Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Rivers of resistance: resource conflict and rural organizing in the Americas(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2024) Anderson, Jacey Christine; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Molly ToddIn the last half of the twentieth-century, historians of every specialization framed their studies by national boundaries, and environmental historians of the so-called "global north" separated the domain of human culture from the domain of physical nature. For decades, scholars widely accepted and repeated these arrangements, but the lines of separation and division turned out to be far more effective as obstructions to understanding than as paths to insight. This transnational research sets a consequential example by removing those obstructions and by mapping those paths. This is an environmental history of two river basins in the Americas. The following chapters unpack parallels between these places, specifically, how people along the Rio Lempa in El Salvador and the Tongue River in Montana used their local knowledge of the land to successfully prevent mining projects in the late twentieth and early-twenty first centuries. I examine the environmental, societal, and cultural factors that led to these successes from different scales--the global to the local--and highlight common themes they shared. Both movements focused on defending their watersheds from mining projects that would have damaged water quality and altered locals' ways of life. The leaders of both movements were not traditional environmentalists and did not consider themselves to be; rather, they were ordinary people who were fighting for what they valued--a life of dignity and respect for their surroundings. By examining two distinct case studies, I show that "success" stories are not singular anomalies. They serve as models for future action.Item Blood and black gold: natural resource extraction and violent crime on American Indian reservations(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2023) Sikoski, Laura Kate; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Wendy A. StockUsing 2001 to 2016 precinct-level crime data, I examine the relationship between natural resource development in the Bakken oil fields and violent crime on American Indian reservations. While previous studies find positive effects of the Bakken oil boom on crime, the impacts of the oil boom on crime within reservations have never been evaluated. I find that the increase in crime caused by the Bakken oil boom was significantly more severe in reservations, driving the increase in regional crime found by other studies. These results suggest that community safety outcomes should be considered by federal, state, and tribal governments for future natural resource development on reservation.Item Community resilience in remote, resource-dependent communities: a case study of the U.S. coal transition(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2022) Roemer, Kelli Frances; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Julia Hobson Haggerty; This is a manuscript style paper that includes co-authored chapters.The United States is undergoing a significant energy system transition characterized by widespread retirement of coal-fired electricity generation facilities. In the next ten years, nearly 30 percent of the nation's coal power plant fleet will retire. The US West hosts a significant portion of these closures, with twenty-five generating units of coal-fired electricity retiring across six Western states. Retirements pose immediate social, economic, and environmental challenges for the localities and regions that host power plants and associated mines. Affected communities need to both plan for loss of employment and tax revenue and ensure thorough decommissioning and remediation of a major industrial facility. Successfully addressing the social, economic, and environmental legacies at coal facilities presents opportunities for enhancing equity and justice in rural energy communities. However, determining the appropriate policy and planning response to address challenges affecting fossil fuel-dependent communities drives significant debate over the implications of accelerating decarbonization in rural places. Interdependent social, political, economic, historical, and environmental processes influence community experiences of coal decline in the US West. This dissertation explores how such factors enable or constrain the resilience of coal-dependent communities to economic decline, where resilience refers to the capacity of a social system to mobilize its resources and respond to shock. This research is thus informed by and contributes to the multidisciplinary literature on resource geography, community resilience, and energy transitions. It makes the following contributions: (1) it investigates how federal and state policies influence community resilience pathways and decision-making at the local level; (2) it identifies and characterizes processes that constrain resilience or enable rural communities to overcome challenges and foster new trajectories; and (3) it identifies specific policies and strategies to support communities navigating energy transition and socioeconomic uncertainty. To make these contributions, this dissertation engages a mixed-methods approach, combining policy analysis and qualitative data collection to examine the coal transition in the US West at the regional and local scale.Item Navigating the local costs and benefits of modern mineral mines: the role of non-regulatory agreements(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Rose, Jackson Cooper; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Julia Hobson Haggerty; Julia H. Haggerty was a co-author of the article, 'Navigating the local costs and benefits of modern mineral mines: the role of non-regulatory agreements' submitted to the journal 'Society and Natural Resources' which is contained within this thesis.This thesis explores natural resource development at the local level from the perspective of resource peripheries in the United States. Using three case studies--two in Montana and one in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan--this study combines qualitative mixed-methods with on-the-ground experience to explore the dynamics of the costs and benefits of extractive industries in the context of short-duration, high-impact underground mines. Research questions focused on the specific concerns and priorities in each place and the novel tools communities are using to address both short-term impacts and long-term economic development. The methodology relied on in-person, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, participant observation, and document and policy analysis. Results reveal that rural places share similar concerns tied to these projects, although multiple stakeholder groups often have divergent ideas and priorities. Non-regulatory agreements show promise as a tool for stakeholder groups to navigate the balancing act of mining projects, but the initiatives found in these agreements are often affected by classic dilemmas facing resource peripheries as well as individual places' institutional and regulatory context. Findings also suggest that communities are granted a limited window of opportunity to maximize their negotiating power in the social license to operate process. Ultimately, non-regulatory agreements should be tailored to fill regulatory gaps and, in the best cases, are able to focus on delivering lasting economic benefits from short-term mining developments.Item Mining for empire: gold, American engineers, and transnational extractive capitalism, 1889-1914(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Bartos, Jeffrey Michael; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy Smith; Tim LeCain (co-chair)Between 1889 and 1914, American mining engineers drew on their experience in mining in the American West into management positions with prominent mining finance firms in the British Empire. The careers of three engineers, Hennen Jennings, John Hays Hammond, and Herbert Hoover, demonstrate their influence on British gold mining investment and on the imperial system. The professional biographies of these engineers demonstrate their racialized labor practices, access to technology and capital, ideas about management, and willingness to interfere in the politics and economies of sovereign nations for the interests of the mining finance industry, notably the Transvaal Republic and late Qing China. In their actions in the colonies, they employed the latest mining technologies to extract gold from low grade ores, imposed labor conditions on the basis of race (including the legal foundations of Apartheid in South Africa), and directed investment capital toward profitable mining in support of the monetary gold standard and shareholder dividends. Along with hundreds of other mining engineers, they oversaw a world-historical expansion of the world's gold supply through the expansion of gold mining on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal Republic and in Western Australia, effectively doubling the world's supply of gold in two decades. These engineers were agents of transnational extractive capitalism and the British and American empires. As an integral component of their careers, they operated in the core of empire: major centers of investment such as London and New York, the media and publishing worlds, and even world's fairs. They communicated their professional activities and technical developments through the Engineering and Mining Journal, the premier mining publication of the era. They promoted world's fairs, ensuring that mining was prominently featured as an aspect of civilization at these expositions. They also acted as public intellectuals, speaking and publishing on topics of empire, well beyond the purview of the mine. Based on archival research, contemporary technical journals and media accounts, and autobiographical documents, this dissertation analyzes the influence of American Mining Engineers, both good and bad, in shaping the British Empire and the modern world system before the outbreak of World War 1.Item Traditional knowledge systems and tribal water governance on Fort Peck Indian Reservation, MT(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2017) Zoanni, Dionne Kae; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Jamie McEvoy; Jamie McEvoy, Julia Haggerty and Elizabeth Rink were co-authors of the article, 'All the answers are in our culture': integrating traditional knowledge systems into tribal water governance on Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana' submitted to the journal 'Geoforum' which is contained within this thesis.The Fort Peck Indian Reservation is located in northeast Montana and is home to the Assiniboine (Nakona) and Sioux (Dakota) Tribes. Conventional oil and gas development and the disposal of produced water has led to the contamination of 15-37 billion gallons of groundwater within the aquifer that had historically been the only source of drinking water for reservation community members. Although the tribes are aware of the contamination plume, exploiting newly accessible shale resources has become a viable option as the tribes continue to try to alleviate the high unemployment and poverty rates of tribal members. Even so, tribal members and authorities also understand the importance of ecological health in fostering a healthy community. A strong movement of cultural resurgence has been in motion, with tribal members looking to traditional stories and lessons in order to guide the future of the community and create community cohesion. Traditional knowledge systems (TKS) have been heralded throughout contemporary Indigenous governance literature as an important dynamic resource for indigenous communities that deal with difficult decisions involving resource management. Using a TKS framework and interviews with tribal members, this research seeks to answer the following questions: 1) What are the TKS that surrounds water and its use for the Nakona and Dakota tribes? 2) What are some of the opportunities and barriers that exist for the successful incorporation of TKS into tribal water governance structures at Fort Peck? Challenges to validity, process, and relevance due to political histories and power imbalances, as well as diverse intertribal knowledge systems, may impede the successful integration of Indigenous knowledge in collaborative water governance initiatives with outside interests. The internal knowledge sharing process has the potential to enhance cultural revitalization efforts on the reservation -- which represent an organic solution that takes place from within the community itself. In addition, TKS-based tribal policies may uphold the expression of tribal self-determination, i.e. the 'governance-value' of traditional knowledge systems.Item Development of GIS/GPS methodology of minesite soil salvaging(Montana State University - Bozeman, 1994) Lindberg, Steven Dennis; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: D. J. DollhopfItem Rehabilitation of pronghorn habitat on surface mines of the northern Great Plains(Montana State University - Bozeman, 1983) Zimmerman, George MichaelItem Reclamation of abandoned bentonite mine spoils with phosphogypsum and magnesium chloride amendments(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1988) Smith, Steven Carl; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Douglas J. DollhopfAbandoned bentonite mine spoils are scattered over southeast and north central Montana. The clayey, saline-sodic nature of these spoils creates adverse physicochemical properties. Invasion of native plant species is precluded and revegetation is difficult. Infiltration of surface water is severely limited due to surface crusting and shrink-swell processes. Chemical amendments have recently been shown to be effective in ameliorating adverse physical and chemical spoil properties. Chemical amendment use increases reclamation costs significantly, therefore effective, low cost amendments are needed. Phosphpgypsum and magnesium chloride brine are low cost industrial wastes that have not been tested for use in land reclamation. Experimental field plots were implemented to evaluate the effects of phosphogypsum (40.4 mt/ha) and magnesium chloride brine (36.2 mt/ha) incorporated to a 35 cm depth. Effects of nitrogen fertilizer (0, 67 kg/ha, and 134 kg/ha) on seedling emergence were also tested. Representative unamended spoil at the site had a sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) of 33.8 and an electrical conductivity (EC) of 8.0 mmhos/cm. Over a 14 month sampling period, SAR (0-5 cm) declined to 24.5 on phosphogypsum treated plots, and to 21.3 on magnesium chloride brine treated plots. Electrical conductivity (0-5 cm) increased to 10.1 mmhos/cm on phosphogypsum treated plots, and to 15.9 mmhos/cm on magnesium chloride brine treated plots. Following 30 minutes of simulated rainfall, minesoil infiltration rates were 2.8 cm/hr on phosphogypsum treated plots and 3.8 cm/hr on magnesium chloride brine treated plots, compared to .1 cm/hr on unamended spoil. Nitrogen fertilizer at 67 kg/ha resulted in significantly greater seedling density among fertilizer treatments, at 192 seedlings/m^2. Plant canopy cover of 39% estimated on magnesium chloride brine treated plots was significantly greater than 28% on phosphogypsum treated plots. Above ground plant production was 1753 kg/ha on phosphogypsum treated plots and 2717 kg/ha on magnesium chloride brine treated plots. Production of pioneering (non-seeded) annual forbs comprised 60% of total production on phosphogypsum treated plots and 83% on magnesium chloride brine treated plots.Item The potential for dryland alfalfa on minesoils in southeastern Montana(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1985) Postle, Robert Cairns