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Spring 2021

Hynes, Ashley

Climate change may cause reduced forest productivity and higher tree mortality due to water deficits that result from increased evapotranspiration. Such limitations may occur in some areas of the North American boreal forest, where precipitation is low and warming trends are high. This thesis...

Fall 2021

Daly, Ella

Mapping trophic and non-trophic species interactions and mapping ecosystem-wide ecological networks have become important research avenues in network ecology, but until recently these two avenues have been separate endeavors. Now, a framework exists to combine multiple interaction types into...

Fall 2021

Herlein, Kalli

Wildfire management agencies are increasingly interested in the efficiency of wildfire suppression as they work to protect human lives and communities from wildfire damages under constrained management budgets. In Alberta, climate change is expected to increase the length of the wildfire season...

Spring 2018

Meehan, Matthew Lawrence

Soils provide numerous ecosystem services, including provision of nutrients for plants, sequestration of greenhouse gases, and serving as habitat for soil animals. Soil animal diversity is immense, and many undescribed taxa still remain. One prominent group that inhabits soils is mites...

Spring 2017

Frerichs, Laurie Anne

Achieving forest recovery on previously forested well sites in northern Alberta is an on-going challenge for the oil and gas industry. Thirty-three experimental oil sands exploration (OSE) sites were constructed and reclaimed between 2004 and 2006 in northeastern Alberta. Our goal was to...

Fall 2015

Das Gupta, Sanatan

The recent open pit mining for oil sands in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR), northern Alberta has created an unprecedented industrial scale disturbance whose ecological consequences is not well understood, and requires intensive investigation. This study focused on the temporal dynamics of...

Fall 2022

Theis, Sebastian

Land-use change via human development is a major driver of biodiversity and habitat area loss and ecosystem function impairment. To reduce these impacts, billions of dollars are spent on environmental offsets, aimed to compensate for authorized negative impacts. Studies evaluating offset project...

Fall 2018

Springer, Kyle

Terrestrial vegetation contributes strongly to dynamic biosphere-atmosphere exchanges of mass and energy, through activities such as photosynthesis, that help shape the Earth’s climate. The boreal forest is located in high latitudes and subject to large seasonal temperature fluctuations and a...

Spring 2016

Stralberg, Diana

Often referred to as North America’s bird nursery, the boreal forest biome provides a productive environment for breeding birds, supporting high species diversity and bird numbers. These birds are likely to shift their distributions northward in response to rapid climate change over the next...

Fall 2013

Schoonmaker, Amanda L

Variation in quantity of light has driven plants to employ many strategies in order to persist in high and low light. It is also a primary driver of lower branch mortality and crown recession. Fine roots and leaves are complimentary tissues representing belowground and aboveground resource...