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Three Essays On Variation In Intergenerational Mobility And Incarceration In The United States, Vikash Dangal

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The U.S. is often called the “land of opportunity” but there are substantial disparities in the opportunity and life outcomes of children depending on where they grow up. The structural factors that shape future outcomes of children can be traced to their childhood environment. This dissertation builds upon the existing literature on childhood environment and future outcomes of children and presents three essays on the variation in intergenerational income mobility and incarceration in the US.

In the first essay in chapter 2, I employ spatial regime analysis to study how the factors affecting absolute upward mobility vary due to local …

Uncertain Regional Urbanism In Venezuela. Government, Infrastructure And Environment, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

Uncertain Regional Urbanism in Venezuela explores the changes cities face when they become metropolises, forming expanding regions which create both potential and problems within settlements. To do so, it focuses on three metropolitan areas located in Venezuela’s Center-North region: Caracas, Maracay and Valencia, designated as "Camava."

Considering three core topics, government and territorial administration, infrastructure and environment, as well as looking at the reciprocal impact, this book describes and analyzes the determinant variables that characterize the phenomenon of regional urbanization in this area and in the wider Global South. It includes documentary research, semi-structured interviews and Delphi methodology, involving a …

Speciation-By-Depth On Coral Reefs: Sympatric Divergence With Gene Flow Or Cryptic Transient Isolation?, Carlos Prada, Michael E. Hellberg

Faculty Publications

The distributions of many sister species in the sea overlap geographically but are partitioned along depth gradients. The genetic changes leading to depth segregation may evolve in geographic isolation as a prerequisite to coexistence or may emerge during primary divergence leading to new species. These alternatives can now be distinguished via the power endowed by the thousands of scorable loci provided by second-generation sequence data. Here, we revisit the case of two depth-segregated, genetically isolated ecotypes of the nominal Caribbean candelabrum coral Eunicea flexuosa. Previous analyses based on a handful of markers could not distinguish between models of genetic exchange …

Correlation Analysis Of Precipitation And River Flow With The Injection And Discharge Of The Three Gorges Dam And Reservoir, Lirong Yin

LSU Master's Theses

The Yangtze River has been the primary support of the resources and transportation of China. Its basin covers an area of 1.8 million square kilometers. The Three Gorges Dam and Reservoir on the Yangtze River is one of the world's largest dams. After the dam construction in 1997, the reservoir started injecting the reservoir to a size of over 600 km². The influence caused by the dam and reservoir on the river system has been overwhelming and destructive. The possible influence of this vast water body and the operation to maintain this waterbody's size and water level on …

Using Spatial Analysis And Machine Learning Techniques To Develop A Comprehensive Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Consolidation Model, Samira Soleimani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The safety of highway-railroad grade crossings (HRGC) is still an issue in the United States of America (USA). The grade crossing is where a railroad crosses a road at the same level without any over or underpass. To improve the safety of crossings, the crossings’ condition should be explored from several aspects such as engineering design (speed limit, warning signs, etc.), road condition (number of lanes, surface markings, etc.), rail design (the type of track, ballast, etc.), temporal variables (weather, visibility, time of day, lightning, etc.), social variables (population, race, etc.), and last but not least, spatial variables (the type …

Does Ecological Water Replenishment Help Prevent A Large Wetland From Further Deterioration? Results From The Zhalong Nature Reserve, China, Liwen Chen, Sixin Liu, Yanfeng Wu, Y. Jun Xu, Shengbo Chen, Shiliang Pang, Zongting Gao, Guangxin Zhang

Faculty Publications

Ecological water replenishment (EWR) has been increasingly applied to the restoration and maintenance of wetland hydrological conditions across China since the beginning of the 21st century. However, little is known about whether EWR projects help protect and/or restore wetland ecohydrology. As one of the earliest and longest-running EWR projects in China, water has been released from the Nenjiang River into the Zhalong wetland since 2001. It is important to examine the ecohydrological effects of this EWR project. In this study, long time series remote sensing data were used to extract the water area, inundation frequency, and normalized difference vegetation index …

Fall 2020 Catalog, Lsu Press

LSU Press Seasonal Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Environmentally Clean Access To Antarctic Subglacial Aquatic Environments, Alexander B. Michaud, Trista (Vick-Majors, Amanda M. Achberger, Mark L. Skidmore, Brent C. Christner, Martyn Tranter, John C. Priscu

Faculty Publications

Subglacial Antarctic aquatic environments are important targets for scientific exploration due to the unique ecosystems they support and their sediments containing palaeoenvironmental records. Directly accessing these environments while preventing forward contamination and demonstrating that it has not been introduced is logistically challenging. The Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project designed, tested and implemented a microbiologically and chemically clean method of hot-water drilling that was subsequently used to access subglacial aquatic environments. We report microbiological and biogeochemical data collected from the drilling system and underlying water columns during sub-ice explorations beneath the McMurdo and Ross ice shelves and …

Assessment Of Surface Hydrological Connectivity In An Ungauged Multi-Lake System With A Combined Approach Using Geostatistics And Spaceborne Sar Observations, Yueqing Chen, Lili Wu, Guangxin Zhang, Y. Jun Xu, Zhiqiang Tan, Sijia Qiao

Faculty Publications

Connectivity metrics for surface water are important for predicting floods and droughts, and improving water management for human use and ecological integrity at the landscape scale. The integrated use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observations and geostatistics approach can be useful for developing and quantifying these metrics and their changes, including geostatistical connectivity function (GCF), maximum distance of connection (MDC), surface water extent (SWE), and connection frequency. In this study, we conducted a geostatistical analysis based on 52 wet and dry binary state (i.e., water and non-water) rasters derived from Sentinel-1 A/B GRD products acquired from 2015 to 2019 for …

Low-Income Energy Affordability In An Era Of U.S. Energy Abundance, Marilyn A. Brown, Anmol Soni, Melissa V. Lapsa, Katie Southworth, Matt Cox

Faculty Publications

In an era of U.S. energy abundance, the persistently high energy bills paid by low-income households is troubling. After decades of weatherization and bill-payment programs, low-income households still spend a higher percent of their income on electricity and gas bills than any other income group. Their energy burden is not declining, and it remains persistently high in particular geographies such as the South, rural America, and minority communities. As public agencies and utilities attempt to transition to a sustainable energy future, many of the programs that promote energy efficiency, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, and home batteries are largely inaccessible to …

Abq Streets: Creating Alternative Residential Street Designs, Gregory Rowangould Ph.D, Nick N. Ferenchak Ph.D

Publications

This research evaluates opportunities for retrofitting residential streets with alterative designs with the overall goal of improving their function, reducing their negative impacts and reducing maintenance costs. This is accomplished through three main research tasks. First, we conduct a comprehensive review of the street design literature with a focus on studies that report how alterative or unique designs that are relevant to the residential street context affect travel behavior, traffic flow, safety, crime and environmental impacts. We then survey residential streets in several study neighborhoods to measure typical design features and cross sections. With this information we then evaluate which …

Cross-Sectional Associations Between The Neighborhood Built Environment And Physical Activity In A Rural Setting: The Bogalusa Heart Study, Jeanette Gustat, Christopher E. Anderson, Queendaleen C. Chukwurah, Maeve E. Wallace, Stephanie T. Broyles, Lydia A. Bazzano

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Background: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is a common health risk and more prevalent in rural populations. Few studies have assessed relationships between the built environment and PA in rural settings, and community policy guidance to promote PA through built environment interventions is primarily based on evidence from urban studies. Methods: Participants in the Bogalusa Heart Study, a longitudinal study in rural Louisiana, with International Physical Activity Questionnaire data from 2012 to 2013 and a valid residential address (N = 1245) were included. PA was summarized as the number of weekly metabolic equivalent (MET)-minutes of total, transportation, and leisure time PA. …

Potential Pollen Evidence For The 1933 M 7.5 Diexi Earthquake And Implications For Post-Seismic Landscape Recovery, Hongyan Xu, Hanchao Jiang, Kam-Biu Liu, Ning Zhong

Faculty Publications

The relationships between strong earthquakes, landslides, and vegetation destruction and the process of post-seismic recovery in tectonically active alpine valley areas have not been adequately documented. Here we show detailed pollen study results from a swamp located near the epicenter of the 1933 M 7.5 Diexi earthquake in eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) to reveal the impact of earthquake on vegetation, and the post-seismic recovery process. Based on(210)Pb-Cs-137 age model, the seismic event layer is well constrained. The earthquake event corresponds stratigraphically to a zone with the lowest pollen concentrations, the lowest pollen diversity, and a high frequency of non-arboreal pollen. …

Urban Crime Mapping And Analysis Using Gis, Alina Ristea, Michael Leitner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Fire As A Fundamental Ecological Process: Research Advances And Frontiers, Kendra K. Mclauchlan, Philip E. Higuera, Jessica Miesel, Brendan M. Rogers, Jennifer Schweitzer, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Alan J. Tepley, J. Morgan Varner, Thomas T. Veblen, Solny A. Adalsteinsson, Jennifer K. Balch, Patrick Baker, Enric Batllori, Erica Bigio, Paulo Brando, Megan Cattau, Melissa L. Chipman, Janice Coen, Raelene Crandall, Lori Daniels, Neal Enright, Wendy S. Gross, Brian J. Harvey, Jeff A. Hatten, Sharon Hermann, Rebecca E. Hewitt, Leda N. Kobziar, Jennifer B. Landesmann, Michael M. Loranty, S. Yoshi Maezumi, Linda Mearns, Max Moritz, Jonathan A. Myers

Faculty Publications

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society Fire is a powerful ecological and evolutionary force that regulates organismal traits, population sizes, species interactions, community composition, carbon and nutrient cycling and ecosystem function. It also presents a rapidly growing societal challenge, due to both increasingly destructive wildfires and fire exclusion in fire-dependent ecosystems. As an ecological process, fire integrates complex feedbacks among biological, social and geophysical processes, requiring coordination across several fields and scales of study. Here, we describe the diversity of ways in which fire operates as …

Unpacking The Decline In Food Waste Measured In Chinese Households From 1991 To 2009, Danyi Qi, John W. Apolzan, Ran Li, Brian E. Roe

Faculty Publications

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. Food waste reduction is an explicit goal for many countries, yet a paucity of high-quality primary measurements of food waste are available to inform policy. We analyze repeated physical measurements of discarded food from more than 37,000 households enrolled in the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1991 to 2009 and describe relevant food waste patterns and trends within households over a period of dramatic change. Over a period in which average real household incomes tripled, food discarded per person declined by about 20% on a quantity basis and by about 40% on a Calorie …

Integrative And Quantitative Bioenergetics: Design Of A Study To Assess The Impact Of The Gut Microbiome On Host Energy Balance, Karen D. Corbin, Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, Elvis A. Carnero, Christopher Bock, Rita Emerson, Bruce E. Rittmann, Andrew K. Marcus, Taylor Davis, Blake Dirks, Zehra Esra Ilhan, Catherine Champagne, Steven R. Smith

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

The literature is replete with clinical studies that characterize the structure, diversity, and function of the gut microbiome and correlate the results to different disease states, including obesity. Whether the microbiome has a direct impact on obesity has not been established. To address this gap, we asked whether the gut microbiome and its bioenergetics quantitatively change host energy balance. This paper describes the design of a randomized crossover clinical trial that combines outpatient feeding with precisely controlled metabolic phenotyping in an inpatient metabolic ward. The target population was healthy, weight-stable individuals, age 18–45 and with a body mass index ≤30 …

Phyr: Anrpackage For Phylogenetic Species-Distribution Modelling In Ecological Communities, Daijiang Li, Russell Dinnage, Lucas A. Nell, Matthew R. Helmus, Anthony Ives

Faculty Publications

Model-based approaches are increasingly popular in ecological studies. A good example of this trend is the use of joint species distribution models to ask questions about ecological communities. However, most current applications of model-based methods do not include phylogenies despite the well-known importance of phylogenetic relationships in shaping species distributions and community composition. In part, this is due to a lack of accessible tools allowing ecologists to fit phylogenetic species distribution models easily. To fill this gap, therpackagephyr(pronounced fire) implements a suite of metrics, comparative methods and mixed models that use phylogenies to understand and predict community composition and other …

List-Wise Fairness Criterion For Point Processes, Jin Shang, Mingxuan Sun, Nina S.N. Lam

Faculty Publications

Many types of event sequence data exhibit triggering and clustering properties in space and time. Point processes are widely used in modeling such event data with applications such as predictive policing and disaster event forecasting. Although current algorithms can achieve significant event prediction accuracy, the historic data or the self-excitation property can introduce biased prediction. For example, hotspots ranked by event hazard rates can make the visibility of a disadvantaged group (e.g., racial minorities or the communities of lower social economic status) more apparent. Existing methods have explored ways to achieve parity between the groups by penalizing the objective function …

The Roles Of Host Species, Geographic Scale And Environmental Stressors In Shaping The Composition Of Coral Microbiomes, Alicia Marie Riegel Parker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Reef-building corals are long-lived and may take many centuries to adapt, making them especially susceptible to climate change. However, corals host microbial symbionts that can change quickly, potentially speeding acclimation. My dissertation aimed to determine the degree of coevolution and flexibility between corals and their microbiomes among hosts, across space, and in response to stress.

Microbial communities are usually surveyed by sequencing the 16S rRNA gene, however the PCR primers used also amplify coral DNA, thereby limiting prokaryotic read coverage. To mitigate this contamination, I designed a peptide nucleic acid clamp that increased the recovery of bacterial reads by 2-11x …

Do Ground Layer Microhabitats In Old-Growth Pine Savanna Influence Recruitment Of Longleaf Pine?, Matthew Blanchard

LSU Master's Theses

Savanna tree populations typically share two demographic characteristics, high mortality of juvenile stages and low mortality of established trees. Juvenile savanna tree species escape demographic bottlenecks when they reach a safe size and annual mortality becomes low. Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) is the dominant tree species in pine savannas of the southeastern United States. The seeds and juvenile seedlings experience bottlenecks to recruitment to a safe size, the grass stage. Low intensity, frequent savanna fires facilitate establishment of seedlings, but also kill juvenile seedlings that have not grown sufficient above ground biomass. We hypothesized that juvenile seedlings escape the …

Antarctica And The Southern Ocean, Jessica Blunden, Derek S. Arndt, E. Povl Abrahamsen, Sandra Barreira, Cecilia M. Bitz, Amy Butler, Kyle R. Clem, Steve Colwell, Lawrence Coy, Jos De Laat, Marcel D. Du Plessis, Ryan L. Fogt, Helen Amanda Fricker, John Fyfe, Alex S. Gardner, Sarah T. Gille, Tessa Gorte, L. Gregor, Will Hobbs, Bryan Johnson, Eric Keenan, Linda M. Keller, Natalya A. Kramarova, Matthew A. Lazzara, Jan T.M. Lenaerts, Jan L. Lieser, Hongxing Liu, Craig S. Long, Michelle Maclennan, Robert A. Massom, François Massonnet, Matthew R. Mazloff

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Salt Marsh Dynamics In A Period Of Accelerated Sea Level Rise, Sergio Fagherazzi, Giulio Mariotti, Nicoletta Leonardi, Alberto Canestrelli, William Nardin, William S. Kearney

Faculty Publications

Salt marshes are dynamic systems able to laterally expand, contract, and vertically accrete in response to sea level rise. Here, we present the grand challenges that need to be addressed to fully characterize marsh morphodynamics. The review focuses on physical processes and quantitative models. Without predictive models, it is impossible to determine the future marsh evolution under accelerated sea level rise. In these models, one of the challenges is to resolve both horizontal and vertical dynamics within the same framework. Vertically, the marsh has to accumulate enough material to contrast rising water levels. Horizontally, marsh erosion at the ocean side …

On How Wetlands Can Provide Flood Resilience In A Large River Basin: A Case Study In Nenjiang River Basin, China, Yanfeng Wu, Guangxin Zhang, Alain N. Rousseau, Y. Jun Xu, Étienne Foulon

Faculty Publications

Wetlands are often acknowledged as a nature-based solution for improving flood resilience in a large river basin. However, the effects of wetlands on floods have not been assessed as extensively within a large river basin, as previous studies have mainly focused on assessing the effect on peak flows of a certain given return period. In this study, a distributed hydrological modeling platform was used to (i) quantify the effect of wetlands on floods with respect to event hydrographs, and (ii) investigate how flood regulation services can occur on the rising and falling limbs of an event hydrograph. Further, we hypothesized …

Effects Of Irrigation Discharge On Salinity Of A Large Freshwater Lake: A Case Study In Chagan Lake, Northeast China, Xuemei Liu, Guangxin Zhang, Jingjie Zhang, Y. Jun Xu, Yao Wu, Yanfeng Wu, Guangzhi Sun, Yueqing Chen, Hongbo Ma

Faculty Publications

The salinization of freshwater lakes by agricultural activities poses a threat to many lake ecosystems around the world. Quantitative, medium-to long-term studies are needed to understand how some common agricultural practices, such as the discharge of crop irrigation in the vicinities of large lakes, may affect lake salinization. In this study, hydrological, hydrodynamics, water quality and meteorological datasets were used to analyze the long-term spatial-temporal variations of water salinities of a major lake, the Chagan Lake, in Northeast China. An integrated hydrodynamics-salinity model was used to simulate lake water salinity changes taking place at different times and locations, including (i) …

Birds In Fragmented Amazonian Rainforest: Lessons From 40 Years At The Biological Dynamics Of Forest Fragments Project, Philip C. Stouffer

Faculty Publications

For decades, ecologists have studied fundamental questions of how Amazonian biodiversity is maintained, and whether that diversity can persist following deforestation. The long history of avian research at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, near Manaus, Brazil, has helped advance this understanding in the context of a broader research program focused on rainforest fragments embedded in a dynamic matrix. By sampling birds beginning before fragments were isolated, in the late 1970s, and continuing the protocol to the present, our work has revealed community dynamics driven not just by area and isolation, but also by larger landscape patterns, particularly second …

Climate From The Mcmurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, 1986–2017: Surface Air Temperature Trends And Redefined Summer Season, M. K. Obryk, P. T. Doran, A. G. Fountain, M. Myers, C. P. Mckay

Faculty Publications

©2020. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. The weather of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, the largest ice-free region of the Antarctica, has been continuously monitored since 1985 with currently 14 operational meteorological stations distributed throughout the valleys. Because climate is based on a 30-year record of weather, this is the first study to truly define the contemporary climate of the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Mean air temperature and solar radiation based on all stations were −20°C and 102 W m−2, respectively. Depending on the site location, the mean annual air temperatures on the valleys floors ranged between −15°C and −30°C, …

Characterization Of Shallow Subsurface Hydrology In Large Fine-Grained Floodplains, Mary Grace Lemon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Floodplains are hydrologically dynamic, receiving water from overbank events, hyporheic flows, local precipitation, and regional groundwater sources. These sources are variously important contributors to the heterogeneous floodplain water pool that includes matrix water in soil micropores, mobile water in soil macropores, groundwater below the rooting zone, ephemeral to seasonal surface storage, and permanent surface water features such as oxbow lakes, sloughs, and other secondary channels. All sources may be ecologically relevant for floodplain vegetation, but the exact roles of each source in both controlling soil water and shallow groundwater recharge and in controlling floodplain water drainage are not well understood, …

Southwest Pacific Tropical Cyclone Frequency And Intensity Related To Observed And Modeled Geophysical And Aerosol Variables, Rupsa Bhowmick

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation focuses on western region of Southwest Pacific Ocean (SWPO)

basin (135E - 180, and 5S - 35S) tropical cyclone (TC) climatology using observed

and modeled data. The classification-based machine learning approach

identifies the synoptic geophysical and aerosol environment favorable or unfavorable

for TC intensification and intensity change prior to landfall incorporating

observational and satellite data. A multiple poisson regression model with varying

temporal monthly lags was used to build a relationship between the number of

monthly TC days with basin wide average dust aerosol optical depth (AOD), sea

surface temperature (SST), and upper ocean temperature (UOT). This idea …

Natural Geochemical Markers Reveal Environmental History And Population Connectivity Of Common Cuttlefish In The Atlantic Ocean And Mediterranean Sea, Jay R. Rooker, R. J.David Wells, Piero Addis, Haritz Arrizabalaga, Miguel Baptista, Giovanni Bearzi, Michael A. Dance, Igaratza Fraile, Thomas Lacoue-Labarthe, Jessica M. Lee, Persefoni Megalofonou, Rui Rosa, Ignacio Sobrino, António V. Sykes, Roger Villanueva

Faculty Publications

Natural markers (δ 13 C and δ 18 O stable isotopes) in the cuttlebones of the European common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) were determined for individuals collected across a substantial portion of their range in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean (NEAO) and Mediterranean Sea. Cuttlebone δ 13 C and δ 18 O were quantified for core and edge material to characterize geochemical signatures associated with early (juvenile) and recent (sub-adult/adult) life-history periods, respectively. Regional shifts in cuttlebone δ 13 C and δ 18 O values were detected across the 12 sites investigated. Individuals collected from sites in the NEAO displayed more enriched …