Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2000. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (University of Texas Digital Repository, viewed on Sept. 14, 2009). Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D., Natural Resources)--University of Idaho and Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza, April 2007. / Major professors: Steven Hollenhorst, Dietmar Stoian. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online (PDF file) by subscription or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1984. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-225).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wyoming, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 6, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-134).

Thesis (M.S. in environmental science)--Washington State University, May 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 102-104).

<p> Thirty-four percent of Earth&rsquo;s arable land has been converted to agricultural uses, and increased agricultural intensification has been correlated with contemporary decreases in avian abundance and functional diversity. Farm-scale biodiversity enhancement features such as native woody plant hedgerows have been planted in crop margins with the expectations of attracting beneficial predators and pollinators, and of improved pest control and pollination services in adjacent crops. Despite ongoing investment and perceived benefits of these types of enhancements for biodiversity, few evaluations have tested their effectiveness at increasing avian diversity. A growing body of research has quantified crop pest reduction by birds with indirect benefits for yield, yet few studies have evaluated whether farm-scale conservation activities improve effect sizes of these services. Further, whether or not crop margin habitats confer fitness benefits necessary for avian population viability (i.e., survival and reproduction) remains almost entirely unstudied. On each of these fronts, landscape effects can counteract or interact synergistically with the effects of local activities, and assessment of farmland habitat enhancement must be done with explicit reference to landscape context. I conducted field research in a system of extant woody hedgerows and semi-natural riparian habitat patches among farmlands of the Sacramento Valley of California&rsquo;s Central Valley, USA to investigate three questions. Does farm-scale biodiversity enhancement and retention of semi-natural landscape habitat 1) influence patterns in avian abundance and diversity, 2) increase the rate of pest reduction by birds in adjacent crops, and 3) provide quality habitat and confer fitness benefits for avian occupants? In Chapter 1, and with collaborators, I sampled birds and habitat characteristics in 111 crop margins and landscape buffers during two winter and breeding seasons. We found that margins with hedgerows, treelines, or remnant riparian habitat harbored 2&ndash;3 times as many bird species and 3&ndash;6 times greater abundance than bare or weedy margins. Margin habitat type interacted with distance from semi-natural woodlands; hedgerow or riparian margins further from woodlands harbored more bird species. In Chapter 2, I performed a sentinel prey exclosure experiment in walnuts to compare pest cocoon predation rates by birds in 10 orchards with and 10 orchards without woody vegetation patches in their margins, and I characterized semi-natural cover within landscape buffers. Avian predator richness and abundance was greater in habitat orchard margins than in bare margins, and birds were confirmed predators of 23&plusmn;29% pest cocoons per orchard (range 0 &ndash; 80%). Pest predation rates did not increase with the presence of woody margin habitat. Instead, predation rates increased with the increasing size of orchard trees, avian predator abundance, and percentage of semi-natural cover in the landscape. In Chapter 3, I used a suite of environmental, body condition, and population measures in long-distance migratory <i>Zonotrichia</i> sparrows to quantify habitat quality at hedgerows and natural reserves along a gradient of connectivity and landscape habitat amount. Abundance and within-winter apparent survival was highest in connected hedgerows and natural reserves with the most woodland landscape cover. Isolated hedgerows were of poor quality for first year Gambel&rsquo;s white-crowned sparrows <i>(Z. leucophrys gambelii)</i> and the differences in within-winter apparent survival between first year and adult birds decreased significantly with increasing woodland landscape cover. The combined results suggest that farm scale habitat enhancement can be beneficial for birds in terms of local abundance and diversity, and within-winter apparent survival if connected to and among a sufficient percentage of other similar habitats. Farm scale enhancements can also be beneficial to growers by increasing the number of avian predators of crop pests. Yet, growers appear to benefit most by having crops located in landscapes with greater percentages of semi-natural landscape cover, where avian predation rates of crop pests were highest.</p><p>

In mixed-jurisdiction landscapes of the Intermountain West, unprotected wildlands in private and State Trust ownership buffer protected areas, support ecosystem and watershed processes, and maintain landscape connectivity, while their subdivision and development, results in losses of habitat and biodiversity, fragmentation, and isolation of neighboring protected areas. In recent decades, conservation easements (CEs) have emerged as the primary tool for protecting private lands, but as private agreements, there is no explicit expectation that land protected provides these conservation values. With this dependence on CEs, identifying their conservation outcomes is critical to understanding their role in landscape-scale conservation efforts. Focusing on the Madrean Archipelago in Arizona and New Mexico, I conducted a mixed methods study assessing the spatial pattern of existing CEs relative to grasslands, riparian areas, and distance from protected areas, and completed stakeholder interviews to identify any process underlying these spatial patterns. Results show that more than 10% of private wildlands in the region are in CEs. They exhibited a strong affinity towards grasslands (almost 20% of private grassland area is in CEs) and protected areas (more than 80% of CEs lie within 1 km of a protected area) but tend to avoid riparian areas. Interviews revealed a moderate level of consistency between the spatial patterns identified and stakeholder objectives. These results suggest that CEs in the Madrean Archipelago do support landscape-scale conservation outcomes, in part because stakeholders engaged in establishing them are prioritizing resources and values with landscape-scale significance. They also affirm the need for more access to spatial data on CEs to better integrate them into regional conservation planning efforts.

<p> Involving a diversity of stakeholders in conservation issues is an important and growing trend in wildlife management. My thesis provides a case study of a collaborative conservation effort in which representatives from sportsmen&rsquo;s and environmental groups came together to advise the Arizona Game and Fish Department in a project to restore bighorn sheep to the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona. These stakeholders formed the Catalina Bighorn Sheep Restoration Advisory Committee to help address the human dimension factors of the project, build public support, and guide project planning and implementation. In addition to participant observation and document analysis informing my study, I surveyed 31 stakeholders both on and off the Advisory Committee and interviewed key Advisory Committee members. All stakeholders were in favor of collaborative conservation. However, there were objections to this particular Advisory Committee for this particular project. Although stakeholders had a diversity of values that informed their beliefs, the Advisory Committee members who took the time to understand the science involved, develop mutual trust and respect for others at the table, and held a strong commitment to the project goals were able to shift deeply held, values-based beliefs and find consensus on contentious project elements. This included agreeing on a mountain lion management plan that called for the killing of mountain lions that preyed on the newly reintroduced bighorn sheep. Stakeholders not on the Advisory Committee did not come to agreement on most elements of the project. This study contributes to the understanding of collaborative conservation efforts by providing a case study of a controversial wildlife conservation project that involved diverse stakeholders who worked together, successfully found consensus, and achieved their main goal of getting bighorn sheep back on the mountain.</p><p>

Although urban heritage has been a research field in the focus of scholars’ attention since the concepts of restoration and rehabilitation of monuments had been extended to entire areas such as historical city centres, before the mid‐twentieth century, architectural studies approached towns only through individual historical monuments, and historical studies only through juridical, political, and religious institutions or economic and social structures. In consequence, urban space as the manifestation of the urban phenomenon in its complexity has been largely ignored by the practice of urban conservation. This thesis aims to be a theoretical approach to the field of urban conservation, revealing its place at the crossing of history, architecture, urbanism, geography, philosophy, and anthropology. The creation of place, its understanding, the meaning that places hold for human identity and the way they shape us in return. The basis of such an enquiry is set by looking at attitudes towards the historic fabric over time and the origins of the notion of ‘urban conservation’ in its European context. The concentration of economic, social and cultural exchanges over long periods of time, which characterises traditional urban cultures, gives the value of historical areas in towns. Therefore, the history of urban development provides a substantial contribution towards the protection, conservation, and restoration policy of historic towns and urban areas as well as towards their development and adaptation to contemporary life. The term ‘integrated conservation’ emerged as a response to these changes in conservation’s relationship to heritage and its context. This broadened image of heritage enables a better understanding of how human activity has shaped the urban fabric and of how conservation can be perceived today as a component of management of urban change. This raises a number of theoretical and methodological issues, which are discussed in detail in this thesis: how do we understand the historic urban areas and how do we elicit their cultural values in order to protect and use these values. This research is therefore concerned with the origin and nature of ideas relevant to urban conservation, rather than with what is commonly regarded as being a prescriptive doctrine in heritage conservation generally, and indeed urban conservation. In reality, this latter view of the theoretical and philosophical body of research in conservation is hindering its theoretical development as a discipline and has an undesired, stalling effect on practice development. This is why this research aims to provide tools for thinking about specific conservation issues, not self‐sufficient theories. The references span a very wide timescale because of the inherent preoccupation of humans with their own inhabiting of the world, which is ultimately the frame in which urban settlements are inscribed.