Guangyu Wang

The increasing urbanization of societies worldwide has led to a growing disconnect between individuals and natural environments, significantly impacting modern people's physical and mental health. The fast-paced lifestyles, particularly among university students, are characterized by extensive assignments and limited access to natural settings. This detachment from nature has been associated with heightened stress levels and a range of negative health outcomes. While there is a well-established body of research documenting the benefits of nature exposure (NE) on human well-being, the challenge remains in providing these benefits to individuals who cannot regularly access natural environments due to their urban lifestyle or accessibility issues. This study investigated the potential benefits of simple activities like meditation in natural environments and assessed whether Simulated Nature Environments (SNEs) could effectively replicate these benefits. The research aims to address: 1). How does outdoor nature meditation (ONM) impact the overall well-being of university students? 2.) Can meditation in SNEs be an effective alternative to ONM for enhancing well-being among urban populations who spend significant time indoors? 3). Among three different SNE settings designed for indoor meditation, which most effectively replicates the physiological and psychological benefits observed in ONM sessions? The study employed a pretest-posttest repeated measures design, where 40 university students participated in three 20-minute guided meditation sessions across different environments: three replicated outdoor settings in a forest and three distinct SNEs in a controlled laboratory. Physiological measures, including heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), and salivary amylase (SA), were collected pre- and post-meditation, alongside psychological assessments using the PSS-10 and POMS questionnaires. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, paired t-tests, R studio and ANOVA. The results indicate that both ONM and meditation in SNE designs significantly improved participants' physiological and psychological well-being. However, the ONM sessions showed stronger impacts, while the SNEs with comprehensive sensory stimuli provided similar, though slightly less pronounced, benefits. The findings suggest that while SNEs can effectively replicate some benefits of UNM, the full restorative potential of nature exposure is best achieved in authentic natural settings.

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The full abstract for this thesis is available in the body of the thesis, and will be available when the embargo expires.

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The urgent need to address global climate challenges has heightened the importance of reducing CO₂ emissions and developing sustainable carbon utilization methods. CO₂ electrolysis (CO2E) is an emerging carbon utilization method that can convert captured CO₂ into various products while closing the carbon loop in pursuit of achieving global climate targets. The development of improved materials and electrolyser designs has enabled CO2E to reach commercially relevant current densities, voltages, and faradaic efficiencies, however, achieving all of these in unison along with high stability remains a challenge. Barriers to furthering progress include the high kinetic losses associated with CO₂ reduction, H₂ evolution at the cathode, and slow mass transportation of CO₂ reactant, all of which can be improved by optimizing electrode and cell design. A reference electrode is a tool that can help the development of electrodes, materials, and cell design by decoupling electrode processes from one another during operation. Decoupling various overpotentials using reference electrodes within electrolysers and fuel cells has been well documented, but their application in CO2E cells is limited, and remains challenging to incorporate reference electrodes into electrochemical cells while ensuring accurate measurements and minimal obstruction of cell performance. In this thesis, a method for bipolar membrane deposition was developed to improve CO2E to multicarbon faradaic efficiency while reducing cell voltage and H₂ evolution. Then, an electrolyser cell which incorporates an edge-type reference electrode was developed to decouple anode and cathode potentials throughout CO2E stability tests for up to 300 hours. Results show that the cell is capable of separating potential measurements for extended testing and is recommended for future stability studies, and that electrode alignment and understanding electrode kinetics are critical to obtain accurate electrochemical impedance spectroscopy for 3-electrode measurements. Finally, this cell design was extended to anion-exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEM-WE) to test its wider applicability, which showed the ability to decouple anode and cathode degradation through 3-electrode cyclic voltammograms. These findings contribute a method of improving membrane performance in CO₂ electrolysers, and present a cell design that can be used as a tool to monitor in-situ degradation of MEA components under extended operation.

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Gateway communities are crucial to national park management, and the impacts of national parks on gateway communities are mostly related to tourism. Residents' perceptions of tourism could reveal people's interactions with national parks, thereby affecting management effectiveness. However, residents' perceptions of tourism impacts are rarely emphasized in national park gateway communities in North America and the variables associated with local support haven't been completely identified.This thesis explored residents' perceptions and examined the criteria used by previous scholars to identify the impact factors and investigate local support for tourism. A survey-based questionnaire instrument collected residents' perceptions (n = 790) in the gateway communities of the two most-visited national parks in North America. This study (Chapter 3) found that the main issues in the gateway communities at Banff National Park were noise pollution, a lack of infrastructure, visitor environmental education, and environmental issues related to water, air and garbage disposal. Residents' perceived impacts of tourism development were primarily reflected in community life, natural environment, cultural development, quality of life, and economic development, and the intermediate gateway community residents perceived most impacts from tourism. The local support by studied gateway communities of BNP was associated with the natural environment, cultural development and quality of life factors identified from exploratory factor analysis, and the core GC residents were most supportive.Further, this study (Chapter 4) found a discrepancy between the expected level of park development and community status, and corresponding management measures need to be taken. Tourism development mainly caused environmental and social-cultural issues rather than economic issues. It was also found that support for tourism (ST) was highly associated with community participation (CP), the living environment (LE), trust in tourism agencies (TT), tourism benefits (TB), and community satisfaction (CS). Moreover, this study provided recommendations for both local authorities to better manage the gateway communities by prioritizing environment management, optimizing the use of environmental resources, and obtaining residents’ support by the positive aspects identified in this study. Aside from that, the study recommended that park managers provide economic benefits to local stakeholders and environmental education to visitors. Lastly, some limitations were addressed.

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National parks serve the mandate of protecting natural resources and providing recreational and educational opportunities for the public. How to balance the development of park services to ensure a high-quality visitor experience all year-round while conserving wildlife populations becomes increasingly important for park sustainability. However, there has been limited research on bridging the knowledge gap between tourism seasonality and visitor satisfaction and analyzing long-term human-wildlife conflict patterns through examining Banff National Park visitor/wildlife incidents and conflict management. This thesis (chapter 2) investigated visitor satisfaction in Banff National Park in different seasons. The study was conducted through a face-to-face questionnaire survey that collected visitor demographic, expectation and satisfaction data in July and December 2019 in Banff National Park. The data analyses were based on a sample of 741 respondents and were processed using Principal Component Analysis, Correlation Analysis and Logistic Regression Models. There were significant differences in visitor satisfaction levels and their determinants in different seasons. The quality of the park’s natural characteristics and the park’s activities were the most important determinant of visitor satisfaction in the high season and off-season, respectively. This research also (Chapter 3) investigated spatial and temporal patterns and characteristics of human-wildlife conflicts in Banff National Park. The data analyses were based on a sample of 6,302 occurrences of the conflicts during 2008-2016. The data were processed by using temporal and spatial analysis, hotspot analysis and correlation analysis. Results show a significant spatial characteristic that the conflicts had a high risk of occurring along or near the trails or roads, and 96% of the conflicts occurred within a 1km distance from the trails. Townsite activities and driving are two major activities that cause conflicts. Results also reveal that both anthropogenic and environmental variables were significantly correlated with the occurrences of the conflicts. The findings may assist both practitioners and scholars in understanding visitor expectations and satisfaction in different seasons and the patterns and trends of human-wildlife conflicts in Banff National Park. They also assist in the prioritization and effective management of the park to optimize the visitor experience and improve human-wildlife coexistence in national parks.

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