Mountain Scholar
Mountain Scholar is an open access repository service that collects, preserves, and provides access to digitized library collections and other scholarly and creative works from Colorado State University and the University Press of Colorado. It also serves as a dark archive for the Open Textbook Library.
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- Explore the Colorado State University community’s scholarly output as well as items from the University at large and the CSU Libraries.
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Recent Submissions
How identity is impacted by schizophrenia: a metacognitive lens
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Prill, Morgan, author; Rhodes, Matthew, advisor; Thomas, Michael, committee member
Schizophrenia affects approximately 1% of the world's population (Almulla et al., 2021). Individuals with schizophrenia not only present with symptoms of hallucinations and emotional dysregulation but also demonstrate a loss of identity. This paper evaluates the literature surrounding schizophrenia through the lens of metacognition, highlighting elements of autobiographical and episodic memory. The paper also describes the etiology, epidemiology, symptoms, treatment options, and recovery progression that may be experienced by someone with schizophrenia. Accordingly, I evaluate the literature via the experience of someone with schizophrenia while also providing insight into the importance behind reviewing metacognitive research for an illness that disrupts an individual's identity.
Exploring the role of the Wild Animal Sanctuary in captive wildlife education through a community service internship experience
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025-08-08) Spencer, Aubrey, author; Stafford, Nicole T., advisor; White, Cecilia, committee member
Strategic fire zones are essential to wildfire risk reduction in the western United States
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) North, Malcolm P., author; Bisbing, Sarah M., author; Hankins, Don L., author; Hessburg, Paul F., author; Hurteau, Matthew D., author; Kobziar, Leda N., author; Meyer, Marc D., author; Rhea, Allison E., author; Stephens, Scott L., author; Stevens?Rumann, Camille S., author
Background Over the last four decades, wildfires in forests of the continental western United States have significantly increased in both size and severity after more than a century of fire suppression and exclusion. Many of these forests historically experienced frequent fire and were fuel limited. To date, fuel reduction treatments have been small and too widely dispersed to have impacted this trend. Currently new land management plans are being developed on most of the 154 National Forests that will guide and support on the ground management practices for the next 15 20 years. Results During plan development, we recommend that Strategic Fire Zones (SFZs) be identified in large blocks (? 2,000 ha) of Federal forest lands, buffered (? 1 2.4 km) from the wildland-urban interface for the reintroduction of beneficial fire. In SFZs, lightning ignitions, as well as prescribed and cultural burns, would be used to reduce fuels and restore ecosystem services. Although such Zones have been successfully established in a limited number of western National Parks and Wilderness Areas, we identify extensive remote areas in the western US (8.3 12.7 million ha), most outside of wilderness (85 88%), where they could be established. Potential wildland fire Operational Delineations or PODs would be used to identify SFZ boundaries. We outline steps to identify, implement, monitor, and communicate the use and benefits of SFZs. Conclusions Enhancing collaboration and knowledge-sharing with Indigenous communities can play a vital role in gaining agency and public support for SFZs, and in building a narrative for how to rebuild climate-adapted fire regimes and live within them. Meaningful increases in wildland fire use could multiply the amount of beneficial fire on the landscape while reducing the risk of large wildfires and their impacts on structures and ecosystem services.
Tree regeneration spatial patterns in ponderosa pine forests following stand-replacing fire: influence of topography and neighbors
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Ziegler, Justin P., author; Hoffman, Chad M., author; Fornwalt, Paula J. author; Sieg, Carolyn H., author; Battaglia, Mike A., author; Chambers, Marin E., author; Iniguez, Jose M., author
Shifting fire regimes alter forest structure assembly in ponderosa pine forests and may produce structural heterogeneity following stand-replacing fire due, in part, to fine-scale variability in growing environments. We mapped tree regeneration in eighteen plots 11 to 15 years after stand-replacing fire in Colorado and South Dakota, USA. We used point pattern analyses to examine the spatial pattern of tree locations and heights as well as the influence of tree interactions and topography on tree patterns. In these sparse, early-seral forests, we found that all species were spatially aggregated, partly attributable to the influence of (1) aspect and slope on conifers; (2) topographic position on quaking aspen; and (3) interspecific attraction between ponderosa pine and other species. Specifically, tree interactions were related to finer-scale patterns whereas topographic effects influenced coarse-scale patterns. Spatial structures of heights revealed conspecific size hierarchies with taller trees in denser neighborhoods. Topography and heterospecific tree interactions had nominal effect on tree height spatial structure. Our results demonstrate how stand-replacing fires create heterogeneous forest structures and suggest that scale-dependent, and often facilitatory, rather than competitive, processes act on regenerating trees. These early-seral processes will establish potential pathways of stand development, affecting future forest dynamics and management options.
Overlapping bark beetle outbreaks, salvage logging and wildfire restructure a lodgepole pine ecosystem
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Rhoades, Charles C., author; Pelz, Kristen A., author; Fornwalt, Paula J., author; Wolk, Brett H., author; Cheng, Antony S., author
The 2010 Church's Park Fire burned beetle-killed lodgepole pine stands in Colorado, including recently salvage-logged areas, creating a fortuitous opportunity to compare the effects of salvage logging, wildfire and the combination of logging followed by wildfire. Here, we examine tree regeneration, surface fuels, understory plants, inorganic soil nitrogen and water infiltration in uncut and logged stands, outside and inside the fire perimeter. Subalpine fir recruitment was abundant in uncut, unburned, beetle-killed stands, whereas lodgepole pine recruitment was abundant in cut stands. Logging roughly doubled woody fuel cover and halved forb and shrub cover. Wildfire consumed all conifer seedlings in uncut and cut stands and did not stimulate new conifer regeneration within four years of the fire. Aspen regeneration, in contrast, was relatively unaffected by logging or burning, alone or combined. Wildfire also drastically reduced cover of soil organic horizons, fine woody fuels, graminoids and shrubs relative to unburned, uncut areas; moreover, the compound effect of logging and wildfire was generally similar to wildfire alone. This case study documents scarce conifer regeneration but ample aspen regeneration after a wildfire that occurred in the later stage of a severe beetle outbreak. Salvage logging had mixed effects on tree regeneration, understory plant and surface cover and soil nitrogen, but neither exacerbated nor ameliorated wildfire effects on those resources.