Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Physiographic components of trail erosion(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2000) Godwin, Ian Chandler Paterson; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Andrew MarcusNo previous study has sought to discriminate between soil erosion and soil compaction when explaining the "missing" cross-sectional areas of incised trails, assuming instead that erosion was the dominant process. Separating the two processes of erosion and compaction is critical to understanding the relationship between physiographic variables and the structure of trails. The purposes of this project are to estimate the relative effects of compaction and erosion on trail cross sectional area along the New World Gulch Trail, Montana, and to better understand the relationship between erosion, compaction, local topography, vegetation, soil bulk density, and soil texture. The following hypotheses were addressed: 1) adjusting the incised cross sectional area of a trail, by removing the effects of soil compaction, will increase the amount of variance in erosion explained by collected physiographic variables; and 2) inclusion of soil bulk density and soil texture as physiographic variables will increase the amount of variance in cross-sectional area explained along the trail. The goals of this study required the collection of field data, analysis of soil samples, and statistical analysis of data. Soil samples and other field measurements were collected over several months during the summer and fall of 1994. Some of the topographic information used in the statistical analysis originated in Urie's (1994) study of recreational trails. The determination of trail slope as one of the primary components of trail incision is consistent with previous studies. Soil water content is the second most significant independent variable when the percentage of particle sizes are not considered. Percent vegetative cover is also significant in the stepwise regression, although it is not significantly correlated to cross-sectional area. The most significant variable added to those already studied was soil bulk density. When individual variables were regressed against the measured cross-sectional area, off-trail soil bulk density accounted for the second greatest amount of variance (r2 = 0.12) after trail slope (r2 = 0.35). The ratio of on-trail soil bulk density to off-trail soil bulk density, which could be considered a measure of compaction, accounted for even more variance (r2 = 0.18) than soil bulk density.Item Distance delivered education at Montana State University - supplementing or supplanting campus registrations : an exploration of changing patterns over time(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 2008) Godwin, Ian Chandler Paterson; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Marilyn Lockhart.The problem addressed in this study was that university system and institutional administrators need to know who (geographically and demographically) the consumers of online courses and programs are. The purpose of this comparative study was to identify student populations and registration patterns over an eight year period in on-campus and online courses offered by Montana State University. Whether or not distinct student populations could be identified based on the mode of course delivery (on-campus vs. online) was established through analysis of spatial and demographic data. The design of this project used a comparative approach to identify differences in population demographics and a spatially sensitive correlational approach to identify associations between the spatial nature of on-campus and online registrations over time. The population included all on-campus and online course registrations offered through MSU from academic year 2000-2001 through 2007-2008. A Chi Square test was used to provide a spatially unweighted assessment of "spatial" proportionality. The exploratory spatial data analysis tool GeoDa was used to assess the global and local spatial dimension of the research while ANOVAs, factorial ANOVAs, and logistic regression were used to assess the demographic research questions. The Chi Square tests indicated that there are significant differences in the proportion of registrations over time at the local, state and national level. Global spatial autocorrelation tests provide statistically significant, but moderately weak results. The Local Indicator of Spatial Autocorrelation (LISA) analyses point to considerable overlap in registration "footprints" between on-campus and online registrations. Those tests also indicated that changes in spatial patterns have been more evolutionary for online registrations than for on-campus registrations which showed less variation over time. The demographic tests indicated that on-campus and online populations differ both in age and gender composition. The conclusion based on the results is that online courses are likely supplementing, not supplanting campus registrations at MSU. While the geographic analysis points to significant, fairly extensive, and growing geographic overlap between the home-of-origin locations of online and on-campus populations, the age and gender differences clearly indicate that the online population is older and more female than the on-campus population.