University of Regina Thèses et mémoires par auteur commençant par D

With a warming climate and greater evaporative demand, the functioning of forest ecosystems is increasingly affected by water limitation. Water stress has the potential to impact many forests globally with tree die-back, drought-related injury and increased chances of wildfire. To address the need for an innovative, non-invasive research approach to gather insight into a tree’s water stress status, I employed airborne thermal imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles as a new tool for measuring leaf temperatures. Higher canopy leaf temperatures (CLT) have been related to plant water stress when there is low soil moisture and high evaporative demand. In this thesis, …  Lire la suite

Theoretical models of anxiety suggest that cognitive vulnerabilities are involved in the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Elwood, Hahn, Olatunji, & Williams, 2009). Attentional bias for threat has been identified as a cognitive vulnerability which may facilitate the development and maintenance of PTSD (Bomyea, Risbrough, & Lang, 2012). Several cognitive tasks have previously been used to assess attentional bias for threat in anxiety pathologies (i.e., emotional Stroop task, visual search task, dot probe task). The proposed investigation was designed to assess the directionality (i.e., facilitated attention, difficulty in disengagement, avoidance) and time-course of attentional bias for threat …  Lire la suite

Recent research shows an increase in the mental health needs of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel (Fikretoglu, Liu, Zamorski, & Jetly, 2016). Research also indicates that a portion of CAF personnel with a mental health need do not seek professional mental health care or fail to initiate treatment in a timely fashion (e.g., Fikretoglu, Liu, Pedlar, & Brunet, 2010; Zamorski & Boulos, 2014). Andersen’s (1995; 2008) Behavioral Model of Health Services Use suggests predisposing factors (e.g., age), enabling/impeding factors (e.g., income), and need-related factors (e.g., mental health diagnosis) can help explain professional mental health care seeking behaviors. Several studies conducted …  Lire la suite

The objective of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore how participants’ feelings of hope were impacted by their lived experience of material deprivation or poverty. An ecological perspective framed by the social determinants of health and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shaped my understanding of the elements of a healthy, hopeful life. Literature describing the prevalence and impact of suicide, and seven suicide theories guided my understanding of the importance of hope in human lives. A purposeful criterion sampling method was used to recruit five current or former residents of Saskatchewan, Canada, who have lived experience of poverty or material …  Lire la suite