<p> Issues around sustainably managing freshwater resources are one of the most challenging and timely issues affecting the globe. In response to rising social and ecological complexities, decision makers are faced with designing new policies and programs to effectively govern water resources. This shift towards new freshwater resource management approaches is in line with recent movement toward incentive-based mechanisms such as &ldquo;Investments in Watershed Services&rdquo; (IWS). The western United States contains one of the most concentrated IWS populations, in a time when population growth, intensifying land uses, and climate-induced environmental changes are stressing ecological systems in the region. My dissertation focuses on understanding this new arena of environmental governance aimed at freshwater conservation in the US West. Through three sets of data and analytical lenses I explore: the characterization of this new arena of governance, what led to its recent and significant growth, and what changes have occurred with respect to how such water resources were traditionally governed. I employ a mixed methods approach, using quantitative approaches to characterize the study population and temporal changes, and qualitative approaches to dive deeper into understanding specific phenomena. First, I improve understanding of IWS as an institution, and demonstrate the importance of dynamics between institutional factors for external context, program structure, and other related analytical domains in shaping how PWS is applied to water resources challenges globally. Through an institutional analysis of IWS and the use of cluster analysis to group programs around buyer types and management actions, I highlight the role of government, influence of geographic context, and role of both regional and local conditions in shaping IWS design and structure. Second, I demonstrate that government actors are essential to IWS in the region, expanding beyond existing regulations and traditional roles. This exploration of the role of government within adaptive governance shows the evolving and expanding role of government over time, from federal regulations driving early water quality management, then state legislation driving water quantity programs, and more recently, federal agencies partnering on local water source protection efforts. Third, I show how key individuals and organizations create voluntary IWS in response to risk, aligning policies, politics and problems into solution framing, which suggests policy process theories more explicitly consider social-ecological complexities. These programs constitute the most recent expansion of IWS in the US West, and applying a policy process theory sheds light into the formation of the IWS, and the political, economic, ecological and social components that aligned to make the programs possible. My research shows this new arena of environmental governance as adaptive, place and problem-based, learning and collaboration-focused, accepting of uncertainty, and containing nimble and adaptive government across scale. My work also creates a baseline of IWS in the region, and identifies areas for future research as IWS matures over time.</p>

<p> Interest in renewable energy and governmental mandates has motivated land managers to consider cellulosic feedstocks for bioenergy. I investigated plant community response to a system including switchgrass (<i> Panicum virgatum</i>) as a feedstock intercropped with loblolly pine (<i>Pinus taeda</i>). I estimated plant species evenness, richness, and diversity and biomass production, with emphasis on white-tailed deer (<i> Odocoileus virginianus</i>) forages. I detected 225 species in 2,220 1-m² quadrats, and 7,495 biomass samples (96.4 kg dry weight) from 960 quadrats. Intercropping reduced plant species diversity, total non-pine tree biomass, and biomass of deer forages during switchgrass establishment. These effects were no longer apparent at treatment level two years after switchgrass establishment, except that deer browse and total deer forage biomass remained less in intercropped interbeds. Intercropping in managed pines may temporarily effect plant communities but further studies are needed to examine longer term effects and to quantify effects on nutritional carrying capacity for deer.</p>

<p> To avoid unintended complications of invasive species eradication, it is important to understand the potential implications of the techniques used in species eradication efforts. This study aimed to compare how different methods of removing <i>Malephora crocea</i> affect the survivorship of planted seedlings of native perennial plants on Anacapa Island. Employing a randomized complete block design in an <i>M. crocea</i> stand, three removal treatments were tested: 1) hand-pull; 2) spray with herbicide and leave skeletons; and 3) spray and then remove skeletons after 2.5 months. In each treatment, seedlings of three species (<i>Leptosyne gigantea, Frankenia salina</i>, and <i>Grindelia stricta</i>) and seeds of two species (<i>L. gigantea</i> and <i>G. stricta</i>) were planted. Survivorship and seed establishment were monitored quarterly between March 2010 and January 2011. For transplanted seedlings, the spray-and-leave treatment resulted in higher survivorship, while no difference was observed between the pull-treatments. Seed establishment was very low overall, but results of seeding of <i>G. stricta</i> showed that the spray-and-pull treatment provided for higher establishment than other treatments. <i> L. gigantea</i> seed establishment was inconclusive. The spray-and-leave treatment also provided the highest relative soil moisture. My results suggest that the spray-and-leave treatment provided the most suitable conditions for survival of transplanted native perennial vegetation.</p>

<p> The road network in the U.S. is immense, and vehicle use has expanded to incredible proportions since the early 1900s. While the use of this network has proven useful to people, roads and vehicles cause severe environmental degradation. An important part of this degradation is direct mortality of wildlife due to road-kill, with some estimates of vertebrate fatalities reaching the hundreds of millions each year in the U.S. alone. Until the last few decades, little attention was given to the problem of road-kill. A few recent studies have conducted statistical and GIS analyses to identify and predict locations of road-kill in order to strategically implement mitigation strategies. These road-kill studies focused on few species and/or limited study areas. </p><p> In the U.S., suburban areas have been expanding in recent years, but have been largely absent from the research on road-kill. This study investigates road-kill of the small vertebrate community on the fringe of the St. Louis metropolitan area and identifies significant land use/land cover attributes surrounding road-kill and hotspot locations using logistic regression models and hotspot analyses. The findings clearly show that rates of road-kill in this area are substantial and worthy of mitigation. Locations were identified for reducing overall rates of road-kill, such as areas nearer to forest fragments and farther from cultivated lands that are surrounded by greater amounts of open and low intensity developed areas and lesser amounts of cultivated lands. If mitigation were targeted in locations identified in this study, it could lead to reductions of thousands of road-kills each year.</p>

<p> The objectives of this study were to measure injuries and impairments directly observed from gags <i>Mycteroperca microlepis</i> caught and released within a large-scale recreational fishery, develop methods that may be used to rapidly assess the condition of reef fish discards, and estimate the total portion of discards in the fishery that suffer latent mortality. Fishery observers were placed on for-hire charter and headboat vessels operating in the Gulf of Mexico from June 2009 through December 2012 to directly observe reef fishes as they were caught by recreational anglers fishing with hook-and-line gear. Fish that were not retained by anglers were inspected and marked with conventional tags prior to release. Fish were released in multiple regions over a large geographic area throughout the year and over multiple years. The majority of recaptured fish were reported by recreational and commercial fishers, and fishing effort fluctuated both spatially and temporally over the course of this study in response to changes in recreational harvest restrictions and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Therefore, it could not be assumed that encounter probabilities were equal for all individual tagged fish in the population. Fish size and capture depth when fish were initially caught-and-released also varied among individuals in the study and potentially influenced recapture reporting probabilities. The Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to control for potential covariates on both the occurrence and timing of recapture reporting events so that relative survival among fish released in various conditions could be compared. A total of 3,954 gags were observed in this study, and the majority (77.26%) were released in good condition (condition category 1), defined as fish that immediately submerged without assistance from venting and had not suffered internal injuries from embedded hooks or visible damage to the gills. However, compared to gags caught in shallower depths, a greater proportion of gags caught and released from depths deeper than 30 meters were in fair or poor condition. Relative survival was significantly reduced (alpha <u>&lt;</u>0.05) for gags released in fair and poor condition after controlling for variable mark-recapture reporting rates for different sized discards among regions and across months and years when individual fish were initially captured, tagged and released. Gags released within the recreational fishery in fair and poor condition were 66.4% (95% C.I. 46.9 to 94.0%) and 50.6% (26.2 to 97.8%) as likely to be recaptured, respectively, as gags released in good condition. Overall discard mortality was calculated for gags released in all condition categories at ten meter depth intervals. There was a significant linear increase in estimated mortality from less than 15% (range of uncertainty, 0.1-25.2%) in shallow depths up to 30 meters, to 35.6% (5.6-55.7%) at depths greater than 70 meters (p &lt; 0.001, R² = 0.917). This analysis demonstrated the utility of the proportional hazards regression model for controlling for potential covariates on both the occurrence and timing of recapture events in a large-scale mark-recapture study and for detecting significant differences in the relative survival of fish released in various conditions measured under highly variable conditions within a large-scale fishery.</p>

<p> This thesis estimates the impacts of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) capacity on electricity generation and CO2 emissions in America's Pacific Northwest. The region's demand for electricity is increasing at the same time that it is attempting to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The electricity generated by rooftop PV capacity is expected to displace electricity from fossil fueled electricity generators and reduce CO2 emissions, but when and how much? And how can this region maximize and focus the impacts of additional rooftop PV capacity on CO2 emissions? To answer these questions, an hourly urban rooftop PV generation profile for 2009 was created from estimates of regional rooftop PV capacity and solar resource data. That profile was compared with the region's hourly fossil fuel generation profile for 2009 to determine how much urban rooftop PV generation reduced annual fossil fuel electricity generation and CO2 emissions. Those reductions were then projected for a range of additional multiples of rooftop PV capacity. The conclusions indicate that additional rooftop PV capacity in the region primarily displaces electricity from natural gas generators, and shows that the timing of rooftop PV generation corresponds with the use of fossil fuel generators. Each additional Wp/ capita of rooftop PV capacity reduces CO2 emissions by 9,600 to 7,300 tons/ year. The final discussion proposes some methods to maximize and focus rooftop PV impacts on CO2 emissions, and also suggests some questions for further research.</p>

No description available.

<p> Semi-arid forests are in a period of rapid transition as a result of unprecedented landscape scale fires, insect outbreaks, drought, and anthropogenic land use practices. Understanding how historically episodic disturbances led to coherent forest structural and spatial patterns that promoted resilience and resistance is a critical part of addressing change. Here my coauthors and I apply metabolic scaling theory (MST) to examine scaling behavior and structural patterns of semi-arid conifer forests in Arizona and New Mexico. We conceptualize a linkage to mechanistic drivers of forest assembly that incorporates the effects of low-intensity disturbance, and physiologic and resource limitations as an extension of MST. We use both aerial LiDAR data and field observations to quantify changes in forest structure from the sub-meter to landscape scales. We found: (1) semi-arid forest structure exhibits MST-predicted behaviors regardless of disturbance and that MST can help to quantitatively measure the level of disturbance intensity in a forest, (2) the application of a power law to a forest overstory frequency distribution can help predict understory presence/absence, (3) local indicators of spatial association can help to define first order effects (e.g. topographic changes) and map where recent disturbances (e.g. logging and fire) have altered forest structure. Lastly, we produced a comprehensive set of above-ground biomass and carbon models for five distinct forest types and ten common species of the southwestern US that are meant for use in aerial LiDAR forest inventory projects. This dissertation presents both a conceptual framework and applications for investigating local scales (stands of trees) up to entire ecosystems for diagnosis of current carbon balances, levels of departure from historical norms, and ecological stability. These tools and models will become more important as we prepare our ecosystems for a future characterized by increased climatic variability with an associated increase in frequency and severity of ecological disturbances. </p>

<p> Despite an increasing interest among land managers in collaborative management and learning from place-based Indigenous knowledge systems, natural resource management negotiations between Indigenous communities and government agencies are still characterized by distrust, conflict, and a history of excluding Indigenous peoples from decision-making. In addition, many scholars are skeptical of Indigenous communities attempting to achieve self-determination through bureaucratic and scientific systems, which can be seen as potential mechanisms for co-opting Indigenous community values (e.g. Nadasdy 2003). </p><p> This dissertation considers how Indigenous communities and state agencies are meeting contemporary natural resource governance challenges within the Pacific Northwest. Taking a community-engaged scholarship approach, the work addresses two exemplar case studies of Indigenous resource management negotiations involving forest management with the Karuk Tribe in California (U.S.) and the X&aacute;xli'p Indigenous community in British Columbia (Canada). These cases explore the ways and degree to which Indigenous peoples are advancing their self-determination interests, as well as environmental and cultural restoration goals, through resource management negotiations with state agencies&mdash;despite the ongoing barriers of uneven power relations and territorial disputes. </p><p> Through the 1990s and 2000s, both the X&aacute;xli'p and Karuk communities engaged with specific government policies to shift status quo natural resource management practices affecting them. Their respective strategies included leveraging community-driven management plans to pursue eco-cultural restoration on their traditional territories, which both overlap with federal forestlands. In the X&aacute;xli'p case, community members successfully negotiated the creation of the X&aacute;xli'p Community Forest, which has provided the X&aacute;xli'p community with the exclusive right to forest management within the majority of its traditional territory. This <i>de jure</i> change in forest tenure facilitated a significant transfer of land management authority to the community, and long-term forest restoration outcomes. In the Karuk case, tribal land managers leveraged the Ti Bar Demonstration Project, a <i>de facto</i> co-management initiative between the Forest Service and the Karuk Tribe, to conduct several Karuk eco-cultural restoration projects within federal forestlands. Because the Ti Bar Demonstration Project was ultimately abandoned, the main project outcome was building the legitimacy of Karuk land management institutions and creating a wide range of alliances that support Karuk land management approaches. </p><p> Through my case studies, I examined how Indigenous resource management negotiations affect knowledge sharing, distribution of decision-making authority, and longstanding political struggles over land and resource access. I first asked, how is Indigenous knowledge shaping natural resource management policy and practice? My analysis shows that both communities are strategically linking disparate sets of ideas, including Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western scientific knowledge, in order to shape specific natural resource governance outcomes. My second question was, how does access to land and resources shift through Indigenous resource management agreements? This work demonstrates that both communities are shifting access to land and resources by identifying "pivot points": existing government policies that provide a starting point for Indigenous communities to negotiate self-determination through both resisting and engaging with government standards. And third, I considered how do co-management approaches affect Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination? The different case outcomes indicate that the ability to uphold Indigenous resource management agreements is contingent upon establishing long-term institutional commitments by government agencies, and the broader political context. </p><p> This work emphasizes the importance of viewing the world from the standpoint of individuals who are typically excluded from decision-making (Harding 1995, 1998). Pursuing natural resource management with Indigenous peoples is one way for state agencies to gain innovative perspectives that often extend beyond standard resource management approaches, and consider longstanding relationships between people and the environment in a place-based context. Yet the assumption that tribal managers would export Indigenous knowledge to agency "professionals" or other external groups, supposedly acting on behalf of Indigenous peoples, reflects a problematic lack of awareness about Indigenous perspectives on sovereignty and self-determination--central goals for Indigenous communities that choose to engage in natural resource management negotiations. </p><p> Several implications emerge from these findings. First, Indigenous community representatives need to be involved in every step of natural resource management processes affecting Indigenous territories and federal forestlands, especially given the complex, multi-jurisdictional arrangements that govern these areas. Second, there is a strong need to generate funding that enables Indigenous communities to self-determine their own goals and negotiate over land management issues on a more level playing field. Finally, more funding must be invested in government programs that support Indigenous resource management.</p>

<p> Pinyon-juniper (<i>Pinus monophylla &ndash; Juniperus osteosperma</i>) woodlands have expanded and infilled over the last 150 years to cover more than 40 million ha in the Great Basin. Many land managers seek to remove Pinyon-juniper trees using a variety of treatments. This thesis looks at six different Pinyon-juniper removal projects in Central and Eastern Nevada. We established a total of 73 vegetation and soil monitoring plots (38 treated, 35 adjacent untreated) across six Pinyon-juniper removal projects in Central and Eastern Nevada to look at the effects of fire, hand thinning, and chaining. The four burns examined together in Chapter 1 had similar elevation, precipitation, and pre-treatment vegetation communities in the untreated areas, but the treated areas had significantly different responses to treatment. With nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS), we found a useful 3-axis ordination of the plots (stress=7.1, R²=.966). Within ordination space, the treated plots were well grouped by parent material. These results informed a Poisson generalized linear model that found parent material factorized explained 86.5% of the deviance in cheatgrass (<i>Bromus tectorum</i>) cover at the treated plots. The projects on soils derived from welded tuff had very little cheatgrass while soils derived from limestone or mixed limestone/volcanics were dominated by cheatgrass. Parent material should be considered an important factor when planning Pinyon-juniper removal treatments. Chapter 2 examined the effects of a hand thinning. The hand thinning significantly reduced tree cover [F(1,10) = 7.43, p = 0.027] to less than 2%. Perennial grasses on the site are slightly higher in the treated area. There was a significant increase in perennial grass cover from 2013 to 2014 [F(1,10) = 14.5, p = 0.003]. The hand thinning did not have significant effects on shrubs, annual grasses, annual forbs, perennial forbs, ground cover, stability, species richness, diversity, infiltration, or gap structure. Because hand thinning does not remove the shrubs or other perennials, site resistance can be maintained. With sufficient understory vegetation to maintain resistance post treatment (as in phase I or early phase II Pinyon-juniper woodlands), nonnative annual grasses are less likely to dominate after treatment. Chapter 3 examined the effects of a chaining. The effects of the 40-year old chaining are still significant even though Pinyon-juniper trees are reinvading and make up >5% of the cover in the treated area. The treated areas still have a much more productive understory than adjacent untreated areas. Perennial grass cover, frequency, and density was 2-5 times greater in the chained area. The treated area had fewer large gaps (>100 cm). However, interspace infiltration times were slower in the treatment (t(4)=-2.14, p=0.09). Surface and subsurface soil aggregate stability remained significantly lower in the treatment for vegetation-protected and unprotected samples (t(4)=3.53, p=0.024; t(4)=3.10, p=0.036). Chainings have long-term benefits for vegetation, but also long term impacts on soils and hydrologic ecosystem processes. When planning Pinyon-juniper removal treatments, land managers should consider the plant community, temperature and precipitation regime, and soils at the potential treatment location to better achieve desired outcomes.</p>