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I investigated plant and animal community characteristics on 14 forest stands in north central Mississippi. Study sites included 9 pine plantations, 3 streamside management zones, and 2 hardwood cove forests. I estimated relationships between faunal metrics and habitat characteristics. I measured vegetation characteristics within quadrant and nested plot designs to estimate understory, midstory, and overstory species composition and structure. I inventoried breeding birds using point count surveys and sampled herpetofauna diversity using area-constrained searches within belt transects during 2008 and 2009. I detected 39 species of birds in 2008, 43 species of birds in 2009, 11 species of amphibians, and 9 species of reptiles. Hardwood cove sites supported more deep forest-dwelling bird and salamander species; whereas, pine stands supported more grassland bird species. Species richness and abundance of birds was related to snag DBH. Species richness and abundance of herpetofauna was related to number of understory plant species.

I evaluated effects of 5 treatments for pine plantation establishment on breeding and wintering birds and small mammals during years one through 5 post-treatment in the Lower Coastal Plain of Mississippi. I modeled relationships between 8 vegetation variables and avian abundance to identify influential habitat components in pine plantations. At the landscape scale, I compared avian abundance of regionally important species with land class variables in the Coastal Plain of Georgia. In pine plantations, species richness, total abundance, and 2 conservation bird metrics generally decreased with increasing intensity of stand establishment. Thus, this study suggests that increasing standmestablishment intensity can reduce avian habitat quality in Coastal Plain pine plantations. Presence of residual trees retained after timber harvest was the most influential variable related to avian abundance, and tree retention may reduce the negative impacts of intensive stand establishment on avian communities. There were minimal treatment effects on common small mammals of young pine plantations. For the Coastal Plain landscape, a mixture ofn area and edge variables were influential in avian models for 10 species, although area or edge each were important for 2 species. Hardwood forests were important vegetation types for all but one modeled species. Assessment of habitat conditions that affect avifauna and small mammals on managed timber production lands can assist natural resource managers with integration of timber production and conservation of biological diversity.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Hawaiian sugar industry rose from economic insignificance to become one of the world’s most efficient and productive sugarcane plantation systems. "Planter's Paradise" traces the transnational environmental history of cane planting in Hawaiʻi, from Polynesian settlement to the early twentieth century, to explore how an export-based mono-culture plantation system eclipsed diversified farming, how cultural encounters between indigenous and Euro-American groups influenced agriculture and natural resource use, and how the politics of planting contributed to the rise of American hegemony over the islands. With research grounded in plantation records, agricultural association publications, popular media, and personal correspondence, I address sugarcane planting as a point where ideas about nature, methods of converting nature into commodities for consumption in distant markets, and nature itself influenced each other within the context of U.S. imperial expansion. I argue that the ascendance of Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry was the result of cultural encounters, economic relations, and environmental conditions at the local level, but cane planting also connected the archipelago to particular transnational networks of economic, ecological, and cultural exchange. Sugarcane planting introduced to Hawaiʻi foreign ways of relating to the natural world, a host of alien organisms, and advances in agricultural science and technology that impacted all of Hawaiian society. These introductions contributed to planters' power. By the early twentieth century, Hawaiʻi had become a planter's paradise: a society and environment transformed for the industrial cultivation of sugarcane. / History

Climate change resulting from emissions of fossil fuel combustion has sparked considerable interest in renewable energy and fuel production research, particularly energy derived from cellulosic ethanol, which is derived from biomass such as wood and grass. Cellulosic ethanol demonstrates a more promising future as a global energy source than corn-derived ethanol because it does not displace food crops, irrigation is not required, and chemical application rates are much lower than for annual crops, such as corn. Growing cellulosic biomass for energy can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions via carbon (C) sequestration and by reducing demand for fossil fuel production. The objective of this study was to investigate how land use change affects soil properties and selected soil C and nitrogen (N) dynamics among alternative cellulosic biofuel treatments at the Weyerhaeuser Alabama Cellulosic Biofuel Research site in west-central Alabama. Composite soils for characterization, along with forest floor, were collected at year 1 and year 2 after treatment establishment at 0-15cm and 15-30cm depths at six locations along three hillslope-riparian transects in five experimental watershed treatments. Decomposition of loblolly pine needles was assessed in each watershed using an in situ litter bag method. Seasonal in situ net nitrogen mineralization was measured using a sequential core method, and an anaerobic incubation for N mineralization potential of composite soils was performed in the laboratory. Results revealed high variability of soil properties and processes within these watersheds, along with no consistent treatment effects. This study provides baseline data for these watershed treatments for future studies. / Master of Science

Over one million hectares of pocosins and wet flats in the southeastern coastal plain are intensively managed for the production of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations. These management activities may have adverse effects on soil physical properties, site hydrology, and overall site productivity. Substantial quantities of wood residues are often left on these sites by timber harvesting operations, and it was hypothesized that the incorporation of this slash into the soil could improve the soil physical properties and site hydrology. One organic pocosin site and one mineral wet flat site were chosen post-harvest for treatment. The wet flat study was organized as an incomplete block design having four blocks and six treatments: (i) conventional bedding, (ii) strip surface mulching with bedding, (iii) strip surface mulching with tillage and bedding, (iv) broadcast mulch without bedding, (v) broadcast mulch with bedding, and (vi) flat planted control. The pocosin study was organized as a randomized complete block design with four blocks and four treatments. The treatments are identical to those of the wet flat site without the broadcast mulch treatments (iv and v). Soil physical property data was analyzed pre- and post-treatment, while post-treatment site hydrology and soil water chemistry data was analyzed periodically for one year. Seedling survival and height data were analyzed after one growing season. The treatments had little effect on soil physical properties, site hydrology, soil water nutrients, or seedling survival on the wet flat study site. Bedding in general significantly increased tree height growth, but mulching had no significant effects. The treatments had little effect on soil physical properties on the pocosin study site except for soil macroporosity, which was significantly increased by bedding. Site hydrology and soil water nutrients were not significantly affected by the treatments, but seedling survival and height growth were significantly increased by bedding. Mulching had no significant effects on any of the parameters studied. / Master of Science

Site preparation is fundamental for establishing loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations, but long-term sustainability of plantations established using mechanical treatments is in question because of concerns regarding soil tillage and the removal of harvest residue and soil organic matter. A study was installed in 1981 on 12 locations in northeastern Georgia and west-central South Carolina to evaluate pine plantation response to mechanical site preparation. Site preparation treatments induced gradients of organic matter manipulation and soil tillage. The treatments included: Control, Chop/Burn, Shear/Disc, Shear/V-Blade, Shear/Rake, and Shear/Rake/Pile. Research was conducted to address the following objectives: (i) compare rotation-age forest response to several intensive site preparation treatments used to establish pine plantations in the Piedmont of the southeastern United States; (ii) correlate growth response with the gradients of soil organic matter removal, soil tillage, and hardwood control; (iii) determine the influence of intensive management on the amount of carbon contained in pine plantations. All site preparation treatments increased year-18 volume accumulation compared to the control treatment. Chop/Burn and Shear/Disc treatments, with pine volumes of 214 m3 ha-1 and 232 m3 ha-1, respectively, conserved harvest residue and out-performed the Shear/Rake treatment (191 m3 ha-1), which completely removed harvest residue. Treatments that included tillage provided growth benefits that lasted throughout the rotation even when tillage was accompanied by complete organic matter removal. Hardwood competition had the greatest influence on pine volume accumulation, explaining over 54% of the variation in pine growth at age 18. Treatments that included tillage most effectively controlled hardwood competition. At year 18, site preparation treatments significantly affected soil organic matter (SOM) content; however, soil nitrogen, foliar nitrogen, bulk density, and macroporosity were not affected by site preparation. All treatments were equally deficient in foliar nitrogen. The Shear/Disc and Shear/Rake/Disc treatments had a significantly positive relationship between foliar nitrogen and pine volume. These treatments had lower hardwood basal areas (below 15%), indicating that once hardwoods were controlled, nitrogen became limiting to pine growth. Using pre-harvest characterization data, carbon accumulation during old-field succession increased fourfold compared to agricultural sites on the nearby Calhoun Experimental Forest. Carbon accumulation on these old-field loblolly pine sites reached quasi-equilibrium after 40 years as shown by uncut reference stands. Site preparation significantly affected the amount of soil C in the upper 20 cm of the soil. Those site preparation treatments that removed harvest residue and accelerated SOM decomposition through tillage had the lowest soil carbon levels. The Shear/Rake/Disc treatment had 10% lower soil carbon content than the Control and Shear/V-Blade treatments. / Master of Science

This dissertation is an analysis of Elaine Mitchener’s structurally improvised work SWEET TOOTH, initially devised in 2017 and 2018 for an ensemble of four. I focus on the February 22, 2018 London premiere at St George’s Church in Bloomsbury, where Mitchener, an experimental vocalist and movement artist, performed the piece with Sylvia Hallett (accordion, violin and voice), Mark Sanders (percussion), and Jason Yarde (saxophones). I have previously examined this piece in a co-authored essay with Mitchener entitled, “‘Water long like the dead’: The interruption and flow of time in Elaine Mitchener’s SWEET TOOTH,” as part of the volume Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today, edited by Harald Kisiedu and George E. Lewis. This essay concentrated on how, with its improvisatory performance style, SWEET TOOTH’s structure, including harmonic and pitch content, emulates the simultaneous interruptions and flow of what Antonio Benítez-Rojo refers to as the “Plantation Machine”: the mechanics of transatlantic slavery that have continued to repeat and reveal themselves in renewed but connected ways as part of an expanded framework, where the Caribbean exists as what Benítez-Rojo describes as a “meta-archipelago,” a de-centered, multidimensional nexus without boundary that is also realized through SWEET TOOTH. In this thesis, I argue that the air is as vital to the Caribbean’s borderless flow as the sea, in that its vibrational qualities also repeat and oscillate through space and time. Specifically, I explore what Ashon T. Crawley describes as the “choreosonics” of SWEET TOOTH: how the combination of movement and sound together displace the air, making the work multi-sensory, and enabling travel between the interconnected histories, time zones, and dimensions that form the conditions of the Machine: the hold of a slave ship, the deep seas of the Atlantic Ocean, a Caribbean sugar plantation, spiritual realms and unknown worlds. Furthermore, I consider how “in-between,” or “blue” zones are formed, which facilitate these connected sites to simultaneously exist and be disrupted, as well as how aural triggers conjure these spaces in the present through memory, real and imagined. Finally, I analyze the means through which the Afro-Jamaican religion kumina is incorporated and practiced as part of SWEET TOOTH in the hope of transcending into an otherworldly realm: an act of defying the Machine. Ultimately, I demonstrate that whilst SWEET TOOTH replicates, and even belongs to the Plantation Machine complex, the work simultaneously finds ways to cut through and resist it: to frustrate its repetitions with the desire to completely disrupt it in perpetuity. shouting forever into the receiver (2022), a musical composition for large ensemble, attempts to recreate the repetitious condition of the Plantation Machine. This is achieved primarily through auxiliary instruments and their resulting effects on the work’s overall sound world and temporal state. A two-way walkie-talkie device introduces feedback and radio interference into the soundscape symbolizing the Machine’s persistent looping system, also simulating the cries of the plantations. Furthermore, a confluence of separate time zones is created through a chorale-like section of massed harmonicas and seven wind-up music boxes playing well known pre-programmed melodies by Beethoven, Mozart and Strauss composed during the establishment of the Plantation. Thus, not only is the past connected to the present through these aural memories, the ties between Europe and the plantations are purposefully emphasized. Eight players play two harmonicas simultaneously, breathing independently, each creating their own time zone with every repeat of the exhale-inhale action. The music boxes wind down at their own rate generating additional cyclical layers of time, thus emulating the eccentric situation of the Caribbean, which is without center or axis. A “blue” space is formed as a result, an expansive new site of connectivity where it is possible for transformation to occur or to, indeed, transcend out of the Machine.

By the late nineteenth century, private companies and state authorities had transformed the East Coast of Sumatra, an agricultural region in the northwestern side of the Netherlands Indies, into a primary site for producing and testing global cash crops. Central to this intermingling of world commerce and colonial pursuit was how extractive practices reconfigured local environments in which living beings operated. Underscoring architecture as key to the profound transformation, this dissertation traces the conversion of native land into industrial plantations and the creation of an extensive network of buildings sustaining commodity production. Each chapter explores a different type of space that speaks to the entanglement between spatial practices and resource extraction. Chapter One attends to the formation of plantation fields that was characterized by the persistent appearance of soils and fires as both objects of control and modes of resistance. Chapter Two deals with efforts to make tobacco leaves uniform, which hinged on experimenting with cultivation techniques and reformulating the design of processing facilities. Chapter Three highlights the role of agricultural experiment stations deployed by trade associations to eliminate plant diseases and increase crop production. Chapter Four focuses on migration offices that were distributed in more than a hundred locations to maintain the influx of labor from China, India, and Java to the plantation estates in the region. Analyzing primary sources—land concessions, planting maps, corporate photographs, technical drawings, and institutional reports, among other forms of documents—produced by plantation companies, trade associations, research institutions, and state agencies, this dissertation proposes that those spaces constituted a material practice that built commodities, thereby giving form to their appearances, amounts, categorizations, and other aspects that eventually contributed to their market values. Yet, amid the reordering of environments caused by the extractive process underlying commodity production, soils, fires, plants, microbes, and different groups of people also emerged across episodes as environmental actors, both informing and distorting those spaces.

La grande majorité des scientifiques s’accordent depuis deux décennies sur le fait que les actions anthropiques sont responsables d’une grande perte de biodiversité à l’échelle terrestre via l’élimination de gènes, d’espèces et de traits biologiques à un rythme alarmant. Ce fait les a conduits à se questionner sur les impacts de la perte de la biodiversité sur le fonctionnement des écosystèmes. Bien qu’aujourd’hui les connaissances sur le lien entre biodiversité et fonctionnement des écosystèmes (BEF) commencent à être bien documentées, nous en savons encore très peu sur les mécanismes sous-jacents à la relation entre BEF, et en particulier concernant les mécanismes appuyant les processus souterrains des écosystèmes forestiers. L’objectif de ce projet de doctorat était de développer les connaissances sur le lien entre la biodiversité des parties aériennes et le fonctionnement souterrain des écosystèmes artificiels (plantations d’arbres). Nous avons pour cela examiné l’implication de différents acteurs et paramètres du compartiment souterrain susceptibles d’intervenir dans le cycle du C - et de l’N - en lien avec la biodiversité (notamment via le recours à l’approche des traits fonctionnels). D’une part nous avons étudié la productivité des racines fines, leur chimie ainsi que le fonctionnement et la composition des communautés microbiennes du sol en lien avec des mesures de diversité (la richesse spécifique et la diversité fonctionnelle) dans une jeune plantation (4 ans). D’autre part, nous avons étudié la décomposition des racines fines en lien avec les communautés d’arbres et de végétation du sous-bois subséquentes à l’application de traitements dans une plantation plus âgée (27 ans). Dans tous les cas, nous avons étudié le lien entre ces différents paramètres et processus et les C et N du sol (totaux et dans les fractions). Les feuillus et les conifères diffèrent quant à la productivité des racines fines ainsi que par rapport à la métabolisation des sources de C. Les conifères étaient plus productifs que les feuillus (racines fines), et les feuillus métabolisaient un plus grand nombre de sources de C que les conifères. Par ailleurs, la richesse spécifique a influencé le fonctionnement des microbes mais pas leur composition ni la productivité des racines fines, tandis que l’identité des arbres (et de leurs traits fonctionnels) ont influencé tous ces paramètres et processus. La valeur moyenne des traits a plus influencé la productivité des racines fines, la respiration basale et la biomasse microbienne que la variance de ces traits. La diversité fonctionnelle (considérée en tant que gradient) n’a quant à elle pas eu d’effet sur aucun des paramètres et processus étudiés. Finalement, notre étude a révélé que la végétation du sous-bois (couvert de type fonctionnel et certaines espèces) plus que les arbres, les propriétés du sol ou la chimie des racines fines influençait la décomposition de ces dernières. De manière générale, cette thèse a permis de découvrir et de mettre en évidence des aspects jusqu’alors inconnus du lien entre BEF, notamment en ce qui concerne le lien entre la diversité des parties aériennes et le fonctionnement des parties souterraines. Nos résultats ont permis d’identifier avec précision les espèces d’arbres, de végétation du sous-bois ou encore les traits fonctionnels et les processus sur lesquels ils interviennent. Ceci pourrait permettre d’affiner les modèles de prédiction des cycles du C et de l’N ou encore de prodiguer des conseils avisés aux gestionnaires forestiers. / In the last two decades, the vast majority of scientists have agreed that anthropogenic actions are responsible for an important and rapid loss of biodiversity at a global scale, through the elimination of genes, species and biological traits. This fact led to remarkable progress towards understanding how the loss of biodiversity affects the functioning of ecosystems. Although the link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is now well documented, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are still poorly understood, especially with regards to belowground processes in treed ecosystems. The objective of this Ph.D. project was to improve our understanding of the link between aboveground biodiversity and belowground functioning in two artificial ecosystems (tree plantations). For this purpose, we examined the implication of different actors and parameters of the belowground compartment that are likely to influence the C - and N - cycles, in relation to aboveground biodiversity (through the functional trait-based approach). On the one hand we studied the productivity of fine roots, their chemistry, the functioning and composition of soil microbial communities in relation to diversity measures (specific richness and functional diversity) in a young plantation (4 years). On the other hand, we studied the decomposition of fine roots in relation to over- and understory vegetation following the application of silvicultural treatments in an older plantation (27 years). In all cases, we studied the relationship between these parameters and processes, as well as soil C and N (total and in fractions). Deciduous and conifer species differed in fine root productivity and in microbial community catabolic activity. Conifers were more productive than deciduous (fine roots), and soil microbial communities associated with deciduous trees used a greater number of carbon sources than those associated with conifers. Moreover, although tree specific richness influenced the functioning of microbes, it had no effect on their composition or the productivity of the fine roots, while tree identities (and their functional traits) influenced all these parameters and processes. The mean value of traits had a greater influence on fine root productivity, basal respiration and microbial biomass than the variance of these traits. The functional diversity (considered as a gradient) had no effect on any of the parameters and processes studied. Finally, our study revealed that the understory vegetation (cover of functional type and some species), more than overstory vegetation, soil properties or fine root chemistry influences the fine root decomposition. In general, this thesis has uncovered and highlighted unknown aspects of the relationship between BEF, in particular with regard to the link between aboveground diversity and belowground functioning. Our results precisely identified tree species, understory vegetation and functional traits and the processes on which they intervene. This could help to refine predictive models of C and N cycles or provide advice to forest managers.