Climate change is inevitable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forewarned the global community of the consequences of unrestrained burning of fossil fuels (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2011, para. 2). Until there is an economically viable source of alternative energy that can meet current and future demands, consumption of fossil fuels will continue to rise unless abated by models of governance that can assure sustainable use (Homer-Dixon & Garrison, 2010, p. 4). Climate change mitigation strategies take place in isolated cases where the resources and capability exist to address it. Biosphere reserves are governed as such. Each biosphere reserve has the ability to include climate change mitigation strategies within their mandates. Can these models of governance be used to demonstrate how to effectively address and mitigate climate change in other systems?

<p>Rice not collected by harvesters and natural seeds are important foods for waterfowl. Estimation of abundance of these seeds is necessary for calculating waterfowl habitat conservation needs in the Louisiana Chenier Plain (LCP) and Texas Mid-Coast (TMC). My objectives were to quantify dry mass of rice and other seeds from August-November 2010, and estimate waterbird abundances on farmed and idle ricelands in these regions from December 2010-March 2011. Rice abundance in farmed ricelands ranged from 159.7 kg/ha (CV = 66.6%) to 1,014.0 kg/ha (CV = 8.3%). Natural seed abundance in idle ricelands ranged from 99.7 kg/ha (CV = 32.9%) to 957.4 kg/ha (CV = 17.2%). Greatest waterbird densities occurred in shallowly flooded disked ricelands (mean = 7.35 waterbirds/ha, 90%; CI = 2.37-19.70). Ratoon, disked, and shallowly flooded ricelands are important habitat for non-breeding waterbirds but variable estimates of seed and waterbird abundances warrant continuation of this study.

The world today faces many challenges. Reducing poverty and protecting the environment are prominent amongst these challenges, and consequently both are high on priority lists for many national, international, governmental and non-governmental organizations. Since the 1980s there has been an increasing awareness that environmental protection must not fly in the face of social justice, especially in developing countries, and that a system can only truly achieve sustainability if it is socially just and economically sound, as well as environmentally secure. Likewise poverty reduction at the cost of the environment is worthless in the long term. This has given rise to much more holistic approaches to both conservation and poverty reduction policies and brought the rights of communities living in or near protected areas into the international focus. However, wether it is possible to conserve biodiversity and protect habitats successfully without undermining the livelihoods of local communities, or wether it is possible to offer development aid to an impoverished region without jeopardizing their local environment, is a question which has not been resolved. This study approaches this debate by examining the relationship between the livelihoods and natural resources of a rural village adjacent to a forest reserve on the Mambilla Highlands in Nigeria. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative techniques were employed during five months spent living on location to develop a picture of the situation as it currently exists, the environmental effects of development in the village to date, and the effects of these environmental changes on people’s livelihoods. Based on this research this thesis concludes that development in a region certainly increases the vulnerability of the environment. However, rather than concluding that this makes development and environmental protection conflicting agendas, this thesis argues that this period of vulnerability presents opportunities to develop true sustainability, as effective sustainable practices can develop from the experience of resource depletion. Additionally, examples of how knowledge sharing and dialogue between western scientists and indigenous communities has the potential to facilitate and accelerate this process are discussed.

<p> This dissertation traces the history of cattle grazing at Saguaro NP, Organ Pipe Cactus NM and Fort Bowie NHS in southern Arizona. This collection of studies examines the factors affecting that use, the ranchers who made their living from the landscape, and the federal land managers responsible for sustaining the natural and cultural resources. </p><p> A dominant industry on arid public lands since the Civil War, grazing was altered by a variety of influences: environmental and human-derived. Ranching communities developed from homesteading settlements. Success was determined by climate, topography, and natural resources; social and cultural pressures; economic events and political legislation; and later federal regulations and decisions. </p><p> The first agency to oversee grazing, USFS was under constant pressure to maximize short-term human benefits. The NPS Organic Act of 1916 mandated conservation of natural resources "by such means as will leave them unimpaired for future generations" and yet approved cattle grazing, an extractive use, under USFS management. Park managers were frustrated by grazing practices not under their control. Parks were at a cultural and social disadvantage. Residents and politicians often expressed displeasure at park reservations; communities feared that parks would interfere with local industries. </p><p> Park employees supervised visitors and developed recreation infrastructure; they came with little experience to manage livestock. Lack of funding for research, limited manpower, and political and administrative interference allowed cattle grazing to continue unregulated for decades altering vegetation and enhancing erosion. In the 1960s, changing values from the environmental movement, the waning power of the livestock industry, and the rise of activist scientists impelled NPS to act. Without monitoring data, NPS turned to legal opinions to terminate grazing. </p><p> Now grazing is regulated and carefully monitored. NPS is mandated to incorporate research results into management decisions. Older grazing permits are being retired, but land acquisitions for park additions add new management challenges. Purchasing permits offers a new but financially limited opportunity to protect sensitive lands. Grazing has ended at all three parks, yet ecological changes and historic structures remain. As cultural and administrative legacies, those remnants offer opportunities to interpret a significant regional tradition and an untold controversy.</p>

Across the Canadian North, resource co-management has become a central institution for the management of natural resources. An inventory of co-management boards in Canada’s northern territories, conducted in 2012, identified more than 30 different boards, with responsibilities ranging from wildlife, water, lands and non-renewable natural resources (Natcher 2013). While operating along a continuum of institutional authority, co-management has been heralded by many as an effective means to engage resource users and government managers in a collaborative and more equitable approach to environmental decision-making. Although a considerable amount of multi-disciplinary research has examined the various social and political dimensions that influence the effectiveness of resource co-management, little has been done to understand how gender might affect collaboration and decision-making within this resource regime. This gap in understanding is particularly evident in the northern Canadian context, where women make up 16% of all current co-management board members. With the intention to address this analytical void, this study set out to examine the ways in which a gender imbalance influences board decision-making and the experiences of those involved in co-management boards that have been established in the Yukon Territory. It focused in particular on women within these institutions, while also acknowledging broader gender roles that involve both men and women. Written surveys and semi-structured interviews demonstrated that the representation of women within these institutions was important to establishing a holistic decision-making process and positive institutional culture that facilitated effective decision-making. The presence of women on these boards also influenced the scope and efficacy of decision outcomes. Participants found that though opportunities to participate in decision-making existed, there were still barriers preventing board members from acting on these opportunities. These barriers were often experienced by men and women in different ways. Implicit within these findings are the gendered roles and characteristics that shape the activities and expectations of those involved with co-management institutions. Gendered roles in the community and on the land were particularly relevant to these boards. This research contributes to a more informed understanding of a critical, yet unexplored, aspect of the social and political context of co-management, with practical implications for how effective decision-making is interpreted and implemented by these boards.

<p> Physical evidence of past fires, left in the form of cambial scars, suggests that low and moderate intensity fires have burned periodically for centuries in the coast redwood (<i>Sequoia sempervirens</i>) forest in California's central coast bioregion. These fires may have played an important role in shaping stand age structure and composition. Nonetheless, the ecological role of fire in shaping successional processes in the redwood ecosystem is not well understood. The extent to which both aboriginal and more recent burning practices have affected the central coast landscape is also uncertain. Standard dendrochronology techniques were used to reconstruct and analyze the fire history of the coast redwood forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains based on the fire scar record. Three hundred and seventy-three fire scars were identified in 70 cross-sections that were removed from redwood stumps, downed logs, and trees in select locations between Davenport and A&ntilde;o Nuevo, California. The earliest recorded fire occurred in 1352 and the most recent in 2009. The grand mean fire return interval (FRI) for single trees (point) was 60.6 years, and the median FRI was 40.1 years. Fire scars were found most frequently in the dormant and latewood portions of the annual growth rings, signifying that fires tended to occur in the late summer and fall. A high degree of variability in the data set suggests that cultural burning practices occurred on fluctuating temporal and spatial scales.</p>

<p> Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) have inhabited the southern Great Basin for thousands of years, and consider <i>Nuvagantu</i> (where snow sits) in the Spring Mountains landscape to be the locus of their creation as a people. Their ancestral territory spans parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and California. My research identifies and describes the heterogeneous character of Nuwuvi ecological knowledge (NEK) of pi&ntilde;on-juniper woodland ecosystems within two federal protected areas (PAs) in southeastern Nevada, the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area (SMNRA) and the Desert National Wildlife Refuge (DNWR), as remembered and practiced to varying degrees by 22 select Nuwuvi knowledge holders. I focus my investigation on four primary aspects of NEK. First, drawing from data obtained through ethnoecological research, I discuss how Nuwuvi ecological knowledge evolved through protracted observation and learning from past resource depletions, and adapted to various environmental and socio-economic drivers of change induced since Euro-American incursion. Second, I argue that Nuwuvi management practices operate largely within a framework of non-equilibrium ecology, marked by low to intermediate disturbances and guided by Nuwuvi conceptions of environmental health and balance. These practices favor landscape heterogeneity and patchiness, and engender ecosystem renewal, expanded ecotones, and increased biodiversity. I then consider the third and fourth aspects of NEK as two case studies that consider NEK at the individual, species, population, habitat, and landscape scales. These case studies operationalize NEK as a relevant body of knowledge and techniques conducive to collaborative resource stewardship initiatives with federal land management agency partners. In the first case study I suggest that the Great Basin pi&ntilde;on pines are Nuwuvi cultural keystone species (CKS), evaluating their central importance to Nuwuvi according to several criteria including number of uses, role in ritual and story, and uniqueness relative to other species. In the second case study I contend that local social institutions regulated Nuwuvi resource use in the past and in some cases continued to do so at the time of study. These local social institutions included a system of resource extraction and habitat entrance taboos that may have mitigated impacts and supported sustainable resource use and conservation. The implications of this research are that Nuwuvi ecological knowledge, disturbance-based adaptive management practices, and resource and habitat taboos are relevant to contemporary land management concerns in pi&ntilde;on-juniper woodlands, offering complementary approaches to adaptive management as practiced in the SMNRA and the DNWR despite divergent epistemological foundations. My research contributed to the Nuwuvi Knowledge-to-Action Project, an applied government-to-government consultation, collaborative resource stewardship, and cultural revitalization project facilitated by The Mountain Institute among seven Nuwuvi Nations, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.</p>

<p> Parcelization is an increasing concern to land managers in the rural regions of the United States. In order to protect vital ecosystem goods and services, resource managers need to account for decreasing parcel sizes. The Catskill region of New York State contains both the New York City Watershed and the Catskill Preserve. In order to maintain ecosystem functions within these sensitive areas, wise planning is needed in the development of rural lands. This study documents the change in private, rural parcel dynamics from 2004 to 2010 in the Catskill region at the township scale. A parcel density map was developed to observe trends in distribution of small parcels. The average parcel size dropped from 13.9 acres in 2004 to 13.1 acres in 2010. The distribution of small private, rural parcels is diffuse across the study region, implying the transition from resource management focused land holdings to rural residential within the Catskill region.</p>

The purpose of this research was to assess stakeholder interest pertaining to best management practices for free-roaming horses in the Chilcotin, British Columbia. The study site is located between the towns of Hanceville to the east and Tatla Lake to the west. A case study approach was adopted, utilizing on-site observation, document analysis and semi structured interview methods. Analysis, through the reduction and interpretation of data, allowed for the emergence of the themes and subthemes. Themes were free-roaming horse interaction with both the biophysical and socioeconomic landscape as well as management. British Columbia government, ranchers, First Nations and Non Governmental Organizations were interviewed on their awareness and interaction with free-roaming horses, the management and policies pertaining to the species. Free-roaming horses have historically represented a social and economic resource, although stakeholders have had little input into management decisions. Antiquated policies, clashing social values, changing land title and land use and difficult economic times have resulted in a lack of clarity regarding jurisdiction, and therefore management, for the free-roaming horses. Management goals are not clear due to lack of classification as livestock or wildlife under provincial or federal legislations. A strategy, which promotes decentralization, collaboration and transparency in decision and policy-making is recommended. Multi-stakeholder research is the first step toward creating such a strategy.

Assessments of landscape connectivity are increasingly required in natural resource management. Understanding how landscape structure affects the movement and dispersal of animals may be essential for ensuring the long-term persistence of species of conservation concern. Functional connectivity models describing how features on the landscape influence animal movement behaviour have been produced in two different ways. The resistance surface models landscape connectivity as its inverse, the resistance to movement and dispersal, while the landscape graph represents landscape connectivity by describing the relationships among resource patches. Both methods have limitations that make them less effective for modelling highly-mobile and wide-ranging species such as ungulates and carnivores. This thesis develops a method called grains of connectivity that combines the continuous representation of landscape connectivity provided by resistance surfaces and the scalability provided by landscape graphs to create a flexible modelling framework for these species. The first half of the thesis reviews the conceptual origins of the grains of connectivity method and examines its properties using simulated landscapes. In the second half, empirical evidence of movement and dispersal in a boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) population is used to validate functional connectivity hypotheses generated using the method. Connectivity for caribou at the temporal scale of generations is examined using a landscape genetics approach, while connectivity at the seasonal scale is assessed using the distribution of caribou telemetry locations. Grains of connectivity may be most useful for study systems where animals are not found exclusively in well-defined resource patches and there is uncertainty in the behavioural parameters influencing movement and dispersal. Additionally, the scalability of the analysis can be used to selectively remove spatial heterogeneity that may be uncorrelated with movement and dispersal giving an improved description of the pattern affecting the landscape connectivity process.