Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Timothy D. Keane / The purpose of the investigation was to inventory and analyze riparian corridor vegetation changes throughout the Black Vermillion watershed from approximately 1857 through 2007. Three sub-watersheds were studied; North Fork, Irish Creek and Black Vermillion Main Stem. Research questions investigated were: 1) What changes in riparian corridor width have taken place since the original territory surveys done in 1857 and why? 2) How has land cover adjacent to riparian corridors changed since the original territory surveys? 3) Has woody species composition in the riparian corridors changed? The research questions were addressed using a variety of techniques and tools including aerial photography, basic GIS, and vegetation survey techniques. Territory of Kansas survey maps and notes that were completed in 1857 were used as baseline reference conditions concerning corridor width and woody species present in the riparian corridors. Inventory and analysis of the riparian vegetation change over time and adjacent land cover will aid in understanding the present ecology of these riparian corridors and are important to stream and riparian ecosystem rehabilitation. Woody riparian corridors increased in width throughout the watershed from 1857 until about 1956 (probably due to a decrease in prescribed burning and lack of grazing), which is the pre-channelization period for this watershed. After channelization (late 1960's & early 1970's), average corridor widths dropped significantly as the stream was shortened a total of 15.8 miles (25.4Km). Most often, the land cover changed from native, tallgrass prairie to cultivated cropland or pasture. Woody species composition has changed over time from established mature woodland to a pioneer successional stage. The findings of this study can influence beginning stages of design for natural habitat rehabilitation purposes in this watershed. Design decisions for land rehabilitation purposes should consider reference conditions (historic), and to understand reference conditions we must study the history of land use and land change. This study provides a template for studying the history of land use and land use change of riparian corridors for Midwestern, agricultural landscapes.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide leaders with a clear explanation of commercial corridor revitalization, standard for evaluation, and justification for the support of existing and future commercial corridor revitalization districts in New Orleans, LA. This thesis begins with a definition of commercial corridor revitalization and discussion of how it has been applied in New Orleans, LA. A standard framework for commercial corridor revitalization development and assessment is also established with several steps for implementation included. To test the feasibility, significance and relevance of the proposed framework, all of the steps mentioned were implemented in the New Orleans East Town Center Case Study. Key findings of this research may contribute to the providing a tool that evaluates criteria for evaluating city-wide policies to support the sustainability and vitality of existing and future commercial corridor revitalization districts in New Orleans, LA.

A Política Nacional do Meio Ambiente completou 25 anos em 2006. Houve muitos avanços no planejamento ambiental tanto para criação de Unidades de Conservação como para o processo de licenciamento ambiental de atividades de grande porte, por meio do Estudo de Impacto Ambiental e suas decorrências. Por outro lado, em muitos aspectos do planejamento, a fauna foi ignorada ou abordada com superficialidade. Neste trabalho, considera-se a ampla distribuição histórica de felinos na américa do sul e evidencia-se a existência de felinos de grande porte (Puma concolor) e dos pequenos gatos selvagens na região entre as rodovias Fernão Dias e Presidente Dutra no Estado de São Paulo. Evidencia-se, também um mosaico de usos da terra que formam um expressivo corredor para a fauna e embasam a discussão para o necessário avanço das ferramentas de planejamento que ainda carecem de normatizações e parâmetros básicos à conservação de felinos. Propõe-se uma matriz qualitativa de avaliação de impactos ambientais e monitoramento de obras lineares para felinos. / The National Policy of the Environment completed 25 years in 2006. There were several advances in the environmental planning both for the creation of Conservation Units and for the process of environmental licence of far-reaching activities, through Environmental Impact Study and its results. On the other side, in many aspects of the planning, the fauna was ignored or tackled with superficiality. In this work, it is considered the broad historical distribution of the felines in South America and it is showed the existence of big felines (Puma concolor) and small wild cats in the region between the highways Fernão Dias and Presidente Dutra, in the State of São Paulo. It is showed as well a mosaic of land uses that constitutes an important fauna corridor and supports the discussion for the necessary advance of the planning tools that still need standardization and basic parameters for the felines conservation. It is proposed a qualitative evaluation mould for environmental impacts and linear constructions for felines.

A Política Nacional do Meio Ambiente completou 25 anos em 2006. Houve muitos avanços no planejamento ambiental tanto para criação de Unidades de Conservação como para o processo de licenciamento ambiental de atividades de grande porte, por meio do Estudo de Impacto Ambiental e suas decorrências. Por outro lado, em muitos aspectos do planejamento, a fauna foi ignorada ou abordada com superficialidade. Neste trabalho, considera-se a ampla distribuição histórica de felinos na américa do sul e evidencia-se a existência de felinos de grande porte (Puma concolor) e dos pequenos gatos selvagens na região entre as rodovias Fernão Dias e Presidente Dutra no Estado de São Paulo. Evidencia-se, também um mosaico de usos da terra que formam um expressivo corredor para a fauna e embasam a discussão para o necessário avanço das ferramentas de planejamento que ainda carecem de normatizações e parâmetros básicos à conservação de felinos. Propõe-se uma matriz qualitativa de avaliação de impactos ambientais e monitoramento de obras lineares para felinos. / The National Policy of the Environment completed 25 years in 2006. There were several advances in the environmental planning both for the creation of Conservation Units and for the process of environmental licence of far-reaching activities, through Environmental Impact Study and its results. On the other side, in many aspects of the planning, the fauna was ignored or tackled with superficiality. In this work, it is considered the broad historical distribution of the felines in South America and it is showed the existence of big felines (Puma concolor) and small wild cats in the region between the highways Fernão Dias and Presidente Dutra, in the State of São Paulo. It is showed as well a mosaic of land uses that constitutes an important fauna corridor and supports the discussion for the necessary advance of the planning tools that still need standardization and basic parameters for the felines conservation. It is proposed a qualitative evaluation mould for environmental impacts and linear constructions for felines.

Based on the upcoming 2010 World Expo of Shanghai. According to 'moving out' policy of Shanghai government, a large percentage of residents from Shanghai's old downtown area are being moved out to a district on the outskirts of the municipality. In the context of moving out policy and shifting community space of 'Longtang' residents, my research explores how water can be used to forge a new typology for the Xinji residential area in developing Shanghai. The new typology of residential area is defined by a new type of community space. Water, edge and corridor are examined as three main concepts to create this kind of new community space, where residents can be provided with diverse spatial experience and various spatial effects through spatial transformations in and between private and public and diverse programs in a residential area. 'Longtang' is one of the key precedents I am looking at for the purpose of studying water edge conditions and corridor conditions, and to deduce a way to best design hybrid community in the Xinji residential area, which is selected as my research site. It is identified as one of the peripheral node for the moving out policy by Shanghai government? My research, therefore, tries to explore a new typology of Xinji residential area, which can provide both existing residents and 'Longtang' residents with diverse water based community space in the residential area and its context.

Congestion on the road is identified as a severe threat to nations’ economy. To address this problem, in the past the capacity of existing infrastructure is increased by building new roads. But as history has shown, it is not only an expensive and unsustainable, but also not an efficient way of dealing with this problem. Alternatively, by identifying underutilized links, for example, in the form of parallel routes, the already existing infrastructure can often be used more efficient. This thesis focuses on the development of a framework to simulate re-routing incentives to enable an improved travel corridor performance. Thus, the effects of providing traveler information and tendering mometary incentives on a concidor’s traffic flow are investigated. The aim is to show that by changing the route choice behavior of a certain percentage of the fleet, the overall performance of the existing corridor can be increased. By using the microscopic traffic simulation tool VISSIM in combination with dynamic traffic modeling, numerous scenarios are simulated. By gradually increasing the amount of users who get access to the incentive scheme, the impacts of the penetration get analyzed as well. Based on a network stretch located in California, United States, the simulation model is developed. Using this model, three different scenarios are investigated in detail: a No Incident scenario, a Construction Work scenario and an Accident scenario. Finally, a comprehensive analysis of the simulation results takes place. It mainly focuses on the indicator travel time to discuss the impacts on the corridor performance. Interpreting the achieved simulation results, it can be stated that already small penetration rates have the potential for a significant increase of the corridor performance. To be able to optimize the corridor’s performance, free capacity on detours – especially  at bottlenecks like ramps – has to be available. Nevertheless, in case of high penetration rates, straightforward broadcasting of incentives is not an option.

The artificial neural network (ANN) approach has been recognized as a capable technique to model the highly complex and nonlinear problem of travel time prediction. In addition to the nonlinearity, a traffic system is also temporally and spatially dynamic. Addressing the temporal-spatial relationships of a traffic system in the context of neural networks, however, has not received much attention. Furthermore, many of the past studies have not fully explored the inclusion of incident information into the ANN model development, despite that incident might be a major source of prediction degradations. Additionally, directly deriving corridor travel times in a one-step manner raises some intractable problems, such as pairing input-target data, which have not yet been adequately discussed. In this study, the corridor travel time prediction problem has been divided into two stages with the first stage on prediction of the segment travel time and the second stage on corridor travel time aggregation methodologies of the predicted segmental results. To address the dynamic nature of traffic system that are often under the influence of incidents, time delay neural network (TDNN), state-space neural network (SSNN), and an extended state-space neural network (ExtSSNN) that incorporates incident inputs are evaluated for travel time prediction along with a traditional back propagation neural network (BP) and compared with baseline methods based on historical data. In the first stage, the empirical results show that the SSNN and ExtSSNN, which are both trained with Bayesian regulated Levenberg Marquardt algorithm, outperform other models. It is also concluded that the incident information is redundant to the travel time prediction problem with speed and volume data as inputs. In the second stage, the evaluations on the applications of the SSNN model to predict snapshot travel times and experienced travel times are made. The outcomes of these evaluations are satisfactory and the method is found to be practically significant in that it (1) explicitly reconstructs the temporalspatial traffic dynamics in the model, (2) is extendable to arbitrary O-D pairs without complete retraining of the model, and (3) can be used to predict both traveler experiences and system overall conditions.

The population of central Texas is increasing rapidly, and urbanization and suburban development continue amid projections of unprecedented growth to come. How is this affecting the expanses of rich agricultural land and remaining scraps of Blackland Prairie upon which the agricultural industry of east central Texas was built? State Highway 130 is partially complete – providing an urban-area bypass intended to alleviate traffic on I35 between San Marcos and Georgetown. In view of the building of this new transit and development corridor to the east of I35, on the eastern edge of Austin, what can be done to preserve agriculture and native prairie on Austin’s urban fringe? In this PR, I examine this question in terms of two essential components: growth management and land conservation. There are numerous studies on the structures and efficacies of growth management tools and of land conservation strategies, but there is little discussion of the role of growth management in relation specifically to urban and urban-fringe agriculture. I begin with a literature review, surveying the current state of study and practice with regard to growth management and open space & agricultural land conservation. This is followed by a case study of state-level open space conservation policy in Georgia, from which I draw lessons relevant to my case. The next step is to frame the potential management and conservation policies presented win the literature review and case study within the context of local practices, thus narrowing the focus of analysis to the confines of my study area: an approximately 20-mile wide, 58-mile long corridor along a portion of SH130. To gauge the possibilities for management and conservation within the study area, I have produced a matrix of jurisdictions and policy options, and an inventory of vacant land. Using the matrix I analyze, on the one hand, the relevant legal codes available to each jurisdiction, and on the other hand, local attitudes toward growth and agriculture. The land inventory is a graphic presentation – through GIS mapping – of factors critical to the potential preservation of open space. The final operation is to sketch a larger proposal within which this study would fit as a preliminary step. Here I suggest an implementation plan, based on the Envision Central Texas model, and recommend directions for future research. / text

I quantified the bat assemblage associated with a Sonoran Desert riparian corridor at a wildland-urban interface using mist netting (2002-2005) to assess differential spatial and temporal resource use. My capture rate was high (17 species and 961 individuals) considering the aridity of the area; however, landscape complexity of this montane region undoubtedly contributes to foraging opportunities. I found that bats were distributed along the canyon when water was plentiful but their activity was concentrated at isolated pools during dry periods. I also found temporal variation in pool-use by the most frequently captured species. I conducted an acoustic study to measure bat-use between deciduous riparian and Sonoran desertscrub communities. I measured activity levels using number of acoustic call files. I found greater bat foraging in desertscrub and used a multidisciplinary approach to determine why bats might use the more arid environment. All capture data and supporting analyses are included in appendices.