The MH-2B hole was one of three holes completed as a part of HOTSPOT: The Continental Scientific Drilling Project. MH-2B was drilled to a depth of 1821m on the Mountain Home Air Force Base southeast of Boise, Idaho to evaluate the potential for development for geothermal energy on the base. Water under artesian pressure was encountered at a depth of 1745 m. We analyzed pieces of the core to study clay mineralization with depth. We took 22 samples from the bottom half of the core, focusing on around 1790m, where preliminary analysis indicated the presence of corrensite (R1 ordered smectite/chlorite). X-ray diffraction (XRD) of these powders showed a transition from smectite at 762m to corrensite at 1790m and back to smectite at 1807m. More detailed XRD analysis with ethylene-glycol solvated samples confirmed the findings of the powder samples (namely a transition from smectite -> corrensite -> smectite). We modeled smectite and corrensite crystallinity with depth and found an increase in the defect free distance of both minerals. Samples around 1790m showed the presence of smectite, corrensite, and possibly chlorite (or serpentine). We interpret this result to support a discontinuous (stepwise) model for the smectite-chlorite transition. The presence of artesian fluid in this zone is evidence for the importance of high fluid/rock ratios in the smectite- chlorite transition, and the association of high fluid/rock ratios with a discontinuous transition model.

This paper is inspired by the literal intersection of two walking bodies, the hiker and the migrant, in the "Most Dangerous Park In America." In Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, located on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, while the National Park Service and other actors authorize hikers to appreciate nature, migrants suffer in nature under their supervision. In this thesis I explore the relationship between the construction of nature and the differentiation of bodies, with its real and violent consequences. I argue that wilderness in Organ Pipe was never a nature sanctuary; rather it was created, and is continually recreated, through the apparatus of boundary-making and the exclusion of bodies and activities that are perceived as ecologically other to wilderness, or what I term "anti-nature." Through an examination of walking in nature, my research suggests that nature, identity, and mobility are deeply intertwined, producing in each other danger, beauty, safety, etc. When in 2012 previously closed sections of Organ Pipe Cactus were reopened, nature and walking had become militarized as a way to "take back the land" from immigration. I argue that militarized nature supports the privileged mobility of national U.S. bodies while ignoring, and even perpetuating, the harm faced by non-U.S. bodies. By examining the making of our divided natures, I hope to simultaneously challenge border violence and unsettle our monolithic conception of wilderness.

The Poughkeepsie Farmers Market was the epitome of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project's mission to create a "just and sustainable food system in the Hudson Valley." While farm itself had been operating for many years prior to the program, it had taken on a social justice agenda when it decided to extend its programs from the wealthier Town of Poughkeepsie into the post-industrial, food insecure City of Poughkeepsie. However, after eight years of a struggling farmers market, the Poughkeepsie Farm Project decided to cut the funding for the project, thus ending its direct presence in the City of Poughkeepsie.
The main question of this senior thesis is that of the relationship formed between the Poughkeepsie Farm Project and the residents of the City of Poughkeepsie through the space farmers market. How is it that a well-planned, well-intentioned project such as the farmers market was not received by the residents of the city? In answering this question, I maintain that this socio-geographic relationship is necessarily one of race, as it was an unspoken, yet guiding principle of the organization's work. By synthesizing different theories of urban development, whiteness, and social movement participation, I hope to shed light on how race influences the work of movements to create equitable participation in the food system. It is only by having an open and honest conversation about race that we will be able to create a just food system. I hope to be one of the many voices of that conversation.

Baltimore is divided into spaces of luxury and wealth and spaces of poverty
and destitution. How did Baltimore come to be materially and spatially segregated by race, and how have those boundaries remained in a post‐Civil Rights era of purported "equality"? To understand this question, this thesis explores the relationship between historical and contemporary urban governance practices; American capitalism and neoliberalism; and racial memory construction. The approach focuses particularly on the implications of these factors for justice and equality in the urban landscape. It argues that the massive disparities between the wealth and neighborhoods of white and African American Baltimore have not arisen naturally out of free market tendencies (as the neoliberal ideology would encourage me to believe). Racial segregation is a construction resulting from capitalist exploitation and accumulation by dispossession, whose mechanisms went form being overtly racist to covertly racist after the Civil Rights Movement and with the rise of neoliberalism. The thesis investigates material histories of exclusion and contemporary constructions of history and memory that perpetuate racism.

This project seeks to investigate the intersections of race, class, and food: examining how access and acceptance to good quality food is shaped and changed through the process of gentrification. I ask why it is predominately upper-middle class whites that are buying 'good food' (non-processed, organic, local, etc), how this situation came to be in the United States, and ultimately what the consequences are of injecting upscale food cultures into previously low-income, high-minority spaces. To observe this change I overview the broad inequality created by the policies of the US food system, the emergence of whiteness within alternative food movements, and the gentrification of food and space through a case study of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. I draw from official data sources and academic works, as well field research and observation to support my argument. In this piece I contend that structural problems such as agricultural policy and institutionalized racism contribute to the lack of access and acceptance of good food among low-income minorities. These inequalities are then magnified and accelerated in gentrifying neighborhoods, as they clash with the traditionally upscale food tastes of new residents. I ultimately find that there is fairly good access to food within my sample area, but that spaces of consumption are stratified and segregated, implying a more complex and dynamic situation than is explained by typical narratives of gentrification.

Understanding how species survive mass extinction events allows scientists to more fully explore the effects of major biotic change in the fossil record. The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K- Pg) extinction 65.5 Ma was one of the largest extinction events in Earth's history and profoundly affected both terrestrial and marine life. Fossiliferous exposures of the Hell Creek and Fort Union Formations in the northern Great Plains of the western U.S. offer some of the best available records of conditions before and after the K-Pg boundary. Similarly, due to their hard aragonitic shells, conispiral geometry, and prevalence throughout the Phanerozoic Eon, well- preserved gastropods (snails) are perfect candidates for morphometric and stable-isotope analyses aimed at reconstructing paleoecological information.
In this study, I compared two populations of the freshwater gastropod <em>Campeloma sp.</em>, one from before and from after the K-Pg boundary at Hell Creek, Montana. I used principal components analysis (PCA) of 6 manually measured and 10 landmark-based components of shell morphological variation to compare the two populations, in order to investigate any possible anatomical differences that may have arisen in response to the extinction event. Likewise, I used stable oxygen isotope analysis to investigate potential differences in ontogeny or growth rate. Taken together, the stable isotope and morphometric analyses suggest that <em>Campeloma sp. </em>exhibited no major ontogenetic or anatomical differences in response to the events that triggered the K-Pg extinction. This suggests that <em>Campeloma </em>was capable of withstanding dramatic environmental change with little to no adaptation in shell morphology.

This thesis investigates how right to the city conflicts regarding the (de)construction of bicycle lanes in Brooklyn, New York affect the development of a more environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive city. Through an examination of two particular cases – those of Bedford Avenue in 2008 and Prospect Park West in 2010 – I show how conflicts over the physical space of bicycle lanes always embody larger, competing notions of community, civility, and (dis)order. Moreover, the construction, publicization, and mediation of these conflicting rights to the city additionally provide important insights regarding the direction of sustainability in New York City today, as well as the functioning of the state under Mayor Bloomberg's administration. In light of these findings, and embedded within the context of anthropogenic climate change and neoliberal economic pressure, I argue that our efforts to create more sustainable and inclusive cities must begin with a more sensitive understanding of the material and symbolic effects that these different rights to the city produce. I also introduce a theoretical distinction between what I term <em>rights to place </em>and <em>rights to mobility</em>.

The techniques of fault dating, though still underdeveloped on a wide scale, have been increasingly studied over the past decade. This study draws on these recent observations in relative literature and relates them to a fault in Rosendale, New York, the location of significant tectonic events during the mid to late Paleozoic. Direct dating of clay-rich brittle fault gouges involves two components: clay polytype quantification and 40Ar/39Ar thermochronological dating. This study will focus on the polytype quantification aspect of the dating process. Polytypes are variations in mineral structure which can be related to the conditions of formation of the clay mineral. The two polytypes of illite formed in a fault are 2M1, reflecting the detrital material from the wall rock of the fault, and 1M/1Md which are authigenic clays that form during movement on the fault. By splitting the fault gouge sample into three grain size fractions and determining the percentages of each polytype in each fraction, we can project the age of the fault. We used X-ray diffraction analysis to measure polytype peak intensities and WILDFIRE© modeling software to determine percentages. Our results showed that the largest size fraction's comparative polytype percentage was 33.33% 1M and 66.66% 2M1, the intermediate size fraction's comparative percentage was 50% 1M and 50% 2M1, and the smallest size fraction's comparative percentage was 77.77% 1M and 22.22% 2M1. The percentages of the three size fractions can be graphed against the 40Ar/39Ar age and extrapolated until pure authigenic age is determined. This step will be carried out by our colleagues at the University of Michigan.

Pennsylvania's forests share a long and deep history that has been affected throughout the years by a number of external factors. The most recent threat to forest health is the development of unconventional shale gas production from the Marcellus Shale, which underlies much of Pennsylvania. Unconventional gas production has a large surface footprint as it is enabled by two key technologies—horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. This study explores the effects of gas development upon forests that are part of a quarter-million hectare old-growth plan for the state of Pennsylvania. Because of severed mineral rights and State gas leases on State Forests, gas development poses an imminent threat to the future of Pennsylvania's old-growth forests.
By examining the effect of gas development in the region from 2008 to 2012, this study indicates the early stages of fragmentation in an increasingly segmented landscape. Landscape ecology was key in evaluating this area. Landscape metrics-specifically contagion, mean fractal index, percent forest cover, core forest, and total edge were used to evaluate the study area. In addition to these data, extensive research into the effects of fragmentation and surface disturbance upon both long and short-term forest wellbeing was made. The study found that development increased edge length and the number of forest patches and decreased interior forest cover. It is recommended that no further leasing be allowed in these regions and that the forest management and regulation budget be increased through gas royalty payments and used to enhance the old growth characteristics of Pennsylvania's forest.