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Browsing by Author "Bowser, Gillian, committee member"

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    Agency of ecological landscapes through paintings of the American West
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Hinkelman, Adam, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Bowser, Gillian, committee member
    The lineage of American landscape paintings invokes a hierarchical structure cresting with humankind and the divine. This evokes problematic relational dynamics between humanity and the natural world which is exacerbated by Anthropocentric activity. Traditionally, early western landscape artists illustrated nature as a sublime force displayed as vast expanses of "untamed" wilderness, ethereal mountain peaks, fertile valleys, and steaming brooks. Alongside colonial settlements, paintings effectively lured eager European Americans to claim land through western expansion. To promote mutualistic bonds between humans and nature and contribute towards a new decolonial ecology, my thesis instills agency to natural landscapes by exploring a synthesis between generational historicity to place, non-anthropocentric phenomenology through kinship, and a painting process enriched by the practice of ultra distance trail running. More specifically, my paintings recognize the innate agency of trees, mountains, and glaciers through non-human centric perspectives across time scales, spatial dimensions, and non-observable light wave spectrums. This invites observers to identify a kinship with nature from non-anthropocentric grounding.
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    Desert grey
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Hayes, Esther Marlena, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Ausubel, Ramona, committee member; Bowser, Gillian, committee member
    This collection of short stories and essays engages both the infertility of a landscape rendered unrecognizable by environmental change and the enduring fertility of the bodies that live there. The majority of the collection takes place in my first home—the deserts of Nevada. This is a landscape that has been abused both for its infertility and its fertility. It has been a site for nuclear tests and a dumping ground for waste; it has had tunnels carved into its mountains for the gold and the silver in its veins. In places real and invented, my characters—both real and invented—ask how to move forward. Will we be forgiven for what we have done?
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    The effects of long term nitrogen fertilization on forest soil respiration in a subalpine ecosystem in Rocky Mountain National Park
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Allen, Jordan, author; Denning, A. Scott, advisor; Baron, Jill, advisor; Ryan, Mike, committee member; Bowser, Gillian, committee member
    Anthropogenic activities contribute to increased levels of nitrogen deposition and elevated CO2 concentrations in terrestrial ecosystems. The response of soil respiration to nitrogen fertilization in an on going 18- year field nitrogen amendment study was conducted from July 2014 to October 2014. The focus of this study was to determine the effects of nitrogen fertilization on soil carbon cycling, via respiration. Our objectives were to (1) test the hypothesis that N additions would increase soil respiration in Rocky Mountain National Park, and (2) understand the impacts of N additions on carbon flows in subalpine forests. A LiCor LI-820 infrared gas analyzer (IRGA) was used to quantify soil respiration rates. We compared soil respiration from fertilized forest plots (30 x 30 m) with soil respiration from control forests plots (30 x 30 m) that receive only ambient nitrogen deposition (3-5 kg/ N/ha-1/yr-1) during the 2014-growing season. Our results shows that mean soil respiration measurements were not significantly different in the control plots (3.14 µmol m-2 sec-1) than in the fertilized plots (3.02 µmol m-2 sec-1). Treatment was insignificant in influencing soil respiration (p-value greater than 0.5), allowing us to reject our primary hypothesis: that nitrogen additions would lead to an increase in soil respiration. Our results confirm previous research in these plots Advani (2004). The statistically identical soil respiration rates between the control and fertilized plots may result from nitrogen saturation due to elevated levels of ambient N deposition, microbial suppression due to very high levels of N additions in the fertilized plots, or some combination of the two.