Diss.-- Univ. of Bremen, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

The raccoon (Procyon lotor) is a species that has likely benefited from environmental conditions that followed European settlement of North America. As such, the raccoon has experienced vast range expansion during the past century, moving northward across the continent. However, little is known about the factors that currently govern the northern distribution and the ecology of raccoons at the northern edge of its range. Thus, I studied the population dynamics and social ecology of raccoons in southern Manitoba during spring, summer, and autumn, 2002-2005.<p>To understand how intrinsic and extrinsic factors affected population dynamics, I examined how winter severity, body condition, age, and gender influenced over-winter survival of raccoons. Winter severity (measured by temperature and snow accumulation) was the most important factor influencing survival (â = 1.08, 95% CI = 0.99-1.17). Over-winter survival estimates ranged from 0.51 (95% CI: 0.41, 0.75) during the harshest winter to 0.84 (95% CI: 0.71, 0.97) during the mildest winter on record for Manitoba. There was no apparent relationship between autumn body condition and autumn food indices and no correlation between autumn and spring body condition. Adults experienced higher survival than yearlings while males had a greater chance of dying compared to females. Variation in abundance natural food items thought to be important during autumn hyperphagia are likely overwhelmed by the presence of grain as an alternative food source, as autumn body condition was constant across all years and plateaued at ca. 20% body fat. I conclude that changes in climatic conditions will likely have the greatest impact on raccoon demographics, with milder winters leading to higher survival. <p>I also examined the spatial ecology of raccoons to determine if spacing behaviour could limit population growth and to test hypotheses regarding social tolerance and the formation of male coalition groups. Female home ranges were regularly spaced throughout the study site, with minimal spatio-temporal overlap among adult females. However, there where instances where females did display tolerance among conspecifics as well as the ability to partition areas of overlap to use them dissimilarly. While females were generally non-gregarious, plasticity in social tolerance likely precludes spacing behavior from regulating densities of this population. Male social behavior was more complex than previously described for northern populations; most adults (ca. 80%) formed a coalition pair with another male. There was little overlap among male groups and high overlap within groups. The dynamic interaction tests confirmed association in movements for male dyads. Male coalition groups formed despite females being regularly spaced, which contradicts working hypotheses of mechanisms explaining grouping behavior in male carnivores. I propose that group formation occurred because of the benefits that dominant males received through increased efficiency in territory maintenance and the increased likelihood of territory inheritance by subordinate males.

The raccoon (Procyon lotor) is a species that has likely benefited from environmental conditions that followed European settlement of North America. As such, the raccoon has experienced vast range expansion during the past century, moving northward across the continent. However, little is known about the factors that currently govern the northern distribution and the ecology of raccoons at the northern edge of its range. Thus, I studied the population dynamics and social ecology of raccoons in southern Manitoba during spring, summer, and autumn, 2002-2005.<p>To understand how intrinsic and extrinsic factors affected population dynamics, I examined how winter severity, body condition, age, and gender influenced over-winter survival of raccoons. Winter severity (measured by temperature and snow accumulation) was the most important factor influencing survival (â = 1.08, 95% CI = 0.99-1.17). Over-winter survival estimates ranged from 0.51 (95% CI: 0.41, 0.75) during the harshest winter to 0.84 (95% CI: 0.71, 0.97) during the mildest winter on record for Manitoba. There was no apparent relationship between autumn body condition and autumn food indices and no correlation between autumn and spring body condition. Adults experienced higher survival than yearlings while males had a greater chance of dying compared to females. Variation in abundance natural food items thought to be important during autumn hyperphagia are likely overwhelmed by the presence of grain as an alternative food source, as autumn body condition was constant across all years and plateaued at ca. 20% body fat. I conclude that changes in climatic conditions will likely have the greatest impact on raccoon demographics, with milder winters leading to higher survival. <p>I also examined the spatial ecology of raccoons to determine if spacing behaviour could limit population growth and to test hypotheses regarding social tolerance and the formation of male coalition groups. Female home ranges were regularly spaced throughout the study site, with minimal spatio-temporal overlap among adult females. However, there where instances where females did display tolerance among conspecifics as well as the ability to partition areas of overlap to use them dissimilarly. While females were generally non-gregarious, plasticity in social tolerance likely precludes spacing behavior from regulating densities of this population. Male social behavior was more complex than previously described for northern populations; most adults (ca. 80%) formed a coalition pair with another male. There was little overlap among male groups and high overlap within groups. The dynamic interaction tests confirmed association in movements for male dyads. Male coalition groups formed despite females being regularly spaced, which contradicts working hypotheses of mechanisms explaining grouping behavior in male carnivores. I propose that group formation occurred because of the benefits that dominant males received through increased efficiency in territory maintenance and the increased likelihood of territory inheritance by subordinate males.

Thesis (M.S. in Community Research and Action)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Objective: To explore the relationship between individual factors (i.e. affect, self-efficacy, and self-regulation), social and environmental factors, and their effects on the level of participation in physical activity (PA). Design: Undergraduate and graduate students (N = 386) completed 11 online measures assessing physical activity level and reactions to physical activity participation at Time 1, 9 online measures at Time 2, and a measure of physical activity participation at Time 3. Measures included those assessing affective reactions to PA, outcome expectancy, self-efficacy, self-regulation, social support, and perceptions of the environment. Results: Affect had a small total effect on METs (Ã =.13, p=.03), which was partially mediated by self-regulation, a strong predictor of METs (Ã =.45, p<.01). The total effect of affect on METs was substantially reduced (Ã =.05, p=.34) when self-efficacy was added as a precursor in the model. Self-efficacy influenced both METs (Ã =.39, p<.01) and affect (Ã =.23, p<.01). Adding environment and social support as predictors of self-efficacy (Ã =.23, p<.01; Ã =.19, p<.01, respectively) further reduced the influence of affect on METs (Ã =.03, p=.63) as environment and social support influenced affect (Ã =.20, p<.01; Ã =.14, p=.02, respectively) and METs (Ã =.15, p=.02; Ã =.21, p<.01, respectively). Conclusion: As in earlier studies of acute affective response to PA, these results provide evidence that anticipatory affect is positively associated with behavioral decision-making related to PA participation. Although increasing an individual's self-efficacy for PA should increase their affective association with the behavior, affect may not influence PA decision-making independently of self-efficacy and ecological factors (i.e. environment and social support). / Master of Science

This qualitative case study aims to provide an understanding of people-environment relationships in El Naranjal, an expanding informal settlement in Caracas, Venezuela, against a backdrop of an episode of exceptionally intense rainfall that affected the north of the country in 2010. It is argued that the vulnerability of informal settlements to environmental risks such as weather-related events is shaped not only by the socio-economic particularities of the context in which these emerge, but also by the ways in which the inhabitants of these settlements experience, conceive and relate to their local environment. People-environment relationships are understood as multiple, complex and contextual, where environment comprises the physical, interpersonal, social and cultural aspects of the context that people interact with. The study demonstrates that an in-depth understanding of these relationships can be gained through exploring residents' experiences of place and communities in El Naranjal. Over a fieldwork period of eight months, data were gathered using in-depth and walking interviews, participant observation and group activities. Environment and environmental risks such as the impacts of rainfall were understood, experienced and related to differently by individuals with diverse needs and agendas. Residents' diverse experiences and responses are shaped by pre-existing issues of rapid irregular land occupation, socio-spatial segregation, poor infrastructure, lack of participation and government support within the communities of El Naranjal. This underlines some of the gaps between national policy-making on environmental, land tenure, risk management and community participation matters and residents' understandings and experiences of issues of their places and communities. Thus, this study emphasises the need to approach environmental risks as adding to, and amplifying the complex issues that residents of informal settlements deal with locally on a day-to-day basis. In doing so, it challenges views of informal settlement communities as homogeneous, illegal and paralysed by poverty. Instead, it highlights their central role in the making of cities, as well as their heterogeneity and capacity to innovate in the face of mounting risks.

Submitted in fulfillment of the academic requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) in the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand. June 2015 / This dissertation critically examines the transformation of the South African National Parks with special reference to the role of the Social Ecology Directorate during the period 1994-2004. The establishment of a non-racial democratic social order required a different approach to the conservation of biodiversity which involved substantive change. This change included the organisation confronting its role in the apartheid legacy of dispossession, environmental racism and injustice. The Social Ecology Directorate and the concept of Social Ecology were established by the South African National Parks to drive a process of transformation. However, it is argued that these ideas and structures were not strong and cohesive enough to do so. Nevertheless the dissertation suggests that during this period, in a series of complex and contested processes, constrained but significant change was achieved in four areas: a shift to a more people-centred and developmental approach to conservation, restructuring to make the organisation more representative and to eliminate racism and sexism, land restitution, improved relations with neighbouring communities and greater inclusivity and openness to all South Africans through the promotion of tourism and cultural heritage. These changes laid the basis potentially for more radical change which links the conservation of biodiversity to social justice. / MT2016

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Carl Aaron McNeece, Florida State University, School of Social Work. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 29,2003). Includes bibliographical references.

All this has implications for achieving environmental sustainability in a 'real' biosphere that still supplies the 'ecosystem services' that allow humans, and the rest of the biomass, to actually survive (at the same time that its custodians of mind-us- are 'escaping' into customised neo-worlds). This thesis makes some preliminary enquiries into these new logics, the new 'selectors' at work in human meaning making ecosystems that owe little to those produced by billions of years of 'natural selection'. What seems to be at work at present is an enormously accelerated 'cultural selection' of winners and losers in the 'real' and 'imaginary' world. It would be unwise for the modernist systems of thought that still inform many of our institutional responses to the biosphere to ignore the pre-eminent affect of these cultural processes and the strange and possibly disturbing (at least to the ecosystemic biological purists) new 'weedy' entertainment-ecosystems that might arise from their deployment. / This thesis reviews some aspects of these 'new selectors' at work and begins to chart- with an Australian focus- the tentative development of institutional/legal responses and emergent socialites that acknowledge and even leverage, these new forces. It finally suggests a radical set of possibilities, which if they came to pass, would signal the end to the kind of 'public reservationism' that has characterised the 20th century response to nature, wilderness and the 'environmental crisis', and usher in a more chaotic (but still possibly sustainable) era of 'winners' and 'losers' mediated by new social selectors of post-consumption voluntary affiliation. / The 20th century will be remembered for many 'firsts' and many 'revolutions'. One of these 'revolutions' was the process whereby issues surrounding 'nature', the non-human organisms that inhabit it, the human relationship to these organisms, and the human impact on the planet as a whole, came to occupy such a considerable amount of our individual and collective 'attention space' as the century progressed. In a nutshell, over the course of the 20th century 'the environment' became a 'thing' that almost everyone recognised, and which became associated with a wide range of qualities, dreams and fears that impacted, to varying degrees, on almost every human meaning-making system and institution. / 'Environmentalism' has largely been a product of enlightenment, modernist thinking. From the romantic philosophers, poets and travellers of the 18th and 19th century, to the founders of the ecological sciences, to the eco-activists and 'green' political parties of the 20th century, a whole series of intertwining enlightenment systems of thought and practice have informed its discourses and narratives. The logics of these discourses are all around us in our newly networked global mediasphere- at work in environmental organisations, informing government policy- and they form the basis of the environmental story telling that have made green issues so prominent in the media in the last several decades. / Thesis (PhDSoSc(Communic,InformatStud))--University of South Australia, 2005.

The 20th century will be remembered for many ‘firsts’ and many ‘revolutions’. One of these ‘revolutions’ was the process whereby issues surrounding ‘nature’, the non-human organisms that inhabit it, the human relationship to these organisms, and the human impact on the planet as a whole, came to occupy such a considerable amount of our individual and collective ‘attention space’ as the century progressed. In a nutshell, over the course of the 20th century ‘the environment’ became a ‘thing’ that almost everyone recognised, and which became associated with a wide range of qualities, dreams and fears that impacted, to varying degrees, on almost every human meaning-making system and institution. / ‘Environmentalism’ has largely been a product of enlightenment, modernist thinking. From the romantic philosophers, poets and travellers of the 18th and 19th century, to the founders of the ecological sciences, to the eco-activists and ‘green’ political parties of the 20th century, a whole series of intertwining enlightenment systems of thought and practice have informed its discourses and narratives. The logics of these discourses are all around us in our newly networked global mediasphere- at work in environmental organisations, informing government policy- and they form the basis of the environmental story telling that have made green issues so prominent in the media in the last several decades. / All this has implications for achieving environmental sustainability in a ‘real’ biosphere that still supplies the ‘ecosystem services’ that allow humans, and the rest of the biomass, to actually survive (at the same time that its custodians of mind-us- are ‘escaping’ into customised neo-worlds). This thesis makes some preliminary enquiries into these new logics, the new ‘selectors’ at work in human meaning making ecosystems that owe little to those produced by billions of years of ‘natural selection’. What seems to be at work at present is an enormously accelerated ‘cultural selection’ of winners and losers in the ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ world. It would be unwise for the modernist systems of thought that still inform many of our institutional responses to the biosphere to ignore the pre-eminent affect of these cultural processes and the strange and possibly disturbing (at least to the ecosystemic biological purists) new ‘weedy’ entertainment-ecosystems that might arise from their deployment. / This thesis reviews some aspects of these ‘new selectors’ at work and begins to chart- with an Australian focus- the tentative development of institutional/legal responses and emergent socialites that acknowledge and even leverage, these new forces. It finally suggests a radical set of possibilities, which if they came to pass, would signal the end to the kind of ‘public reservationism’ that has characterised the 20th century response to nature, wilderness and the ‘environmental crisis’, and usher in a more chaotic (but still possibly sustainable) era of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ mediated by new social selectors of post-consumption voluntary affiliation. / Thesis (PhDSoSc(Communic,InformatStud))--University of South Australia, 2005.