The focus of this thesis is on the acquisition of major capital equipment within Australia's defence system. For the purposes of this analysis, major capital equipment constitute selected projects with a total value of at least $200 million. The projects selected for examination are from each of the three arms of the military service. These projects are: the Royal Australian Air Force's BLACKHAWK helicopters, the Army's PERENTIE vehicles, and the Royal Australian Navy's Australian FFG-7 FRIGATES. These projects were chosen because they share similar planning and management related characteristics. They represent substantial public sector investments. The technology used in each of the systems is available 'off-the-shelf but the way in which the systems were ultimately assembled and produced are uniquely Australian: this adaptation and local innovation involved developmental work. Since each of these projects is almost complete, a comprehensive analysis of the project has been possible. The study of these particular projects provides the basis for a comparative analysis of the acquisition of major defence projects, and facilitates the development of project planning and management 'lessons'. Since current Australian public (and private) sector policies seek to maximise the use of leading edge technology by adapting it to meet specific local requirements; the examination of these three projects provides an objective determination of the validity of such policies.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-139).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-139).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-139).

A well-preserved flora has been collected from the Upper Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation near Salina, Utah. This formation is part of the Mesaverde Group and consists mostly of deltaic sediments deposited along the western margin of a Cretaceous sea. The Blackhawk Flora is comprised of the following species: Eguisetum sp., Osmunda hollickii, Allantodiopsis erosa, Saccoloma gardneri, Araucaria longifolia, Ginkgo laramiensis, Protophyllocladus polymorphus, Sequoia affinis, Geonomites imperialis, Sabalites montanus, Dryophyllum subfalcatum, Juglans similis, Cinnamomum sezannense, Magnolia ampifolia, Menispermum dauricumoides, Ficus glasconea, Ficus planicostata, Ficus puryearensis var. elongata, Myrtophyllum torreyi, Nymphaeites dawsonii, Dalbergia (?) prewilcoxiana, Salix lesquereuxii, and Trapa paulula. Two independent studies were used to determine the climatic conditions that existed when the Blackhawk Flora was living. The first study was an analysis of the fossil leaf features compared with features of modern leaves whose climatic requirements are known. It was determined that the fossil leaves of the woody dicotyledonous species exhibit a high percentage of entire margins, pinnate venation, simple organization, thick texture, large size, and dripping points. These are characters possessed by modern floras living in warm, humid climates. The second study was of the distribution of the nearest living relatives of the fossil plants. This investigation indicated that the modern correlatives of the Blackhawk Flora prefers climates that are warm-temperate to subtropical. Both paleoclimatic studies indicate that the Blackhawk Flora lived in a humid, warm-temperate to subtropical climate.

Using an integrated dataset comprising outcrop, core, GPR and LiDAR data, this study targets a high-quality outcrop "window" of the upper Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation in the eastern Wasatch Plateau in central Utah, spanning a fairly large spatial (~30 km2 area comprising eight contiguous, and vertical cliff faces) and temporal (~4 my) range. This research provides field-validation and -calibration of a wider range of fluvial heterogeneity: 1) large-scale heterogeneity (10’s of m vertically and 100’s of m laterally), 2) intermediate-scale heterogeneity (1’s of m vertically and 10’s of m laterally), and 3) small-scale heterogeneity (10’s of cm vertically and 1’s of m laterally). These sandbody- to facies-scale heterogeneities generate potential for stratigraphic compartmentalization for analogous fluvial reservoirs and prospects. Moreover, these results specifically constitute an outcrop analog to the producing tight-gas fluvial reservoirs of the adjacent hydrocarbon-prolific Uinta and Piceance Basins of Utah and Colorado, including the giant Jonah Field of Wyoming. 3D virtual outcrop model generated from LiDAR-integration has helped in avulsion-scale (~1's-10's kyr) to basin-fill scale (~100's kyr-1's myr) fluvial sandbody organization analysis down to channel-storey level. This high-resolution analysis has brought several intriguing insights. single-storey sandbodies are preferentially attendant to clustering organization, whereas multi-lateral sandbodies (i.e. channel-belt) show compensational-prone behavior. Sandbody organization is broadly compensational for the lower Blackhawk Formation, where the floodplain facies diversity is the highest. In contrast, floodplain diversity decreases stratigraphically upward such that the upper Blackhawk Formation shows the least heterogeneous floodplain with clustering-prone sandbody organization. In the quest of differentiating autogenic from allogenic signal in dynamic systems where their interplay is complexly intertwined, this study presents two incised-valley examples, where resultant fluvial organization has been interpreted, contrary to conventional wisdom, to be preferentially modulated by a dominant controlling mechanism of autogenic forcing. In filling these incised valley deposits, each of which is up to ~15-20 m thick, the dominating behavior of substrate coal compaction as an autogenic mechanism supplanted allogenic forcing (i.e. sea-level fluctuation).