Forests cover a large portion of the global land area and provide critical resources such as timber, food, and medicine in addition to playing a significant role in the global carbon cycle. As such, sustainable forest management practices are required to balance forest economies and climate change mitigation with other non-timber objectives. A key aspect of many sustainable forest management programs is forest monitoring, for which technological and methodological development has led to enhanced forest inventory (EFI) methods, many of which rely on remote sensing data from high-resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and optical imagery. However, to date, current applications of EFI methods have mostly focused on timber attributes with limited research on non-timber attributes or analyses regarding multi-temporal monitoring, method scaling, or method transferability. The objective of this thesis is to expand applications of EFIs in monitoring and analysis through two distinct studies, first evaluating the utility of LiDAR-based EFI methods in multi-temporal silvicultural treatment assessment and secondly in the pre-harvest estimation of merchantable wood and non-merchantable wood left as logging residues. The first study evaluates a process that expands the sampling of fertilization treatment effects on forest stands to the wider treatment area by utilizing paired LiDAR blocks made up of raster cell estimates from a multi-temporal area-based model. Results showed promise for detecting treatment impacts on stand volume, biomass, and height and highlights the potential for the methods to be used as a means to rapidly expand analysis from sample plots to the entire treatment area. The second study focuses on the use of a hybrid area-based and individual tree EFI approach to model merchantable and non-merchantable forest wood volumes while exploring the scalability of these models to harvest blocks and the transferability to additional blocks without prior training. Results from this study indicated that models for both volume attributes are successfully scalable and transferable to harvest blocks. Overall, the research results presented in this thesis demonstrate the potential of enhanced forest inventory methods for the monitoring and assessment of timber attributes, such as wood volume or biomass, as well as alternative attributes, such as stand height, or non-merchantable wood volume, over multiple years. This work further demonstrates the potential for these methods to expand areas of assessment and increase prediction accuracies. / Graduate / 2022-08-17

No description available.

The effect of RU 486 at different concentrations (1, 5, 10, and 20 µg/ml) was studied on sperm-egg interaction in vitro in B6D2Ff mice. The in vitro fertilization rate of mouse ova decreased from 77.0% (control) to 50.0%, 28.7%, and 7.5% in the presence of RU 486 concentrations at 5, 10, and 20 µg/ml medium, respectively (p < 0.001). A concentration of 1 µg/ml did not affect the fertilization rate. A progesterone concentration at equal to or double the concentration RU 486 did not reverse the inhibitory effect of RU 486 on in vitro fertilization, which suggests a progesterone-independent mechanism. Exposure of spermatozoa (for 90 minutes) or ova (for 60 minutes) to RU 486 (20 µg/ml) followed by washing with RU 486-free medium before coincubation did not affect the fertilization rate. The presence or absence of cumulus cells did not change the inhibitory effect of RU 466 (20 µg/ml) on in vitro fertilization. RU 486 at 5 to 20 µg/ml medium was associated with perivitelline polyspermy in nonfertilized ova and enhanced perivitelline polyspermy in fertilized oval.

M.S.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>The experience of infertility and its associated treatments, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), can have a profound impact on the emotional health and well-being of women desiring to become mothers. While researchers have measured the impact of infertility or described the experience and processes related to infertility and its treatment, what remained to be explored was a virtually pre-packaged collection of rich descriptions of the IVF experience as captured in women’s blogs. This discourse analysis sought to describe the blogging practices of women undergoing IVF for treatment of infertility, exploring both the content and function of the IVF blog discourse. Data were collected from the text of seven women’s blogs and resulted in four main functions of the discourse: creation of and connection to a community, emotional support, blogging as therapy, and creation of an IVF resource. Findings suggest that blogging can have a positive impact on the psychosocial consequences experienced by women in fertility treatment. Findings of this study also have methodological implications for researchers considering blogs as a data source in qualitative research.</p> / Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

<p>Validerat; 20111223 (anonymous)</p>

Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) occupies 13 million hectares in the United States and represents a critical component of the global carbon (C) cycle. Forest management alters C dynamics, affecting the C sequestration capacity of a site. Identifying drivers that influence C cycling, quantifying C fluxes, and determining how management alters processes involved in C cycling will allow for an understanding of C sequestration capacity in managed forests. Objectives of the first study included (1) investigating environmental, soil C, root, and stand influences on soil CO2 efflux on the South Carolina coastal plain and (2) quantifying soil CO2 efflux over a rotation in loblolly pine stands located on the South Carolina coastal plain and the Virginia piedmont. In relation to the first objective, temporal variation in soil CO2 efflux was most highly related to soil temperature. Spatial and temporal variability in soil CO2 efflux was weakly related to soil C and root biomass, and not related to coarse woody debris, stand age, stand volume, or site index [Chapter 2]. Soil CO2 efflux was not related to stand age on the South Carolina sites while efflux was positively related to age on the Virginia sites. Cumulative soil C efflux on the South Carolina sites over 20 years is an estimated 278.6 Mg C/ha compared with an estimated 210.9 Mg C/ha on the Virginia sites [Chapter 3]. Objectives of the second study were (1) to investigate short-term effects of fertilization on processes permitting enhanced growth in loblolly pine and (2) to determine the short-term effects of fertilization on autotrophic, heterotrophic, and soil respiration. Major results from the study include the finding that fertilization caused a transient rise in photosynthetic capacity, which paralleled changes in foliar nitrogen. Leaf area accumulation and enhanced growth following fertilization was partly due to enhanced C fixation capacity [Chapter 4]. Fertilization altered the contribution of autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration to total soil CO2 efflux. Enhanced specific root respiration was short-lived while suppressed microbial respiration following fertilization was maintained over the course of the nearly 200-day study. Respiring root biomass growth increased total soil respiration over time [Chapter 5]. / Ph. D.

M.S.