The interactions between predators and prey are a fundamental component of ecology and have direct relevance to the management and conservation of ecosystems around the World. Advances in global positioning system (GPS) collar technology have enabled researchers to gain insight into predator behavior, identify predation events in the field, and also build predictive predation models. Using GPS data from 26 collared cougars across three study areas, I investigated: 1) the mechanisms driving individual specialization in cougars and, 2) the utility of cluster models to predict predation events within and across study systems. In addressing the former, I used a subset of data from only a single study area including 13 cougars. I identified one specialist individual (P06) as having a unique diet relative to the population resulting from the continued selection of beaver (Castor canadensis). P06 actively hunted beaver by selecting for streams and creeks within his home range disproportionality to their availability and also traveled significantly slower while within beaver habitat indicative of the slow, stalk and ambush cougar hunting strategy. When predation by specialist cougars targets sensitive or rare species, targeted (rather than broad) management actions will be more effective in reducing unwanted predation on sensitive species. To address the utility of predictive models, I used logistic regression to discriminate between kill and no-kill GPS clusters and modeled the binary response as function of multiple spatiotemporal variables. I generated within study area estimates of predation using a top model selected from a candidate set using an information criterion (AIC), and estimated predation across study areas using simple models with only temporal variables. Within study area estimates of predation were ≥91% accurate, while across study area estimates averaged 81% (SD = 6%) accuracy. Cluster models serve as a valuable tool to estimate general predation within and across study areas, although there are a number of instances when their use is not recommended. When prey species of interest rare or endangered, occur near human activity, are relatively small, or have range overlaps with other similarly sized cougar prey, rigorous field efforts will be required to produce accurate estimates of predation.

Environmentally - appropriate architectural works are considered by certain critics as relatively oriented without any theoretical basis other than a technicist perspective. Furthermore, this technicist approach, which puts emphasis on the application of scientific rationality, is supposed as being challenged through an arcadian agenda, which claims the return to pre-industrial values through the revival of the vernacular. In the thesis, it is argued that contrary to the assumptions that the green architecture is highly relativistic depending on the ideological standpoints, it is founded upon a holistic philosophy established on the studies pursued by post-war ecological scientists who followed systems approach. It is claimed that the aforementioned duality between the technicist and the arcadian approaches finds its expression in the contemporary green architecture depending on the philosophical framework provided by the systems approach. Systems sciences deal with the ways in which elements of a certain whole come together to make up an organization. Its main principle is that a particular element can only be studied with regard to the totality of which it belongs. Ecologists who endow a systems perspective study on the assembly rules through which living and nonliving members of biological systems are organized into groups. In this thesis, it is put forward that the philosophical outlook and methodology that came along with the systems thinking offers a basis for green architecture. It is provided a historical-analytical survey of the emergence of the systems approach in the architectural discipline since the 60s. It is argued that the 60s appropriation of the systems approach in architecture is still influential in the contemporary green architecture / that today&amp / #8217 / s architects utilize the theories and methods put forward throughout this process of appropriation in their works, alongside the scientific terminology developed by the systems ecologists.

abstract: Despite the breadth of studies investigating ecosystem development, an underlying theory guiding this process remains elusive. Several principles have been proposed to explain ecosystem development, though few have garnered broad support in the literature. I used boreal wetland soils as a study system to test a notable goal oriented principle: The Maximum Power Principle (MPP). The MPP posits that ecosystems, and in fact all energy systems, develop to maximize power production or the rate of energy production. I conducted theoretical and empirical investigations to test the MPP in northern wetlands. Permafrost degradation is leading to rapid wetland formation in northern peatland ecosystems, altering the role of these ecosystems in the global carbon cycle. I reviewed the literature on the history of the MPP theory, including tracing its origins to The Second Law of Thermodynamics. To empirically test the MPP, I collected soils along a gradient of ecosystem development and: 1) quantified the rate of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production--literally cellular energy--to test the MPP; 2) quantified greenhouse gas production (CO2, CH4, and N2O) and microbial genes that produce enzymes catalyzing greenhouse gas production, and; 3) sequenced the 16s rRNA gene from soil microbes to investigate microbial community composition across the chronosequence of wetland development. My results suggested that the MPP and other related theoretical constructs have strong potential to further inform our understanding of ecosystem development. Soil system power (ATP) decreased temporarily as the ecosystem reorganized after disturbance to rates of power production that approached pre-disturbance levels. Rates of CH4 and N2O production were higher at the newly formed bog and microbial genes involved with greenhouse gas production were strongly related to the amount of greenhouse gas produced. DNA sequencing results showed that across the chronosequence of development, the two relatively mature ecosystems--the peatland forest ecosystem prior to permafrost degradation and the oldest bog--were more similar to one another than to the intermediate, less mature bog. Collectively, my results suggest that ecosystem age, rather than ecosystem state, was a more important driver for ecosystem structure and function. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2015

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