Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 G87 / Master of Science

This study presents an insider’s view concerning the significant influence of American fundamentalism at Prairie Bible Institute (Three Hills, Alberta, Canada) during the tenure of the school’s co-founder and primary leader, Leslie Earl Maxwell. During much of the period covering 1922-1980, PBI rivaled well-known American schools such as Moody Bible Institute, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) and Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina, in size. These schools were also highly efficient in producing hundreds of missionaries and Christian workers to serve the fundamentalist cause in North America and around the world. As a belated response to Dr. John Stackhouse, Jr.’s portrayal of PBI in his 1993 book, Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character, this thesis offers clarification and modification to Stackhouse’s work regarding how PBI during the Maxwell era should be viewed by students of church history. It is argued here that the ubiquitous influence of the United States of America on Canadian life is clearly visible in the nature of the Christian fundamentalism that prevailed at PBI under Maxwell’s leadership. The work thereby lends a certain amount of credibility to the suggestions made by some scholars that PBI during Maxwell’s career might legitimately be considered an outpost of American fundamentalism. Employing primarily a quantitative assessment of the evidence in combination with personal anecdotes and a few basic statistics, the thesis reveals that Maxwell’s personality and rhetoric were consistently more militant than Stackhouse allows. PBI’s affinity for many of the distinctives of American fundamentalist theology and culture are also documented. Such an approach serves the additional purpose of enabling the writer to call into question the utility of considering militancy the defining characteristic of twentieth-century evangelicalism when considered from a post-9/11 perspective. It also enables a challenge of Stackhouse’s assumption that what he identifies as “sectish” Canadian evangelicalism is ultimately as substantially different from American fundamentalism as the Canadian scholar infers. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Church History)

We examined the radial growth - climate association of a disjunct population of white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) at its southern limit of distribution. Forty-four white spruce tree islands were sampled over four mixed-grass prairie preserves in the Spruce Woods Provincial Park located in the forestprairie boundary of southwestern Manitoba. Reduced radial growth occurred during the 1910s, 1930s, early 1960s, and the late 1970s to the early 1980s and corresponded to periods of drought on the Canadian prairies, and the Great Plains of the United States. Correlation and response function coefficients indicated that conditions in the summer and fall of the previous year (t-1), and the summer of the current year (t) strongly influenced white spruce growth. Growth was positively correlated with August-September (t-1) and May-June-July (t) precipitation and moisture index (precipitation minus potential evapotranspiration). Radial growth was positively associated with June-July-August (t) river discharge. Growth was most correlated with maximum and mean temperature compared with minimum temperature. Precipitation and maximum temperature accounted for the greatest variation in radial growth (61%). The results suggest that white spruce growth is sensitive to climatic fluctuations because growth is restricted by moisture deficiency exacerbated by temperature-induced drought stress.

Through inquiry, experience, and discovery, this practicum reveals the landscape of Old Wives Lake, Saskatchewan and the prairie pothole region that surrounds it. It is my intention for this work to become a device for the revealing of unseen forces, for the creation of a different attention, an altering of perception, and an openness to a unique landscape of ever changing and shifting phenomena. It is accepted that complex systems, cannot be fully understood without time, patience, and commitment; however, through learning, understanding and revealing, the potential to not simply ‘see’ a landscape, but ‘read’ a landscape is harvested to enlighten and share in its discovery. The result is an exhibition of the unexpected Saskatchewan landscape.

During this creative project rationale, developed from scientific fact, community needs and the values inherent to the student was utilized as the foundation for decisions associated with the development of a campground facility for Prairie Creek Reservoir. Comprehensive and site specific problem-solving methods were used to form a broad overview of the park and recreation planning and design procedures available to landscape architects.At the comprehensive scale, a survey was conducted to assess the community need for the camping experience. An inventory of existing camping opportunities available to the residents of Delaware County was used, in conjunction with the survey results and recreation standards, in a supply/demand equation to determine the number and the type of camping facilities needed to meet present and future demand for the camping experience. The concept of camping at Prairie Creek Reservoir Park was viewed in this light.Site scale investigations began with the establishment of user and resource criteria. Natural, cultural and economic data were collected from the landscape contained within, and immediately surrounding, the property leased by the Muncie Park Board at the Prairie Creek Reservoir site. This information was analyzed in accordance with the design criteria to produce a series of computer generated maps. The student identified alternative campground sites within the site with the help of these visual aids. The campground site, best meeting the user needs and resource capabilities, was selected and a series of development proposals for the campground facility was prepared. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Through inquiry, experience, and discovery, this practicum reveals the landscape of Old Wives Lake, Saskatchewan and the prairie pothole region that surrounds it. It is my intention for this work to become a device for the revealing of unseen forces, for the creation of a different attention, an altering of perception, and an openness to a unique landscape of ever changing and shifting phenomena. It is accepted that complex systems, cannot be fully understood without time, patience, and commitment; however, through learning, understanding and revealing, the potential to not simply ‘see’ a landscape, but ‘read’ a landscape is harvested to enlighten and share in its discovery. The result is an exhibition of the unexpected Saskatchewan landscape.

This study presents an insider’s view concerning the significant influence of American fundamentalism at Prairie Bible Institute (Three Hills, Alberta, Canada) during the tenure of the school’s co-founder and primary leader, Leslie Earl Maxwell. During much of the period covering 1922-1980, PBI rivaled well-known American schools such as Moody Bible Institute, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) and Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina, in size. These schools were also highly efficient in producing hundreds of missionaries and Christian workers to serve the fundamentalist cause in North America and around the world. As a belated response to Dr. John Stackhouse, Jr.’s portrayal of PBI in his 1993 book, Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character, this thesis offers clarification and modification to Stackhouse’s work regarding how PBI during the Maxwell era should be viewed by students of church history. It is argued here that the ubiquitous influence of the United States of America on Canadian life is clearly visible in the nature of the Christian fundamentalism that prevailed at PBI under Maxwell’s leadership. The work thereby lends a certain amount of credibility to the suggestions made by some scholars that PBI during Maxwell’s career might legitimately be considered an outpost of American fundamentalism. Employing primarily a quantitative assessment of the evidence in combination with personal anecdotes and a few basic statistics, the thesis reveals that Maxwell’s personality and rhetoric were consistently more militant than Stackhouse allows. PBI’s affinity for many of the distinctives of American fundamentalist theology and culture are also documented. Such an approach serves the additional purpose of enabling the writer to call into question the utility of considering militancy the defining characteristic of twentieth-century evangelicalism when considered from a post-9/11 perspective. It also enables a challenge of Stackhouse’s assumption that what he identifies as “sectish” Canadian evangelicalism is ultimately as substantially different from American fundamentalism as the Canadian scholar infers. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Church History)

This paper deals with a study of the rangelands in Coleman County just west south and west of the Western Cross Timbers of Texas. This problem consists of classifying certain rangelands in this area according to whether they are excellent, fair, good, or poor, the chief basis for which is their deterioration.

Master of Science / Department of Biology / Jesse B. Nippert / The Konza Prairie in northern Kansas, USA contains over 550 vascular plant species; of which, few have been closely studied. These species are adapted to environmental stress as imposed by variable temperature, precipitation, fire, and grazing. Understanding which plant traits relate to drought responses will allow us to both predict drought tolerance and potential future shifts in plant community composition from changes in local climate. Morphological and physiological measurements were taken on 121 species of herbaceous tallgrass prairie plants grown from seed in a growth chamber. Gas exchange measurements including maximum photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance to water vapor, and intercellular CO[subscript]2 concentration were measured. All plants were exposed to a drought treatment and were monitored daily until stomatal conductance was zero. At this point, critical leaf water potential (Ψ[subscript]crit), an indicator of physiological drought tolerance was assessed. Other measurements include root length, diameter, volume, and mass, leaf area, leaf tissue density, root tissue density, and root to shoot ratio. Traits were compared using pair-wise bivariate analysis and principal component analysis (PCA). A dichotomy was found between dry-adapted plants with thin, dense leaves and roots, high leaf angle, and highly negative Ψ[subscript]crit and hydrophiles which have the opposite profile. A second axis offers more separation based on high photosynthetic rate, high conductance rate, and leaf angle, but fails to provide a distinction between C[subscript]3 and C[subscript]4 species. When tested independently, grasses and forbs both showed drought tolerance strategies similar to the primary analysis. Matching up these axes with long term abundance data suggests that species with drought tolerance traits have increased abundance on Konza, especially in upland habitats. However, traits that relate to drought tolerance mirror relationships with nutrient stress, confounding separation of low water versus low nutrient strategies. My results not only illustrate the utility of morphological and physiological plant traits in classifying drought responses across a range of species, but as functional traits in predicting both drought tolerance in individual species and relative abundance across environmental gradients of water availability.

Master of Science / Division of Biology / John M. Blair / Temperate grasslands are among the most threatened biomes in the world, with the largest historical losses due to conversion to agricultural land. While much of this biome has already been converted, there is concern the last remaining remnants in North America will be converted in response to increasing demand for crops used for ethanol production. Thus, restoring grasslands post-anthropogenic disturbance is increasingly important for conserving grassland biodiversity. Two major challenges for prairie restorations are establishing the many subdominant and rarer species found in native prairie, and offsetting the typical decline in richness and diversity over time as restorations age. Repeated seed addition of targeted species is commonly used to override low and declining plant richness and diversity. While this is generally effective early in restoration (i.e., as communities are establishing), its effectiveness in later stages (i.e., when established communities are often losing diversity) remains unknown. I investigated plant community responses to combinations of resource manipulations and disturbances coupled with a seed addition in a 15-yr old restored grassland to test the hypothesis that spatial resource heterogeneity increases the rate of colonization into established prairie restoration communities. Seeds were added to a long-term restoration experiment involving soil depth manipulations (deep, shallow) crossed with nutrient manipulations (reduced N, ambient N, enriched N). Seedling emergence was generally low and only 8 of the 14 forb species added were detected in the first growing season. I found no effect of increased resource heterogeneity on the abundance or richness of seedlings. There was a significant nutrient effect (p<0.1, α=0.1) on seedling abundance, with higher emergence in the enriched N than the ambient N treatment. I also found unexpected nutrient effects on richness, diversity and Mean C (Mean C = Σ CoCi*Ai, where CoC=Coefficient of Conservatism and A=relative abundance of the ith species). All values, except Mean C, were higher in the enriched N treatment than in either the reduced or ambient N treatments. Mean C was lowest in the enriched N treatment, and highest in the whole-plot control, suggesting that the majority of species contributing to higher richness and diversity in the enriched N treatment were “weedier” species. In a separate experiment, I found no effect of small-scale disturbances (aboveground biomass removal or soil disturbance) on seedling abundance or seedling richness. I did find a marginal effect of disturbance type on seedling richness (p=0.11, α=0.1), with higher seedling richness in the soil disturbance than the aboveground biomass removal treatment. I did not find any disturbance effects on community response variables. These results indicate that recruitment from seed additions into well-established restored communities is relatively low in the first year following a seed addition, regardless of resource availability and heterogeneity. Follow-up studies to determine recruitment rates in subsequent years are needed to elucidate whether recruitment responses are driven more by individual species differences or by environmental mechanisms.