Despite considerable research on the British North American colonies and their political relationship with Britain before 1776, little is known about the administration of Nova Scotia from the perspective of Lord Halifax’s Board of Trade in London. The image that emerges from the literature is that Nova Scotia was of marginal importance to British officials, who neglected its administration. This study reintegrates Nova Scotia into the British Imperial historiography through the study of the “official mind,” to challenge this theory of neglect on three fronts: 1) civil government in Nova Scotia became an important issue during the War of the Austrian Succession; 2) The form of civil government created there after 1749 was an experiment in centralized colonial administration; 3) This experimental model of government was highly effective. This study adds nuance to our understanding of British attempts to centralize control over their overseas colonies before the American Revolution.

<p>As discussed in the factor-price equalization theorem, prices, and thus wages, tend to equalize as a result of trade between two countries. The focus of this thesis is to perform a time series regression in order to evaluate whether wage convergence has taken place between Mexico and the United Sates of America due to the establishment of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. The authors of this thesis conclude that wage convergence did take place between the two countries in question, since the slopes found using the regression are mostly positive, indicating an increasing real wage ratio between Mexico and the United States of America.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Instructional Systems, Leadership, and Workforce Development. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This dissertation aims to identify the main changes in monsoon activity observed over the American monsoon and Amazonian regions during the last decades and the possible links between such changes. To address this, several observational and reanalysis datasets were used. The results suggest the occurrence of two regime types of the North American monsoon during 1948-2009: two dry regimes during 1948-1959 and 1990-2009 and one wet regime during 1960-1989. The occurrence of such regimes is modulated by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. However, the two dry regimes have different causes. In particular, the more recent dry regime is mainly due to both an anomalous westward expansion of the North Atlantic Subtropical High and a northward displacement of the subtropical jet stream over the United States. The former enhances the low-level flow from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Plains and weakens moisture transport to Mexico and the southwestern US. In addition to such a weakening of the North American monsoon during the last two decades, this research shows that the American monsoon systems have shortened after 1978 due to a trend toward earlier retreats of the North American monsoon and delayed onsets of the southern Amazon wet season. These changes produce a longer transition season between both monsoon systems. Whether these changes are caused by a common factor or they are the consequence of independent and unrelated causes was not clear previously. The results discussed here indicate that the observed changes in the American monsoons are partially a consequence of the westward expansion of the North Atlantic surface high observed since 1978. Such a westward expansion enhances the activity of easterly waves over the southern Caribbean Sea and northern South America, producing a dominant easterly flow over the region, which in turn prevents the reversal of the cross-equatorial flow necessary to transport moisture to the southern Amazon and the South American monsoon domain and contributes to its delayed onset. This investigation provides evidence that the shortening and weakening of the American monsoons and the lengthening of the transition season between them are associated with the same large-scale forcing, which may be caused by anthropogenic influence. / text

Western science and Indigenous knowledge understand Southwest climate and the North American monsoon from different cultural perspectives. However, scant literature exists relating to climate and Indigenous communities in the Southwest. On the contrary, substantial climate research has occurred with Arctic Indigenous communities; however, a general aspiration among communities is Indigenous-led climate research and education. This requires more Native scientists and culturally responsive climate science curricula. Southwest Indigenous communities are primed to do this. This dissertation examines 1) the current scientific understanding of the North American monsoon, 2) the state of climate research in Indigenous communities, and 3) the development of culturally responsive climate science curricula. The first paper synthesizes the current scientific understanding of the monsoon and its interannual variability. Pacific Ocean-based teleconnections, such as ENSO-PDO combined indices do add skill in early-season monsoon forecasting. However, general circulation models continue to deal with computational-spatial resolution limitations challenging their application in future climate change projections of the monsoon. The second paper focuses on climate-related research in Indigenous communities in the Arctic and the Southwest to highlight lessons-learned. Climate researchers working with Native communities must exercise cultural considerations for Indigenous relationships with the climate and Indigenous protocols for acquiring and disseminating knowledge. Furthermore, increasing the number of Native students in science and Native scientists are ways to improve climate-related research in Indigenous communities. The third paper is a participatory action research approach to develop a culturally responsive climate science curriculum for Tohono O'odham high school and college students. This project worked with a community advisory board as well as Tohono O'odham Community College instructors and student interns. Pre-assessment surveys were given to community members learn of the most relevant weather and climate topics. The curriculum was developed incorporating local, culturally relevant topics. Climate workshops were offered in the communities using activities developed for the curriculum. Workshop evaluations were positive; however, they also addressed the need for more culturally relevant examples. The overlapping theme for these dissertation papers is cultural understanding for climate research and education in Indigenous communities toward a means for Indigenous-led climate research/education within their own communities.

Final Report, Efficient and Equitable Solution of Indian Reserved Rights, USGS Grant #14-08-0001-G1320, June 21, 1989. / The water rights claims of many Indian reservations in the West are now under adjudication. Frequently, the parties to these adjudications acknowledge that their interests may be better served through negotiated settlements, but they lack comprehensive means for determining mutually acceptable solutions to the conflicts. The research conducted under the title of "Efficient and Equitable Solution of Indian Reserved Rights" (Project #14-08-0001-G1320) sought to 1) develop a conceptual basis for determining Indian water rights; 2) develop an analytical procedure to provide the information needed to resolve water rights conflicts; and 3) apply this analytical procedure to a test case involving the Gila River Basin in Arizona. The methodological core of the research is a set of linked models, encompassing historical, hydrologic, economic, psychological, and institutional elements of the conflict. Hydrologic, institutional, and economic analyses of conjunctive management of surface and groundwater supplies were facilitated by the use of MODSIM, a network optimization model. Data from the model enabled the investigators to construct an impact matrix, defining the effect of each possible settlement option on the goals of the parties. The preferences of the parties were elicited through social judgement analysis. Twelve settlement options were defined on the basis of knowledge of other negotiated settlements, and a final option, representing possible outcomes should the negotiation process fail, was included in the analysis. The next step was to model the possible choices available the contending parties, utilizing an n-person cooperative game framework. This analysis indicated that a set of three settlement options dominated the adjudication option for all players. Each of these included the provision of imported water in lieu of water currently being used in the basin. It is anticipated that the results of this research will be developed as a book-length manuscript by the principal investigators and the research team.

No description available.

In the southwestern United States, the North American monsoon (NAM) is the main driver of severe weather and accounts for nearly half the annual precipitation. How the monsoon has behaved in the past and how it will change in the future is a question of major importance for natural resource management and infrastructural planning. In this dissertation, I present the results of three studies that have investigated North American monsoon variability and change from the perspective of paleoclimate records, future climate change projections, and simulation of the low-frequency variability with the longest retrospective atmospheric reanalysis. In the first study, a monsoon-sensitive network of tree-ring chronologies is evaluated within its ability to reproduce NAM variability during the past four centuries. Matrix methods are used to detect the low-frequency spatiotemporal variability. The treering chronologies can reasonable characterizes the dominant modes of NAM climate variability. The monsoon tree-ring network is able to reproduce the interannual variability of cool and warm season precipitation, in a manner similar to the period of the instrumental record. Earlywood and latewood adjusted chronologies reveal low frequency climate variability at decadal and longer timescales that is beyond the ability of the instrumental record to temporally well resolve. This low-frequency climate variability seems to be part of a much larger cycle that coincides with the occurrence of multiyear persistent droughts. In the second study, we consider the modes of natural climate variability identified in the previous study to objectively assess the degree of physical uncertainty in climate change projections for NAM from Regional Climate Models (RCMs) used in the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). Climate change projection models are evaluated mainly on their ability to represent warm season driven by quasi-stationary Rossby wave trains and El Niño Southern Oscillation – Pacific Decadal Variability (ENSO-PDV). It is concluded that use of the NARCCAP model ensemble mean for NAM climate projections is probably not suitable. NARCCAP RCMs are largely a slave to their driving global models and their error in the specification of large-scale atmospheric circulation. Only one out of eight NARCCAP RCMs has a reasonable representation of the seasonal cycle of monsoon precipitation and ENSOdriven interannual variability in both the 20th and 21st centuries. No decadal variability was observed in any of the NARCCAP RCMs. In the third study, the low-frequency drought signal found with tree-ring chronologies is further explored within the framework of a regional climate modeling. Version 2 of the Twentieth-Century Reanalysis (DD-20CR) is dynamically downscaled over a contiguous U.S.-Mexico domain. Statistic analysis of the DD-20CR suggests that the low-frequency drought signal in the Southwest is driven by atmospheric circulation changes on global to continental scales that affect precipitation in Central American as well. DD-20CR reproduces the spatial patterns of precipitation associated with climate variability at decadal and longer timescales in a manner that compares well with observational records and tree-ring chronologies. Low-frequency climate variability is therefore likely responsible for the multiyear persistent droughts in the last four centuries, as independently evaluated from the tree-ring monsoon-sensitive network.

The aim of the research undertaken in this dissertation was to use medium-range to seasonal precipitation forecasts for hydrologic applications for catchments in the core North American Monsoon (NAM) region. To this end, it was necessary to develop a better understanding of the physical and statistical relationships between runoff processes and the temporal statistics of rainfall. To achieve this goal, development of statistically downscaled estimates of warm season precipitation over the core region of the North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) were developed. Currently, NAM precipitation is poorly predicted on local and regional scales by Global Circulation Models (GCMs). The downscaling technique used here, the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) model, combines information from retrospective GCM forecasts with simultaneous historical observations to infer statistical relationships between the low-resolution GCM fields and the locally-observed precipitation records. The stochastic nature of monsoon rainfall presents significant challenges for downscaling efforts and, therefore, necessitate a regionalization and an ensemble or probabilistic-based approach to quantitative precipitation forecasting. It was found that regionalization of the precipitation climatology prior to downscaling using KNN offered significant advantages in terms of improved skill scores.Selected output variables from retrospective ensemble runs of the National Centers for Environmental Predictions medium-range forecast (MRF) model were fed into the KNN downscaling model. The quality of the downscaled precipitation forecasts was evaluated in terms of a standard suite of ensemble verification metrics. This study represents the first time the KNN model has been successfully applied within a warm season convective climate regime and shown to produce skillful and reliable ensemble forecasts of daily precipitation out to a lead time of four to six days, depending on the forecast month.Knowledge of the behavior of the regional hydrologic systems in NAM was transferred into a modeling framework aimed at improving intra-seasonal hydrologic predictions. To this end, a robust lumped-parameter computational model of intermediate conceptual complexity was calibrated and applied to generate streamflow in three unregulated test basins in the core region of the NAM. The modeled response to different time-accumulated KNN-generated precipitation forcing was investigated. Although the model had some difficulty in accurately simulating hydrologic fluxes on the basis of Hortonian runoff principles only, the preliminary results achieved from this study are encouraging. The primary and most novel finding from this study is an improved predictability of the NAM system using state-of-the-art ensemble forecasting systems. Additionally, this research significantly enhanced the utility of the MRF ensemble forecasts and made them reliable for regional hydrologic applications. Finally, monthly streamflow simulations (from an ensemble-based approach) have been demonstrated. Estimated ensemble forecasts provide quantitative estimates of uncertainty associated with our model forecasts.