<p>BACKGROUND: Canada's aging, heterogeneous population presents a challenge with respect to maintaining a sufficient national blood supply. Patterns of donation and correlates of donor data will be identified through analysis of the data.</p> <p>DATA: Geo-coded blood donor and donor clinic data are provided by Canadian Blood Services. Blood donor data is provided for the fiscal year 2006-2007 indicating the total number of donors for each Canadian postal code, excluding the province of Quebec. Potential con-elates of blood donation are selected based on social and economic characteristics, as well as descriptors of city size and geographical location in the urban hierarchy measures of accessibility, and capacity of donor clinics.</p> <p>METHODS: Data is aggregated to n = 3,746 census tracts in 40 Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA) across the country and then to n = 992 census tracts for the Toronto CMA. The number of donors per population in each Canadian census tract is regressed against the set ofpotential donation con-elates. For the Toronto CMA model, the donor count in each census tract is regressed against similar potential correlates.</p> <p>RESULTS:A number of factors are found to influence blood donation in Canada including the propOliion of younger residents, English ability, proportion of people with immigrant status, higher education, and a population-based measure of accessibility. These findings are confirmed when a model involving the city of Toronto is created. The Toronto model achieves similar correlates as the national model with the addition of variables that are unique to the city of Toronto. These unique attributes involve travel, employment, and gender.</p> <p>CONCLUSION: While a number of correlates of blood donation are observed across Canada, important contextual effects across metropolitan areas are highlighted. These contextual effects are supported by the uniqueness ofthe Toronto model's secondary correlates. The thesis concludes by summarizing what these findings contribute to the field of blood donation in Canada. Further mention is also given regarding the role of spatial filters as a tool in regression analysis.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The objective of this thesis is to validate the results of the Integrated Model of Urban LAnd use and Transportation for Environmental analysis (IMULATE), as well as the Integrated Model for Population Aging Consequences on Transportation (IMPACT) in the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) of Hamilton, Ontario. The land use/demographic modules of these two models are validated using observed data from Statistics Canada, while data from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) and the City of Hamilton are used to validate the transportation modules. Statistical, graphical and GIS visualization techniques are incorporated into this validation.</p> <p>This thesis illustrates some sub-modules in IMULATE and IMPACT can work very well, while the predictive ability of others is not as good. IMULATE considers more factors to simulate land use development. It generates accurate simulations of household dynamic using observed data as exogenous input. We used the "fmal demands" for economic sectors as the exogenous input to estimate the employment's distribution. After recalculating the "fmal demands" in its employment location model, the generated employment is also found to be close to the observed value. However, we found that its transportation module was not able to produce accurate predictions of inter-zonal trips and traffic flows over the Hamilton's road network.</p> <p>IMPACT can predict the growth of population by gender and age with good accuracy. The simulation results for males are better than females. The inter-zonal trips generated by IMPACT are found to be much closer to the observed value than the inter-zonal trips generated by IMULATE. However, we found that the simulated trips have lower dispersion across the city than normally observed.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This thesis discusses a longitudinal study of psychosocial effects in a population living within 2 kilometers of the Taro Aggregates Ltd. East Landfill site in Stoney Creek, Ontario. This facility has been the source of longstanding concerns among residents in the surrounding community. The focus of the study is local residents' reappraisal of the landfill over a nine-year period. The theoretical basis for the research lies in the fields of environmental stress and coping, place effects and risk perception. A telephone survey was administered to a random stratified (by distance) sample of households during the decision making process (1996) and five years after the landfill site was constructed and began operation (2002). In-depth interviews were conducted with a sub-set of respondents in 2005 in order to better understand how people act in, and give meaning to, their own lives. The scope of this research is based on the need for additional comparative, as well as longitudinal, studies that measure how individuals and communities respond to the process of making the decision to site a landfill, and how these responses change over time as they live with the landfill. This work is part of an ongoing, multidisciplinary research program designed to determine the impacts of exposure to environmental stressors on human health and well-being and to develop strategies to reduce their adverse effects.</p> <p>Residents' reappraisal of the Taro East Landfill site reveals little change in the frequency of landfill concerns over time, with over half the respondents maintaining concerns about the site in the post-siting process. There was a significant increase in the frequency of health concern, a shift in the nature of the health concern (short-term vs. long-term) and a reduced frequency of daily life effects (perceived/anticipated) and action-focused coping as residents lived with the landfill. While most used a variety of coping strategies to mitigate effects, emotion-focused strategies were used with greater frequency. The results reveal a range of factors that mediate residents' reappraisal of the landfill related to context (e.g., lack of meaningful involvement in the siting process, mismanagement, incidents), composition (e. g., socioeconomic status, dwelling tenure and type) and collective (e.g., distrust, inequity, stigma). These findings imply an ongoing process of reappraisal whereby, for many, latent concerns remain even though they have adapted to the landfill over time. The longitudinal nature of this study, the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches, and the focus on factors affecting the reappraisal of an environmental stressor, are the primary contributions of this research.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Rising post-glacial sea levels since the last glacial maximum have dramatically changed the configuration of coastal areas worldwide. On the western Anatolian coast of Turkey, rising Holocene sea levels and tectonic subsidence have drowned large areas of coastal and terrestrial landscapes that were once occupied by Neolithic peoples. These submerged landscapes have high potential for well-preserved Neolithic sites, but to date few systematic attempts have been made to investigate the prehistoric underwater archaeology. Further exploration for these sites is dependent on an improved understanding of the coastal paleogeography, sea level history and shoreline positions during prehistory.</p> <p>In this study, detailed coastal geoarchaeological investigations were conducted at Liman Tepe/Klazomenai, a long-occupied (Chalco lithic-Roman Age) coastal settlement near Izmir, Turkey, to reconstruct changes in the prehistoric coastal environments and to document coastal impacts associated with the construction of a Hellenistic causeway structure. Detailed sedimentological (lithofacies, grain size, magnetic susceptibility, loss on ignition), geochemical (trace metals) and micropaleontological analysis was conducted on five cores extracted from the Bay of Izmir. Core data were integrated with the results of a detailed marine geophysical survey (bathymetry, side-scan sonar, chirp seismic profiling) to reconstruct the shoreline positions from the Late Neolithic (ca. 4000 BC) to the present.</p> <p>The core results identified five distinct lithostratigraphic units (Units A-E), recording the development of transgressive barrier-lagoonal system prior to ca. 3800 BC and progradation of the coast during a subsequent high-stand phase after ca. 2800 BC. The transgressive barrier-lagoonal system is represented by a fining-upwards sequence of pebbly foreshore deposits (Unit E) overlain by laminated, organic-rich muds deposited in shallow wetland and lagoonal environments (Units C,D). The transition from beach to lagoonal sediments is represented in seismic profiles by a basin-wide, high-amplitude seismic reflector. Mapping of the reflector surface identifies the beach deposits as a linear, northeast-trending beach barrier ridge. ¹⁴C dating of organics from Unit E yielded a Late Neolithic Age (3860 +/- 120 cal BC) for the beach deposits.</p> <p>At the top of the lagoonal sequence a sharp transition to muddy silt lithofacies (Unit B) with abundant <em>Posidonia Oceanica</em> fragments records sediment accumulation with a sheltered embayment formed by construction of a causeway commissioned by Alexander the Great (334 BC). The onset of causeway construction (Phase 3) is indicated by a shift to coarser mean grain size, the appearance of pottery and masonry and abundant olive pits which yielded a ¹⁴C date of 450 ± 70 cal BC, confirming the early Hellenistic age for the causeway. The causeway construction dramatically altered the coastal sediment budget, contributing to accelerated sedimentation and rapid progradation of the coastline. An increase in the abundances of <em>Bolivinid</em> and <em>Rodalinid</em> genera below the causeway construction horizon indicates increasing eutrophication of coastal waters as Archaic populations increased at Klazomenai. The detailed record of changing coastal environments and shoreline configurations obtained through this study provide important baseline data for future underwater archaeological exploration at Liman Tepe/Klazomenai.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p> Forest ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon (C) cycle by exchanging large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) with the atmosphere. Their potential to act as significant sink for atmospheric CO₂ has been recognized and is relevant to current efforts in reducing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. Besides the most important greenhouse gas CO₂, forests also emit and consume methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) as the two other important atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs). To date, few attempts have been made to quantify the net effect of forest GHG exchange on the global warming potential. Furthermore, a better understanding of successional and environmental effects on forest processes is required to improve large scale estimates of forest C and GHG exchange. </p> <p> This thesis examines C dynamics and the exchange of the three major greenhouse gases (CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O) in an age-sequence (7-, 20-, 35-, and 70-years-old as of 2009) of afforested pine forests, in southern Ontario, Canada. The impacts of environmental controls on these GHG exchanges were also evaluated. Forest C exchange was determined for 2003 to 2008 using the eddy-covariance (EC) technique and inventory-based biometric measurements. Soil CH₄ and N₂O measurements were conducted from 2006 to 2007 using the static closed-chamber method. In addition, concentrations and fluxes of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) throughout the vertical profile in forest canopy and soil were determined from 2004 to 2005 using throughfall buckets and lysimeters. </p> <p> During periods without climatic constraints, monthly gross ecosystem productivity (GEP) and ecosystem respiration (RE) corrected for differences in site index increased with stand age, whereas monthly net ecosystem productivity (NEP) peaked at the 35-year-old site. In contrast, during constrained periods (e.g. seasonal drought events), monthly GEP and NEP at the 20-year-old site were higher compared to the 35-year-old site because trees may have benefited from sustained availability of soil water in deeper layers. This study further demonstrates that differences in site quality may affect the interpretation of age-related C flux dynamics in chronosequence and synthesis studies (Chapter 2). </p> <p> The temperature-RE relationship was an important control on daily NEP anomalies under optimum growing conditions, whereas constrains on GEP primarily determined NEP during environmentally constrained periods. Furthermore, effects from single environmental variable constrains on NEP anomalies were enhanced as well as outbalanced under multiple environmental variable constrains. The results further indicate that future changes in temperature and precipitation patterns towards drier and warmer conditions as well as greater cloud cover may result in reduced C sequestration potentials in these temperate pine forests (Chapter 3). </p> <p> Early summer drought and heat events in 2005 caused NEP to decrease by approximately 100 g C m⁻² y⁻¹ at each site compared to the other years. This decrease was primarily driven by a decrease in photosynthesis, while the effect of these events on ecosystem respiration was small. Overall, for the years 2003-2007, annual NEP was 219, 155, 36, 148, and 120 g C m⁻² y⁻¹ at the 68-year-old site, 666, 318, 346, 511 and 366 g C m⁻² y⁻¹ at the 33-year-old site, 768, 885, 684, 708 and 826 g C m⁻² y⁻¹ at the 18-year-old site, and-18, 145, 125, 34 and 164 g C m⁻² y⁻¹ at the 5-year-old seedling site, respectively (negative numbers indicating net C source (Chapter 4). </p> <p> Four-year mean values of biometric NEP_(B) and EC-based NEP_(EC) were similar at the 7-year-old seedling (77 and 66 g C m⁻² y⁻¹) and the 70-year-old mature site (135 and 124 g C m⁻² y⁻¹), but differed considerably at the 20-year-old (439 and 736 g C m⁻² y⁻¹) and the 35-year-old sites (170 and 392 g C m⁻² y⁻¹). Integrating NEP across the age-sequence resulted in a total net C sequestration of 137 and 229 t C ha⁻¹ over the initial 70 years as estimated by the biometric and EC method, respectively. The total ecosystem C pool at the 70-year-old site suggested an accumulation of 160 t C ha⁻¹. These three estimates resulted in a mean C sequestration of 175 ± 48 t C ha⁻¹ (Chapter 5). </p> <p> For both CH₄ and N₂O, we observed uptake and emission ranging from -160 to 245 μg CH₄ m⁻² hour⁻¹ and -52 to 21 μg N₂O m⁻² hour⁻¹, respectively (negative values indicate net uptake). Mean N₂O fluxes from mid-April to mid-December across the 7-, 20-, 35-, 70-years old stands were -3.7, 1.5, -2.2, and-7.6 μg N₂O m⁻² hour⁻¹, without age-related pattern, whereas the uptake rates of CH₄ increased with stand age from 6.4 to -7.9, -10.8, and-23.3 μg CH₄ m⁻² hour⁻¹, respectively. For the same period, the combined contribution of CH₄ and N₂O exchanges to the global warming potential (GWP) calculated from net ecosystem exchange of CO₂ and aggregated forest floor exchanges of CH₄ and N₂O was on average <4% (Chapter 6). </p> <p> DOC concentration in forest floor leachates was positively correlated to stand age, aboveground biomass and forest floor carbon pools. From the period of Mid-April to December, DOC fluxes via precipitation, throughfall, and leaching through forest floor and Ah-horizon were in the range of ~1 to 2, 2 to 4, 0.5 to 3.5, and 0.1 to 2 g DOC m⁻², respectively. DOC export from the forest ecosystem during that period through infiltration and groundwater discharge decreased with increasing stand age from ~7 to 4, 3, and 2 g DOC m⁻² (Chapter 7). </p> <p> This thesis improved our understanding of C and GHG exchange dynamics and their environmental, physical, and physiological controls in forest ecosystems. This study will also contribute to efforts being made to better predict future forest C and GHG dynamics and their feedbacks on climate under changing environmental conditions. <p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)