The application of systematic conservation decision-making methodologies requires data on the spatial distribution of the elements of biodiversity. When a decision on where to put a protected area to conserve biodiversity must be made at a given time, the decision must be based on the best data available. But, adequate data are often lacking. This thesis examines the use of surrogate measures of biodiversity in conservation decision-making in Guyana, South America. The study looks at different surrogate measures and their influence on the selection of priority biodiversity sites for conservation. Surrogate measures at the ecosystem and species level are examined. The research shows that measures from different hierarchical levels produce different outcomes on the location of sites, however measures at the ecosystem-level appear to capture most of the known species distributions. The thesis examines cross-taxon congruency and shows that the spatial scale of analysis influences patterns of congruency for different taxonomic groups. The influence of spatial scale is also examined for various measures of biodiversity and it is shown that variability of species richness decreases with increased selection unit size. Finally, an index of vulnerability is used to prioritise conservation of sites in Guyana based on urgency, which is defined by two different threats: agriculture and forestry. This thesis adopts a conceptual framework based on data-driven, efficient, flexible and transparent methodologies and uses it to demonstrate how a network of protected areas might be established in Guyana that uses the most comprehensive data available on biodiversity. The thesis concludes by presenting a protocol for conservation decision-making that incorporates some of the theoretical principles identified by this work as important for measuring biodiversity and planning a protected area network.

"Sayling, Stories from the Mothership" is a collection of ethnographic fictions ? short stories ? adapted from notes, archival materials, and interviews compiled over a year of geographic fieldwork in southwestern Nigeria. Touching on a wide range of themes, from domesticity to internet fraud, the stories explore the interface of occult violence and youth politics in the contemporary period. They are connected through overlapping characters and through their relationships to a central geography: the University of Ibadan (UI), Nigeria?s oldest and most prestigious institute of higher education and the site of origin for the nation?s first campus ?cult?: the Pyrates Confraternity. The collection is, in essence, a character study of Nigerian campus cultism, itself. The stories are organized into three sections that can be mapped onto a ritual landscape: the stages of initiation, participation, and renunciation serve to link diverse voices and life stories. The dissertation is framed by a Preface and Epilogue that explore issues of race, representation, and reflexivity, themes that are important to a project engaging with living memories of contemporary violence. A critical prologue and footnotes throughout serve to connect the creative core of this work to larger academic, literary, and ethnographic contexts. An appendix features maps that highlight spaces and dates important to the stories as well as four original interview ?transcripts?, semi-fictionalised records that provide both additional ethnographic detail and evidence of methodology.

Despite its relatively small land mass (approximately 245 000 sq km), the UK is now home to close to 61 million people (Office of National Statistics, 2009). This high population density (243 per km2), aggregated in major cities, leaves the remaining land area, under great stress to produce food and housing and recreation opportunities for the country’s ever increasing population. The principle of ‘right of way’, allowing walkers to cross privately owned land on paths or tracks, totalling about 140,000 miles (225,000km) makes recreation in Britain unique. In the mosaic of the English countryside, linear features (such as field boundaries, woodland edges and streams) are often the natural route of public rights of way. The importance of field boundaries to wildlife within the agricultural landscape, has been recognised for several years. Disturbance by public access and recreation is another potential source of detriment to farmland wildlife, and one that is noticeably absent from current research. As managers consider how to limit impacts, they are faced with difficult decisions that affect countryside users, landowners and biodiversity. A call by authors for better integrated social and ecological research regarding recreation impacts has been heard in recent years. This study takes a holistic approach to this challenge utilizing a questionnaire survey of farmers/landowners, recreational groups and members of the public in the Midland counties of England to identify areas of conflict between recreational users and identify areas current management that could be improved. Disturbance to wildlife and damage to tracks from ‘trampling’ were two topics commonly identified as areas of concern to landowners, recreational groups and the general public. Study two attempts to account for the differences in diversity, abundance and spatial distribution of farmland birds along a disturbance gradient (footpath). No significant difference between bird abundance or species richness on transects following public rights of way and control transects was found in this study, suggesting that presence of public rights of way with ‘low’ recreational disturbance does not impact on the abundance of farmland birds in lowland England. Study three investigates an important consideration in management of recreation and access - the durability or vulnerability of a vegetation type to activity. Low resistance to four studied activities (All Terrain Vehicles, horse & rider, walker and mountain bike), was exhibited by MG7 grassland in this study; all four activity types showing a 50% cover loss at 40 passes or less. The low resistance of grassland to trampling could have implications for management since areas of disturbance become obvious with just a few passes – these areas will tend to attract more use, and therefore lead to trail formation. In the case of Rights of Way that follow an obvious route such as a field boundary are less likely to have issues with be a problem. ROW without an obvious route to follow (through pasture or grassland) or physical boundary (hedge or crop edge) to guide the trail user wandering from the intended trail and possible formation of secondary trails could occur. This potential problem argues for the use good signage to avoid trail users losing their way from the intended route. The results of the three studies were drawn together in the final chapter to formulate suggestions for management of public access and recreation in lowland farmland.

Health behaviors are triggered and reinforced by a system of environmental cues that only dimly impact conscious awareness. When people try to change their eating habits, they often struggle to break out of the self-defeating scripts that keep them entrenched in undesirable behavioral patterns and fail to take into account the environmental cues that undermine their efforts. By redesigning their personal environments, people can facilitate their own behavior change to promote wellness. This thesis explores the ways in which individuals can redesign their everyday personal environments, from kitchens to desks to cars, to disrupt unhealthy patterns and create positive cues to support their desired behavioral transformation. Research conducted through literature review, surveys, interviews, journals, and generative modeling reveals needs for personalized wellness education, design inspiration, guidance that promotes self-efficacy, and long-term support for prioritizing and managing environmental and behavioral redesign. A proposed web-based tool called Seeds of Health provides an adaptive framework for personal wellness transformation in an iterative, four-phase process: (1) exploration and assessment, (2) planning and preparation, (3) practice and tracking, and (4) reflection and adjustment. The tool is intended to serve as a personal wellness guide, planning tool, and evolving record of an individual’s behavioral and environment changes.

In this thesis, the work of Serge Moscovici on the human history of nature is made relevant to his theory of social representations. This theoretical synthesis breaks away both from the realist assumption of a given, immutable and non-socialised nature, and from the individualist conceptualisations of man-environment relations which still dominate environmental, ecological and social psychology. It is argued that social representations are not solely the concern of epistemology; they have ontological correlates and are involved in the social construction on nature. The empirical study investigates how social representations of nature functioned in Shetland - a society which combines traditional and late modern features - in the wake of the Braer oil spill in January 1993. The findings are based on the qualitative analysis of 17 individual interviews, five small group discussions, 375 articles from the newspaper The Shetland Times, the transcript of a public debate on the Cost of the Braer for Shetland and, more generally, participant observation. The analysis reveals the synchronic existence of three distinct, yet interrelated, social representations of nature: organic, mechanistic and cybernetic. Each of them is intrinsically related to a particular sense of identity, mode of knowledge, and mode of relations to nature. "Real Shetlanders" hold predominantly organic representations, whereby nature constitutes a repository of their history, a definer of their identity as a marginal but resilient community. It is known through direct engagement and participation in a life world. By contrast, "Sooth-Moothers" (outsiders) hold mechanistic and/or cybernetic representations which rest upon some universal, abstract knowledge of the systemic properties of "the environment". Their relations to nature oscillate between domination, mastery and protection. However, the imperatives facing the community, together with constant exchanges of information via the media, blur the boundaries between representations.

The empirical focus for this thesis research is Toronto, Canada where four case study sites are investigated and fifty-seven semi-structured interviews conducted with a range of actors both directly and indirectly involved in the creation of New Urbanist-inspired development projects. Two of the sample projects are situated in greenfield locations outside the administrative boundary of the City of Toronto, and two are situated in brownfield locations on formerly developed lands, both within the urban core of the City of Toronto. The contrasting contexts of the study units have been purposefully selected to explore the possibility of multi-factor causality involving contrasts of place, process, time, and social interaction. Underpinning this empirical research is the contention that the structures of provision model provides a useful approach for framing housing production research. However, it is argued that the evaluative power of this approach is limited by its inability to adequately account for how and why the New Urbanist form of provision has emerged, been legitimised, and normalised as 'best practice' within Toronto. In an unorthodox move, the final chapter of this thesis takes the level of theorisation enabled via the empirical framework of the structures of provision a step further to address this shortcoming. This is done by applying a 'rationalities' perspective to the investigation of how and why New Urbanism has become such a powerful force within Toronto's development cultures.

The sites and settings of structured youth work have been a neglected sphere of study in contemporary human geography. This thesis addresses this silence through an examination of The Boys’ Brigade – a voluntary Christian uniformed youth work movement. Limited in geographic scope to Scotland, the thesis draws upon a multiple-methods research strategy comprising: a mail-based questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and a period of participant observation, incorporating participatory approaches with boys. Resting upon Foucouldian theoretical foundations, and written with audiences both within and without academia in mind, the thesis argues that a failure to appreciate the spatialities of structured youth work settings invariably results in partial accounts of both the motives underpinning their voluntary provision by adults’ and boys’ participation in them. More specifically, it suggests that the spaces of structured youth work are realised through small-scale processes of negotiation between boys and adults that stabilise a shared spatio-temporal regime – a structure – through which youth work is conducted by both adults and boys. It contends that it is space itself, and particularly its purposive ordering, that is both enlisted and resisted to achieve this fleeting stabilisation with its attendant disciplinary and developmental ends. In so doing the thesis delivers an analytical framework through which other spaces of structured youth work can be read that, by remaining alert to the interweaving of the geographies of voluntary provision and participation, neither overplays adults’ nor downplays young people’s agency in their creation.

Thesis (Ph. D. - Anthropology)--University of Arizona. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 317-339).

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007. / Vita. Appendices: leaves 74-84. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-92).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: p. 351-382.