Betula neoalaskana Sargent is the most abundant birch species in Alaska. All parts of the tree can be used in creating timber and non-timber products, and birch stands provide high-value ecosystem services for ecotourism and outdoor recreational purposes. For these reasons, the OneTree Alaska program of the University of Alaska Fairbanks uses Interior Alaska white birch as the centerpiece of its work. This M.S. thesis is a contribution to OneTree Alaska's goal of raising the public's understanding of the effects of Interior Alaska's lengthening growing season on the growth and reproduction of the local birch resource. Specifically, the thesis relates to the growth and reproduction of the offspring of the original "one trees" harvested on Nenana Ridge in October 2009. The saplings have been growing in the Generation OneTree Research Plot in the T-field, north of the Smith Lake on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, since June 2011 and represent half-sibling families reared from the seed of 8 maternal trees. As seedlings, they were reared for growing seasons of variable length, both by students at the Watershed Charter School of the Fairbanks North Star Borough and by OneTree personnel in a University of Alaska Fairbanks growth chamber. Prior to this study, end of year measurements had been taken of the young trees in the T-field for all but one year and established that the length of the first growing season persistently affected the number of stems and the diameter at breast height (DBH) of the main stems. New findings in this thesis show that the elevation difference among trees impacts the number of infructescences and germination rates but not the number of male catkins. At least for the 2018 seed crop, seeds from trees planted at higher elevations in the T-field showed higher germination rates than those planted at lower elevations, while they produce fewer infructescences at up slope. Other findings demonstrate that sibling family does not have an effect on either vegetative or reproductive growth. Instead, the length of the first growing season provides for a diversity of canopy shapes across sibling families. The most significant finding is the effect of elevation on female reproductive growth: It suggests a number of next steps, tools, and analysis to better understand environmental variables that work alongside elevation in determining growth and reproductive success. Soil moisture and pH (H2O), Carbon/Nitrogen ratio, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine micronutrient composition, sensors to capture wind speed/direction and solar radiation, photosynthetic traits, and chlorophyll concentration measurements could all be valuable in further elucidating the hypotheses being advanced by this research regarding the interactions between changing environment and reproduction.

The Alaska Halibut and Sablefish Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) program is one of the largest and most successful catch share programs of the United States and the world. It has been successful in maintaining the economic value and owner-operated characteristics of these fisheries for the past 25 years. While most of the federal fisheries off Alaska have already transitioned to catch-share management systems, the development of new catch share programs for other regions could benefit from lessons learned in the development and evolution of the Alaska halibut and sablefish IFQ program. One of the main concerns of the policymakers with implementing an IFQ program was the potential loss of halibut and sablefish QS held by residents of remote communities in the Central Gulf of Alaska and the Southeast Alaska regions and the resultant long-term social changes. That concern remains, along with a related concern about perceived financial barriers to entry the Alaska Halibut and Sablefish IFQ program. The resilience of fishery-dependent communities depends on the state of the available fish resources as well as the extent to which community residents are vested in the fishery through ownership of limited license permits and quota share. This thesis consists of five chapters. The first is an overall introduction, which summarizes the entire thesis, and the final chapter is an overview conclusion of the research that was conducted. The three central chapters review the history of the fishery, gauge stakeholder attitudes about aspects of the program, and explore limitations to the successful adoption of measures intended to empower community engagement in these fisheries. Chapter 2 describes the evolution of the Alaska region Pacific halibut and sablefish fisheries over the past 139 years. This history can be divided into seven eras, each characterized by unique opportunities, challenges, and management innovations. The chapter shows that fluctuations in fish populations have been influenced by the interplay of management actions and environmental variation. The third chapter is a survey of Pacific Halibut and Sablefish Quota Share (QS) holders. This survey gathered information on crewmembers and operating costs in the Alaska halibut and sablefish fisheries. The results indicate that, on smaller vessels in certain areas, crewmembers tend to be drawn from the local region. In comparison, the crewmembers on larger vessels that fish in more remote areas tend to be drawn from outside those fishing areas. Results also indicate that residents of small fishing communities in remote areas had difficulty in obtaining financing to purchase QS for halibut and sablefish. In contrast, residents of larger communities expressed less concern about access to financing for QS purchases. The fourth chapter focuses on the evolution of the Alaska halibut and sablefish IFQ program. The impacts on the small communities following the transitions from open- to limited-access or share-based management were negative for some communities and positive for other communities. Over the past 16 years, several programs have been established to benefit fishery-dependent communities. Chapter 4 provides an overview of community-support measures developed for these fisheries and describes similar programs created for other Alaska region fisheries. These programs are not being fully utilized. In order to build their local fleets, communities need to increase cooperation and coordination to establish quota. Chapter 4 establishes a "roadmap" for sustaining and rebuilding community-based fisheries in Alaska. It requires the community to focus on its cooperative goals to enable them to take advantage of the community support measures included in fisheries regulation. There seems to be more interest in the younger generation in Alaska wanting to get involved in commercial fisheries. Evidence includes the popularity of the apprenticeship program developed by the Alaska Longline Association in Sitka and the keen interest in the annual Alaskan Young Fishermen Summit hosted by the Alaska Sea Grant. Rural communities could encourage the development of the next generation of fishermen by nurturing their youth's interest in fisheries and reestablishing their cultural heritage. This could be done by using the Federal halibut special permits for Ceremonial, Celebration, and Education fisheries. These permits are free and require a minimal amount of paperwork through the NOAA Fisheries Restricted Access Management program. The State of Alaska also has an educational permit program that is currently underutilized but has been successfully used in the past. Reestablished of these programs in local schools could foster youth's interest in their cultural heritage in fisheries. The positive outcome of this research is the information provided for rural communities to engage in more opportunities to generate fishing income for their community. Communities could have a real opportunity to bring commercial fisheries back into their rural areas. If the communities can navigate through all the regulations, it could provide a positive economic stimulus for the next generation of youth in their communities.

Three case studies (i.e., (1) FNSB Marijuana Zoning, (2) The Joint Land Use Study, and (3) Rethinking Smith Ranch) were examined in the context of land use planning to assist the reader in understanding some of the challenges a second-class borough in Alaska faces. The researcher utilized an opportunity with the Fairbanks North Star Borough to perform a participant observation study which demonstrated the complexity in engaging and communicating with citizens of the area. The researcher identified the three following critical themes and referenced planning literature to analyze them: (1) challenges to accomplishing goals, (2) the importance of communication, and (3) potential solutions to overcoming challenges. Upon identifying the challenges experienced both during the case studies, as well as outside of the case studies, the researcher determined possible solutions to help the borough’s Department of Community Planning overcome the difficulties associated with communication and engagement of citizens.

Outcomes-Focused Management is based on the idea of four levels of demand for recreation: demand for recreation activities, recreation settings, recreation experiences, and lasting benefits of recreation. Public lands can provide the setting, and thus the opportunity for people to engage in meaningful outdoor recreation activities to realize desired experiences and lasting benefits. Implementation of this management framework requires identifying desired outcomes and understanding how management of public lands recreation settings affects visitors' ability to realize them. This thesis addresses the two tasks. The Fairbanks Community Recreation Study investigated current methods of identifying demands for different types of recreation trips, revealing two key shortcomings. First, demand studies often rely solely on activity participation data and thus fail to account for latent demand and desires for meaningful experiences and benefits. Second, data from demand studies are either too general to be useful in site management, or too specific to one site to account for the range of needs within a community. An online survey was developed to characterize salient and latent demands for outdoor recreation in the context of the greater Fairbanks, Alaska community. A unique survey format allowed respondents to describe their hypothetical "ideal" outdoor recreation trips, the required setting characteristics, and what actual places in the region might realistically provide such a trip. Trip profiles yielded a typology of desired recreation for the region. By connecting these types of trips to real places, local land managers can identify which demands they are uniquely equipped to provide for and how to better cater to latent demands. To address the task of measuring the effectiveness of outcomes-focused management practices, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on data from 13 recreation benefits surveys collected at recreation areas in three western states. Factor structures among individual studies converged on two primary domains of Personal Benefits of recreation and Community Benefits from recreation, each containing a number of potential subdimensions. By identifying latent factors of the recreation benefits construct the study brings research closer to developing and validating a survey instrument to measure lasting beneficial recreation outcomes to individuals and their communities.

Environmental governance in the context of climate change adaptation brings together diverse actors and stakeholders to develop and enact policies across a broad range of scales. However, local needs and priorities are often mismatched with those pursued by entities at different levels of decision-making. This mismatch is perpetuated, in part, by the dominating influence of the Western worldview in knowledge processes involving the creation, sharing, and use of environmental knowledge. Persistent biases that favor Western science and technical information while marginalizing other important sources like local and Indigenous knowledge create blind spots that may adversely affect adaptation outcomes. In this research, a case study of the Native Village of Wainwright, Alaska is used to explore the topic of information blind spots in environmental governance resulting from 1) low resolution tools employed within broad scale adaptation initiatives; 2) preferences for easily quantifiable information; and 3) the challenge of communicating context-rich details to outside decision makers, given disciplinary biases and organizational conventions. This dissertation comprises manuscripts based on three studies undertaken to address the above blind spots in specific areas of adaptation planning. The first manuscript furthers conventional methods of adaptation classification through a place-based approach that uses directed content analysis to identify aspects of local adaptation not readily captured by low resolution frameworks. The second manuscript employs contextual analysis and extends Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework to characterize the role of local informal institutions in adaptation and provide insights into how difficult-to-quantify social and cultural norms might be leveraged in planned adaptation initiatives. The third manuscript reports on a formative endeavor that looked practically at conventions for communicating environmental change to public sector decision-makers, and tested a survey that explored the potential for context-rich visuals and other reporting strategies to effectively convey information about local observations and experiences of change.

In order to complete soil inventories in the remote permafrost zones of Alaska, there is a need to develop efficient digital soil mapping tools that can be applied over large areas using a minimum of ground truth data. This investigation first used a random forest classifier to test combinations of environmental input data at multiple resolutions (10m, 30m, and 100m). Five tiers of soil taxonomic units were predicted: Order, Suborder, Great Group, "Series Concept", and Particle Size Class. Model outputs are compared quantitatively via estimated out-of-bag accuracy, and qualitatively via visual inspection by soil scientists. Estimated out-of-bag accuracy ranged from ~45% to ~75%, with results improving when fewer classes were modeled. Model runs at 10m and 30m resolution performed comparably, with 100m resolution performing ~5-10% worse in most cases. Increasing the number of trees used, including categorical environmental input data (e.g. landforms), and replacement of environmental covariates with principal component analysis (PCA) bands did not significantly improve model performance. The random forest classifier was then used in a digital soil mapping pilot study along the Dalton Highway in northern Alaska. Parameters suggested in the initial study were used to predict multiple soil taxonomic classes from a basic collection of environmental covariates generated using high resolution (10m) satellite images and sparsely sampled pedon data. Covariates included maximum curvature, multiresolution valley bottom flatness, normalized height, potential incoming solar radiation, slope, terrain ruggedness index, and modified soil and vegetation index. Five tiers of soil taxonomic units were predicted: Order, Suborder, Great Group, "Series Concept", and Particle Size Class. Model outputs are compared quantitatively via estimated out-of-bag accuracy. Estimated out-of-bag accuracy ranged from ~45% to ~75%, with results improving when fewer classes were modeled. We suggest future research into optimized sampling to ensure an adequate distribution of samples across the feature space, and the incorporation of expert knowledge into accuracy assessments. Overall, digital soil mapping with random forest classifiers appears to be a promising method for completing the soil survey of Alaska.

Three community-based marine protected areas (CBMPAs) in the Visayas, Philippines were analyzed based on how well they incorporated sustainable livelihood programs into their overall management and planning for those displaced by the CBMPA. Through reviewing management plans and reports, the CBMPAs were then assessed to see whether including alternative livelihoods in these three cases was correlated with greater overall success. Each CBMPA was scored based on their alternative livelihoods and overall success. Management stakeholder perception surveys were also conducted for two of the CBMPA sites studied. Apo Island Marine Reserve scored the highest for its criteria for sustainable livelihood development and criteria for success of a CBMPA. Alternatively, Lawi Marine Reserve scored equivalent to that of Balcon Marine Protected Area for its criteria for sustainable livelihood development, yet the lowest for its criteria for success of a CBMPA. The most successful CBMPA was Apo Island Marine Reserve due to the incorporation of human dimensions into their management planning that helped them create sustainable livelihood programs that increased the community's compliance with the rules and regulations of the CBMPA. In contrast, Balcon Marine Protected Area and Lawi Marine Reserve did not have sustainable livelihood programs in place and their success was far below that of Apo Island. Thus, the overall success of these CBMPAs appears to be strongly correlated with alternative livelihood programs, however further study is needed to determine if this correlation between alternative livelihoods and success is true for the majority of CBMPAs in the Philippines.

The Steese Mountains of Alaska present a complex landscape on which to study soil formation and characteristics in relation to topographic position. The White and Steese Mountains of Alaska are located approximately 70 to 220 km northeast of Fairbanks. Ten toposequences with 3 or 4 sites each were described in the field, sampled, and analyzed in the laboratory in order to determine the relationship between soil morphology and soil-forming factors. Permafrost is discontinuous within the study area and vegetation ranges from tundra on summits to boreal stands of resin birch, quaking aspen, black spruce and white spruce along the lower elevations. There have been many wildfires over time that may have altered the soils and affected the vegetation successional patterns. The processes through which various soil patterns have formed and the unique characteristics of the soils are described here based on field data obtained from both burned and unburned sites. The analysis includes biophysical settings, parent material, texture and nutrient concentrations. Organic horizons were common on most of the transects and play a key role in the depth of the active layer where they exist. Nutrient concentrations are also closely tied to the presence and depth of the organic horizons. Some patterns described in other areas of the boreal region were not observed in this study. There were some soil properties that are not readily described under the current taxonomy protocols which are suggested to be added in a future revision of Soil Taxonomy.

Arctic marine mammals and the communities that depend on them for subsistence are facing unprecedented rates of environmental change. Comparative studies of policy implementation are necessary in order to identify key mechanisms of successful environmental governance under challenging conditions. This study compares two federal agencies responsible for the conservation of Arctic marine mammals. Drawing on multiple methods, I develop in-depth case studies of the policy implementation process for managing bowhead whale and polar bear subsistence hunting. I examine how and why agency approaches to conservation differ and assess policy effectiveness. The analysis focuses on three aspects of institutional performance as drivers of policy outcomes: historical events, organizational culture, and structural relationships with stakeholders. The study begins by tracing the development of marine mammal management in Alaska through time. I find that definitions of subsistence developed under previous eras continue to shape debates over wildlife management in Alaska, confounding ecologically relevant policy reform. I next examine the roles of agency culture, policy history, and relationships with stakeholders in influencing how agencies implement contemporary harvest assessment programs. Findings suggest that the internal orientation of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service makes it more likely to retain control over management programs than the more externally oriented National Marine Fisheries Service. Furthermore, these policy approaches affect the development of social norms at the local level. Through a social network analysis, I demonstrate that the extent to which policy programs are integrated into the existing social networks of a village affects policy success. Hunter participation in and support for policies is stronger when there are local centers of coordination and meaningful policy deliberation. Finally, I assess existing policies regarding both species to examine whether or not contemporary policy approaches address key drivers of system change and provide effective feedback channels. Findings demonstrate that both agencies have focused on regulating harvests; I argue that in order to foster resilience of the system into the future, policy actors must reconfigure management approaches and policies towards the protection of functional seascapes. I propose two strategies in order to govern for recovery (polar bears) and resistance (bowhead whales).

This Master's of Natural Resource Management and Geography project assesses the potential liability the State of Alaska faces with the non-bonded coverage of Dismantle, Removal, and Restoration obligations associated with hydrocarbon leases on state managed lands in Cook Inlet. There are four components to this assessment. First, a Chain-of-Title spreadsheet documents the percentage of Working Interest Ownership held by all companies in study leases from the time of first production through February 2015. Second, a Degrees-of-Separation spreadsheet measures the layers of corporate separation from previous lessees to entities in existence today that could perform obligations. Third, a Special Purpose Entity spreadsheet indicates lease percentages held by companies with corporate histories of less than three years prior to assumption of a Cook Inlet lease. And four, a written opus that describes the relationships between these spreadsheets and how they demonstrate that under current mechanisms of non-bonded coverage the State of Alaska's exposure to Dismantle, Removal, and Restoration liability increases through time as the hydrocarbon reserves in the ground reach the end of productive life.