<p>This study was undertaken to further understand the interrelationships between the endobenthos and sedimentation. Quantification of ichnospecies abundance and diversity are used to interpret their significanceand the ecologicalconditions two sedimentologically different incised valleyfills. This study is based on cores from two incised valley-fills from the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway (Alberta). The first, the Waskahigan Channel (Shingle Dl) in the Dunvegan Allofonnation (Cenomanian) interpreted as a migrating delta, contains mud and fine-grained sand. The second, the South Willesden Green Channel (Allomember C) in the Viking Allofonnation (Albian) interpreted as a straight incised valley-fill, contains coarser, reworked marine sand and conglomerates. These differences provide a comparative test for the innovative techniques used herein. TInsresearch provided a tool to interpret changes in sea level and the depositional environment by subtle changes observed in the abundance and diversity of ichnofossil communities and ichnofacies. ill the Waskahigan Bottleneck Channel (7-13-64-24W5), estuarine sand flats are distinguished by the such changes. The assemblages' abundance and diversity increased, then decreased and increased again as the channel infilled. In the South Willesden Green Channel, core IO-35-40-7W5 is interpreted as estuarine bay fill deposit. Without quantitative ichnology, the five successive fills recognized herein would be considered one deposit. In both channels, shells and shell fragments are absent as a result of physical weathering and chemical dissolution. This study contributes methods of ichnological quantification and comparison in subsurface core. TI,e subtle details reveal more information about the ecological conditions during the infilling of these Cretaceous depositional environments.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>The Lower Cretaceous Viking Formation is a complex stratigraphic unit containing a variety of geographically separated sand bodies of varying orientation, thickness and lithology. Many of these sand bodies are prolific hydrocarbon reservoirs which have been extensively drilled by industry. Despite this fact, their origins and interelationships are largely unknown. Establishment of a Viking Allostratigraphy in the Willesden Green area (1) allows the recognition of distinct allomembers based on bounding discontinuities and facies associations, and (2) determines the exact stratigraphic relationships and depositional histories of the Viking oil and gas fields as defined by basin-wide sea level fluctuations. Detailed core and log correlations indicate that in the Willesden Green area, the Viking Formation is made up of 4 distinct packages of sediment separated by 3 major stratigraphic breaks. The lower most package is regional in extent, and consists of three gradational coarsening-upward cyclic offshore mudstone/siltstone sequences (Members A and B). At Willesden Green, Member B is erosively incised by a major unconformable scour surface (VE2 - Viking Erosion surface 2) filled with conglomerate-rich channel/estuarine sediments (Member C). The VE2 incision was carved during an initial Viking lowstand, and infilled during a temporary stillstand in the ensuing transgression. The top of Member C is erosively truncated by a regionally tracable pebble-mantled ravinement surface (VE3). Member D, a sandying-upward sequence of storm-dominated lower shoreface to transitional offshore sediments, overlies VE3, and records a second major Viking progradational event. This unit thickens southward, and can be traced laterally into correlative upper shoreface and nonmarine sediments at Caroline and Harmattan. The top of Member D is bevelled by a second basin-wide ravinement surface (VE4) which rises in a step-like fashion towards the south. This surface is mantled by a thin veneer of pebbles which locally accumulate to form the elongate shaleencased, conglomeratic shelf sand bodies of Member E. Member E gradationally passes upward into the silty shales of the Colorado Group and records a final transgressive flooding of the Viking basin.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

published_or_final_version / abstract / Earth Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on Nov. 25, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, [Department of] Chemistry, University of Alberta." Includes bibliographical references.

<p>BACKGROUND: Canada's aging, heterogeneous population presents a challenge with respect to maintaining a sufficient national blood supply. Patterns of donation and correlates of donor data will be identified through analysis of the data.</p> <p>DATA: Geo-coded blood donor and donor clinic data are provided by Canadian Blood Services. Blood donor data is provided for the fiscal year 2006-2007 indicating the total number of donors for each Canadian postal code, excluding the province of Quebec. Potential con-elates of blood donation are selected based on social and economic characteristics, as well as descriptors of city size and geographical location in the urban hierarchy measures of accessibility, and capacity of donor clinics.</p> <p>METHODS: Data is aggregated to n = 3,746 census tracts in 40 Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA) across the country and then to n = 992 census tracts for the Toronto CMA. The number of donors per population in each Canadian census tract is regressed against the set ofpotential donation con-elates. For the Toronto CMA model, the donor count in each census tract is regressed against similar potential correlates.</p> <p>RESULTS:A number of factors are found to influence blood donation in Canada including the propOliion of younger residents, English ability, proportion of people with immigrant status, higher education, and a population-based measure of accessibility. These findings are confirmed when a model involving the city of Toronto is created. The Toronto model achieves similar correlates as the national model with the addition of variables that are unique to the city of Toronto. These unique attributes involve travel, employment, and gender.</p> <p>CONCLUSION: While a number of correlates of blood donation are observed across Canada, important contextual effects across metropolitan areas are highlighted. These contextual effects are supported by the uniqueness ofthe Toronto model's secondary correlates. The thesis concludes by summarizing what these findings contribute to the field of blood donation in Canada. Further mention is also given regarding the role of spatial filters as a tool in regression analysis.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The objective of this thesis is to validate the results of the Integrated Model of Urban LAnd use and Transportation for Environmental analysis (IMULATE), as well as the Integrated Model for Population Aging Consequences on Transportation (IMPACT) in the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) of Hamilton, Ontario. The land use/demographic modules of these two models are validated using observed data from Statistics Canada, while data from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) and the City of Hamilton are used to validate the transportation modules. Statistical, graphical and GIS visualization techniques are incorporated into this validation.</p> <p>This thesis illustrates some sub-modules in IMULATE and IMPACT can work very well, while the predictive ability of others is not as good. IMULATE considers more factors to simulate land use development. It generates accurate simulations of household dynamic using observed data as exogenous input. We used the "fmal demands" for economic sectors as the exogenous input to estimate the employment's distribution. After recalculating the "fmal demands" in its employment location model, the generated employment is also found to be close to the observed value. However, we found that its transportation module was not able to produce accurate predictions of inter-zonal trips and traffic flows over the Hamilton's road network.</p> <p>IMPACT can predict the growth of population by gender and age with good accuracy. The simulation results for males are better than females. The inter-zonal trips generated by IMPACT are found to be much closer to the observed value than the inter-zonal trips generated by IMULATE. However, we found that the simulated trips have lower dispersion across the city than normally observed.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This thesis discusses a longitudinal study of psychosocial effects in a population living within 2 kilometers of the Taro Aggregates Ltd. East Landfill site in Stoney Creek, Ontario. This facility has been the source of longstanding concerns among residents in the surrounding community. The focus of the study is local residents' reappraisal of the landfill over a nine-year period. The theoretical basis for the research lies in the fields of environmental stress and coping, place effects and risk perception. A telephone survey was administered to a random stratified (by distance) sample of households during the decision making process (1996) and five years after the landfill site was constructed and began operation (2002). In-depth interviews were conducted with a sub-set of respondents in 2005 in order to better understand how people act in, and give meaning to, their own lives. The scope of this research is based on the need for additional comparative, as well as longitudinal, studies that measure how individuals and communities respond to the process of making the decision to site a landfill, and how these responses change over time as they live with the landfill. This work is part of an ongoing, multidisciplinary research program designed to determine the impacts of exposure to environmental stressors on human health and well-being and to develop strategies to reduce their adverse effects.</p> <p>Residents' reappraisal of the Taro East Landfill site reveals little change in the frequency of landfill concerns over time, with over half the respondents maintaining concerns about the site in the post-siting process. There was a significant increase in the frequency of health concern, a shift in the nature of the health concern (short-term vs. long-term) and a reduced frequency of daily life effects (perceived/anticipated) and action-focused coping as residents lived with the landfill. While most used a variety of coping strategies to mitigate effects, emotion-focused strategies were used with greater frequency. The results reveal a range of factors that mediate residents' reappraisal of the landfill related to context (e.g., lack of meaningful involvement in the siting process, mismanagement, incidents), composition (e. g., socioeconomic status, dwelling tenure and type) and collective (e.g., distrust, inequity, stigma). These findings imply an ongoing process of reappraisal whereby, for many, latent concerns remain even though they have adapted to the landfill over time. The longitudinal nature of this study, the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches, and the focus on factors affecting the reappraisal of an environmental stressor, are the primary contributions of this research.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Rising post-glacial sea levels since the last glacial maximum have dramatically changed the configuration of coastal areas worldwide. On the western Anatolian coast of Turkey, rising Holocene sea levels and tectonic subsidence have drowned large areas of coastal and terrestrial landscapes that were once occupied by Neolithic peoples. These submerged landscapes have high potential for well-preserved Neolithic sites, but to date few systematic attempts have been made to investigate the prehistoric underwater archaeology. Further exploration for these sites is dependent on an improved understanding of the coastal paleogeography, sea level history and shoreline positions during prehistory.</p> <p>In this study, detailed coastal geoarchaeological investigations were conducted at Liman Tepe/Klazomenai, a long-occupied (Chalco lithic-Roman Age) coastal settlement near Izmir, Turkey, to reconstruct changes in the prehistoric coastal environments and to document coastal impacts associated with the construction of a Hellenistic causeway structure. Detailed sedimentological (lithofacies, grain size, magnetic susceptibility, loss on ignition), geochemical (trace metals) and micropaleontological analysis was conducted on five cores extracted from the Bay of Izmir. Core data were integrated with the results of a detailed marine geophysical survey (bathymetry, side-scan sonar, chirp seismic profiling) to reconstruct the shoreline positions from the Late Neolithic (ca. 4000 BC) to the present.</p> <p>The core results identified five distinct lithostratigraphic units (Units A-E), recording the development of transgressive barrier-lagoonal system prior to ca. 3800 BC and progradation of the coast during a subsequent high-stand phase after ca. 2800 BC. The transgressive barrier-lagoonal system is represented by a fining-upwards sequence of pebbly foreshore deposits (Unit E) overlain by laminated, organic-rich muds deposited in shallow wetland and lagoonal environments (Units C,D). The transition from beach to lagoonal sediments is represented in seismic profiles by a basin-wide, high-amplitude seismic reflector. Mapping of the reflector surface identifies the beach deposits as a linear, northeast-trending beach barrier ridge. ¹⁴C dating of organics from Unit E yielded a Late Neolithic Age (3860 +/- 120 cal BC) for the beach deposits.</p> <p>At the top of the lagoonal sequence a sharp transition to muddy silt lithofacies (Unit B) with abundant <em>Posidonia Oceanica</em> fragments records sediment accumulation with a sheltered embayment formed by construction of a causeway commissioned by Alexander the Great (334 BC). The onset of causeway construction (Phase 3) is indicated by a shift to coarser mean grain size, the appearance of pottery and masonry and abundant olive pits which yielded a ¹⁴C date of 450 ± 70 cal BC, confirming the early Hellenistic age for the causeway. The causeway construction dramatically altered the coastal sediment budget, contributing to accelerated sedimentation and rapid progradation of the coastline. An increase in the abundances of <em>Bolivinid</em> and <em>Rodalinid</em> genera below the causeway construction horizon indicates increasing eutrophication of coastal waters as Archaic populations increased at Klazomenai. The detailed record of changing coastal environments and shoreline configurations obtained through this study provide important baseline data for future underwater archaeological exploration at Liman Tepe/Klazomenai.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth and Planetary Science, 1982. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Science / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 110-111. / by Gerald Alan LaTorraca. / Ph.D.