Aesthetic Characteristics of the Front Range: An Analysis of Viewsheds Provided by Boulder OSMP Lands

The city of Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) lands offer residents and visitors a variety of unique recreational, scenic, and cultural experiences that are often captured and shared publicly via social media. Given the diversity of OSMP lands, visitor experiences likely differ based on the aesthetic and biophysical features that can be viewed from these landscapes. For instance, the peaks of the iconic Flatirons provide visitors with different scenic views than the low-lying grasslands in the southeastern area of the city. Furthermore, visitor use and enjoyment of OSMP lands could be directly related to the landscape features that are visible from these different locations. Understanding how visible landscape features vary across OSMP lands can help managers target their planning efforts to improve the quality of outdoor recreation experiences, and potentially identify new locations for outdoor recreation infrastructure (e.g., trails, pavilions, etc.) that offer the ability to see the regions most desirable landscape features. This study: (1) identifies points in the landscape where users are often inspired to take photographs; (2) maps the landscapes most often viewed by visitors; (3) summarizes the types of landscape features viewed from OSMP lands; and (4) determines how these landscape features vary across LCAs

Landscape Values and Aesthetic Preferences Across the Front Range

Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) lands are managed to provide a diverse set of benefits valued by Boulder’s residents as well as tourists. Not all OSMP lands provide the same set of benefits however. Understanding how the values associated with OSMP lands vary across the region can provide managers with insights into how best to allocate resources so that they yield the maximum public benefit. In addition to an understanding of the values visitors associate with OSMP lands, management can benefit from knowledge of how different features of the landscape impact user experiences, both positively and negatively

Modeling Landowner Interactions and Development Patterns at the Urban Fringe

Population growth and unrestricted development policies are driving low-density urbanization and fragmentation of peri-urban landscapes across North America. While private individuals own most undeveloped land, little is known about how their decision-making processes shape landscape-scale patterns of urbanization over time. We introduce a hybrid agent-based modeling (ABM) – cellular automata (CA) modeling approach, developed for analyzing dynamic feedbacks between landowners’ decisions to sell their land for development, and resulting patterns of landscape fragmentation. Our modeling approach builds on existing conceptual frameworks in land systems modeling by integrating an ABM into an established grid-based land-change model – FUTURES. The decision-making process within the ABM involves landowner agents whose decision to sell their land to developers is a function of heterogeneous preferences and peer-influences (i.e., spatial neighborhood relationships). Simulating landowners’ decision to sell allows an operational link between the ABM and the CA module. To test our hybrid ABM-CA approach, we used empirical data for a rapidly growing region in North Carolina for parameterization. We conducted a sensitivity analysis focusing on the two most relevant parameters—spatial actor distribution and peer-influence intensity—and evaluated the dynamic behavior of the model simulations. The simulation results indicate different peer-influence intensities lead to variable landscape fragmentation patterns, suggesting patterns of spatial interaction among landowners indirectly affect landscape-scale patterns of urbanization and the fragmentation of undeveloped forest and farmland

Novel gene function revealed by mouse mutagenesis screens for models of age-related disease

Determining the genetic bases of age-related disease remains a major challenge requiring a spectrum of approaches from human and clinical genetics to the utilization of model organism studies. Here we report a large-scale genetic screen in mice employing a phenotype-driven discovery platform to identify mutations resulting in age-related disease, both late-onset and progressive. We have utilized N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea mutagenesis to generate pedigrees of mutagenized mice that were subject to recurrent screens for mutant phenotypes as the mice aged. In total, we identify 105 distinct mutant lines from 157 pedigrees analysed, out of which 27 are late-onset phenotypes across a range of physiological systems. Using whole-genome sequencing we uncover the underlying genes for 44 of these mutant phenotypes, including 12 late-onset phenotypes. These genes reveal a number of novel pathways involved with age-related disease. We illustrate our findings by the recovery and characterization of a novel mouse model of age-related hearing loss

Changing foreign policy: the Obama Administration’s decision to oust Mubarak

This paper analyses the decision of the Obama administration to redirect its foreign policy towards Egypt in the wake of the Arab Spring. It attempts to highlight the issue of how governments deal with decision-making at times of crisis, and under which circumstances they take critical decisions that lead to major shifts in their foreign policy track record. It focuses on the process that led to a reassessment of US (United States) foreign policy, shifting from decades of support to the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, towards backing his ouster. Specifically, the paper attempts to assess to what extent the decision to withdraw US support from a longstanding state-leader and ally in the Middle East can be seen as a foreign policy change (FPC). A relevant research question this paper pursues is: how can the withdrawal of US support to a regime considered as an ally be considered, in itself, as a radical FPC