This thesis examines the effect of deforestation on strategies of woodland use and management in Zimbabwe's communal areas. It looks historically at the influences on forest and land use policy and the assumptions and ideologies on which interventions have been founded. The local impact of these policies is analysed through a case study of woodland response to disturbance, the changing role of trees in local livelihoods and modification of tree tenure and usufruct. Forestry in colonial Zimbabwe was much more than a series of value-free technical decisions; for much of its early history it was constrained by the interests of mining capital. Afforestation with exotics was initially part and parcel of a broader inodernisation ideology. The 'woodfuel crisis' was subsequently used to justify the same afforestation policies. Ceritralised institutions and the authority of science have contributed to the devaluation of local understandings and the underappreciation of the dynamism of use strategies. Planning has persistently been based on misunderstandings of savanna ecology and the way it is used. Land use policy in the 1920s and 1930s established the basic layout of the study area and had a lasting and detrimental effect on woodland cover. The institutional isolation of forestry has persisted such that land use policy and its effects are rarely considered a forestry issue. In contrast with state interventions, local strategies for coping with environmental change can be highly effective in resource conservation. Flany changes in resource use, however, are rooted not in physical scarcity but in broader political, economic, and lifestyle changes, and in a desire for modernity. State agents have an increased role in determining woodland usufruct in the study area. There has been a decline in the authority of spirit guardianship of woodlands and an increase in the use of privatised resources.

<p> Along the coastlines of the Hawaiian Islands, there is a valuable and critical resource known for its brackish water habitat &ndash; loko i&lsquo;a (Hawaiian fishponds). They are dynamic systems dependent on the balance between fresh groundwater inputs from uka (uplands) and landward flow of kai (seawater), which all vary depending on the behavior of our climate, including rainfall, tides, and storms. Nutrient-rich groundwater mixing with the seawater at the coast allows for an abundant growth of limu or primary productivity attracting many of Hawaii&rsquo;s favorable native brackish water and herbivorous species. Having an intimate relationship with this natural coastal nursery, Hawaiians effectively modified these coastal habitats into loko i&rsquo;a to provide a sustainable food source for the communities in which they reside. In support of these invaluable resources and practices, this study seeks to understand primary productivity and salinity relationships along the same coastline at Honokea Loko of Waiuli, and Hale o Lono and Wai&amacr;hole/Kapalaho of Honohononui, Hawaii. Weekly water quality monitoring by kiai' loko (fishpond steward) and biweekly water column sampling, salinity in the three loko i&rsquo;a ranged from 3.1 to 18.8 and was significantly different throughout different areas of each pond. Benthic primary productivity experiments, found significantly more growth at higher salinity locations across all sites. Due to these strong correlations, loko i'a communities would greatly benefit from these methodologies to quantify the variability of environmental changes through time and specific impacts of climate phenomena, changes in rainfall and sea level. These factors have the potential to interfere with primary productivity and alter loko i'a systems interactions entirely.</p><p>

Health care education is developing and simulations, in different guises, are gaining increasing attention as a means of overcoming tensions between instructional models and educational objectives. The role of simulations is, however, yet to be fully defined and will be dependent on the actual impact simulations on educational practice. Research need to better understand this impact and contribute to developing simulation practices. There is, therefore, a strong need for research that can balance scientific stringency and practical utility. This presents a challenge in a field that is biased in favor of laboratory experiments where theoretical accounts are also rare. This thesis explores a new theoretical and methodological approach, as a means of meeting this challenge. It draws upon Rose Luckin's Ecology of Resources framework for redesigning learning contexts (2010) and it attempts to explore relations between learning context, learner interactions, and learning outcomes, in order to identify opportunities for the development of educational simulation practice. In researching different types of health care simulations in their own right, arguments have been made that it is necessary to strive for smaller and more useful generalizations. In response to this challenge, this thesis delineates one type of simulation context: collaborative educational computer-assisted simulation (ECAS) in health care education. After reviewing previous research on related topics, a model of this type of context has been developed. Based on this general model, the particular subfield of collaborative radiology in ECAS has been analyzed and researched. Four articles on this topic present empirical contributions that address different relations between context, learner interactions, and learning outcomes in collaborative radiology in ECAS. The first one explores how moving from a static tool to an ECAS changes what learners talk about, how they talk about it, and how they develop during training. The second one explores in more detail relations between the features of ECAS, the content of learner interactions, and the impact on learning. The third one explores how context design impacts peer interaction, and the fourth compares more and less successful groups in order to identify needs and opportunities for development of the learning context. The empirical data are used to discuss relations between learning context, learner interactions, and learning outcomes, and how collaborative scripts may be potentially useful in the development of collaborative ECAS in health care education. Such scripts could support for instance explicit dialogue about relations between context-dependent doing and subject-specific principles, thorough engagement with simulation feedback and inclusion of all simulations participants. A new path for health care simulation research is suggested, including a move beyond laboratory experiments towards dealing with the messiness of actual educational practice, a move beyond universal generalizations towards smaller-scale context considerate and more practically useful generalizations. / Learning Radiology in Simulated Environments

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 375-381).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1994. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 240-254).

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2003. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-102).

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, IL, 2003. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-102).

Thesis (M. Sc. (Zoology and Entomology))--Rhodes University, 2005.

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, IL, 2003. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-102).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2008. / Typescript. CD-ROM contains full thesis, appendix II database and abstract. Includes bibliographical references: p. 169-198.