Members of the genus Peromyscus, White-footed Mice, are known to occur in nearly all habitats of North America. Because of their numerical abundance and widespread distribution, these mice are extensively used in the study of the dynamics of animal populations. Thus, information perteining to the local distruibution and activities of these mice is of value to the more comprehensive studies that are being carried out in the field of zoological research.

Numerous well-preserved, exhumed paleochannels in the Morrison, Cedar Mountain and Dakota Sandstone formations are exposed east of Castle Dale, Utah. These channels consist primarily of point bar complexes and scattered, low sinuosity channels. To determine the vertical and lateral relationships of these channels within the Cedar Mountain and Dakota Sandstone formations, a 1:24,000 scale geologic map covering ~140 km2 was created showing the fluvial sandstones. In the study area the Cedar Mountain Formation consists, from bottom to top, of 2.5-10 m of Buckhorn Conglomerate Member equivalent units, ~80 m of the Ruby Ranch Member, and ~30 m of the Mussentuchit Member. The Dakota Sandstone consists of conglomeratic to sandy, meandering channel fills within the Mussentuchit Member. The Ruby Ranch-Mussentuchit member contact is diagnosed as the top of a laterally extensive, ~10 meter thick, maroon paleosol with calcrete horizons and root traces. When deeply weathered the contact is discernable as a shift from maroon mudstone to a pale green-white, silty mudstone. Like the balance of the Mussentuchit Member overbank deposits, the white-green mudstone is rich in smectitic clays. In the southern one-third of the mapped area, Ruby Ranch Member sandstones are thin, discontinuous channel segments surrounded by floodplain deposits. In the middle to northern area, point bar complexes dominate, some of which are laterally amalgamated. Flow direction data from four meander complexes and a low sinuosity channel indicate an average northeast flow. Dakota Sandstone channels all of which are within the Mussentuchit Member also flowed to the northeast but point bar complexes are both more numerous and more laterally continuous than in the Ruby Ranch Member, indicating deposition in an area with less accommodation space than during Ruby Ranch Member time. The data indicate the Dakota Sandstone consists exclusively of fluvial sandstones encased within the Mussentuchit Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation. Therefore, these units are coeval and simply different facies of the same depositional system. Consequently the Mussentuchit Member is considered a member facies of the Dakota Formation.

Forest roads and stream channels are mapped using a variety of remote sensing and ground-based techniques. In densely forested areas, conventional remote sensing methods provide limited terrain information, while ground-based surveys can be time-consuming, difficult, and expensive. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is an airborne remote sensing technology used to create high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) of the earth’s surface. This study tests the accuracy of forest road and stream channel features mapped using LiDAR in the steep, forested terrain of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains. A conventional total station survey was used to determine centerline position and elevations along a four-kilometer forest road, and along six thirty-meter stream channel study reaches. A 1.5 m LiDAR DEM was suitable to accurately map the location of the forest road and channel features. Ninety five percent of the LiDAR-derived road length was located within 2.2 m normal to the field-surveyed centerline and LiDAR-derived road slopes were not significantly different from field-surveyed slopes. Stream channel features derived from the LIDAR DEM were located within 2.7 m normal to the field-surveyed thalweg, while the LiDAR-derived slopes measured within 0.49 percent of field-surveyed slopes. These findings indicate that LiDAR can provide accurate terrain measurements that are suitable for resource management and assessment.

California is currently in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. There are approximately 5,000 native species of plants in California, a quarter of which are considered rare. Determining threats to these rare plants is often times difficult. Despite California's botanical resources, we still know very little about much of California’s rare plants. San Luis Obispo County is home to 2,000 of California’s native plant taxa, one- third of which are rare or endemic to the county. These species are of great local and environmental concern. In Chapter 1, we attempted to assess the impact of non native species on a threatened species in eastern San Luis Obispo County. We conducted an invasive thatch removal experiment on 10 vegetation plots of Camatta Canyon Amole, Hooveria purpurea var. reducta. The Camatta Canyon Amole (CCA) is a federally listed “threatened” plant that is only known to occur on 21.15 ha of land on Los Padres National Forest (LPNF). In the 1980s, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established 10 plots to monitor the population of CCA. These biologists recorded a decrease in the CCA since the establishment of those plots in the 1980s. One hypothesis for the decline is the absence of cattle grazing from LPNF, which has resulted in the accumulation of a dense thatch layer. We experimentally removed this thatch layer in five of the 1980s vegetation plots to test this hypothesis. While our the experiment was designed to be a long term treatment, from the first 1.5 years, we found no relationship between thatch removal and the amount of CCA in each plot. The effect of our treatment may take many years to materialize. In Chapter 2, we conducted extensive botanical surveys of the Camatta Ranch, a 32,000 acre cattle ranch in eastern San Luis Obispo County. The goal of these surveys was to estimate the distribution and population size of CCA on private property, which has never before been accessed or surveyed. We did this in two ways: 1) We created a density ratio estimate based off of plot sampling done on the ranch and 2) we created a species distribution model (SDM) to predict the likelihood of presence throughout the ranch. Our surveys of Camatta Ranch, coupled with our SDM suggest that a majority of CCA’s preferred habitat is on Camatta Ranch, making the ranch of paramount concern for CCA’s protection. Our estimates suggest that 90% of the total population of CCA occurs on Camatta Ranch. In Chapter 3, we attempted to quantify biases in the literature about California’s flora. The California Floristic Province is one of the most biologically diverse floras in the world. Considerable legal and conservation attention is given to rare plants in California. However, there is no information as to the research effort given to rare species in California. Here we ask the question: Is there more research done on rare plants in California than on non-rare species? To answer this question, we quantified the amount of literature available on Google Scholar for California’s rare plants, weeds, and non-rare natives. To account for the differences in species geographic extent, we aggregated occurrence data for each species from GBIF to determine their ranges. We found that rare species were severely under-represented in the literature, even after accounting for the differences in species extent.

No description available.

Lawrence Halprin foi um arquiteto paisagista norte-americano que atuou profissionalmente entre 1945 e 2009. Sua prática holística, multifacetada, experimentalista e transdisciplinar aplicada ao processo de pensar a paisagem e projetar os ambientes humanos resultaram numa abordagem compreensiva e inovadora ao design.Assumindo a relevância de suaprática na paisagem, esta dissertação procurou entender e discutir sua trajetória profissional sob o ponto de vista do processo de design. O recorte abrange o período de transição entre os anos 1950 e a primeira metade da década de 1960. O trabalho foi organizado de forma que se compreenda o objeto da pesquisa, que também é sujeito, frente as suas origens, influências, referências e contextos, para então percorrer seu processo de design, cujos temas abordados por este trabalho correspondem aos subsídios que servem para embasar a discussão entre discurso e prática em duas de suas principais obras: o condomínio de veraneio SeaRanch, no condado de Sonoma (Califórnia), e a Sequência de Espaços Abertos da cidade de Portland (Oregon). / Lawrence Halprin was an american landscape architect professionally active for more than sixty years. His holistic,multifaceted, experimentalist and transdisciplinarypractice offers a way of thinking landscape and design in the human environment as a result of a comprehensive and innovative approach. Assuming his relevance under the field of landscape practice worldwide this thesis seeks to understand and discuss Halprin\'s professional lifewith an emphasis on his creative process or design process. The research focus was narrowed to the years of Halprin\'s first discoveries that lead him to developthe themes that characterize his comprehensive approach, which correspond to the beginnings of the fifties and the first decade of the sixties. The thesis\'s structure was organized to situate Halprin under the historical, artistic and social context of the fifties and sixties providing an insight in his origins and influences to then explore his design process with which are used to discuss the interface between his discourse and his practice using as case studies two of his major works: Sea Ranch, located in Sonoma Couny, California, and Portland Open Space Sequence, in Portland, Oregon.

A recent upsurge exists of archaeologists using ancient hair as a research tool, with new uses of this previously discarded archaeological material being introduced annually. Human hair deteriorates extremely slowly, and since the average modern human sheds approximately one hundred hairs per day, there should be copious amounts of hair debris left behind after humans leave a site; it is just a matter of how much of the hair survives in the archaeological environment. Most loose hair recovered from archaeological sites, however, is found fortuitously and in many cases, because archaeologists were not actively searching for ancient hair, it is possible they tainted the hair they later tested in ways that compromised their data, or more importantly contaminated their samples with modern hair and did not test ancient hair at all. No standardized method has previously been established for searching for ancient hair in an archaeological site. This paper considers (a) a method of soil extraction in the field that avoids contamination with modern hair and elements that might hinder later test data; (b) the processing of samples in the laboratory while continuing sample integrity; (c) identification of the types of soils and environments that are most favorable to hair preservation; and (d) an examination of the relevance of hair extraction from sites including the practicality and research potential. This paper examines five archaeological sites, using three different methods of hair extraction, examining the pros and cons of each. This should enable future researchers to find a method that works best for their particular site. It also analyzes the soil chemistry of the sites in order to study the soil and hair survival relationship, so that scientists can better determine which soils hold the best potential for hair survival. Laboratory methods that avoid contamination of the samples are also outlined in order to help researchers keep sample integrity after leaving the archaeological site.

A recent upsurge exists of archaeologists using ancient hair as a research tool, with new uses of this previously discarded archaeological material being introduced annually. Human hair deteriorates extremely slowly, and since the average modern human sheds approximately one hundred hairs per day, there should be copious amounts of hair debris left behind after humans leave a site; it is just a matter of how much of the hair survives in the archaeological environment. Most loose hair recovered from archaeological sites, however, is found fortuitously and in many cases, because archaeologists were not actively searching for ancient hair, it is possible they tainted the hair they later tested in ways that compromised their data, or more importantly contaminated their samples with modern hair and did not test ancient hair at all. No standardized method has previously been established for searching for ancient hair in an archaeological site. This paper considers (a) a method of soil extraction in the field that avoids contamination with modern hair and elements that might hinder later test data; (b) the processing of samples in the laboratory while continuing sample integrity; (c) identification of the types of soils and environments that are most favorable to hair preservation; and (d) an examination of the relevance of hair extraction from sites including the practicality and research potential. This paper examines five archaeological sites, using three different methods of hair extraction, examining the pros and cons of each. This should enable future researchers to find a method that works best for their particular site. It also analyzes the soil chemistry of the sites in order to study the soil and hair survival relationship, so that scientists can better determine which soils hold the best potential for hair survival. Laboratory methods that avoid contamination of the samples are also outlined in order to help researchers keep sample integrity after leaving the archaeological site.

No description available.

Lawrence Halprin foi um arquiteto paisagista norte-americano que atuou profissionalmente entre 1945 e 2009. Sua prática holística, multifacetada, experimentalista e transdisciplinar aplicada ao processo de pensar a paisagem e projetar os ambientes humanos resultaram numa abordagem compreensiva e inovadora ao design.Assumindo a relevância de suaprática na paisagem, esta dissertação procurou entender e discutir sua trajetória profissional sob o ponto de vista do processo de design. O recorte abrange o período de transição entre os anos 1950 e a primeira metade da década de 1960. O trabalho foi organizado de forma que se compreenda o objeto da pesquisa, que também é sujeito, frente as suas origens, influências, referências e contextos, para então percorrer seu processo de design, cujos temas abordados por este trabalho correspondem aos subsídios que servem para embasar a discussão entre discurso e prática em duas de suas principais obras: o condomínio de veraneio SeaRanch, no condado de Sonoma (Califórnia), e a Sequência de Espaços Abertos da cidade de Portland (Oregon). / Lawrence Halprin was an american landscape architect professionally active for more than sixty years. His holistic,multifaceted, experimentalist and transdisciplinarypractice offers a way of thinking landscape and design in the human environment as a result of a comprehensive and innovative approach. Assuming his relevance under the field of landscape practice worldwide this thesis seeks to understand and discuss Halprin\'s professional lifewith an emphasis on his creative process or design process. The research focus was narrowed to the years of Halprin\'s first discoveries that lead him to developthe themes that characterize his comprehensive approach, which correspond to the beginnings of the fifties and the first decade of the sixties. The thesis\'s structure was organized to situate Halprin under the historical, artistic and social context of the fifties and sixties providing an insight in his origins and influences to then explore his design process with which are used to discuss the interface between his discourse and his practice using as case studies two of his major works: Sea Ranch, located in Sonoma Couny, California, and Portland Open Space Sequence, in Portland, Oregon.