<p> The disappointing economic performance of Nigerian, Ghanaian, and the Togolese economies, coupled with the globalization of activities in the world economy, have forced them to look outward for development strategies. Many studies have been attempted to estimate the impact of natural resources on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows around the world, but very few have been focused on Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. This study departed from previous studies and employed a gravity-type framework to explicitly explore the question of whether natural resource endowments was a more relevant factor that explained the FDI&rsquo;s attraction to the countries under study. The study also included other FDI determinants. Accordingly, this study served to investigate whether natural resources attracted FDI inflows in Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. Using time series data from 1980&ndash;2015, the study was conducted to answer two research questions. Two models were established utilizing the pooled ordinary least square method to estimate the coefficients of the models. Preliminary results were obtained using both the random effect and fixed effect models. The results of the study yielded by both techniques registered natural resources to be significant as a driven factor for FDI inflows to the countries under review. Other factors such as GDP per capita, trade openness, political stability, and economic liberalization were also found to be significant in FDI determination. </p><p>

<p> A large body of literature finds a negative relationship between natural resource abundance and economic efficiency. With few notable exceptions, this literature does not account for variations in the ownership and control of the resources. Through an analytical interpretation of results from a game-theoretic political economy model, this study examines how economic rents, the opportunity cost of firms, potential cost or market access advantages of the private sector and time preferences of politicians combine to affect a politician&rsquo;s preferences for ownership and control of a non-renewable resource. I find that the resulting choice of ownership type, public or private, is context-specific and that no generalisations can be made: among other factors politicians will consider the size of the resource, expected price paths, whether the private sector has a cost or market access advantage over the state when making its decision, prices and the degree to which the government holds a non-controlling equity stake in the firm. With respect to the efficiency of public versus private ownership, I find that either model can be efficient and that the result is driven mainly by: (i) the differences in time preferences between politicians, the private sector and the social optimum; and (ii) the degree to which the private sector holds a non-appropriable competitive advantage over the government. The model provides a rich and nuanced interpretation of the incentives governments face in making ownership decisions over non-renewable resources. The results act as a reminder to advisers to take into consideration country specifics when making recommendations to governments about which forms of ownership and control lead to a more efficient outcome. Results are corroborated by observations in empirical literature and the model&rsquo;s explanatory power is highlighted through a range of country case studies.</p><p>

<p> Reservoirs throughout the country exhibit degraded shorelines and simplified littoral habitats because of aging. This study evaluated the establishment of agricultural plantings on reservoir mudflats and the effectiveness of supplemental brush pile structures in providing recruitment habitat for juvenile fish. The mudflats of Enid Reservoir, Mississippi were seeded during the winter drawdown in October of 2016 and 2017 with agricultural plantings. Monitoring of plantings found grasses performed best in terms of establishment and providing potential fish habitat. During Summer 2017 brush piles and control sites, without brush, were sampled in Enid Reservoir using rotenone to evaluate juvenile fish use. Juvenile fish exhibited greater abundances and larger sizes, on average, in brush pile sites. Larger brush piles placed in shallower water provided the greatest benefit to juvenile fish.</p><p>

abstract: In riparian ecosystems, reptiles and amphibians are good indicators of environmental conditions. Herpetofauna have been linked to specific microhabitat characteristics, microclimates, and water resources in riparian forests. My objective was to relate herpetofauna abundance to changes in riparian habitat along the Virgin River caused by the Tamarix biological control agent, Diorhabda carinulata, and riparian restoration. During 2013 and 2014, vegetation and herpetofauna were monitored at 21 riparian locations along the Virgin River via trapping and visual encounter surveys. Study sites were divided into four stand types based on density and percent cover of dominant trees (Tamarix, Prosopis, Populus, and Salix) and presence of restoration activities: Tam, Tam-Pros, Tam-Pop/Sal, and Restored Tam-Pop/Sal. Restoration activities consisted of mechanical removal of non-native trees, transplanting native trees, and introduction of water flow. All sites were affected by biological control. I predicted that herpetofauna abundance would vary between stand types and that herpetofauna abundance would be greatest in Restored Tam-Pop/Sal sites due to increased habitat openness and variation following restoration efforts. Results from trapping indicated that Restored Tam-Pop/Sal sites had three times more total lizard and eight times more Sceloporus uniformis captures than other stand types. Anaxyrus woodhousii abundance was greatest in Tam-Pop/Sal and Restored Tam-Pop/Sal sites. Visual encounter surveys indicated that herpetofauna abundance was greatest in the Restored Tam-Pop/Sal site compared to the adjacent Unrestored Tam-Pop/Sal site. Habitat variables were reduced to six components using a principle component analysis and significant differences were detected among stand types. Restored Tam-Pop/Sal sites were most similar to Tam-Pop/Sal sites. S. uniformis were positively associated with large woody debris and high densities of Populus, Salix, and large diameter Prosopis. Restored Tam-Pop/Sal sites likely supported higher abundances of herpetofauna, as these areas exhibited greater habitat heterogeneity. Restoration activities created a mosaic habitat by reducing canopy cover and increasing native tree density and surface water. Natural resource managers should consider implementing additional restoration efforts following biological control when attempting to restore riparian areas dominated by Tamarix and other non-native trees. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Applied Biological Sciences 2014

<p> Understanding survival and breeding season length of game birds are important for effective management and conservation. By determining the variables that drive survival and recovery rates for white-winged doves (<i>Zenaida asiatica</i>), I can offer management implications to agencies across their range. There is currently little knowledge about white-winged dove molting and hatching chronology. The objectives of this study were to: 1) investigate annual survival and recovery rates of white-winged doves, 2) determine intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing them, 3) determine AHY primary feather molt rate and the factors that influence molt rate and initiation, and 4) describe hatch chronology and determine the factors that influence hatching. To understand what influences annual survival and recovery, I examined subpopulation, climate variables, urbanization characteristics, molt, and band type as covariates. I used the Brownie approach in the RMark package of R to compare annual survival and recovery models and generate estimates. I used Underhill and Zucchini models in the Moult package of R to determine AHY primary feather molt rate and the best predictors of molt rate and initiation. I analyzed molt scores of HY doves recorded during annual banding using GLMs in R to determine the factors that influence hatching. I used AIC to select the most parsimonious models for each <i>a priori</i> candidate set. I analyzed 71,675 bands, of which, 3,086 were recovered from 2007 &ndash; 2016. My most supported model influencing survival and recovery was [<i>S</i>(age class x urban intensity) <i>f</i>(age class X MRPP)]. Average AHY primary molt rate across Texas was 13.21 &plusmn; 0.93 days. MRPP subpopulation + Year was the most supported model influencing AHY primary molt rate, AHY molt initiation, and hatch date. Within my sample, 95% of AHY white-winged doves began molting from 7 April to 8 July and completed molt 17 August to 17 November. White-winged doves hatched as early as 6 January and as late as 27 July, with 95% of all hatching occurring between 22 March and 18 June and peaking at 5 May. Urban intensity was an important variable influencing annual survival, which is expected for such an urbanized species. MRPP subpopulations influenced vital rates and should be considered for future harvest management. </p><p>

<p> This research is composed of three essays. It highlights the driving factors of land conversion and crop acreage response focusing on North Dakota agriculture and estimates the benefits of conservation land measures at west central South Dakota watershed. The major questions that are addressed here are how and why agricultural producers decide among different land use choices, crop selection, and land conservation measures and how their decision vary over time? The first essay examines the long run land conversion trend interconnected with change in crop, oil, and ethanol prices, climate and renewable fuel policy mandates. Data are obtained from Cropland Data Layer from 1997 to 2015 period of National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) at the USDA. The first essay employs a Seemingly Unrelated Tobit Regression approach to better understand the connection between land conversion and crop prices, biofuel policies, biophysical environment. Key findings indicate land-use conversion from grassland to cropland is relatively higher across the ND counties. </p><p> The second essay is designed to investigate the relationship between crop acreage response and socio-economic and environmental drivers. We use prices for crude oil, planted acres of major crops (corn, wheat, soybean, hay) and prices from the period of 1990 to 2015. This essay focuses on corn acreage response due to crop prices, energy policies, climate and other socio-economic factors using a Fixed Effect parameter framework. </p><p> The final essay estimates environmental benefits due to adoption of conservation practices. In other words, it analyzes the economic and environmental benefits of implemented conservation practices at Bad River watershed in South Dakota using an integrated framework. For example, in an article in the Global Journal of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development (2016), a Benefit Cost Analysis model is utilized to assess soil conservation benefits and evaluate economic impacts of conservation measures at a watershed scale. The economic analysis includes estimation of benefit cost ratio, annual rate of return of conservation practices. Key findings suggest that benefit value of sediment reduction average $2.13 per ton expressed in constant (year = 2000) dollars and the ratio of benefits to costs is greater than 1.</p><p>

<p> Plant populations experience both spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity, and their strategies for coping with environmental heterogeneity are shaped by their inability to move in response to unfavorable conditions. In addition, human induced land-use change, including changes in grazing regimes and shorter fire-return intervals, has become increasingly common as a source of environmental heterogeneity experienced by plant populations. This research focuses on how native Great Basin plants respond to environmental heterogeneity, studying three stages of plant life-histories: seed germination, seed banks, and mature plants. My dissertation sought to: 1) identify relationships between climate variability and population-level variation in germination strategies of arid land forbs, 2) use occurrence records from herbaria to compare the climate niches for a group of arid land forbs, and 3) investigate the relationship between disturbance history and seed bank dynamics in sagebrush steppe communities. </p><p> The second chapter examines the similarities and differences between the climate niches and the geographic distributions of a set of co-occurring understory forbs found in sagebrush steppe systems. We used distribution models of the potential habitat for our species to estimate the range size, niche breadth, and geographic overlaps between our species. Next, we used model results to identify climate variables most predictive of the distributions of the individual species. Lastly, we compared the mean and variability for precipitation and temperature across known occurrence locations for each species to assess similarities and differences in climate characteristics where these species grow. We found that species varied in their predicted area of occupancy, niche breadth, and the climate characteristics most predictive of their suitable habitat. Only two of the ten species shared a comparable climate niche. This work demonstrated that herbarium records can be used to estimate climate preferences and potential habitat for understudied species. </p><p> The third chapter investigates seed bank dynamics in a Great Basin sagebrush steppe system, comparing sites that differ in their disturbance history. We asked whether shrub cover, ground cover, climate, or disturbance history (fire and grazing) were predictive of the seed densities in the soil, the diversity of native and introduced species, the presence of rare species, and similarity between the above and below-ground species composition. We found that common measures of fire history and grazing use may be overly coarse for predicting the effects of disturbance on seed bank dynamics. We also found that shrub cover was highly predictive of the seed bank dynamics in this system. Shrub cover of early seral shrub species was predictive of patterns consistent with moderate disturbance or recovery from disturbance within the above and below-ground plant community, while increasing cover of later seral species, such as <i>Artemisia tridentata,</i> produced patterns indicating a longer time since disturbance. </p><p> The fourth chapter asks how mean climate and climate variation at individual sites and across a species&rsquo; range affects the specialist-generalist spectrum of germination strategies exhibited by ten arid land forbs. We investigated these relationships using climate data for the western United States, occurrence records from herbaria, and germination trials with field-collected seeds. We found that nine out of ten species exhibited population-level variation in germination, and that generalist strategies were associated with higher spatial variation in actual evapotranspiration at a local scale and higher variation in available water in the spring and annual precipitation at a range-wide scale.</p><p>

<p> The primary goal of this research is to advance methods for deriving fine-grained, scalable, wildland fuels attributes in 3-dimensions using terrestrial and airborne laser scanning technology. It is fundamentally a remote sensing research endeavor applied to the problem of fuels characterization. Advancements in laser scanning are beginning to have significant impacts on a range of modeling frameworks in fire research, especially those utilizing 3-dimensional data and benefiting from efficient data scaling. The pairing of laser scanning and fire modeling is enabling advances in understanding how fuels variability modulates fire behavior and effects. </p><p> This dissertation details the development of methods and techniques to characterize and quantify surface fuelbeds using both terrestrial and airborne laser scanning. The primary study site is Eglin Airforce Base, Florida, USA, which provides a range of fuel types and conditions in a fire-adapted landscape along with the multi-disciplinary expertise, logistical support, and prescribed fire necessary for detailed characterization of fire as a physical process. Chapter 1 provides a research overview and discusses the state of fuels science and the related needs for highly resolved fuels data in the southeastern United States. Chapter 2, describes the use of terrestrial laser scanning for sampling fuels at multiple scales and provides analysis of the spatial accuracy of fuelbed models in 3-D. Chapter 3 describes the development of a voxel-based occupied volume method for predicting fuel mass. Results are used to inform prediction of landscape-scale fuel load using airborne laser scanning metrics as well as to predict post-fire fuel consumption. Chapter 4 introduces a novel fuel simulation approach which produces spatially explicit, statistically-defensible estimates of fuel properties and demonstrates a pathway for resampling observed data. This method also can be directly compared to terrestrial laser scanning data to assess how energy interception of the laser pulse affects characterization of the fuelbed. Chapter 5 discusses the contribution of this work to fire science and describes ongoing and future research derived from this work. Chapters 2 and 4 have been published in International Journal of Wildland Fire and Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, respectively, and Chapter 3 is in preparation for publication.</p><p>

<p> Involving a diversity of stakeholders in conservation issues is an important and growing trend in wildlife management. My thesis provides a case study of a collaborative conservation effort in which representatives from sportsmen&rsquo;s and environmental groups came together to advise the Arizona Game and Fish Department in a project to restore bighorn sheep to the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona. These stakeholders formed the Catalina Bighorn Sheep Restoration Advisory Committee to help address the human dimension factors of the project, build public support, and guide project planning and implementation. In addition to participant observation and document analysis informing my study, I surveyed 31 stakeholders both on and off the Advisory Committee and interviewed key Advisory Committee members. All stakeholders were in favor of collaborative conservation. However, there were objections to this particular Advisory Committee for this particular project. Although stakeholders had a diversity of values that informed their beliefs, the Advisory Committee members who took the time to understand the science involved, develop mutual trust and respect for others at the table, and held a strong commitment to the project goals were able to shift deeply held, values-based beliefs and find consensus on contentious project elements. This included agreeing on a mountain lion management plan that called for the killing of mountain lions that preyed on the newly reintroduced bighorn sheep. Stakeholders not on the Advisory Committee did not come to agreement on most elements of the project. This study contributes to the understanding of collaborative conservation efforts by providing a case study of a controversial wildlife conservation project that involved diverse stakeholders who worked together, successfully found consensus, and achieved their main goal of getting bighorn sheep back on the mountain.</p><p>

<p> Interactions between animal populations and their environment form the foundation of wildlife management, and provision of resources that enhance fitness produce effectual management. Hunting is a selective force that shapes behavior and other adaptations of harvested species and may subsequently impact diel habitat use. Moreover, linking habitat use to biological outcomes, such as survival, is needed to evidence habitat suitability because of equivocal relations among population density, habitat correlations, or energy availability to population dynamics. The mallard (<i>Anas platyrhynchos</i>) is among the most coveted and harvested waterfowl in North America and is a migratory species of ecological, economic, and social importance. The Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) is an ancestral and continentally important wintering area for North American mallards despite significant anthropogenic wetland transformation. Through targeted objectives and consequence of soil and water conservation, financial assistance programs have expanded waterfowl habitat on private lands in Mississippi. I radiomarked 265 female mallards and tracked their diel habitat use in winters 2010-2015 to evaluate objectives related to their wintering ecology in the MAV of Mississippi. Specifically, I investigated whether waterfowl hunting influenced use of some habitats during hunting season, the effectiveness of financial assistance programs in providing habitat, and habitat suitability through habitat specific survival rates. Females made greatest use of forested and emergent wetlands diurnally and emergent wetlands and flooded cropland at night. Results suggested that mallards did not avoid flooded cropland or emergent wetlands diurnally during hunting season, but conclusions were complicated by significant use of inviolate sanctuaries. Mallards used numerous incentivized conservation program wetlands, but use was less than public and privately managed wetlands. Among conservation programs, those with large enrollment and a focus on restoration (i.e., Wetlands Reserve Program) were most used by mallards. Apparent survival was independent of diurnal habitat use suggesting that mallards use of wetland complexes leads to their winter survival. Restoration of forested wetlands should be a management focus and easement programs provide such inroads on private lands. Public wetlands are an important source of habitat and inviolate sanctuary should be considered where waterfowl hunting is a predominate activity.</p><p>