"Acoustic Ecology and Sound Mapping the University of Central Florida Main Campus" explores the intersection of place and space, sound studies and acoustic ecology, visualization, and archives. The end result consists of a collection of "soundwalk" and stationary recordings conducted from 2016-2019 at the University of Central Florida (UCF) main campus in Orlando presented as an online Sound Map. This archive previously did not exist and provides a snapshot of the various sounds heard throughout the campus as well as a starting point and context for future research into this still-emerging field of acoustic ecology and sound studies. While the individual recordings help to provide a sense of place at the university, they also represent a benchmark from a public history standpoint to interpret sonic change over time.

Eutrophication, stimulated by phosphorous (P) runoff from landscapes, compromises water quality and can have long-term impacts on the aesthetics, recreation, property values, and drinkability of bodies of water around the world. In the State of Vermont, efforts are underway to control the amount of P entering Lake Champlain per standards set forth in the Federal Clean Water Act. Agriculture has been identified as a major contributor to excess P in the waterways and will be managed according to Act 64, the Vermont Water Quality Act. The studies presented in this paper will introduce two independent methodologies proposed to aid in evaluating the farmer's willingness to implement pro-environmental practices, (1) determining farmer values towards implementation of best management practices to inform policy, and (2) creating a multifunctional sustainability prioritization scheme for dissemination of Clean Water Fund resources. The Vermont Water Quality Act proposes Required Agricultural Practices (RAP) for agriculture in the State with a limited understanding of what the farming community desires from such a policy. This paper's first article titled, "Determining Farmer Values for Implementing Pro-Environmental Practices," analyzes twenty-four farmers and their associated values towards adopting pro-environmental practices for improved water quality. A hierarchical cluster analysis was used to segment farmers according to their adoption of best management practices on their farms. Further, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted using dependent functional (quality), functional (price), and emotional, social, conditional, and epistemic variables to understand the variance between the segments. The results from this analysis illuminate farmer values. This information can be used to inform water quality policy, ecosystem service payments, communication strategy, and funding dissemination. The Clean Water Fund was created to support the implementation of water quality initiatives in various sectors throughout the State of Vermont. The resources within the fund are limited; therefore careful prioritization of farms for outreach is essential. In the article titled, "Prioritizing Farms for Subsidies: A Multifunctional Approach," a prioritization methodology is presented using theory from the sustainable multifunctional agriculture literature. The sample includes vegetable, vegetable and meat, meat, and maple producers within the State. The diverse production types included in this study reflects the non-discriminatory—relating to production types—policies in Act 64. The study is limited by the exclusion of the dairy sector. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software was used to map environmental practices on twelve farm landscapes to generate a spatial representation of environmental stewardship that was then translated into an environmental score. This environmental score was combined with social and economic data to prioritize farms based upon their multifunctional sustainability. This ranking methodology may be useful for the State of Vermont in determining the prioritization of Clean Water Fund resources using farm sustainability measurements.

As the number of people living in forested areas continues to grow, so does the likelihood that an individual will suffer from a wildland fire. There has been little research produced strictly looking at the human dimensions of wildland fire, especially in southern rural communities (Machlis, Kaplan, Tuler, Bagby, and McKendry 2002). Using two of Kumagai, Carrol, and Cohan's (2004) propositions on the social impact of disaster and the theoretical framework of Emile Durkheim's (1933) view of community and collective consciousness, the primary purpose of this research was to aid in understanding the effects of wildland fire on the social and economic well-being of a community. This research examined a specific location in Kentucky, Bell County. Bell County has suffered many wildland fires, especially with wildland-fire arson. In June of 2006 questionnaires exploring residents' perception of wildland fire on the social and economic well-being of the local community were sent to a random sample of area residents. Two aspects of community and wildland fire were examined, the impact of wildland fire on community and blame for damage caused by inadequate efforts to control wildland fires. Partial correlations were used to measure the relationship between variables. The findings suggest that there is no consistent positive or negative impact of wildland fire on all individuals in a community. No consistent relationship exists between wildland fires' impacts and aspects of community in a negative way. Respondents themselves were less likely to report gain or loss and more likely to report that others had gained or lost in income. The longer respondents have lived in Bell County, the more likely they will discuss wildland fire. Respondents did not blame any local, state, or federal agency for wildland fire. In fact, the more one is tied to community (in terms of quality of life, trust in government, and strong neighbor relations), the more supportive one is of local government. The implications of this study could include policy changes with regards to wildland fire, information gathered would help aid in the understanding of the effects of wildland fire within a rural community. Due to the small sample (n = 140) and weak response rate (18.8%), the information gathered may only be generlizable to Bell County or the respondents themselves. Future research would be suggested, research at a qualitative level, through participant observation and in-depth interviews of residents of Bell County, Kentucky.

Privately owned lands often undersupply environmental benefits and oversupply environmental costs through land use and management decisions. Insights into human behavior suggest a range of cognitive biases and nonstandard preferences that offer alternative explanations for and, perhaps, strategies to influence landowner behavior. People respond to simple changes in context and framing, make inconsistent choices over time, and respond to social influence—the opinions and behavior of peers. This dissertation applies insights from behavioral science to strategies that seek to influence individual decisions that impact the environment, especially related to land management. First, I review existing experimental research on behavioral insights to influence decisions in six domains that have large environmental externalities. Behavioral interventions, including changing the status quo and leveraging social influence, are often more effective than simply providing information, but there are few applications to land management. Chapter Two maps behavioral insights onto farmers’ plot-level conservation decisions that benefit biodiversity. Using a case study from California, USA, I find farmers who receive information from their peers are three times more likely to adopt practices that support biodiversity than those who do not. Chapter Three tests the causal effect of social influence on engaging Vermont forest owners in bird habitat conservation. Contrary to results from similar studies in other domains, information about peer participation reduced interest in the conservation program. Chapter Four presents results from another large-scale field experiment that tested the effect of message framing on contributions to water quality in a polluted urban watershed. Participants who read an emotional, personal narrative with tenuous connections to nutrient pollution were willing to pay more for nutrient runoff-reducing landscaping products than those who read a scientific description of nutrient pollution's impacts on ecosystems and surrounding communities. The findings from these four studies contribute to our understanding of environmentally relevant behavior, with implications for privately managed land and the environmental benefits it provides.

This study of the Quonset Auditorium, one roadhouse among many on the regular tour route of R&B, gospel and country musicians in the post-World War II era (1947- 1959), illustrates the important role of roadhouses during a time of growth and change in popular music. It situates memories and experiences from the Quonset Auditorium in relation to regional and national movements of the day such as highway development, commercial and popular music, and the civil rights movement. With hindsight, we can see that the Quonset Auditorium stood at a crossroads as regards these social and technological movements of the post-WW II era and the metaphor of crossroads has been applied throughout this study. Roadhouses have received little detailed attention in literature about commercial music, and this study has meant to provide details from the Quonset Auditorium in order to flesh out the generalizations often made about roadhouses, and touring. This study has drawn primarily on oral accounts collected from a variety of individuals: musicians who performed there, past audience members and people with second hand memories of the Quonset. It also utilizes historical documents relating to the Quonset Auditorium in university yearbooks, newspapers and ledgers from show poster companies.

The subject of this case study is the Vermont Agricultural Resilience in a Changing Climate initiative, a transdisciplinary research team at UVM that has maintained success in meeting research and outreach objectives despite collaborating in a way that does not follow any particular ideal-type transdisciplinary process. In following recent science and technology (STS) studies' accounts of cross-disciplinary collaboration, the hypothesis pursued is that the transdisciplinary study of messy or "wicked" problems like climate change brings forth an array of responses from researchers whose disciplinary backgrounds already position them to pursue their research differently, particularly when they involve outside stakeholders in a participatory action research agenda. When not addressed explicitly through the transdisciplinary research framework, these differences are likely to result in more subterranean or affective responses, such as ambivalence and equivocation, which may permeate the collaborative group process. Through a qualitative ethnographic approach, I show that transdisciplinary work is complex and situational, due to the topic itself in agricultural resilience and climate change, the affective nature of the collaborative process, the differences in disciplinary perspectives, the researchers' subjectivities, and the influence of outside actors in the initiative. I argue that transdisciplinary work must necessarily be challenging given the variety of heterogeneous forces at play, and that deeper attention to the situation elucidates underlying dynamics that are not addressed in the normal research process. This research contributes insights into the literature on transdisciplinary research on messy problems.

Local communities have the right to participate in decision-making about environmental resources near where they live. Local governments have tried to gather feedback from communities to help improve the decisions they make, but have not always done a good job getting feedback from minority or urban communities. This dissertation provides one step toward obtaining this kind of public input in a majority minority community surrounding the Jordan River in Salt Lake City. Children and adults participated in this research. I present findings from two surveys, from work with children, and from adult interviews to understand how this community relates to their local river, what they like and do not like about it, and what they would like to see improved. This research revealed that communities have both positive and negative views of the river, but overall see it as an important community resource that is highly valued. Communities would like to participate more in river decision-making and have suggestions for how they would like to see that happen. The results in this dissertation can help bridge the gap between local city government officials and this minority community to help improve the river environmental quality and connections to the community.

In this study I examine the relationship between environmental attitudes and gender. First, I explore variations across previous studies to determine patterns regarding gender differences in levels of environmental concern. Second, I look at the mediating effects of gender and several socio-demographic characteristics (age, race, class, education, political orientation, residence, martial status, number of children, religious identification, and scientific knowledge) on a variety of measures of environmental concern to assess the extent to which gender operates through other variables as it predicts levels of environmental concern. Third, I look at the moderating effects of gender on the same list of socio-demographic characteristics to determine the extent to which gender intersects with other variables to shape environmental attitudes. I conduct a systematic review of literature using 22 peer reviewed journal articles, which include 128 measures of environmental concern, published between 1995 and 2010. I also test for mediating and moderating effects of gender and various socio-demographic characteristics on 14 measures of environmental concern using data from two sources: the General Social Survey Environment II: 2000 questionnaire and the American National Election Study 2008 Times Series Pre-election Survey. To test for mediating and moderating effects I employee several methodological techniques including principal component analysis, model building, linear regression techniques, and non-parametric regression methods. The results of this study show that, in general, women do express a greater concern for the environment than men. However, gender in conjunction with other socio-demographic characteristics has the potential to produce different effects than when gender is considered alone. This study supports the idea that the intersectionality of gender and other socio-demographic characteristics is of great importance and should not be ignored.

To expand the research base concerning terrorism this study connects terrorist incidents on a global scale with economic and noneconomic institutional factors. Whereas most terrorism studies use social disorganization theory or anomie theory as their theoretical bases, this study uses institutional anomie theory (IAT) to examine the influence of economic and noneconomic institutions on terrorist-incident counts in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The research employs the following five sources that are linked together: The Global Terrorism Database (GTD), World Bank Database, data from the University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP), the United Nations (UN), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression models examine the influence of inequality on counts of terrorist incidents for the decades of 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s net of controls. OLS models also examine the extent to which the influence of inequality on terrorist-incident counts is mediated by the strength of the noneconomic institutional structures of health care and the family. Results from ordinary least squares regression analyses show that for the time period of 1970 to 1979 there was a nonsignificant, negative association between inequality and terrorist-incident counts and neither health care nor number of divorces was a mediating factor. For the time period 1980 to 1989 a significant, positive association existed between inequality and terrorist incident counts, supporting the hypothesis that countries with higher levels of inequality will have higher counts of terrorist-incident counts. However, in the 1980s neither health care nor family mediated the effects of inequality on terrorist-incident counts. For the time period 1990 to 1997 a statistically significant, positive association was found between inequality and terrorist-incident counts as well as successful mediation by health care on the effects of inequality on terrorist-incident counts, which supports the hypothesis that the influence of inequality on terrorist-incident counts will be mediated by noneconomic institutional structures. Implications of these findings are discussed.

ABSTRACT Human transportation patterns have continued to shift and increase in rate as technology has made travel between spatially disparate locations more feasible. These movements are responsible for approximately one third of global carbon emissions, and account for one half of Vermont’s greenhouse gas output. Modeling transportation behaviors is difficult due to changing travel patterns and issues of surveying human participants. Long distance travel patterns are especially difficult and have not received the attention that urban mobility has within the literature. In this Masters thesis, I describe current methods of transportation data collection and propose new methods, as well as attempt to quantify the impact on Vermont’s roadways of the transportation-based tourism sector. In the first chapter of this thesis, I describe a GPS-based travel survey conducted over the course of one year, coupled with interview data of long distance trips undertaken by 10 participants. Long distance travel has historically been underrepresented in travel surveying due to its infrequency, resulting in decreased likelihood of capturing a long distance trip in a short travel study. By extracting points at intervals from the GPS dataset, it becomes possible to determine accuracy of trip matching between the two datasets with adjusted data collection methods. The second chapter examines transportation related to tourism in Vermont. As one of Vermont’s largest industry sectors, economic impact has been of particular interest to state planners. However, limited analyses of the transportation impacts of this sector are currently available. My research models route choice of drive through tourists, whom constitute 40% of visitors, attempting to begin quantifying tourist mileage and CO2 emissions within the state. Together, these studies expand knowledge on long distance transport data collection and the role of tourism in Vermont’s transportation mileage.