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No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Plant Biology, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Mar. 30, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p.197-216). Also issued in print.

There is vigorous debate regarding possible changes in the spatial and temporal attributes of chaparral fire regimes within southern California. We employed a novel approach to reconstruct a multi-century record chaparral fire history and to evaluate the effects of climate on these fire regimes across three southern California National Forests. The research in this dissertation is presented as three related studies. The first focused on using fire scars and tree rings from isolated stands of bigcone Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga macrocarpa), which we demonstrate as reflective of the temporal and spatial patterns of fire in the surrounding chaparral. We found many extensive fires were apparent in both the pre-and post-twentieth century period indicating that such events were a natural component of the system. The second study applied the same approach but the spatial extent of the project was expanded to examine fire histories at a regional scale. Our results confirm that widespread fire events have, for centuries, likely played a critical role in shaping the fire regime of southern California chaparral landscapes. We found that such events occurred on a multi-decadal interval and that interval lengths have nearly doubled since the turn of the century. The third study examined the relationship between antecedent climate and wildfires in chaparral landscapes across southern California. We found that acute drought, driven by antecedent cool season precipitation in the previous winter and spring, was a reliable indicator of increased wildfire activity in the past; however, we now find a contemporary system influenced by antecedent climate in the two years prior to the fire event and no immediate connections to climatic drivers is apparent in the year of the event. The broader results from these three studies indicate that some changes in fire return intervals have occurred in the modern era but widespread fires have been and remain an integral part of chaparral fire regimes. We hypothesis that land use in the 20th century has altered vegetation structure and composition so much so that chaparral fire regimes now respond differently to climatic cues than they had for the past 200-300 years.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--California Polytechnic State University, 2009. / Title from PDF title page; viewed on October 23, 2009. Major professor: Dr. David Keil. "Presented to the faculty of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo." "In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree [of] Master of Science in Biological Sciences." "September 2009." Includes bibliographical references (p. 200-209). Also available on microfiche.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Davis and San Diego State University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-101). Also available via the World Wide Web. (Restricted to UC campuses).

Em setembro de 2007 o grupo Gerdau concretizou a aquisição da siderúrgica americana Chaparral Steel, desembolsando para isso 4,2 bilhões de dólares. Para financiar esta compra, 93% do funding foi de capital de terceiros e participação de acionistas, obtidos através de operações de empréstimo, emissão de ações e de um Bond, com prazo médio total de 5 anos. As operações foram contratadas no terceiro trimestre de 2007, período no qual a crise do subprime começou a preocupar as empresas e investidores, com o reporte de contínuas perdas por mau-pagamento de hipotecas, principalmente nos Estados Unidos, afetando diversos produtos financeiros. Destaca-se nesta estruturação o fato dela ter sido premiada pela International Financing Review Awards como a melhor operação de empréstimo feita por uma empresa da América Latina em 2007 e também a questão de ser o maior valor desembolsado pelo grupo Gerdau em uma aquisição. Como um todo, a operação manteve a empresa dentro dos indicadores das melhores práticas do seu segmento e possibilitou criação de valor para os acionistas e stakeholders. / In September of 2007 the Gerdau group finalized the acquisition of the American steelmaker Chaparral Steel, with a disbursement of 4.2 billion US dollars. Only 7% of the financing of this purchase was cash, the remaining 93% was obtained through the emission of new shares, short-term and long-term debt, and a Bond, with a total average maturity of 5 years. All the operations were contracted on the third semester of 2007, when the subprime crises started to scare off companies and investors, with the continuous report of losses due to the financial structured products on the mortgages market, mainly in the US. The highlights of this structure are that it was awarded by International Financing Review Awards as the best Latin American Loan of 2007 and also, it was the most ever paid by the group in an acquisition. Last but not least, the operation kept the company in the range of the best practice ratios of its segment and allowed the creation of value for its shareholders and stakeholders.