate data, and regression tree modeling, we developed regional models of the relationships between climate and annual productivity growth. Historical interconnections between climate and annual productivity were coupled with three climate change scenarios modeled by the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis (CCCma) to predict and map productivity components to the year 2065. Results indicate we can expect a warmer and wetter environment, which may lead to increased productivity in the north and higher elevations. Overall, seasonality is expected to decrease and greenness productivity metrics are expected to increase. The Coastal Mountains and high elevation edge habitats across British Columbia are forecasted to experience the greatest amount of change. In the future, protected areas may have potential higher greenness and lower seasonality as represented by indirect biodiversity indicators. The predictive model highlights potential gaps in protection along the central interior and Rocky Mountains. Protected areas are expected to experience the greatest change with indirect indicators located along mountainous elevations of British Columbia. Our indirect indicator approach to predict change in biodiversity provides resource managers with information to mitigate and adapt to future habitat dynamics. Spatially specific recommendations from our dataset provide information necessary for management. For instance, knowing there is a projected depletion of habitat representation in the East Rocky Mountains, sensitive species in the threatened Mountain Hemlock ecozone, or preservation of rare habitats in the decreasing greenness of the southern interior region is essential information for managers tasked with long term biodiversity conservation. Forecasting productivity levels, linked to the distribution of species richness, presents a novel approach for understanding the future implications of climate change on broad scale biodiversity. / Graduate

O conceito de ‘ecossistema’ emergiu da necessidade de compreender o caráter extremamente dinâmico da vegetação, interpretado a partir daí como o resultado da interação recíproca entre um dado complexo de organismos e seu conjunto amplo de fatores do ambiente físico. Um ramo das ciências ecológicas desenvolveu-se desse conceito, visando examinar o resultado de tais interações em termos de fluxos de energia, matéria e informação. Desenvolvimentos conceituais recentes apontam para uma concepção do ecossistema sob a ótica de um novo paradigma, para o qual aninhamento, hierarquia, decomposabilidade relativa, probabilidade e dependência de escala são critérios chave. Outro desenvolvimento importante, a análise de trajetórias, abriu a possibilidade de tratar a dinâmica e o funcionamento do ecossistema como fenômenos em múltiplas escalas. Incertezas metodológicas e ecológicas decorrem numa visão pouco nítida de como o funcionamento e a estrutura do ecossistema interagem sob a influência de um determinado conjunto de fatores de uso e do ambiente físico. A situação demanda uma abordagem analítica na qual classificações funcionais e estruturais sejam implementadas independentemente, com o fim de estabelecer ‘a posteriori’ quanto e como as classificações estão interconectadas. A tarefa é ainda mais desafiante, em termos de método e interpretação, quando consideramos o contexto hierárquico e complexo em que a análise deve ser feita e a dependência de definição dos resultados. Esta tese refere-se ao desenvolvimento de ferramentas conceituais e metodológicas para analisar a heterogeneidade funcional dos ecossistemas no espaço, em relação a fatores significativos de uso e do ambiente, e aos diferentes tipos de vegetação presentes numa determinada região. Com esse objetivo, adotamos o conceito de ‘Tipos Funcionais de Ecossistemas’ (TFEs), os quais reúnem unidades espaciais com padrão de funcionamento similar, sem considerar seus atributos estruturais, e avançamos num esquema classificatório de TFEs que permite capturar as respostas funcionais de curto prazo dos ecossistemas em cenários de mudanças ambientais e de uso altamente dinâmicas. Também examinamos a sensibilidade dos tipos funcionais de ecossistemas a diferentes definições de funcionamento e parâmetros de escala espacial. Os TFEs provaram ser sensíveis a estas variáveis analíticas, oferecendo assim a possibilidade de indagar a natureza multidimensional e multi-escala dos fenômenos do ecossistema. Os TFEs capturam eficientemente os aspectos mais relevantes da resposta sazonal da vegetação aos fatores do ambiente biofísico, provendo assim uma ferramenta útil para descrever a heterogeneidade espacial do funcionamento dos ecossistemas em domínios temporais e geográficos específicos. Nesta tese avançamos no reconhecimento e descrição dos principais tipos de paisagem no planalto basáltico do Rio Grande do Sul, e propomos mecanismos e controles responsáveis desses padrões característicos. Da associação espacial entre feições do terreno, solos, tipos de uso e vegetação, identificamos três tipos básicos de paisagens e definimos preliminarmente seu domínio espacial. Os resultados descrevem um forte relacionamento entre a distribuição dos grandes tipos fisionômicos de vegetação, os solos e os processos formadores de relevo. Assim sendo, os campos dominam onde relevo e solos indicam a ocorrência de remanescentes de uma antiga superfície de pediplanação, em quanto as florestas prevalecem onde os agentes geomorfológicos têm rejuvenescido a paisagem. Porém, com o objetivo de compreender os processos responsáveis destes padrões, é essencial fazer ‘downscaling’ desde a escala regional na qual os processos formadores de relevo e de solos dominam a diferenciação espacial de variáveis ecológicas, até a escala local na qual fatores biológicos e relacionados com o regime de distúrbio adquirem maior importância na produção de padrões de heterogeneidade espacial. Identificamos que a abordagem ecossistêmica funcional é a maneira mais promissora de relacionar processos de natureza tão divergente. / The ‘ecosystem’ concept emerged from the need for understanding the highly dynamic nature of the vegetation, interpreted from thereon as the reciprocal interaction among the organism-complex and a wide array of factors of the physical environment. A full branch of the ecological sciences developed from this concept, aimed to assessing the outcome of such interactions as flows of energy, matter and information. Recent conceptual developments points to a conception of ecosystem as an entity evolving under the influence of a novel paradigm, for which nestedness, hierarchy, relative decomposability, probability and scale-dependency are central. Another important development, trajectory analysis, opens the possibility to treat ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem functioning as multi-scale phenomena. Methodological and ecological uncertainties determine a rather fuzzy picture of how ecosystem function and structure interplay under the influence of some set of drivers of the physical environment and land use. The whole situation waits for an analytical path to be designed in which functional and structural classifications are carried out independently, in order to establish a posteriori whether they are connected and how they are connected. The task is even more defiant, both in terms of methods and interpretation, if we consider the already complex hierarchical context in which the analysis should be set and the definition-dependency of the outcome. This thesis is about the development of conceptual and analytical tools for analyzing the functional heterogeneity of the ecosystems in the space, in relation to meaningful environmental and land-use factors and to the different types of vegetation present over a given region. To that aim, we adopt the concept of Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs), which enclose spatial units with similar functional patterns, no attention paid to their structure, and advance on an EFT classificatory scheme that allows capturing the short-term functional response of the ecosystems to environmental and land-use changes. Furthermore, we examine the effect of using different surrogates of ecosystem functioning on the resulting picture of functional patchiness. The effect of changing parameters of spatial scale is also tested. The Ecosystem Functional Types proved to be heavily definition-dependent and sensitive to spatial scale, which allows exploring the multi-dimensional and multi-scale nature of ecosystem phenomena. The EFTs efficiently capture the most relevant features of the seasonal response of the vegetation to the drivers of the biophysical environment, providing so a useful tool for depicting the spatial heterogeneity of ecosystem functioning in a given geographic and temporal domain. In this report we also accomplished the recognition and description of main landscape types in the basaltic tablelands of Rio Grande do Sul, and proposed mechanisms and controls responsible for their characteristic patterns. From the spatial association of terrain features, soils, land-use and vegetation, we identified three basic landscape types and broadly defined their spatial domain. The picture described tells of a rather close relationship among the distribution of the major physiognomic types of the vegetation, soils, land-use and land-forming processes. In this picture, the grasslands prevail where terrain and soil features suggest there are the remnants of an old pediplanation surface, while forests seems to dominate wherever geomorphic agents have rejuvenated the landscape. However, in order to understand the processes responsible of these patterns it is then essential to downscale from the regional realm where terrain and soil-forming phenomena dominate spatial differentiation, to the fine-scale processes at which biological and disturbance-related factors are most influential in the production of patterns of spatial heterogeneity. We identify the functional approach to the ecosystems as the most promising way to correlate processes of such a different nature.

O conceito de ‘ecossistema’ emergiu da necessidade de compreender o caráter extremamente dinâmico da vegetação, interpretado a partir daí como o resultado da interação recíproca entre um dado complexo de organismos e seu conjunto amplo de fatores do ambiente físico. Um ramo das ciências ecológicas desenvolveu-se desse conceito, visando examinar o resultado de tais interações em termos de fluxos de energia, matéria e informação. Desenvolvimentos conceituais recentes apontam para uma concepção do ecossistema sob a ótica de um novo paradigma, para o qual aninhamento, hierarquia, decomposabilidade relativa, probabilidade e dependência de escala são critérios chave. Outro desenvolvimento importante, a análise de trajetórias, abriu a possibilidade de tratar a dinâmica e o funcionamento do ecossistema como fenômenos em múltiplas escalas. Incertezas metodológicas e ecológicas decorrem numa visão pouco nítida de como o funcionamento e a estrutura do ecossistema interagem sob a influência de um determinado conjunto de fatores de uso e do ambiente físico. A situação demanda uma abordagem analítica na qual classificações funcionais e estruturais sejam implementadas independentemente, com o fim de estabelecer ‘a posteriori’ quanto e como as classificações estão interconectadas. A tarefa é ainda mais desafiante, em termos de método e interpretação, quando consideramos o contexto hierárquico e complexo em que a análise deve ser feita e a dependência de definição dos resultados. Esta tese refere-se ao desenvolvimento de ferramentas conceituais e metodológicas para analisar a heterogeneidade funcional dos ecossistemas no espaço, em relação a fatores significativos de uso e do ambiente, e aos diferentes tipos de vegetação presentes numa determinada região. Com esse objetivo, adotamos o conceito de ‘Tipos Funcionais de Ecossistemas’ (TFEs), os quais reúnem unidades espaciais com padrão de funcionamento similar, sem considerar seus atributos estruturais, e avançamos num esquema classificatório de TFEs que permite capturar as respostas funcionais de curto prazo dos ecossistemas em cenários de mudanças ambientais e de uso altamente dinâmicas. Também examinamos a sensibilidade dos tipos funcionais de ecossistemas a diferentes definições de funcionamento e parâmetros de escala espacial. Os TFEs provaram ser sensíveis a estas variáveis analíticas, oferecendo assim a possibilidade de indagar a natureza multidimensional e multi-escala dos fenômenos do ecossistema. Os TFEs capturam eficientemente os aspectos mais relevantes da resposta sazonal da vegetação aos fatores do ambiente biofísico, provendo assim uma ferramenta útil para descrever a heterogeneidade espacial do funcionamento dos ecossistemas em domínios temporais e geográficos específicos. Nesta tese avançamos no reconhecimento e descrição dos principais tipos de paisagem no planalto basáltico do Rio Grande do Sul, e propomos mecanismos e controles responsáveis desses padrões característicos. Da associação espacial entre feições do terreno, solos, tipos de uso e vegetação, identificamos três tipos básicos de paisagens e definimos preliminarmente seu domínio espacial. Os resultados descrevem um forte relacionamento entre a distribuição dos grandes tipos fisionômicos de vegetação, os solos e os processos formadores de relevo. Assim sendo, os campos dominam onde relevo e solos indicam a ocorrência de remanescentes de uma antiga superfície de pediplanação, em quanto as florestas prevalecem onde os agentes geomorfológicos têm rejuvenescido a paisagem. Porém, com o objetivo de compreender os processos responsáveis destes padrões, é essencial fazer ‘downscaling’ desde a escala regional na qual os processos formadores de relevo e de solos dominam a diferenciação espacial de variáveis ecológicas, até a escala local na qual fatores biológicos e relacionados com o regime de distúrbio adquirem maior importância na produção de padrões de heterogeneidade espacial. Identificamos que a abordagem ecossistêmica funcional é a maneira mais promissora de relacionar processos de natureza tão divergente. / The ‘ecosystem’ concept emerged from the need for understanding the highly dynamic nature of the vegetation, interpreted from thereon as the reciprocal interaction among the organism-complex and a wide array of factors of the physical environment. A full branch of the ecological sciences developed from this concept, aimed to assessing the outcome of such interactions as flows of energy, matter and information. Recent conceptual developments points to a conception of ecosystem as an entity evolving under the influence of a novel paradigm, for which nestedness, hierarchy, relative decomposability, probability and scale-dependency are central. Another important development, trajectory analysis, opens the possibility to treat ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem functioning as multi-scale phenomena. Methodological and ecological uncertainties determine a rather fuzzy picture of how ecosystem function and structure interplay under the influence of some set of drivers of the physical environment and land use. The whole situation waits for an analytical path to be designed in which functional and structural classifications are carried out independently, in order to establish a posteriori whether they are connected and how they are connected. The task is even more defiant, both in terms of methods and interpretation, if we consider the already complex hierarchical context in which the analysis should be set and the definition-dependency of the outcome. This thesis is about the development of conceptual and analytical tools for analyzing the functional heterogeneity of the ecosystems in the space, in relation to meaningful environmental and land-use factors and to the different types of vegetation present over a given region. To that aim, we adopt the concept of Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs), which enclose spatial units with similar functional patterns, no attention paid to their structure, and advance on an EFT classificatory scheme that allows capturing the short-term functional response of the ecosystems to environmental and land-use changes. Furthermore, we examine the effect of using different surrogates of ecosystem functioning on the resulting picture of functional patchiness. The effect of changing parameters of spatial scale is also tested. The Ecosystem Functional Types proved to be heavily definition-dependent and sensitive to spatial scale, which allows exploring the multi-dimensional and multi-scale nature of ecosystem phenomena. The EFTs efficiently capture the most relevant features of the seasonal response of the vegetation to the drivers of the biophysical environment, providing so a useful tool for depicting the spatial heterogeneity of ecosystem functioning in a given geographic and temporal domain. In this report we also accomplished the recognition and description of main landscape types in the basaltic tablelands of Rio Grande do Sul, and proposed mechanisms and controls responsible for their characteristic patterns. From the spatial association of terrain features, soils, land-use and vegetation, we identified three basic landscape types and broadly defined their spatial domain. The picture described tells of a rather close relationship among the distribution of the major physiognomic types of the vegetation, soils, land-use and land-forming processes. In this picture, the grasslands prevail where terrain and soil features suggest there are the remnants of an old pediplanation surface, while forests seems to dominate wherever geomorphic agents have rejuvenated the landscape. However, in order to understand the processes responsible of these patterns it is then essential to downscale from the regional realm where terrain and soil-forming phenomena dominate spatial differentiation, to the fine-scale processes at which biological and disturbance-related factors are most influential in the production of patterns of spatial heterogeneity. We identify the functional approach to the ecosystems as the most promising way to correlate processes of such a different nature.

O conceito de ‘ecossistema’ emergiu da necessidade de compreender o caráter extremamente dinâmico da vegetação, interpretado a partir daí como o resultado da interação recíproca entre um dado complexo de organismos e seu conjunto amplo de fatores do ambiente físico. Um ramo das ciências ecológicas desenvolveu-se desse conceito, visando examinar o resultado de tais interações em termos de fluxos de energia, matéria e informação. Desenvolvimentos conceituais recentes apontam para uma concepção do ecossistema sob a ótica de um novo paradigma, para o qual aninhamento, hierarquia, decomposabilidade relativa, probabilidade e dependência de escala são critérios chave. Outro desenvolvimento importante, a análise de trajetórias, abriu a possibilidade de tratar a dinâmica e o funcionamento do ecossistema como fenômenos em múltiplas escalas. Incertezas metodológicas e ecológicas decorrem numa visão pouco nítida de como o funcionamento e a estrutura do ecossistema interagem sob a influência de um determinado conjunto de fatores de uso e do ambiente físico. A situação demanda uma abordagem analítica na qual classificações funcionais e estruturais sejam implementadas independentemente, com o fim de estabelecer ‘a posteriori’ quanto e como as classificações estão interconectadas. A tarefa é ainda mais desafiante, em termos de método e interpretação, quando consideramos o contexto hierárquico e complexo em que a análise deve ser feita e a dependência de definição dos resultados. Esta tese refere-se ao desenvolvimento de ferramentas conceituais e metodológicas para analisar a heterogeneidade funcional dos ecossistemas no espaço, em relação a fatores significativos de uso e do ambiente, e aos diferentes tipos de vegetação presentes numa determinada região. Com esse objetivo, adotamos o conceito de ‘Tipos Funcionais de Ecossistemas’ (TFEs), os quais reúnem unidades espaciais com padrão de funcionamento similar, sem considerar seus atributos estruturais, e avançamos num esquema classificatório de TFEs que permite capturar as respostas funcionais de curto prazo dos ecossistemas em cenários de mudanças ambientais e de uso altamente dinâmicas. Também examinamos a sensibilidade dos tipos funcionais de ecossistemas a diferentes definições de funcionamento e parâmetros de escala espacial. Os TFEs provaram ser sensíveis a estas variáveis analíticas, oferecendo assim a possibilidade de indagar a natureza multidimensional e multi-escala dos fenômenos do ecossistema. Os TFEs capturam eficientemente os aspectos mais relevantes da resposta sazonal da vegetação aos fatores do ambiente biofísico, provendo assim uma ferramenta útil para descrever a heterogeneidade espacial do funcionamento dos ecossistemas em domínios temporais e geográficos específicos. Nesta tese avançamos no reconhecimento e descrição dos principais tipos de paisagem no planalto basáltico do Rio Grande do Sul, e propomos mecanismos e controles responsáveis desses padrões característicos. Da associação espacial entre feições do terreno, solos, tipos de uso e vegetação, identificamos três tipos básicos de paisagens e definimos preliminarmente seu domínio espacial. Os resultados descrevem um forte relacionamento entre a distribuição dos grandes tipos fisionômicos de vegetação, os solos e os processos formadores de relevo. Assim sendo, os campos dominam onde relevo e solos indicam a ocorrência de remanescentes de uma antiga superfície de pediplanação, em quanto as florestas prevalecem onde os agentes geomorfológicos têm rejuvenescido a paisagem. Porém, com o objetivo de compreender os processos responsáveis destes padrões, é essencial fazer ‘downscaling’ desde a escala regional na qual os processos formadores de relevo e de solos dominam a diferenciação espacial de variáveis ecológicas, até a escala local na qual fatores biológicos e relacionados com o regime de distúrbio adquirem maior importância na produção de padrões de heterogeneidade espacial. Identificamos que a abordagem ecossistêmica funcional é a maneira mais promissora de relacionar processos de natureza tão divergente. / The ‘ecosystem’ concept emerged from the need for understanding the highly dynamic nature of the vegetation, interpreted from thereon as the reciprocal interaction among the organism-complex and a wide array of factors of the physical environment. A full branch of the ecological sciences developed from this concept, aimed to assessing the outcome of such interactions as flows of energy, matter and information. Recent conceptual developments points to a conception of ecosystem as an entity evolving under the influence of a novel paradigm, for which nestedness, hierarchy, relative decomposability, probability and scale-dependency are central. Another important development, trajectory analysis, opens the possibility to treat ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem functioning as multi-scale phenomena. Methodological and ecological uncertainties determine a rather fuzzy picture of how ecosystem function and structure interplay under the influence of some set of drivers of the physical environment and land use. The whole situation waits for an analytical path to be designed in which functional and structural classifications are carried out independently, in order to establish a posteriori whether they are connected and how they are connected. The task is even more defiant, both in terms of methods and interpretation, if we consider the already complex hierarchical context in which the analysis should be set and the definition-dependency of the outcome. This thesis is about the development of conceptual and analytical tools for analyzing the functional heterogeneity of the ecosystems in the space, in relation to meaningful environmental and land-use factors and to the different types of vegetation present over a given region. To that aim, we adopt the concept of Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs), which enclose spatial units with similar functional patterns, no attention paid to their structure, and advance on an EFT classificatory scheme that allows capturing the short-term functional response of the ecosystems to environmental and land-use changes. Furthermore, we examine the effect of using different surrogates of ecosystem functioning on the resulting picture of functional patchiness. The effect of changing parameters of spatial scale is also tested. The Ecosystem Functional Types proved to be heavily definition-dependent and sensitive to spatial scale, which allows exploring the multi-dimensional and multi-scale nature of ecosystem phenomena. The EFTs efficiently capture the most relevant features of the seasonal response of the vegetation to the drivers of the biophysical environment, providing so a useful tool for depicting the spatial heterogeneity of ecosystem functioning in a given geographic and temporal domain. In this report we also accomplished the recognition and description of main landscape types in the basaltic tablelands of Rio Grande do Sul, and proposed mechanisms and controls responsible for their characteristic patterns. From the spatial association of terrain features, soils, land-use and vegetation, we identified three basic landscape types and broadly defined their spatial domain. The picture described tells of a rather close relationship among the distribution of the major physiognomic types of the vegetation, soils, land-use and land-forming processes. In this picture, the grasslands prevail where terrain and soil features suggest there are the remnants of an old pediplanation surface, while forests seems to dominate wherever geomorphic agents have rejuvenated the landscape. However, in order to understand the processes responsible of these patterns it is then essential to downscale from the regional realm where terrain and soil-forming phenomena dominate spatial differentiation, to the fine-scale processes at which biological and disturbance-related factors are most influential in the production of patterns of spatial heterogeneity. We identify the functional approach to the ecosystems as the most promising way to correlate processes of such a different nature.

The recent development of the commercially viable thin film electro-acoustic technology has triggered a growing interest in the research of plate guided wave or Lamb wave components owing to their unique characteristics. In the present thesis i) an experimental study of the thin film plate resonators (FPAR) performance operating on the lowest symmetrical Lamb wave (S0) propagating in highly textured AlN membranes versus a variety of design parameters has been performed. The S0 mode is excited through an Interdigital Transducer and confined within the structure by means of reflection from metal strip gratings. Devices operating in the vicinity of the stop-band center exhibiting a Q-value of up to 3000 at a frequency around 900MHz have been demonstrated. Temperature compensation of this type of devices has been studied theoretically and successfully realized experimentally for the first time. Further, integrated circuit-compatible S0 Lamb based two-port FPAR stabilized oscillators exhibiting phase noise of -92 dBc/Hz at 1 kHz frequency offset with feasible thermal noise floor below -180 dBc/Hz have been tested under high power for a couple of weeks. More specifically, the FPARs under test have been running without any performance degradation at up to 27 dBm loop power. Further, the S0 mode was experimentally demonstrated to be highly mass and pressure sensitive as well as suitable for in-liquid operation, which together with low phase noise and high Q makes it very suitable for sensor applications; ii) research in view of FPARs operating on other types of Lamb waves as well as novel operation principles has been initiated. In this work, first results on the design, fabrication and characterization of two novel type resonators: The Zero Group Velocity Resonators (ZGVR) and The Intermode-Coupled Thin Film Plate Acoustic Resonators (IC-FPAR), exploiting new principles of operation have been successfully demonstrated. The former exploits the intrinsic zero group velocity feature of the S1 Lamb mode for certain combination of design parameters while the latter takes advantage of the intermode interaction (involving scattering) between S0 and A1 Lamb modes through specially designed metal strip gratings (couplers). Thus both type of resonators operate on principles of confining energy under IDT other than reflection.

This study explores the subjective experiences of mothers living with HIV from Southeastern Ontario when accessing health and social services. Drawing on principles of feminist participatory action research, 5 MLWH were brought together in order to share their stories of accessing health and social services and to participate in the creation of a collage as part of the storytelling process. Intersectional feminist theory was chosen as a theoretical lens for this project to highlight the ways women’s multiple identities intersect and contribute to HIV-stigma. Emerging from the storytelling and arts based process were stories about the women’s interactions with the criminal justice system, Children’s Aid Societies, social welfare programs and women-specific supports. The key concerns that the women raised in connection to these interactions included having to re-tell their story, concerns about confidentiality and disclosure and experiencing a loss of control as a result of depending on a myriad of health and social services. In addition, the participants identified changes they would like to see within health/social services including more opportunities for peer support and an increase in services available to support the unique psychosocial challenges of MLWH. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)