Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 497-523). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

A continental-scale study of historic wildfire data within and across ecoregion provinces was conducted and geographical gradients in seasonal measures of wildfire size and frequency were observed. In the conterminous United States, western ecoregion provinces show north-south gradients in duration of season (short-to-long) and peak of season (early-to-late). Across the continent a gradient of unimodal to bimodal seasonal distributions of wildfire size and frequency was shown: western ecoregions have a single summer fire season and eastern regions have spring and late-summer fire seasons separated by an intervening dip in wildfire activity. From the ecoregion provinces with the highest wildfire frequency, average size, and area burned values, eight federal land units (four from the western and four from the eastern conterminous United States) were selected for a study of geographical variation in interactions between wildfire variables and the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI). Daily KBDI values for each location were provided by the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS). Confidence intervals around the mean for both days on which wildfires ignited and for days on which no new wildfires ignited were generated for each location using a bootstrap resampling method. A greater difference existed between nonire and fire-start KBDI values in the western locations, indicating a stronger association between KBDI and wildfire potential. At eastern locations, the difference between mean nonire and fire-start KBDI was lower than the minimum western mean difference for three of the four locations. The exception, the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, showed the second highest difference between nonire and fire-start KBDI values of all eight federal land units. These results indicate that across the southeastern United States, the soil moisture (and, by extension, fuel moisture) cycle from field capacity (saturation) to drought (wilting point) and back to field capacity does not follow the regular seasonal pattern shown in the western states, and neither do geographical characteristics of wildfires.

Past research has shown that interpretive tour visitors at Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge do no better than other visitors on knowledge and value questions about federal wilderness areas and national wildlife refuges. Tours into the Okefenokee Swamp Wilderness are conducted by a National Wildlife Refuge concessionaire. Interpretive tour guides participated in a training session on the purposes and values of wilderness and wildlife refuges. Visitors who took guided interpretive tours in the spring of 2001 with trained and untrained guides completed knowledge surveys immediately after taking the boat tour. Results indicate that there were no differences in visitor knowledge scores with trained versus untrained guides. A small sample of interpretive tour visitors was also interviewed in an effort to understand the meanings they ascribe to wilderness. Visitors were able to describe and articulate their views of wilderness with considerable clarity. Recommendations for future research include monitoring the guides' interpretive messages, conducting more in-depth interviews with visitors and guides, assessing visitors' and guides' prior knowledge of wilderness and wildlife refuge purposes and values, and developing guide training based on the principles of persuasive communication. / Master of Science

Ball State University LibrariesLibrary services and resources for knowledge buildingMasters ThesesThere is no abstract available for this thesis.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 125 p. : ill., map. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-96).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1994. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [134]-156).

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 31-38). Also available on the World Wide Web.

M. Tech. Tourism and Hospitality Management / This study was aimed at analysing the perceptions of visitors to Groenkloof Nature Reserve (GNR) with regard to sustainable business practices at the reserve. The study basically utilized three major methods of data gathering (viz. behavioural observation, interviews and questionnaires) to obtain all information required for such analysis.