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Elephants, Local Livelihoods, And Landscape Change In Tsavo, Kenya., Peter Ngugi Kamau Jan 2017

Elephants, Local Livelihoods, And Landscape Change In Tsavo, Kenya., Peter Ngugi Kamau

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation provides a historical context for socio-ecological relationships in Tsavo, Kenya by focusing on the interaction between elephants and people in the landscape. A better understanding of the relationship between elephants and people in the Tsavo landscape promotes opportunities for better policy outcomes. The dissertation engages with the analytical approach of political ecology, which has enabled it to provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between elephants and people in Tsavo. Apolitical accounts of human-elephant conflicts in Tsavo do not adequately address the colonial roots of human-elephant conflicts or their consequences for local livelihoods. This dissertation demonstrates how …

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Finding Voice In The Academy Through Yellow Storytelling: An Asian American Autoethnography On Suffering In Higher Education, Thuong Thi Nguyen Jan 2017

Finding Voice In The Academy Through Yellow Storytelling: An Asian American Autoethnography On Suffering In Higher Education, Thuong Thi Nguyen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Higher education institutions in the United States (U.S.) were founded for a select segment of the population, i.e. white Christian men from upper socioeconomic classes (Thelin, 2011). Research shows the policies, pedagogies, and practices created for use within majority populations and dominant cultures are not as beneficial or effective for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. As the U.S. becomes more diverse and college enrollment among diverse students increases, higher education institutions need to identify more holistic approaches and investigate alternative methods to better serve these populations. This dissertation is a response to that need. In order to offer other alternatives, …

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Dorothy Day's Distributism And Her Vision For Catholic Politics, William Patric Schulz Jan 2017

Dorothy Day's Distributism And Her Vision For Catholic Politics, William Patric Schulz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of Dorothy Day’s political ideas, her creation of the Catholic Worker movement, and her relationship with Distributism, the official socio-economic teaching of the Catholic Church. In order to fully understand Day’s views, it is necessary to review her intellectual development, and the foundational ideas and documents of Distributism. As is noted in the introduction, precious little scholarship has been done on Distributism, and few outside of Catholic academic circles are even aware of its existence. Beyond that, Day, herself, is not especially well-known, as existing scholarship tends to focus on either her early, Socialist activities …

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The White Bicycle: Performance, Installation Art, And Activism In Ghost Bike Memorials, Nicole Marie Costantini Jan 2017

The White Bicycle: Performance, Installation Art, And Activism In Ghost Bike Memorials, Nicole Marie Costantini

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this project I examine the performative nature of the ghost bike memorial. Ghost bikes, flat-white painted immobile bicycles created by cycling communities and loved ones of victims, are installed roadside to mark the locations of cycling related deaths. Using critical performance ethnography and critical-cultural analysis as methods, I analyze how the ghost bike performs as an artifact of mourning and inspires co-incident performances of grief, activism, and community building and maintenance. As a memorial object used worldwide to represent cycling culture, the ghost bike acts as a social network link that connects a multitude of diverse cycling communities. I …

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Ports Resilience Index: Participatory Methods To Assess Resilience, Lauren L. Morris Jan 2017

Ports Resilience Index: Participatory Methods To Assess Resilience, Lauren L. Morris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Many hazard threats challenge the uninterrupted operation of the maritime transportation system across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Environmental hazard threats include hurricanes, storm surge, and sea-level rise. Resilience begins at the port, which provides the physical, economic, and social connection between sea and land transportation users. Ports function through port authorities, composed of people with decision-making abilities, which causes port resilience to be a complex process to understand. The paucity of metrics to quantify port resilience warrants other methods to study this place-specific topic. The goal of the Ports Resilience Index (PRI) project centered on the development of a …

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Composting The Garden: Hybrid Geographies Of Baton Rouge Urban Gardens, Lauren Hull Jan 2017

Composting The Garden: Hybrid Geographies Of Baton Rouge Urban Gardens, Lauren Hull

LSU Master's Theses

Home gardens are intimate spaces of interaction between humans and the natural world. This study examines how relations and practices within gardens both perpetuate and disrupt perspectives on human separateness from nature. Nine Baton Rouge gardeners participated in this study, sharing stories about their lives and garden through interviews and garden walk-throughs. By adopting more-than-human social theory, this study explores these stories to answer three questions: (1) What types of relationships are found between garden inhabitants in Baton Rouge? (2) How do these relationships influence garden practices? And (3) How do relationships and practices create hybrid garden spaces? Garden inhabitants …

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The Fooding Of Narrative In Contemporary Women's Transnational Fiction, Stacey Marie Amo Jan 2017

The Fooding Of Narrative In Contemporary Women's Transnational Fiction, Stacey Marie Amo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Fooding of Narrative in Contemporary Women’s Transnational Fiction examines how foodstuffs are strategically deployed in recent fiction about migration to the United States. The novels examined, all set in the period following the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, depict the experience of resettlement from a diverse set of postcolonial sites: Haiti, Cuba, Vietnam, and India. The Fooding of Narrative argues that food is deployed as a structuring trope and acquires narrative significance in articulating the profound sense of identity crisis that frequently accompanies the immigration experience. By focusing on food’s narrative significance in a broad …

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Consumer Acceptance Of Licensed Brand Extensions: An Analysis Of Key Success Factors For Extending Into Fashion Categories, Langchao Zhang Jan 2017

Consumer Acceptance Of Licensed Brand Extensions: An Analysis Of Key Success Factors For Extending Into Fashion Categories, Langchao Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Brand extension and lifestyle branding have been the most commonly used marketing strategies. Unlike other consumer goods, fashion products, or other lifestyle products contains strong meaning of the user’s identity, thus, once done well, the parent non-fashion brands could benefit from not only the profit generated by the extension, but also creating a closer and stronger relationship with customers. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine how fashion product attributes affect consumers’ behavioral intention towards the fashion extension, to examine how perceived fit and brand extension authenticity affect consumers behavioral intention towards the fashion extensions, to explore the …

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A Palynostratigraphic Investigation Of Holocene Coastal Texas Bays: Implications For Future Coastal Change, Shannon Marie Ferguson Jan 2017

A Palynostratigraphic Investigation Of Holocene Coastal Texas Bays: Implications For Future Coastal Change, Shannon Marie Ferguson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Although the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most studied basins in the world, a majority of the focus has been driven by petroleum exploration and/or on seismic and sedimentological facies models. Rarely has the intent of previous studies been to characterize the Holocene climatic record of coastal Texas. Of those studies that discuss Holocene vegetation change, the majority focus on the Mississippi River Delta, the Edwards Plateau or central Florida, leaving an absence of insight to western Gulf of Mexico climate changes. The Texas coastline stretches 595 km across almost 4° of latitude and the strong northwestern precipitation …

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A Mixed Methods Analysis Of School- And Student-Level Effects: Mathematics Course Completion And Achievement Beyond Algebra 2 Among Mexican American Female High School Students, Lester Archer Jan 2017

A Mixed Methods Analysis Of School- And Student-Level Effects: Mathematics Course Completion And Achievement Beyond Algebra 2 Among Mexican American Female High School Students, Lester Archer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the United States, as the Hispanic population continues to grow, persistently low mathematics achievement among Mexican Americans continues to exist, particularly among girls. Low mathematics achievement places this group in a disadvantaged position. As such, a multistage mixed method study was implemented to investigate possible factors associated with mathematics achievement and the probability of taking mathematics courses beyond Algebra 2 among Mexican American female high school students. The Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002) database provided the quantitative sample (n = 710) of respondents who self-identified as Mexican American, female, and had a math IRT score. A parallel sample (n = …

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Digital Osteology: 3d Surface Scanning The Os Coxa, Victoria Harrington Jan 2017

Digital Osteology: 3d Surface Scanning The Os Coxa, Victoria Harrington

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT This research was designed to isolate a standard 3D scanning methodology using a popular 3D scanner (NextEngine®) used in biological anthropology to reproduce research-quality human skeletal remains. Settings using NextEngine® hardware were determined through three successive studies. The first study used minimum settings to create a topography of nine postcranial bones excavated from a Maya archaeological site, Moho Cay, Belize. The research was conducted in Louisiana State University’s (LSU) Digital Imaging and Visualization in Archaeology (DIVA) Lab. The resulting 3D scans were visually compared to the original bone specimens for similarities in five categories. The similarity ratings were used …

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Brazilian Surface And Upper-Level Wind Characteristics Based On Ground And Model Observations From 1980–2014, Joshua M. Gilliland Jan 2017

Brazilian Surface And Upper-Level Wind Characteristics Based On Ground And Model Observations From 1980–2014, Joshua M. Gilliland

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The examination of temporal changes in surface winds has been analyzed by scientists for a variety of physical, biological, climatological, and socioeconomic reasons. This research uses surface and upper-level wind data from historical in-situ and climate models to examine the geographical and climatological characteristics of wind across Brazil during 1980–2014. Overall linear and quantile regression shows that surface wind speed trends are changing regionally across Brazil. Wind speeds across northeastern Brazil are increasing, while a decreasing trend is documented for interior and southeastern Brazil. The spatial and temporal trends found are possibly related to alterations in the physical landscape (urbanization …

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Local Embeddedness Matters: A Study Of Hip-Hop Artists' Interaction With Their Local Community, Castel Vette Sweet Jan 2017

Local Embeddedness Matters: A Study Of Hip-Hop Artists' Interaction With Their Local Community, Castel Vette Sweet

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation study is an exploration of hip hop and rap artists’ embeddedness in local communities, and their interpretation of the connectedness between their work and their communities. I explore the influence of place and space in the identity development of artists, and how artist use those identities to guide their interactions with their local community. I also investigate the significance of artists’ interactions and relationship in the cultivation of social and cultural capital. In contrast to previous scholarship emphasising the negative influence rap and hip-hop artists have on their communities, I utilize in-depth interviews with artists to examine the …

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Crime Analysis In The City Of Baton Rouge And Brec Park Based On Crime Location Quotient And Hotspot Method, Anliu Jiang Jan 2017

Crime Analysis In The City Of Baton Rouge And Brec Park Based On Crime Location Quotient And Hotspot Method, Anliu Jiang

LSU Master's Theses

City parks provide intrinsic environmental, aesthetic, and recreation benefits to our cities and their inhabitants. Some researchers indicate that City parks serve as places of reduced crime and actually increase the safety of the surrounding area. Other researchers claim that city parks have been seen as contested space. The purpose of this thesis research is to study the relationship between parks and crime or comparing crime types between parks and their cities. First, this thesis research address the difference between crimes in city parks compared to crimes in the entire city. The second research question addresses the impact that parks …

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Vertebral Pathologies And Implications For Economic Lifestyle Changes In Two Prehistoric Skeletal Populations, Alyxandra Leigh Stanco Jan 2017

Vertebral Pathologies And Implications For Economic Lifestyle Changes In Two Prehistoric Skeletal Populations, Alyxandra Leigh Stanco

LSU Master's Theses

Little research considers the vertebral column in relation to inter-populational variation and changes in economic lifestyle. Numerous studies have been conducted regarding the influence of activity-related stress on post-cranial elements such as the knees, hips and shoulders, but few studies have considered the vertebral column. This study examined the vertebral columns of two prehistoric skeletal populations. The Indian Knoll site, home to a population of early hunter-gatherers, is located in Ohio County, Kentucky along the Green River. Indian Knoll was first excavated in 1915 by C.B. Moore. The Moundville site, a chiefdom of early agriculturalists, is located in the Black …

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The Ontological Nature Of Theology: On Heidegger's "Phenomenology And Theology", Casey Garrett Spinks Jan 2017

The Ontological Nature Of Theology: On Heidegger's "Phenomenology And Theology", Casey Garrett Spinks

LSU Master's Theses

Following his newfound celebrity upon publication of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger delivered a lecture in 1927 and 1928, titled “Phenomenology and Theology,” where he discussed how his recent groundbreaking work in existential phenomenology relates to Christian theology. Far from offering his philosophy as a method for theology, he instead attempted to utterly separate the two, setting the former as fundamental ontology and the latter as a positive science more akin to history, with the Christian faith as its positive object of study. The lecture was left unpublished until 1969, when Heidegger added an appendix, a piece exemplary of the …

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Feasting In Florida: Evidence Of Swift Creek Ceremonial Feasting And Multi-Group Interactions At Byrd Hammock South (8wa30), Wakulla County, Fl, Joseph Michael O'Keefe Jan 2017

Feasting In Florida: Evidence Of Swift Creek Ceremonial Feasting And Multi-Group Interactions At Byrd Hammock South (8wa30), Wakulla County, Fl, Joseph Michael O'Keefe

LSU Master's Theses

During the LSU 2015 Summer Field School at the Byrd Hammock South site (8WA30) in Wakulla County, Florida, excavations uncovered a large stratified pit-fill feature (Length 78 cm x Width 65 cm x Depth 136 cm) associated with the Early Swift Creek culture (A.D. 0 – 500). The Swift Creek have been generally identified as a transegalitarian society, and are believed to have participated in the phenomenon known as the Hopewell Interaction Sphere. The feature, Feature 1 (F1), was located approximately 60 meters south of Burial Mound B on the western edge of a semi-circular midden that surrounded a clean …

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Non-Metric Cranial Differentiation Between Asian And Native American Populations For Ancestry Assessment, Dominique Marie Bodoh Jan 2017

Non-Metric Cranial Differentiation Between Asian And Native American Populations For Ancestry Assessment, Dominique Marie Bodoh

LSU Master's Theses

Assessing ancestry from skeletal remains provides important information to aid in personal identification. However, trying to specify ancestry for Native American and Asian populations in the United States is a current challenge in laboratory analyses. Both Native American and Asian populations are still often combined in research for a variety of reasons: small sample sizes, skeletal similarities and less emphasis in contemporary literature. Historically, Carlton Coon, in 1939, and Riesenfield, in 1956, refer to this combination of both Native American and Asian populations as “Mongoloid,” a term which is deemed by many as an offensive and inaccurate categorization of both …

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Fitness Costs And Inheritance Of Bt Cry2ab2 Resistance In Fall Armyworm, Spodoptera Frugiperda (J.E. Smith), Binod Acharya Jan 2017

Fitness Costs And Inheritance Of Bt Cry2ab2 Resistance In Fall Armyworm, Spodoptera Frugiperda (J.E. Smith), Binod Acharya

LSU Master's Theses

Evolution of resistance in target pest populations is a major threat to the sustainability of transgenic crops expressing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) proteins. Fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith), is a cross-crop target pest of Bt corn, Bt cotton, and Bt soybean. This pest, thus far, is the only target pest species that has developed field resistance to Bt crops in multiple areas across countries. Cry2Ab2 is a common Bt protein expressed in transgenic corn and cotton targeting lepidopteran pests including S. frugiperda. The objective of this study was to characterize fitness costs and inheritance of Cry2Ab2 resistance in S. frugiperda. …

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Grounds For Displacement: Issues Of Migration On Louisiana's Disappearing Coast, Jessica Rose Simms Jan 2017

Grounds For Displacement: Issues Of Migration On Louisiana's Disappearing Coast, Jessica Rose Simms

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research inquiry engages with residents from three Louisiana parishes who have already or are currently facing possible migration decisions. The research focuses on understanding the links among the influence and mobility of three factors: social relations (i.e., faith-based networks, civic organizations, family, cultural and heritage identities, etc.), inherent resilient practices, and place, including sense of and attachment to it. It will draw from those bodies of literature as well as environmental migration literature, while underscoring that decisions of migration are influenced by environmental factors, but ultimately shaped by a complexity of often simultaneous forces, including social, political-economic, and cultural …

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A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of River Flow Rates On Decomposition, Maddisen Paige Neuman Jan 2017

A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of River Flow Rates On Decomposition, Maddisen Paige Neuman

LSU Master's Theses

While the general biological processes of decomposition are known to forensic anthropologists, data on aquatic decomposition is in need of refinement. Water composition varies in mineral content, temperature, flow rate, and scavengers; each of these elements can have an effect on the rate of decomposition. This study specifically focuses on the effects of river flow rates on decomposition by comparing the rate of decay of three feral pigs (Sus scrofa) on land (control specimen), in faster flowing water, and in slower flowing water. The hypothesis states that the pig placed in the faster section of the river will decompose more …

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Impacts Of Enso On Tornado Frequency, Intensity, And Geography Across The Eastern United States, Coryn Ann Collins Jan 2017

Impacts Of Enso On Tornado Frequency, Intensity, And Geography Across The Eastern United States, Coryn Ann Collins

LSU Master's Theses

Tornadoes are a reoccurring severe weather hazard, with the highest rates globally occurring in the central United States. Despite their high frequency in the U.S., the scientific community’s disagreement of tornado activity during varying phases and intensities of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) justifies a need for further research. In this study, tornado events from 1950 to 2014 in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains were investigated for seven phases of ENSO: strong, moderate, and weak El Niño/La Niña and the neutral phase. A seasonal Niño 3.4 index was used as the definition of ENSO. ENSO influences on …

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How American Is The American College Fraternity? Examining The European Legacy Within The U.S. Greek System, Andrew Thomas Bell Jan 2017

How American Is The American College Fraternity? Examining The European Legacy Within The U.S. Greek System, Andrew Thomas Bell

LSU Master's Theses

In this study, a cultural dissemination model is used to identify the cultural markers a fraternalism across multiple educational environments all in an attempt to answer the question “How American is the American college fraternity?” Aspects of modern fraternities and sororities were broken down and their historical predecessors were identified in order to track cultural dissemination, or diffusion. “Diffusion is the spread of culture traits and, as Wissler (140,146) and Bartlett (7) have demonstrated, this spread may be either conscious or unconscious” (Willey & Herskovits, 1927, p. 263). Primarily systems the broad European Fraternalism, European Universities (German and English), American …

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Pots, Pans, And Politics: Feasting In Early Horizon Nepeña, Peru, Kenneth Edward Sutherland Jan 2017

Pots, Pans, And Politics: Feasting In Early Horizon Nepeña, Peru, Kenneth Edward Sutherland

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis explores Early Horizon (900 – 200 BCE) feasting practices visible through the pottery assemblage at three archaeological complexes in the lower Nepeña Valley, north-central coast of Peru. Ceramic vessels were used for production, transportation, and storage of foods consumed for daily subsistence and during feasting events at the settlement of Caylán, a large town or city interpreted as the primary center of a multi-tiered polity. Secondary settlements at Samanco, a small coastal town, and Huambacho, an elite ceremonial center, indicate the complexity of this polity. Analysis of ceramic rim sherds reveals the types of vessels used at these …

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Language Use In Forensic Settings, Emily Faith Wiegers Jan 2017

Language Use In Forensic Settings, Emily Faith Wiegers

LSU Master's Theses

Understanding what constitutes proper communication is an important component of interaction for forensic science professionals. Using concepts from linguistic anthropology, this thesis recognizes patterns of discourse and register among individuals working within a forensic setting. Data collected from a survey distributed to members of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and from interviews with forensic professionals working in the state of Louisiana were used to analyze individual perceptions of language use in professional settings. Results show that variation among individuals within the forensic disciplines affects speech. Other determinants of proper speech include audience and the space within which the communication …

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Remembering In Spite Of All: The Construction Of Collective Memory Of State Terrorism In Mexico, Argentina, And Chile, Telba Espinoza-Contreras Jan 2017

Remembering In Spite Of All: The Construction Of Collective Memory Of State Terrorism In Mexico, Argentina, And Chile, Telba Espinoza-Contreras

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to contribute to the understanding of the formation of collective memory of State violence in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. By comparing these three cases, I pursue to discern how citizens can challenge the silence and amnesia that the groups in power want to impose on society after a period of State terrorism. In order to examine the process of formation of collective memory, this dissertation highlights two important figures from which citizens have been able to build counter-hegemonic narratives, that is, los exiliados and los desaparecidos. I will highlight how they become lenses through which citizens can …

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Evolutionary Innovation And Diversification Of Carotenoid-Based Pigmentation In Finches, Russell A. Ligon, Richard K. Simpson, Nicholas A. Mason, Geoffrey E. Hill, Kevin J. Mcgraw Dec 2016

Evolutionary Innovation And Diversification Of Carotenoid-Based Pigmentation In Finches, Russell A. Ligon, Richard K. Simpson, Nicholas A. Mason, Geoffrey E. Hill, Kevin J. Mcgraw

Faculty Publications

© 2016 The Author(s). Evolution © 2016 The Society for the Study of Evolution. The ornaments used by animals to mediate social interactions are diverse, and by reconstructing their evolutionary pathways we can gain new insights into the mechanisms underlying ornamental innovation and variability. Here, we examine variation in plumage carotenoids among the true finches (Aves: Fringillidae) using biochemical and comparative phylogenetic analyses to reconstruct the evolutionary history of carotenoid states and evaluate competing models of carotenoid evolution. Our comparative analyses reveal that the most likely ancestor of finches used dietary carotenoids as yellow plumage colorants, and that the ability …

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Priming Of Narrative Language In Young Adults, Rachel M. Crowder Dec 2016

Priming Of Narrative Language In Young Adults, Rachel M. Crowder

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

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Using Proxy Records To Document Gulf Of Mexico Tropical Cyclones From 1820-1915, Robert Rohli Nov 2016

Using Proxy Records To Document Gulf Of Mexico Tropical Cyclones From 1820-1915, Robert Rohli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Facies Reconstruction And Stratigraphy Of A Late Pleistocene Bald Cypress Forest Discovered On The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Continental Shelf, Suyapa Gonzalez-Rodriguez Nov 2016

Facies Reconstruction And Stratigraphy Of A Late Pleistocene Bald Cypress Forest Discovered On The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Continental Shelf, Suyapa Gonzalez-Rodriguez

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

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