Forest planning utilizing high spatial resolution data

This thesis presents planning approaches adapted for high spatial resolution data from remote sensing and evaluate whether such approaches can enhance the provision of ecosystem services from forests. The presented methods are compared with conventional, stand-level methods. The main focus lies on the planning concept of dynamic treatment units (DTU), where treatments in small units for modelling ecosystem processes and forest management are clustered spatiotemporally to form treatment units realistic in practical forestry. The methodological foundation of the thesis is mainly airborne laser scanning data (raster cells 12.5x12.5 m2), different optimization methods and the forest decision support system Heureka. Paper I demonstrates a mixed-integer programming model for DTU planning, and the results highlight the economic advances of clustering harvests. Paper II and III presents an addition to a DTU heuristic from the literature and further evaluates its performance. Results show that direct modelling of fixed costs for harvest operations can improve plans and that DTU planning enhances the economic outcome of forestry. The higher spatial resolution of data in the DTU approach enables the planning model to assign management with higher precision than if stand-based planning is applied. Paper IV evaluates whether this phenomenon is also valid for ecological values. Here, an approach adapted for cell-level data is compared to a schematic approach, dealing with stand-level data, for the purpose of allocating retention patches. The evaluation of economic and ecological values indicate that high spatial resolution data and an adapted planning approach increased the ecological values, while differences in economy were small. In conclusion, the studies in this thesis demonstrate how forest planning can utilize high spatial resolution data from remote sensing, and the results suggest that there is a potential to increase the overall provision of ecosystem services if such methods are applied

General Catalog 2007-2009

Contains course descriptions, University college calendar, and college administrationhttps://digitalcommons.usu.edu/universitycatalogs/1127/thumbnail.jp

General Catalog 2009-2010

Contains course descriptions, University college calendar, and college administrationhttps://digitalcommons.usu.edu/universitycatalogs/1128/thumbnail.jp

Uncovering injustice: towards a Dalit feminist politics in Bangalore

This research is interested in unpacking the injustice that dalit groups, men and women, identify as structuring their lives, as well as the strategies deployed to resist, disrupt and subvert the violence. It is also interested in elucidating the tensions in accounting for caste relations, as well as a gendered conception of dalit relations in Bangalore. The dalit women question has received increasing scholarly as well as political attention in the last couple of decades. However, there is very little literature that seeks to locate the conditions of dalit women’s lives in the context of urban spaces. Understanding gendered caste relations in the space of the city has been no easy process. This is not only because of the conceptual and historical disjunction between caste and class, but also because of the disjunction between caste and conceptions of the space of the city. The over-determination of the centrality of ‘the village’ in the literature on caste does not easily allow for a conception of caste relations in the city. Moreover, the space of the city as a space of freedom in the dalit imagination makes it difficult to locate a critical conception of urban spaces for a dalit politics. In relation to a gendered dalit politics, the need for an internal critique of the patriarchy of dalit politics whilst over-determined, has not produced a robust critique of intra-caste relations. This is also because in demarcating the specific conditions of dalit women’s lives, a gendered dalit politics tends to get caught up in a ‘politics of difference’. Based on primary research with three dalit groups in the city of Bangalore and secondary material, this thesis locates the politics around the naming of identity and the ways in which ‘dalit’ identity has been avowed, disavowed, contested and sometimes not confronted at all, by the groups, and what this means for a dalit politics as well as a dalit feminist politics in Bangalore. It also analyses the politics of naming the injustice of untouchability and the strategies deployed by the respondents to contend with the violence. It provides a gendered account of untouchability and an analysis of untouchability in relation to the city

General Catalog 2002-2004

Contains course descriptions, University college calendar, and college administrationhttps://digitalcommons.usu.edu/universitycatalogs/1123/thumbnail.jp