English

Anthropogenic atmospheric emissions and subsequent deposition of nitrogen (N) can affect N-sensitive habitats and lead to shifts in plant species community composition. This study assessed the effects of N deposition on plant community composition for Jack pine forests across northwestern Canada and across a smaller subset of sites surrounding the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) using 'gradient forest' analysis. Predictor influence on community composition varied depending on the scale of the study and relatively

distinct thresholds were identified for different plant groups. In the larger scale study, a total deposited nitrogen (TDN) threshold of 1.5 – 3 kg N ha-1yr-1 was well suited to protect predominantly lichen species, consistent with lichen-based critical loads from other studies. Across the smaller scale study, a TDN threshold of 5.6 kg N ha-1yr-1 was primarily associated with vascular species changepoints but did include some important N-indicator lichen and bryophyte species.

Author Keywords: critical loads, gradientForest, Jack pine, Nitrogen deposition, species composition

Self-regulation skills have been connected to positive school success and increased academic achievement (McClelland, Acock, & Morrison, 2006). One recently explored method to aid students in their ability to self-regulate is physical activity (Becker, et al., 2011). The purpose of this study was to explore the facilitation of self- regulation through physical activity via access to an exercise bicycle within an elementary and secondary school setting. Student bicycle usage was explored via student documentation to determine frequency and duration of use. Teacher observations were collected via email correspondence were analyzed via thematic content analysis and reflections made by the teachers at a follow-up debriefing session were summarized. Overall, a novelty effect was apparent with the bicycle, where it was used extensively in the first month of the study and then use sharply declined thereafter. Teachers felt that the bicycle appeared to provide some students with support, however there were challenges with integrating the exercise bicycle into the classroom. As well, teachers stated that factors such as bicycle placement and engagement levels must be explored further in order to understand the impact an exercise bicycle could possibly have on a student's ability to self-regulate.

Author Keywords: exercise bicycle, physical activity, self-regulation

This thesis approaches the issue of Viewshed Analysis and how it can impact the understanding of a medieval environment. Centered on the High Medieval period of Cilicia, in what is today Southwestern Turkey, the precision of Viewsheds in a complex terrain is evaluated, and the role of the fortifications in the environment is expanded upon. The maps that were generated for this thesis demonstrate that the use of free datasets must be done with caution, and that the use of more than one dataset is crucial in trying to create a clearer picture of the environment. The examination of four separate sets of fortifications within the region leads to new questions about the role of fortifications in the region, as well as a better understanding of what groups such as the Armenian Cilicians and the Knights Templar were doing in the High Medieval period. Finally, conclusions are made regarding the future impact of GIS based studies, and how they can help scholars understand Ancient and Medieval landscapes.

Author Keywords: Armenian Cilicia, Fortifications, GIS, Viewshed

This research explores key themes emerging from the question of the meaning Anishinaabe individuals attach to utilizing traditional practices and ceremonies to address their own trauma. The contributors share their stories, which are deeply rooted in relationships. The methodology of this research is also rooted within an Indigenous paradigm; storytelling is a core feature of relationships and knowledge transmission through its ability to weave together and across generations. Indigenous cultures have had a long history of both verbal and visual storytelling, in the forms of pictographs and petroglyphs, wampum belts, bead and quill work, and so on. While stories are often entertaining, they are at their core, the most human of activities. Anishinaabe approaches to ceremony, spirit and the sacred are woven into the language, attitudes and practices that people still engage in, despite the depredations of colonization. The findings of this research explore how identity, found through love, caring, self-awareness, and the (re)claiming of wellness and wholeness, permeates the stories of healing and is rooted in ceremonies. This is relationship with self and self-in-relation to all things: niwiikaniginaa. Land-as-home, culture, family, and love ground people in their sense of self and wellness. Language and thought emerge from the land, the source of well-being or mino bimaadsiwin in the most profound ways. It is through home – land, family, culture, spiritual connection – that healing occurs in ways that cannot be found in clinical systems.

Author Keywords: Colonization, First Nations, Healing, Identity, Storytelling, Trauma

This thesis examines the interrelationship of urban planning and population health at the site of Angkor (c. 802-1432 CE), the capital city of the Classical Khmer state, now found within modern-day Cambodia. The inhabitants of Angkor developed a settlement strategy that relied on the dispersal of water management features, rice fields, temples and residential areas, to best utilize the spread-out environmental resources of the surrounding monsoon-forest climate. Thus, the main question to be answered by this thesis is this: did the city-planning practice of dispersed, low-density agrarian urbanism promote resilience against the disease hazards associated with tropical environments?

To answer this question, methods involved creating assessing environmental and socio-cultural factors which habituated the urban inhabitants of Angkor's relationship to disease hazards. The results of this assessment demonstrate that it was not until the last stages of Angkor's urban development, when non-farming members of the population were concentrated into the "core" area of temples within city, that the city's inhabitants' vulnerability to infectious disease increased. As the city took a more compact settlement form, it was not as environmentally compatible as the earlier dispersed pattern. Significantly, archaeological case studies such as this can illustrate the long-term development and end-result of urban planning to deal with disease hazards, both in terms of everyday occurrences, as well as during crisis events, which has important implications for contemporary research on environmental disasters today.

Author Keywords: Adaptive Strategies, Mainland Southeast Asia, Pre-industrial Urbanization, Resilience, Tropical Diseases

This dissertation explores a 2017 elementary school Hoop Dance project that was organized by a white music teacher, and taught by an Indigenous artist in Peterborough, Ontario. It aims to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, numbers 10 and 63, which ask the federal government to sufficiently fund legislation that incorporates the following principles: "… developing culturally appropriate curricula" (p. 2), and "building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect" (p. 7). The dissertation asks the question: In what ways will a seven-week Indigenous Hoop Dance Unit, taught by an Indigenous performing artist and facilitated by a white school teacher, contribute to reconciliation in an elementary school classroom in Ontario? I am the teacher in this study and have worked at this elementary school for five years. Throughout the project, I acted as facilitator, participant, and researcher, while Indigenous dancer and instructor Beany John planned and delivered the Hoop Dance content.

Theoretically, the dissertation is organized around the Anishinabek seven grandmother/grandfather teachings, as taught by Ojibwe/Odawa educator and author Pamela Toulouse (2011). I believe that these seven traditional teachings are a meaningful basis upon which to build the project, not only because they inform Indigenous knowledge in the arts, but also because frequent reflection and referral to the teachings help remind me to remain connected to the "higher" purpose of the research throughout the project, which is to further the reconciliation process in Canada, and more broadly, to benefit society. Regarding methodology, I use arts based research (Leavy, 2015) and a constructivist grounded theory analysis, which embraces the subjectivity and positionality of the researcher (Creswell, 2012). The overall conclusion of the dissertation is that although the Hoop Dance project did not significantly address issues of Indigenous sovereignty in education nor our shared inherited legacy of colonial harm, it was a constructive step in the reconciliation project, largely due to the contributions of Beany John, whose teaching gently unsettled conventional educational practice at our school.

Author Keywords: Arts Education, Hoop Dance, Indigenous Education, Indigenous Peoples, Settler Colonialism, Truth and Reconciliation

Aging is associated with a multitude of changes, including changes in the motor system. One such change that has been documented is increased levels of inherent movement variability (the inability to consistently replicate movements over time) with increasing age. Previous research has had controversial findings regarding the effect that movement variability has on motor learning and motor adaptation. Some research suggests that movement variability is beneficial to motor learning, while other research indicates that movement variability is the by-product of a noisy motor system and is a detriment to learning new skills. How do changes in movement variability associated with aging affect the ability to adapt to a mass perturbation? We tested younger and older individuals on a mass adaptation task (applying mass to the lateral side of the arm to perturb inertial forces of the limb during reaches). We analyzed baseline levels of movement variability, learning during the adaptation block and how baseline levels of movement variability explained differences in learning. We focused on measures of accuracy, speed and precision. We found that younger individuals displayed greater levels of movement variability throughout the experiment and that they also learned to adapt to the mass perturbation more successfully than their older counterparts. Multi-joint movements displayed greater degrees of learning in comparison to single-joint movements, likely due to the difference in difficulty when completing the two movements. Taken together, our results suggest that purposeful movement variability may be beneficial to motor adaptation.

Author Keywords: aging, mass adaptation, motor adaptation, motor learning, movement variability

Detecting relevant and meaningful patterns from the complex, interconnected network of relationships between organisms and their environment is a primary objective of ecology. Ecological patterns occur across multiple scales of space and time. In this dissertation, I examine aspects of environmental structure that influence a species' distribution and are expressed in that species' population dynamics. I compare the morphology of the five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) near its high latitude range limits with a lower latitude population and evaluate the economics of their behaviour in the context of its reproductive strategy. I tested the conformity of this species to biogeographical rules postulated by MacArthur, Bergmann, and Rensch. Spatial ecology was investigated in the context of the environmental potential for polygamy proposed by Emlen and Oring (1977) The five-lined skink, Plestiodon fasciatus, conformed to these biogeographic rules. Specifically, abiotic factors were the primary limiting factors affecting distribution at the high latitude range limits of the species; body size was larger in high latitude populations; and the degree of sexual size dimorphism was greater at high latitude than at low latitude. Spatial ecology at the individual scale was influenced by sites with suitable thermal conditions which facilitate the polygynandrous mating system documented in P. fasciatus in high latitude populations. My results confirm the importance of microsites with suitable thermal profiles as key habitat for ectothermic vertebrates at high latitudes. The influence of temperature as a limiting abiotic factor is expressed in population density, body size, spatial ecology, and reproductive strategy of P. fasciatus. Conservation and restoration of high latitude populations of ectothermic vertebrates should focus on ensuring thermal requirements of the species of concern are met before other factors are addressed, as temperature is likely the single most important limiting factor at high latitude range limits.

Author Keywords: biogeography, lizard, Plestiodon fasciatus, range limits, sexual size dimorphism, spatial ecology

This thesis explores middling reform-minded representations of plebeian children's material worlds in England from 1720 to 1780. Specifically, it examines depictions of chattel and place in imagery of children, to convey messages aligned with the reform initiatives of the eighteenth century. Using the Old Bailey Proceedings, prints by William Hogarth, and novels, it argues that contemporary concerns about idleness, vagrancy, consumerism, and delinquency, were reflected in the way the middling sort conceived of plebeian childhood. Ultimately these representations of plebeian children followed two major narratives: industry or idleness. If poor children were not industrious, they were idle. The culture of reform targeted these children with initiatives to instruct and control them. The producers spread their middling ideologies through a range of visual, fictional, and legal productions, all of which framed plebeian children as dependent and in need of education or training.

Author Keywords: Children, Eighteenth-century, England, Material History, Plebeian, representations

The rapid expansion of the worldwide population has caused an urgent need for the development of new, more environment-conscious, food sources. In this context, algae, such as Euglena, are of interest thanks to their capacity to naturally produce essential nutrients such as proteins and oils commonly found in animals and plant sources. While these processes are currently being investigated, underlying measures affecting growth of Euglena gracilis like hormonal influences and growth stress like nutrient deprivation are poorly understood. From this vantage point, this thesis seeks to understand the role of phytohormones cytokinin (CKs) and abscisic acid (ABA) in complex mechanisms underlying heterotrophic growth of Euglena gracilis under recycled, organic media conditions with no supplementation. Hormone profiles were quantified by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS and compared to culture growth dynamics of pH, weight accumulation, glucose content, cell count and morphology. It was expected that ABA acted as an inhibitory hormone and this was confirmed by its higher levels when CKs where low and vice versa. Contrastingly, it was expected that CKs stimulated growth, in which this was shown not to be the case. Interestingly, it was revealed that both hormone groups increase with increasing recycling. Other key findings include: E. gracilis synthesizes CKs via the tRNA-degradation pathway and is cZ and iP dominated, recycling E. gracilis medium is viable for growth, however, the percentage (25% or less) is crucial to cell viability and markedly no ABA was detected in E. gracilis pellet fractions from recycled media. Therefore, this data revealed that recycled media has a striking influence on physiological aspects of growth and illustrated unique changes in hormone profiles of which could be manipulated to help the food industry.

Author Keywords: cytokinin, endogenous hormones, Euglena gracilis, heterotrophic, large scale microalgae cultivation, recycled medium