Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Includes bibliographical references. / Recent technological changes in railroads, mergers, major shifts in urban land use patterns, and declining rail passenger travel has resulted in a surplus of urban rail lands. These lands represent a significant resource for land poor cities. An unparalleled opportunity exists for major new intervention without the usual adverse effects of land assemblage and so called "urban renewal". This work is an urban design study for a 22 acre rail site and 15 acres of adjacent waterfront land in Tacoma, Washington. The site, including Union Station and its yards, is on the edge of Tacoma's central business district. Union Station represents the largest assembled parcel of developable land in the downtown area. An attempt is made to illustrate a possible site use scenario which reflects the divergent and often conflicting goals of various differing interests. / by Jeffrey David Rhoads. / M.Arch.

To get the best prices, sweet cherry growers must supply blemish-free fruit. Unfortunately, mature cherries have a fragile composition, rendering them susceptible to damage from heat, wind, birds, and rain. Rain is particularly devastating, because cherries split when they absorb too much water. Since rainstorms are common in the otherwise arid regions where most cherries are grown, growers must have a system for quickly deploying rain removal methods. The current industry solution relies on human observation and implementation, which is error-prone and costly. This project proposes an automated cherry wetness system using a Decagon Devices leaf wetness sensor (LWS) and a wireless sensor network (WSN). The research consists of analyzing industry and literature for uses of WSNs and LWSs in orchards and testing a LWS in a prototype WSN. The system will be evaluated for its potential to provide a precision-agriculture solution to the problem of remote cherry wetness detection.

The West Crater-Soda Peaks area covering about 100 km is located 35 km southeast of Mount St. Helens in southern Washington State. It is one of several Quaternary monogenetic High Cascade volcanic centers overlying the Ohaaapecosh Formation of the Western Cascade Group and interstratified glacial till.These volcanic centers are the most westerly of the range.

The purpose of this study is to present a descriptive analysis of the active participants in a voluntary association concerned with community development. This analysis will focus upon description and discussion of the socio-demographic characteristics of the active members of the organization. Some of the attitudinal factors which operated to motivate and sustain participation in the organization will also be examined. Before proceeding with discussion of the theoretical background for the study, the community and its history relative to development of the organization will be described.

The 25 Ma Bumping Lake pluton ranges in composition from quartz diorite to granite with the granitic facies comprising approximately 90% of the pluton's surface area. The granite may be classified as calcalkaline, peraluminous and I-type with some Stype characteristics. A late-stage, mafic-poor facies fills cooling related extensional fractures. The pluton was passively emplaced into the Ohanapecosh Formation at a shallow level in the crust. Contact relationships vary from sharp where the contact is vertical to gradational at the roof of the pluton. Where gradational, stoped xenoliths from the roof of the pluton increase in size, angularity and retain more of their primary textures as the contact is approached. Spacial trends in major and trace elements support the interpretation that xenoliths were stoped and assimilated into the melt The predicted Rayleigh number for the pluton when molten is 107 and the predicted Reynolds number is approximately 10-9. Based on these values, the magma of the pluton probably did not convect, and if it did, convection was weak and not a significant process. Based on variations in Eu/Eu* and Sr values, plagioclase fractionation was an important process in the petrogenesis of the pluton. Additionally, fractionation of accessory minerals rich in light rare-earth elements (LREE) resulted in successive depletion of LREE with progressive differentiation. Two separate regions of the pluton are highly differentiated as indicated by high Si02 values, high Rb/Zr ratios, and low Zr and Ti02 values. Mapping by the author indicates that the pluton projects beneath the Mount Aix caldera. Dates of three tuffs derived from the caldera are equivalent to the pluton, and two of these tuffs are chemically indistinguishable from the granite facies of the pluton. This implies that the Bumping Lake pluton represents the chilled remains of the magma chamber that fed the Mount Aix caldera.

Timber-dependent, rural communities in the Pacific Northwest face dramatic economic, political, and cultural change. New philosophies of forest management, primarily formulated in urban communities, require new approaches to the use and extraction of resources. What are the roles of rural communities that wish to adapt and sustain themselves? Two rural communities, one from Washington State, and one from Oregon, serve as case studies for coping with change. These cases build an ethnographic foundation on which to explore the rural-urban dynamic. The theories that elaborate the rural-urban relationship are central-place theory, and hermeneutic theory, which is used to understand the symbols and meaning of actions and ideas. Adaptive management, with new power relations, provides one possible solution to expedite the environmental and cultural sustainability of rural communities. / Graduation date: 1996

Over the past half century, the USDA Forest Service has increasingly faced diverse and often competing demands for forest resources, ranging from recreation, to ecosystem services, and timber supply. Building positive community-agency relationships has become increasingly important. Such relationships can improve community support for forest planning and management activities, ultimately making the agency more efficient and effective, while also providing economic and social benefit to local communities. The development of social capital may play an important role in promoting positive agency-community relationships. Broadly defined, the term refers to the social networks between individuals and groups that create a willingness and ability to act collectively toward a common goal. This study focuses on the impact that a partnership between the Colville National Forest and Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition has had on rural Northeast Washington communities. Overall, our study suggests the partnership has positively impacted networks among community members and networks between the community and the Forest Service. However, there is room for improvement. Many study participants were not familiar with important details about the Coalition's membership and objectives, or how its work may impact them or their community. Targeted outreach efforts will likely lead to greater support for the partnership. Such efforts could also strengthen networks among community members and community-agency networks as individuals learn how the partnership can benefit them and issues they care about. / Graduation date: 2012

Macroinvertebrates constitute the backbone of megafaunal communities in benthic ecosystems around the globe. Many macroinvertebrates have vital roles in benthic ecosystems, ranging from enhancing habitat complexity to providing staple food sources for other organisms. Regardless of how familiar macroinvertebrates are to the general public, very few studies have attempted to describe benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages across large spatial scale in the continental shelf waters of the Pacific Northwest. This study describes different subtidal macroinvertebrate assemblages off Washington and Oregon based on species-substrata associations and the key species that distinguish one assemblage from another. Two data sets were used for this study: underwater footage collected by the submersible Delta during 1993-1995 geological surveys, and footage collected by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Hammerhead during macroinvertebrate surveys in late summer 2011. Footages from these surveys were used to document species-substrata associations and distinguish different assemblages based on species composition similarities and dissimilarities. In addition, I determined if a specific group of invertebrates, Asteroids (Echinodermata), were useful in explaining different assemblage patterns, after all other environmental parameters were taken into account. Findings of this study can be used not only to shed light on the structure of macroinvertebrate communities in the Pacific Northwest, but also as baseline data for future research on the direct and indirect effects of potential offshore installations on macroinvertebrate communities across the continental shelf waters. / Graduation date: 2012

Shallow land burial in vadose zone sediment at the Hanford Site in Washington is being considered for the disposal of Category 3 low-level waste. A series of column experiments were conducted to evaluate and model the performance of the soil surrounding the trench encasement material for iodine-129 and technetium-99 by evaluating the mobility of these nuclides through the surrounding Trench 8 soil. These experiments were designed to determine effective diffusion coefficients for ¹²⁷I and ⁹⁹Tc through the following system: from contaminated soil into uncontaminated soil. The tests were performed at two different soil moisture contents to evaluate the effects of soil moisture content on diffusion. This thesis describes the experimental methods and presents the diffusion results for this media type. It was found that as the moisture content increased the diffusion increased by an order of magnitude (iodine 4% and 7% moisture content soil effective diffusion coefficients were 8.90E-08 and 1.84E-07 cm²/s respectively, and technetium 4% and 7% moisture content soil diffusion coefficients were 7.61E-08 and 1.45E-07 cm²/s respectively). These results, in combination with other diffusion systems results, will allow the development of release models and contaminant migration models that can be used to estimate the long-term fate of dose-controlling radionuclides that are or will be buried in solid waste burial trenches. / Graduation date: 2004

This thesis contains a manuscript describing the implementation of a high resolution wave forecasting model for the coasts of Washington and Oregon. The purpose of this project was to advance the wave predictive capabilities of the states of Oregon and the southwest part of Washington by including the effects of local bathymetric features in the operational forecasts. A 30 arc-second resolution wave forecasting model was implemented making use of the WAVEWATCH III numerical code covering the coastal region from Klamath, CA to Taholah, WA. The wave forecasts extend to the continental shelf at this resolution. To assess the performance of the model, its output was compared against in situ data, with normalized root-mean-squared errors in significant wave height in the vicinity of 0.20 and linear correlation coefficients greater than 0.80. Making use of the resulting validated regional scale wave forecasting system, an evaluation of the model sensitivity to the inclusion of bottom friction and wind input at the shelf level was performed. Results suggest that neither dissipation due to bottom friction or wind generation are significant for long term forecasting/hindcasting in the region. Results from a series of hindcasts suggest that several significant offshore features may affect the nearshore wave field. To evaluate it, a shelf scale SWAN model was implemented and a series of numerical experiments performed. Results suggest that the Astoria and McArthur Canyons; the Stonewall, Perpetua, and Heceta Banks; and Cape Blanco are significant bathymetric features that are capable of producing significant alongshore variability in wave heights nearshore. / Graduation date: 2013