Climate activists urgently emphasize collective action and global institutional change to prevent irreversible damage to human and natural systems from climate change. However, global institutional responses to climate change have been deemed ineffective and slow, and this has been linked to gender imbalance within dominant international climate change negotiations and research. Research shows improved climate change responses and policy agendas when there is greater gender balance within climate negotiations and research. More effective climate responses and policy agendas are dependent on a shared understanding of the problem. This is communicated through the way we frame, or interpret, the phenomenon. Framing is a method of organizing the ways in which people interpret a phenomenon by establishing a shared sense of meaning. A collective action frame involves four steps: identify the (1) problem; (2) causes of the problem; (3) solutions to the problem; and (4) ways to engage others to take solution-oriented actions. Collective action frames against climate change can inform policy agendas by raising alternative questions and solutions, acknowledging more neglected issues, and including marginalized perspectives. I will qualitatively analyze the characteristics of women climate activists’ collective action frames against climate change through 20 in-depth, in-person interviews. Because climate change has only recently become a dominant political narrative, my approach is unique in that interview data will be compared between women who are 18 – 36 years versus women who are 55 years and older to explore the extent to which collective action frames vary by age. Variations of collective action frames of climate change across women of two generations might reveal different climate change policy agendas.

Fires can alter human remains in various ways; however, complete destruction of a human body by burning is impossible and skeletal remains can almost always be recovered. Fatal fires produce a range of physical alterations to the body, from blistering of soft tissue to the calcination of bones.Theses physical alterations leave patterns that can be studied and analyzed to interpret perimortem events. A variety of forensic professionals interact with and analyze these remains postmortem, which can lead to variation in how remains are described.

Currently, the forensic community lacks a consistent, objective, and detailed scale to describe burn injuries or patterns in a variety of settings and conditions. There is a need to create a scale based on quantitative experimental data (e.g. duration and temperature of fire) that provides insight into the nature of the fire and cause of injuries contributing to the condition of the remains. This research develops a new standardized method that would encompass all physical alterations of burned remains and be more applicable to the broader forensic community.

The new classification system is based on observational experiments conducted as part of the Fatal Fire Death Investigation Course by the San Luis Obispo Fire Investigation Strike Team. Observational experiments consisted of 11 to 12 different scenarios covering a wide range of fire environments. The range of fire environments provided through the training course, make it possible to collect a wide range of data that may be more representative of burned forensic cases. All physical alterations to both soft and skeletal tissues were documented with digital photography and thermocouples. Temperature data was collected through use of thermal couples and thermal imaging devices placed on multiple locations and depths directly on the human remains. Time was also recorded manually while each temperature was being read from the data logger. Statistical analyses were performed to identify patterns between physical alterations of remains, environment, time, and temperature. Additionally, the new scoring system and model was tested on a separate sample of case studies provided by medical examiner/coroners’ offices to test and validate the method created. This new model provides investigators with a tool for developing a more precise timeline of death events, and aids in narrowing down a perpetrator. Information gained from the model can also be used to better predict when and at what temperatures these physical alterations may occur on the human body. It can also prove important in reconstructing events involved in fatal fires and aid investigators building a legal case.

Best of GradCon Award Winner: Oral Presentations - STEM

Geometric morphometrics is the analysis of shape, and this method has become more popular in anthropology as three-dimensional data and research become more available. This research provides a new method utilizing 3-D geometric morphometric analysis to determine sex from the human pubic bone. Previous methods of sex determination rely heavily on the visual analysis of bone by the expert forensic anthropologist; these methods generally result in accuracy rates of about 90-95%. Creating a metric method adds credibility and statistical accuracy to the practice of sex determination. This study used a sample of N=378 individual pubic bones from the University of New Mexico Maxwell Documented Collection. Eight landmarks were digitized on each individual bone using a Microscribe Digitizer. Results from the Principle Components Analysis provide promising clustering between male and female groups, as well as indications that the method may be ancestry-specific, and that parity may have an effect on the shape of female pubic bones. The Discriminant Function analysis of the training data set resulted in 96.2% accuracy in predicting the correct sex, and the testing data set resulted in 94.6% accuracy (p This research is groundbreaking within the field of forensic anthropology because refining the use of the method to a small portion of bone which can accurately predict the sex of an individual greatly increases the applicability toward real forensic casework. Very rarely is a forensic anthropologist presented with an entire human skeleton to analyze; much more often we are presented with fragments which must be analyzed to provide as much information as possible. Improving this method so that it is accurate on small portions of bone is a huge advantage to the forensic anthropologist, especially if they must testify as an expert in court. It is important to back up all estimations and information with metrically determined results; this method provides a new and very accurate metric method. As this method continues to be validated on more samples in the future, it could change the way unknown human remains are analyzed and identified.

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), an ecologically important tree species of high-elevation ecosystems of western North America, is declining across most of its range due to the combined effects of an invasive pathogen (blister rust; Cronartium ribicola) and a native insect (mountain pine beetle; Dendroctonus ponderosae), as well as climate-change-induced increases in wildfire frequency and severity. Concern over these threats to whitebark pine as well as successional replacement by shade-tolerant firs has led to its listing under both the US and Canadian Endangered Species Acts and an increase in research activities. In addition, management agencies have adopted coordinated, trans-boundary restoration strategies (e.g., Range-Wide Restoration Strategy for Whitebark Pine and the National Whitebark Pine Restoration Plan) that call for silvicultural treatments and prescribed burning, among other interventions. Despite a growing literature and widespread agreement on the need for conservation and restoration, there is little synthetic information on the species ecology, successional dynamics, and response to management interventions. In order to identify gaps in knowledge and improve restoration strategies for white bark pine, we conducted a literature review on the status of knowledge on the species in general. Specifically, we identified all publications listed on Web of Science and grey literature available on AGRICOLA (National Agricultural Library, USDA) from 1950 to 2018 using the search terms whitebark pine and “Pinus albicaulis”. We only reviewed articles that mentioned the species in the abstract or title, or studies in which whitebark pine ecosystems were a main focus.

Although the number of published articles has been increasing over the last 30 years, most studies focused on biotic interactions (27%), pathogens and MPB outbreaks (39%), mortality (35%), and regeneration dynamics (25%). On the other hand, there was very little available information on the efficacy and effects of restoration and other management activities (less than 10% of all articles). There were also few articles published on the species life history, fire ecology and successional dynamics. Our findings indicate a significant gap in information required for effective conservation and restoration of whitebark pine. To improve capacity for successful management of whitebark pine, there is a need to invest in research that aligns with conservation needs.