VTechWorks
VTechWorks provides global access to Virginia Tech scholarship, including journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more by faculty, students, and staff. Faculty can deposit items to VTechWorks from Elements, including journal articles covered by the University open access policy. Email vtechworks@vt.edu for help.
Open Access Policy
Virginia Tech's open access policy enables researchers to deposit the accepted version of scholarly articles with no embargo.
Theses and Dissertations
Virginia Tech was first in the world to require ETDs in 1997, and continues to add scans of older theses and dissertations.
Open Textbooks
More than 40 freely available and openly licensed textbooks are among our most downloaded items.
Communities in VTechWorks
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
Prompting Best Practices: How Are Libraries or Their Home Institutions Creating, Sharing, Applying, and Adapting GenAI Policies?
Pannabecker, Virginia (2024-06-11)
Join me for this 45-minute discussion-based review of institutional policies created by libraries or their larger institutions on the use of Gen AI in teaching, learning, and research. During the first 15 minutes, I will share a selection of policies from 5-10 institutions, highlighting examples of commonalities and key differences, including how each policy addresses ethical aspects of using AI in the institution's context. The second 15 minutes will be breakout small group discussions of the example policies, policies participants are aware of or use at their own institutions or at institutions they’re curious about; and each group will have an online space to jot down notes and add links to policies or resources they discuss. The last 15 minutes will include a 1-2 minute report back from each group about useful aspects they found in the example policies or other policies discussed in their group, questions or concerns about policies discussed, examples of applying such policies at their institutions, examples of how to stay up to date with changes in Gen AI usage and make nimble adjustments to policies, or recommendations and comments for Gen AI policies going forward. We’ll conclude with a wrap up and links to the shared discussion documents for reference.
Amplification of downstream flood stage due to damming of fine-grained rivers
Ma, Hongbo; Nittrouer, Jeffrey A.; Fu, Xudong; Parker, Gary; Zhang, Yuanfeng; Wang, Yuanjian; Wang, Yanjun; Lamb, Michael P.; Cisneros, Julia; Best, Jim; Parsons, Daniel R.; Wu, Baosheng (Nature Portfolio, 2022-06)
River dams provide many benefits, including flood control. However, due to constantly evolving channel morphology, downstream conveyance of floodwaters following dam closure is difficult to predict. Here, we test the hypothesis that the incised, enlarged channel downstream of dams provides enhanced water conveyance, using a case study from the lower Yellow River, China. We find that, although flood stage is lowered for small floods, counterintuitively, flood stage downstream of a dam can be amplified for moderate and large floods. This arises because bed incision is accompanied by sediment coarsening, which facilitates development of large dunes that increase flow resistance and reduce velocity relative to pre-dam conditions. Our findings indicate the underlying mechanism for such flood amplification may occur in >80% of fine-grained rivers, and suggest the need to reconsider flood control strategies in such rivers worldwide.
A framework for addressing the lack of diversity in the Geosciences through evaluating the current structure of institutional efforts
Guhlincozzi, Aída; Cisneros, Julia (Springer, 2021-07-02)
How can universities build institutional partnerships through supporting community geography projects? This paper details the case of university members seeking to achieve a community goal of expanding Geosciences education opportunities, while also targeting a long-range goal of improving diversity within the university Geosciences. Over the course of one year, two Ph.D students collaborated with community members affiliated with a local middle school to design and organize the School of Earth, Society, and Environment (SESE) Geosciences Camp for Middle School Girls, held in August 2019. This paper deconstructs and critiques the camp organizing process and its outcomes. The conclusion addresses what worked and what did not as a model for future attempts at more sustainable institutional partnerships serving community geography projects.
Grappling with barriers in geosciences from the lens of two Latina geoscientists
Cisneros, Julia; Guhlincozzi, Aída (Routledge, 2022-10-18)
This article reviews our shared experience as two minoritized graduate students, encapsulating what the barriers we encountered were, and identifies the impacts of a personal disinterest by geoscientists and institutional disinvestment in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues in the geosciences. Specifically, in this article we advance the concept of disinvestment in the academy, and how disinvestment and disinterest reveal themselves in the ways the geosciences as a field interact with service and outreach to impact the abilities of minoritized geoscientists to create and sustain diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Through evaluating the case of our creation of a geosciences camp for problems with disinvestment and disinterest by the academy, we identify barriers we faced and solutions created to address them through the framework of navigating a road, and typologizing them as roadblocks, detours, and alternate routes. The multiple barriers we experienced cumulatively amount to considerable time and effort lost, resulting in harm against us and our careers. We find the disinterest and disinvestment we experienced disincentivizes service and outreach work that is pivotal in improving DEI in geosciences. Our current systems and expectations need modification so we can move away from disinvestment and create engaged support structures.
The influence of dune lee side shape on time-averaged velocities and turbulence
Lefebvre, Alice; Cisneros, Julia (Copernicus, 2023-07-11)
Underwater dunes are found in various environments with strong hydrodynamics and movable sediment such as rivers, estuaries and continental shelves. They have a diversity of morphology, ranging from low- to high-angle lee sides and sharp or rounded crests. Here, we investigate the influence of lee side morphology on flow properties (time-averaged velocities and turbulence). To do so, we carried out a large number of numerical simulations of flow over dunes with a variety of morphologies using Delft3D. Our results show that the value of the mean lee side angle in addition to the value and position of the maximum lee side angle have an influence on the flow properties investigated. We propose a classification with the following three types of dunes: (1) low-angle dunes (mean lee side < 10°), over which there is generally no flow separation and over which only little turbulence is created; (2) intermediate-angle dunes (mean lee side 10-17° ), over which an intermittent flow separation is likely over the trough; and (3) high-angle dunes (mean lee side > 17° ), over which the flow separates at the brink point and reattaches shortly after the trough and over which turbulence is high. The influence of maximum lee side slope value and position on flow characteristics depends on the dune type. We discuss the implications of the proposed dune classification on the interaction between dune morphology and flow.