abstract: Mid-Century ranch house architecture and design is significant to the architectural landscape of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. The increasing age of the city's post-WWII properties is creating a need for renovation and rehabilitation, and new technologies have created modern conveniences for today's homeowners, changing interior space plan requirements. These homeowners will need guidance to alter these properties correctly and to preserve the home's essential features. This thesis analyzes the design trends and materials used during the mid-twentieth century, and demonstrates methods for applying them to a current renovation project. The research outlined in this document proves that it is possible to maintain historic integrity, include "Green" design strategies, and apply contemporary technology to a modern ranch renovation. / M.S.D. Architecture 2010

This paper aims to present research carried out at the historical Ruínas da Estância Santa Clara archaeological site, a place located in the rural area of Quaraí / RS, in the Artigas and Uruguay border. The field interventions were done in 2009 and 2011, continuing the Salamanca project developed by the Archaeological Studies and Research Laboratory at the Federal University of Santa Maria, which aims to recover and enhance the archaeological heritage of the city. Aspects of material culture are presented throughout this work which focused on the analysis of chinaware, regarding its consumption meaning. Although the primary purpose of either contemporary or pre-colonial ceramic artifacts is to maintain either solid or liquid waste, they can be endowed with a symbolic characteristic which transcends their original functionality. Would the chinawares have only a functional character? Were they status registering devices? What meaning would they have for those who used them? From the study of the chinawares, we tried to interpret part of the everyday life of that site inhabitants. / Este trabalho visa apresentar as pesquisas realizadas no sítio arqueológico histórico Ruínas da Estância Santa Clara, um estabelecimento rural localizado no município de Quaraí/RS, fronteira com Artigas no Uruguai. As intervenções de campo foram efetivadas no ano de 2009 e 2011, dando continuidade ao projeto Salamanca desenvolvido pelo Laboratório de Estudos e Pesquisas Arqueológicas da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, que visa resgatar e valorizar o patrimônio arqueológico do Município. Os aspectos da cultura material serão apresentados no decorrer do trabalho, sendo que se deteve na análise das louças, buscando seu significado de consumo. Ainda que a finalidade primordial dos artefatos cerâmicos, sejam eles contemporâneos ou pré-coloniais, seja conter resíduos sólidos ou líquidos, eles podem ser dotados de uma carga simbólica que transcende a funcionalidade original. As louças teriam apenas caráter funcional? Eram demarcadores de status? Que significados poderiam ter para aqueles que a consumiam? A partir do estudo das louças buscou-se perceber parte do cotidiano dos habitantes dessa estância.

abstract: Scholars have written much about home and meaning, yet they have said little about the professionally furnished model home viewed as a cultural artifact. Nor is there literature addressing how the home building industry uses these spaces to promote images of family life to increase sales. This research notes that not only do the structure, design, and layout of the model home formulate cultural identity but also the furnishings and materials within. Together, the model home and carefully selected artifacts placed therein help to express specific chosen lifestyles as that the home builder determines. This thesis considers the model home as constructed as well as builder's publications, descriptions, and advertisements. The research recognizes the many facets of merchandising, consumerism, and commercialism influencing the design and architecture of the suburban home. Historians of visual and cultural studies often investigate these issues as separate components. By contrast, this thesis offers an integrated framework of inquiry, drawing upon such disciplines as cultural history, anthropology, and material culture. The research methodology employs two forms of content analysis - image and text. The study analyzes 36 model homes built in Phoenix, Arizona, during the period 1955-1956. The thesis explores how the builder sends a message, i.e. images, ideals, and aspirations, to the potential home buyer through the design and decoration of the model home. It then speculates how the home buyer responds to those messages. The symbiotic relationship between the sender and receiver, together, tells a story about the Phoenix lifestyle and the domestic ideals of the 1950s. Builders sent messages surrounding convenience, spaciousness, added luxury, and indoor-outdoor living to a growing and discriminating home buying market. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.D. Design 2013

State officials, between 1882 and 1888, exchanged three million acres of Texas Panhandle property for construction of the monumental Capitol that continues to house Texas government today. The project and the land went to a Chicago syndicate led by men influential in business and politics. The red granite Austin State House is a recognizable symbol of Texas around the world. So too, the massive tract given in exchange for the building, what became the "fabulous" XIT Ranch, also has come to symbolize the height of the nineteenth century cattle industry. That eastern and foreign capital dominated the cattle business during this period is lesser known, absorbed by the mythology built around the Texas cattle-trail period - all but at an end in 1885. This study examines the interaction of Illinois Republicans and Texas Democrats in their actions and efforts to create what have become two of Texas's most treasured symbols.

This problem consists of classifying the four major pastures of the McKamy ranch into McConnell's four categories, by means of examinations based on these qualities and characteristics.

Scotts Creek, in Santa Cruz County, Calif., supports the southernmost extant population of Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in North America. In 1997, the California Department of Fish and Game (now Fish and Wildlife) conducted an extensive habitat typing survey of mainstem Scotts Creek, describing all habitat units from the top of the estuary to the limit of anadromy approximately 12 km upstream. I repeated this survey in 2013 to (1) assess changes in the quantity and quality of instream habitat, (2) compare the current condition to goals and standards established in the federal Central California Coast (CCC) Coho Salmon Recovery Plan, and (3) identify opportunities for possible future restoration. A comparison of the two surveys revealed an overall increase in mean canopy cover, mean bank vegetation, mean percentage instream cover, pool depth diversity, and percentage riffles since 1997, and decreases in mean residual pool depth, percentage flatwater, and number of primary pools. Overall, the percentage of the total mainstem classified as pool habitat did not change between the two survey periods. Results for individual habitat metrics were more variable when the stream was broken into discrete reaches delineated by major tributary junctions. Although a large woody debris (LWD) survey was not conducted as part of the 1997 survey, contrasting our results with data collected during intervening years indicated that instream LWD has become more abundant, primarily due to increases in hard-wood species (i.e., red alder [Alnus rubra] and California bay [Umbellularia californica]). When compared to habitat goals established in the federal CCC Coho Salmon Recovery Plan, Scotts Creek has adequate canopy cover and percentage pools, but is lacking in percentage riffles, instream cover, key pieces of LWD per100 m, and percentage primary pools.

Swanton Pacific Ranch is an educational and research facility owned by the Cal Poly Corporation and managed by the Cal Poly State University (Cal Poly) College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences. Located about 180 miles north of campus and just 14 miles north of Santa Cruz, California on Highway 1, the property was first leased to and then donated to Cal Poly by the late Albert E. Smith in 1993. The rancho’s original inhabitants included Native Americans, Spaniards, Mexicans, as well as various European immigrants and their descendants; currently, the staff, faculty, and students of Cal Poly occupy the land. Each of these groups used the land’s rich environment for a variety of purposes from subsistence to financial and intellectual pursuits. Over time, researchers and local historians have discussed specific aspects of the Swanton Pacific Ranch and its environs, particularly concerning its occupants, land use (e.g. businesses, farming, research), and land features (e.g. geology, botany). The following work offers a more cohesive, descriptive narrative of the land and its people organized chronologically from prehistory to the present.

Six geomorphic study reaches were established in 2002 along a forested mountain stream (gradients range from 0.02 to 0.05) on Cal Poly's Swanton Pacific Ranch in Santa Cruz County, California. These study reaches are a component of paired and nested watershed studies in the approximately 500 hectare Little Creek watershed. The overall goal of this study was to monitor water quality and channel conditions before, during, and after a selective harvest of redwood. A selective harvest occurred in the North Fork of Little Creek in Summer 2008. In August 2009, approximately 90% of the Little Creek Watershed was burned in the Lockheed Fire. Channel change was evaluated by measuring ground profiles using traditional survey methods. Cross section and longitudinal profiles are surveyed annually every summer in the six study reaches. Change is assessed through evaluation of cross sections and longitudinal profiles, analysis of bed elevation and cross-sectional area change data, and analysis of residual pool characteristics and longitudinal profile variability. Changes in the channel during this time have been relatively small and are typically associated with movement or introduction of coarse woody debris to the stream channel. However, during the study period no large stream flow events occurred (return interval at the closest USGS gauging station does not exceed 5 years). Historically, large debris flow events have occurred in this watershed, with well documented events in 1955 and 1998. The survey data is an important tool for understanding change detection in channel characteristics before and after harvesting, and following fire disturbance.

In this thesis, I examined the lives of my great-grandparents, Oscar and Emma Swett. Oscar began a homestead in the Uinta Mountains in 1909, which he successfully ran for nearly sixty years. My grandmother was born on the ranch, and my own father spent much of his time there. I look at how land policy changed from encouraging ranching and farming in the early 1900's to tourism and recreation in the 1960's, with the coming of the Flaming Gorge Dam. The lives of my great-grandparents and their children were shaped by these changes and they felt the consequences of the shifting values of the Forest Service and government. I used many primary documents in my research, from interviews given by the Swett children to photographs and documents. I also drew from literature and research by other western authors, such as Wallace Stegner, Mary Clearman Blew, and Steve Trimble. I connected my personal and family stories and memories with the larger framework of land policy in the West and the culture of ranching families similar to my own family. This enabled me to show how land policy affected many individuals and families on a personal level, looking through the prism of my own family and experiences.

The Nugget Formation in the Anschutz Ranch East field, northeast Utah and southwest Wyoming, provides an exceptional example of how primary eolian rock properties have a considerable influence on the style of structural deformation. Both new and existing subsurface data were integrated for an overall characterization of sedimentologic and diagenetic heterogeneities, which demonstrate relationships with different styles of structural compartmentalization in reservoirs. The Anschutz Ranch East field is a large asymmetric anticlinal trap in the Utah-Wyoming thrust belt. Three cores were analyzed in order to investigate brittle deformation in eolian facies: dune, apron, and interdune. Selected cores are located along the back limb of the main structure and are nearly perpendicular to the fold axis. Each eolian facies appears to have an associated style of deformation that generally occurs within this tectonic setting. Within the dune facies, deformation bands are the most common style of deformation, unless a fault is present; when faults are present open fractures and breccia occur. In the apron facies, open fractures are more prevalent; however deformation bands are still very frequent. The primary styles of brittle deformation observed in interdune facies are breccias and closed fractures. This relationship between facies and rheology also correlates with porosity. These results support a hypothesis that high porosity rocks tend to be weaker and develop deformation bands, while low porosity rocks have a greater strength and will deform brittlely.