Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of Seeding Rates Of Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium Perenne L.) On Sediment Loading And Nutrient Transport Via Surface Runoff, Jason Robert Anderson

LSU Master's Theses

Sediment loading and nutrient losses from construction sites through surface runoff can have detrimental effects on nearby water bodies. Often cool-season grasses such as perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) are established for temporary coverage until environmental conditions are suitable for warm-season grass establishment. The purpose of this research was to 1) determine if higher seeding rates accelerate establishment thus reducing sediment loading and 2) determine if watering-in fertilizer applications reduces nutrient losses through surface runoff. In the first experiment trays were seeded at 0, 195, 390, or 585 kg ha-1 with 30-min rainfall simulations performed at 16.3 L per minute …

Performing Nostalgia: Body, Memory, And The Aesthetics Of Past-Home, Jade C. Huell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Since its etymological beginnings, the meanings and usages of nostalgia have shifted markedly. In the shifting, nostalgia’s associations with the body and with the concept of home has diminished. This study of African American nostalgia for Africa uses genealogical inquiry, personal and autoethnographic narrative, and performance theories and practices to reinvigorate the relations between body, memory, aesthetics, past, and home. Attending to operations of time and space, I theorize the aforementioned relations in order to build a theory of critical nostalgia. Following Debbora Battaglia, I argue and illustrate that nostalgia is an act realized in performance, and I develop my …

Modeling Population Patterns In New Orleans 2000-2010: A Density Function Approach, Weijie Wang

LSU Master's Theses

Based on the 2000 and 2010 census tract data from the U.S. Census Bureau, this thesis examines the change of population distribution patterns in New Orleans in the pre- and post-Katrina eras by the monocentric and polycentric density functions. The study area is the mostly urbanized part of the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), including Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes. The post-Katrina New Orleans has experienced an uneven recovery reflected in the geographic disparities in population change. The density function approach investigates what function best captures the population density distribution, how the density patterns have changed over time, …

Salt Of The Maya: Evidence Of Prehispanic Salt Production And Architectural Function At The Eleanor Betty Site, Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, Tamara L. Spann

LSU Master's Theses

The Punta Ycacos Lagoon is home to many Classic Maya saltworks. Located in Paynes Creek National Park in southern Belize, these ancient sites may unlock answers to understanding Classic period trade along the southern coast of Belize. Archaeological investigations took place at one such site, the Eleanor Betty Site, in order to determine organization and architectural function. One transect was excavated along what is hypothesized to be the interior of a wooden structure. Using ethnographic, ethnohistoric data, in conjunction with archaeological fieldwork, the function of the structure within the salt-production site has been analyzed. The presence of preserved wooden posts, …

Spatial Assessment And Analysis Of Pollution Sources And Water Quality In The Bogue Falaya River And Abita River Watersheds, St. Tammany Parish, La, Chelsea Core

LSU Master's Theses

Watershed planning is an important ongoing process for enabling communities to repair polluted waterways and ensuring the health and vitality of waterways for future generations. This study defines a process to spatially track pollution sources entering into our waterways. An essential tool used in the watershed planning process is geographic information systems. It is important to gather spatial information to illustrate where all potential pollution sources are located within each watershed. The data for this study were assembled into a database and mapped to locate pollution sources including: commercial/small business wastewater treatment plants; subdivisions without community wastewater treatment; and individual …

The Return To The World: Precís Of A Defense Of Heideggerian Realism, Graham Charles Bounds

LSU Master's Theses

I defend Martin Heidegger’s philosophy from Lee Braver’s contention that it espouses or entails anti-realism, and instead contend that it strongly supports a robust realism. Realism is, in essence, the metaphysical position which states that human beings are aware—or are capable of being aware—of entities that exist independently of us. The counter-position, anti-realism, sometimes equated with idealism, holds that this is not the case. Braver breaks down these simplistic definitions into several more technical propositions, or “matrices,” and attempts to show how Heidegger rejects the realism matrices in favor of their anti-realist counterparts. I will likewise examine the matrices, arguing …

Oysters And Catfish: Resource Exploitation At Rollins Shell Ring, Ft. George Island, Florida, Julie Ann Doucet

LSU Master's Theses

Detailed faunal analyses were conducted on two major subsistence resources, oysters and marine catfish, at Rollins Shell Ring, a Late Archaic (5000 – 3000 B.P.) site on the northeast coast of Florida. The focus of this investigation was on resource exploitation, and, specifically, whether there was evidence that oysters from this site were over-exploited. Three units from previous excavations at the site were selected for analysis, and represent the span of occupation recorded for this site. Measurements were obtained from oysters to determine habitat, and, along with shell height, were compared across time for any changes in the pattern of …

Gis-Based Urban Land Use Characterization And Population Modeling With Subpixel Information Measured From Remote Sensing Data, Quan Tang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation provides deeper understanding on the application of Vegetation-Impervious Surface-Soil (V-I-S) model in the urban land use characterization and population modeling, focusing on New Orleans area. Previous research on the V-I-S model used in urban land use classification emphasized on the accuracy improvement while ignoring the discussion of the stability of classifiers. I developed an evaluation framework by using randomization techniques and decision tree method to assess and compare the performance of classifiers and input features. The proposed evaluation framework is applied to demonstrate the superiority of V-I-S fractions and LST for urban land use classification. It could also …

Shades Of Grey: Slaveholding Free Women Of Color In Antebellum New Orleans, 1800-1840, Anne Ulentin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the economic opportunities that free women of color could derive from slaveholding, their motivations, and their impact on New Orleans’ antebellum society and economy. Another aim is to find out the role and impact of free women of color from Saint Domingue (later Haiti), whose arrival in New Orleans doubled the number of free women of color in the city. Finally, the analysis of relationships between free women of color and their slaves and with the diverse population of New Orleans plays an important part in this study. Notarial deeds (sales and purchases of slaves, mortgages of …

Painting A Surrealist Case Study Tableau: Culturally Relevant Post-Disaster Education Programming, Jolanta Smolen Santana

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This retrospective study explores how each disaster site needs to be considered as its own individual portrait for analysis and how inclusion of cultural elements contributes to the recovery of those affected by the disaster and helps in reinstating their cultural identity. This study was conducted after hurricane Katrina’s landfall, at the largest FEMA trailer park, Renaissance Village, from its inception in October 2005 until its closure June 2008. It portrays how programs may ensure their sustainability if cultural elements are included in the program design, development, and delivery of services. The nuanced notions of culture are predominantly recognized in …

Informe Técnico Final Del Trabajo De Campo Del Proyecto De Investigación Arqueológica Caylán (Temporada 2010), David Chicoine, Hugo Ikehara

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Studying The Relationship Between Past People And Their Environments, Peter D. Clift, Rowan Flad, Dorian Q. Fuller, Liviu Giosan

Faculty Publications

AGU Chapman Conference on Climates, Past Landscapes, and Civilizations; Santa Fe, New Mexico, 21-25 March 2011; The fortunes of human societies are intimately linked to the environments that sustain them. This has been true from the first emergence of human ancestors through to the present day. An AGU Chapman Conference was held to discuss the relationship between past people and their environments. Participants examined the state of the field, debated issues of contention, and formulated ways that such cross- disciplinary research can progress. Scientists' increasing ability to generate high- resolution climate records has proliferated studies that link the rise and …

Unfolding The Graticule Of The Microcontext, Mari Claire Russ

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Dental Genetic Traits Of Selected Maya Burials From Wild Cane Cay And Moho Cay, Belize, Kelly Heim

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Sacrum Of The Poole-Rose Ossuary: Health Status, Variation, And Demography, Elizabeth A. Moffett

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Sediment History From K‟Ak‟ Naab‟ Column Sample 2: Human-Environment Interaction At A Classic Period Maya Salt Works Site, Jessica Harrison

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Great Task Remaining Before Us: Reconstruction As America's Continuing Civil War, Brian Kelly

Civil War Book Review

Understanding the Unfinished Revolution

Historians continue to debate the degree to which the new freedoms won by former slaves through emancipation were obliterated by conservatives’ return to power across the ‘redeemed’ South, but few would deny that in its protracted and formidable a....

How Incipient Colonies Create Territory: The Textual Surveys Of New Spain, 1520s–1620s, Andrew Sluyter, Richard Hunter

Faculty Publications

The study of colonial surveying and cartography has become key to understanding the history of European colonialism because of the recognition that land surveys and maps not only represent territory but form part of the process through which territory comes into being. While many studies have therefore focused on the history of instrumental surveying and cartography in New Spain, roughly equivalent to present-day Mexico, between the seventeenth and twentieth century, the textual surveys of the sixteenth century that helped to bring the initial colonial territory into being have gone largely unstudied. Content analysis of textual land surveys included in sixteenth-century …

Components, Volume 7 (2011), Lsu Center For Computation & Technology

Components

No abstract provided.

On The Origin Of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, And Fiction, Hope Hollocher, Agustín Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Grant Ramsey, Daniel John Sportiello, Michelle M. Wirth

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of Crime Hotspots By Trajectories And Self-Organizing Maps, Marco Helbich, Julian Hagenauer, Michael Leitner

Faculty Publications

The exploration of spatial relationships between crime incidents, the socio-economic characteristics of neighborhoods, as well as physical and structural compositions of the urban landscape is an ongoing research issue in Geographic Information Science. Spatial data mining tools improve the ability to gain knowledge from geographic data and help to understand spatio-temporal processes that contribute to the presence or absence of criminal offenses. However, most of the currently available tools focus either on the spatial, the temporal, or a combination of both aspects. But crime has a spatial and temporal component in a multidimensional attribute space. Therefore, it is reasonable to …

Social Life And Ancient Andean Public Landscapes: Actions And Performances As Seen Through The Use Of A 1st Millennium Bce Plaza At Caylán, Peru, Matthew Ryan Helmer

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines ancient Andean performances from the early urban site of Caylán (800-10 cal. BCE) on the North-Central coast of Peru, Ancash. Spaces utilized for public events such as feasting, spectacles, and rituals have been a rich source of data for anthropologists looking to understand dynamics of community, power, and ideology. These spaces are also undervalued in terms of their potential multivocal qualities. During the Formative Period (1600-100 BCE), sunken plazas were the focus of a vast array of public activities and performances in ancient Peru. This thesis focuses on Formative Period public spaces as theaters of heightened interactions, …

Animal Scavengers As Agents Of Decomposition: The Postmortem Succession Of Louisiana Wildlife, Audra Leigh Jones

LSU Master's Theses

Four adult pig carcasses were placed within a wildlife center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in order to determine what conditions animals utilize carrion and which animal species engage in scavenging. The cadavers were deposited without any protective covering and wildlife cameras were placed around the pigs in order to document animal scavenging. In two cases cameras showed that coyotes were the initial animal scavengers followed by opossums. In another case coyotes were inferred to have scavenged the pig due to discovering a similar pattern of disarticulation as compared to the previous two scenes. In the third case turkey vultures skeletonized …

"The Faults Of A Virginian": John Marshall And Republican Legal Culture, Nathan Thomas Hall

LSU Master's Theses

As chief justice of the United States for thirty-five years, John Marshall molded the Supreme Court into a co-equal branch of government. His efforts to fashion a powerful and independent federal court often ran counter to popular sentiment in his home state of Virginia. There, Marshall’s ideological and political opponent, Thomas Jefferson, dominated the political landscape. The adversarial narrative of Marshall and Jefferson’s national political battles is the subject of much scholarship. Rarely considered, however, is the common legal culture from which they both emerged. Understanding the personalities and the decisions that populated Virginia’s legal culture from the American Revolution …

Communiplaytion: Getting Our Hands Dirty Together, Brooke Tyson Cassady

LSU Master's Theses

CommuniPLAYtion: getting our hands dirty together is a weeklong installation of a collective ceramics studio implanted in Foster Gallery. It is a participatory and interactive exhibition that demonstrates how material play creates moments for personal reflection and contemplation, while also facilitating communication and social relations within a specific place. CommuniPLAYtion is an opportunity for an altruistic exchange among individuals in contrast to the monetary transactions that momentarily connect strangers. These engagements, similar to the “Do-It-Yourself Geopolitics” of other contemporary artists, empower individuals to develop modes of interaction that suit their interpersonal needs. The exhibition, communiPLAYtion enables the basic precursors that …

Performing Toilets: Putting Matter Into Place, Danielle Dick Mcgeough

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I place toilets and toilet practices center stage. Each chapter begins with and is compelled by a performance event in which a toilet plays a central role, such as the display of toilets in museum settings, a festival celebrating the building of public toilet blocks, and a Big Squat event, in which people gather en masse to squat collectively for one minute in recognition of the millions that lack access to toilets. By means of performance, the toilet is transferred from the backstage to center stage. Out of place, the toilet defamiliarizes and refunctions the body’s techniques, …

Transnational Spaces And Communal Land Tenure In A Caribbean Place: "Barbuda Is For Barbudans", Amy E. Potter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the last decade, transnational migration research has gained considerable ground in geography. There is still more to be done, however, in order to understand the complex relationship between migrants and the lands they leave behind. The island of Barbuda in the Lesser Antilles is the ideal place to study the larger issues of transnational migration on a smaller scale, particularly research that focuses on both migration and land tenure. Barbudan land tenure is common property, something that was in practice for more than a century and formalized into law in January of 2008. Because of this particular system of …

Large-Scale Influences On Tropical Cyclogenesis For Selected Storms In The 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season, Jinwoong Yoo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Unpreparedness of large and increasing populations to Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) in North and Central America often causes a significant percentage of human casualties and economic losses, which results in part from the difficulty of forecasting tropical cyclogenesis (TCG) and changes in TC track and intensity. Although the mechanisms that lead to TCG have been studied extensively, lack of knowledge still exists about the relative importance of the precursor factors responsible for TCG, especially in the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean basin where no clear genesis mechanism has been identified for TCs. A series of studies in this dissertation examines influences of …

Fatalities Due To Hurricane Katrina's Impacts In Louisiana, Ezra Clay-Kelly Boyd

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a comprehensive analysis of the loss of life in Louisiana associated with Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic failure of the federal hurricane protection system. While Louisiana officials attribute 1,464 deaths to this disaster, a Louisiana Katrina Victim Database compiled for this dissertation lists 1,575 victims whose death can be linked to circumstances related to the disaster. First, this dissertation presents a comprehensive assessment of the multiple hazards impacting a dynamic population within southeast Louisiana. This is followed by a comprehensive descriptive analysis of victims’ characteristics. Both of these assessments point to an important conclusion: circumstances matter in …

Following The Path Of Involuntary Change: The Emotional Effects, Susan B. Carriere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe the perceived emotional effects of the seven Medical Case Managers who moved from the role of “consultants” of a Railway to “employees” of a Managed Health Care Company in order to maintain employment within their field of telephonic disability case management of railway employees. This research followed the path of an unintended change with two interviews, 2003 and 2010. The participants were seven Medical Case Managers with a combined institutional knowledge base of over fifty years. The study was a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews. Results showed that the Medical Case …