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In the past few decades, wildfires have increased in size and severity in the Southwest and across the western US. These recent trends in fire behavior are a drastic change in arid, ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests of the Southwest compared with tree-ring records of fire history for the past ~ 400 years. This study presents a late Holocene record (~ 3,000 years) of fire history and related changes in fire regimes with climate variability over annual to multi-decadal time scales. Tree-ring and alluvial-sediment sampling sites were paired in four small, tributary basins located in the western San Juan Mountains of Colorado. In our study sites, tree-ring records show that fire return intervals were longer and fire behavior was more severe on the north-facing slopes with relatively dense mixed conifer stands. Increased fire barriers and steep topography decreased the fire frequency and extent relative to gentle terrain elsewhere in the range and leading to a lack of synchrony among fire years in different parts of the study area. The alluvial-sediment record showed four peaks in high-severity fire activity over the past 3,000 years ranging between 200 - 400 years in length. The timing of peaks coincided with decadal-length drought episodes and were often preceded by multiple decades of above average winter precipitation. The sampling of alluvial-sediment and tree-ring data allowed for site-level comparisons between recent alluvial deposits and specific fire years interpreted from the tree-ring records. We found good correspondence between the type of fire-related sediment deposit (i.e. geomorphic response) in the alluvial record and the extent of mixed and high-severity fire estimated from the tree-ring record, and the correspondence was well-supported by the debris flow probability model results. The two paleofire data tend to represent particular components of the historical fire regime, with alluvial-sediments biased towards infrequent, high-severity events during recent millennia, and the tree-ring record biased toward lower severity fires during recent centuries. The combined analyses of different paleofire proxy types in the same study sites, therefore, can enhance and expand our understanding of fire and climate history beyond what is possible with either proxy alone.

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No description available.

Historical events are framed by the actors of the time and then re-framed by subsequent historians and the public. This thesis examines the historiography of the San Juan Island Dispute, 1853-1871, known colloquially in the twentieth century as the “Pig War.” In 1859, after an American settler on San Juan shot a pig owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company, the American military and the British Royal Navy met in a tense stand-off resulting in a twelve year joint-military occupation of the island. This conflict was the last border dispute between the two nations. Following World War II, a message of peace became the dominant trope of histories written about the “Pig War.” The term itself has come to represent this overarching theme. With documents from the dispute, such as colonial despatches, official correspondence and newspaper editorials, this thesis considers how the event was framed at the time; and employing semiotics as a technique for discourse analysis, it examines how the “war” was re-framed in the twentieth century. The thesis follows Alfred Young’s research on antebellum America’s commemoration of the “Boston Tea Party,” with its message appropriated by politicians, merging history and myth. The “Pig War” occupies similar terrain as the reconceptualization of the event embodies its own message of a unique identity for the Pacific Northwest, associated with the 49th parallel as the world’s longest, most peaceful, “undefended” border. / Graduate / 2015-04-26 / 0578 / 0334 / 0337 / lyallg@uvic.ca

This study applies Bayesian inversion to receiver functions (RF) to estimate local shear wave velocity (Vs) structure of the crust and upper mantle beneath two ocean bottom seismometers (OBS) offshore, and two land-based seismometers onshore Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. We use passive seismic data recorded on NC89, a permanent NEPTUNE (North-east Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments) OBS located on the continental slope, and on a temporary autonomous KECK foundation OBS, KEBB, located at the Endeavour segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge (JdFR). The two land based seismometers (OZB and PGC) are located on Vancouver Island and are part of the Canadian National Seismograph Network (CNSN). The introduction of NEPTUNE has helped to fill a gap in offshore seismic monitoring, however; due to high noise levels and a relatively short deployment time, few useful events have been recorded (to date) for RF analysis. In this study, we utilize three-component, broadband recordings of large (M6+), distant (30 -100 degrees) earthquakes to compute RFs due to locally generated P (compressional) to S (shear) converted waves. RFs are then inverted using a non-linear Bayesian approach which yields optimal profiles of Vs, Vp (compressional wave velocity), and strike and dip angles, as well as rigorous uncertainty estimates for these parameters. Near the JdFR a thin sediment layer (<1 km) is resolved overlying a 2 km thick oceanic crust. The crust contains a large velocity contrast at the depth of an expected axial magma chamber. The oceanic crust thickens to 10 km at the continental slope where it is overlain by 5 km of sediments. At the coastal station (OZB) a low velocity zone is imaged at 16 km depth dipping approximately 12 degrees NE. Evidence for this low velocity zone is also seen beneath southern Vancouver Island (PGC) at a depth consistent with previous studies. Determining such models at a number of locations (from the spreading ridge to the coast) provides new information regarding local structure and can aid in seismic hazard analysis. / Graduate

No hay en la línea de la literatura argentina consagrada por el reconocimiento de los lectores expertos y de los protocolos de lectura académicos un proyecto literario que esté al mismo tiempo atraído por el realismo y sea tan grande (tomando en cuenta el volumen de la obra) como el de Saer y el de Aira. Es justamente en la emergencia de esa extensión entendida como duración (la duración de una escritura) donde el realismo puede hallar un lugar, pero además, es en la invención de una calidad del tiempo que esa obra durativa hace posible como forma, que pueden configurarse juntos el realismo y la proyección de una gran obra. Este proyecto se propone identificar las particularidades de la presencia del realismo en la obra de Juan José Saer y César Aira, destacando en particular la configuración de las teorías y formas del concepto de tiempo como regulador de la forma para elucidar cuánto de esa configuración temporal, cuánto de esa invención de un modo de anotar el tiempo, define el proyecto literario de los dos autores y posibilita la invención de grandes obras.

The symbolism of the heavenly, represented in the Temple of Jerusalem, has inspired diverse interpretations of both mystical and archaeological type. The reconstruction by the Jesuit, Juan Bautista Villalpando (1552--1608), which took place amidst hermetic teachings, vitruvian norms, and in a religious Spain, merges all these aspects into a harmonious order that spawns a model of perfect architecture as well as the consummate religious edifice. In this vision of the Temple, deciphered from the prophet Ezechiel's abstract and messianic description, the ideal order of divine creation is drawn. Villalpando's drawings and explanations aim to reconcile the sublime in geometry with matter, therefore imitating divine creation while not ceasing to be an imaginative, worldly interpretation. According to Villalpando, in Ezechiel's vision, the spiritual aspect of the Temple of Salomon, God revealed the future Church. After the incarnation of Christ, this Church can be a reality. Villalpando's conception, which was embodied in the palace and monastery of El Escorial, represents the built ideal.

Zugl.: Trier, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2005