Browsing by Author "Miller, Melinda C."

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Co-located contemporaneous mapping of morphological, hydrological, chemical, and biological conditions in a 5th-order mountain stream network, Oregon, USA
    Ward, Adam S.; Zarnetske, Jay P.; Baranov, Viktor; Blaen, Phillip J.; Brekenfeld, Nicolai; Chu, Rosalie; Derelle, Romain; Drummond, Jennifer D.; Fleckenstein, Jan H.; Garayburu-Caruso, Vanessa; Graham, Emily B.; Hannah, David; Harman, Ciaran J.; Herzog, Skuyler; Hixson, Jase; Knapp, Julia L. A.; Krause, Stefan; Kurz, Marie J.; Lewandowski, Joerg; Li, Angang; Marti, Eugenia; Miller, Melinda C.; Milner, Alexander M.; Neil, Kerry; Orsini, Luisa; Packman, Aaron I.; Plont, Stephen; Renteria, Lupita; Roche, Kevin; Royer, Todd; Schmadel, Noah M.; Segura, Catalina; Stegen, James; Toyoda, Jason; Wells, Jacqueline; Wisnoski, Nathan I.; Wondzell, Steven M. (2019-10-22)
    A comprehensive set of measurements and calculated metrics describing physical, chemical, and biological conditions in the river corridor is presented. These data were collected in a catchment-wide, synoptic campaign in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Cascade Mountains, Oregon, USA) in summer 2016 during low-discharge conditions. Extensive characterization of 62 sites including surface water, hyporheic water, and streambed sediment was conducted spanning 1st- through 5th-order reaches in the river network. The objective of the sample design and data acquisition was to generate a novel data set to support scaling of river corridor processes across varying flows and morphologic forms present in a river network. The data are available at https://doi.org/10.4211/hs.f4484e0703f743c696c2e1f209abb842 (Ward, 2019).
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    Land and Racial Wealth Inequality
    Miller, Melinda C. (American Economic Association, 2011)
    ...Explanations for the persistent and large racial wealth gap largely fall into two categories. First, racially discriminatory policies in credit markets, labor markets, school finance, and other institutions may have inhibited the ability of blacks to earn income and accumulate wealth. And, second, the effect of such policies may have amplified the impact of an alternate source of the racial wealth gap—low initial levels of black wealth. During slavery, law and custom prevented most slaves from owning property or other assets. After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, emancipation grants of “forty acres and a mule” were proposed to remedy the freedmen’s lack of capital. They never came to fruition, thus ensuring that former slaves entered freedom with little to no wealth, lagging substantially behind whites.
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    Race and agriculture during the assimilation era: Evidence from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
    Gregg, Matthew T.; Miller, Melinda C. (Max Planck Institute Demographic Research, 2022-06-21)
    BACKGROUND The role of race within tribal communities is a contentious topic, and some of this acrimony emerged from 19th-century Indian policies rooted in scientific racism. There has been relatively little written on the role of intermarriage within indigenous communities. METHODS We link household data from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century to individual two-generational family trees located in legal documents to investigate the link between personal property and whether a household head had white ancestry. RESULTS We find that the racial gap in property does not follow simple racial hierarchies but rather depends on the gender of the household head. However, once selection into intermarriage is accounted for, the racial gap in property from intermarriage is eliminated. In fact, households containing a male head with close white ancestors held less property than households containing a male head without white ancestry. CONTRIBUTION Understanding who chose to intermarry and how intermarriages impacted the economic status of both families and their children as adults can provide key insights into understanding racial inequality today.
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    Selection and Historical Height Data: Evidence from the 1892 Boas Sample of the Cherokee Nation
    Miller, Melinda C. (USNA, 2017)
    Economists have increasingly turned to height data to gain insight into a population’s standard of living. Because height measures are used when other data is unavailable, testing their reliability can be difficult, and concerns over sample selection have lead to several vigorous debates within the heights literature. In this paper, I use a unique contemporaneous census to gauge the extent of selection into a contested sample of American Indian heights. I have linked people from the 1892 Boas sample of the Cherokee Nation to the 1890 Cherokee Census. An initial analysis finds evidence of negative selection into the Boas sample. A detailed examination of those measured reveals a more complex story. Two distinct groups are present within the data. The first group consists of 64 members of the Cherokee elite. Their households owned more land, had invested more in improvements to their land, and had higher literacy rates. The remainder of the Boas sample is poor relative to both the elite and the rest of the Cherokee Nation. Part, but not all, of this difference is due to their residential location. Forty percent of the Boas sample lived in poorest district of Cherokee Nation. These differences in wealth between the two groups were mirrored by a fairly dramatic difference in average heights. The average height of all men in elite group was 173.9 cm while the non-elite were several centimeters shorter at just 171.2 cm.
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    Solute Transport and Transformation in an Intermittent, Headwater Mountain Stream with Diurnal Discharge Fluctuations
    Ward, Adam S.; Kurz, Marie J.; Schmadel, Noah M.; Knapp, Julia L. A.; Blaen, Phillip J.; Harman, Ciaran J.; Drummond, Jennifer D.; Hannah, David M.; Krause, Stefan; Li, Angang; Marti, Eugenia; Milner, Alexander M.; Miller, Melinda C.; Neil, Kerry; Plont, Stephen; Packman, Aaron I.; Wisnoski, Nathan I.; Wondzell, Steven M.; Zarnetske, Jay P. (MDPI, 2019-10-23)
    Time-variable discharge is known to control both transport and transformation of solutes in the river corridor. Still, few studies consider the interactions of transport and transformation together. Here, we consider how diurnal discharge fluctuations in an intermittent, headwater stream control reach-scale solute transport and transformation as measured with conservative and reactive tracers during a period of no precipitation. One common conceptual model is that extended contact times with hyporheic zones during low discharge conditions allows for increased transformation of reactive solutes. Instead, we found tracer timescales within the reach were related to discharge, described by a single discharge-variable StorAge Selection function. We found that Resazurin to Resorufin (Raz-to-Rru) transformation is static in time, and apparent differences in reactive tracer were due to interactions with different ages of storage, not with time-variable reactivity. Overall we found reactivity was highest in youngest storage locations, with minimal Raz-to-Rru conversion in waters older than about 20 h of storage in our study reach. Therefore, not all storage in the study reach has the same potential biogeochemical function and increasing residence time of solute storage does not necessarily increase reaction potential of that solute, contrary to prevailing expectations.
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    Spatial and temporal variation in river corridor exchange across a 5th-order mountain stream network
    Ward, Adam S.; Wondzell, Steven M.; Schmadel, Noah M.; Herzog, Skuyler; Zarnetske, Jay P.; Baranov, Viktor; Blaen, Phillip J.; Brekenfeld, Nicolai; Chu, Rosalie; Derelle, Romain; Drummond, Jennifer D.; Fleckenstein, Jan H.; Garayburu-Caruso, Vanessa; Graham, Emily B.; Hannah, David; Harman, Ciaran J.; Hixson, Jase; Knapp, Julia L. A.; Krause, Stefan; Kurz, Marie J.; Lewandowski, Joerg; Li, Angang; Marti, Eugenia; Miller, Melinda C.; Milner, Alexander M.; Neil, Kerry; Orsini, Luisa; Packman, Aaron I.; Plont, Stephen; Renteria, Lupita; Roche, Kevin; Royer, Todd; Segura, Catalina; Stegen, James; Toyoda, Jason; Wells, Jacqueline; Wisnoski, Nathan I. (2019-12-20)
    Although most field and modeling studies of river corridor exchange have been conducted at scales ranging from tens to hundreds of meters, results of these studies are used to predict their ecological and hydrological influences at the scale of river networks. Further complicating prediction, exchanges are expected to vary with hydrologic forcing and the local geomorphic setting. While we desire predictive power, we lack a complete spatiotemporal relationship relating discharge to the variation in geologic setting and hydrologic forcing that is expected across a river basin. Indeed, the conceptual model of Wondzell (2011) predicts systematic variation in river corridor exchange as a function of (1) variation in baseflow over time at a fixed location, (2) variation in discharge with location in the river network, and (3) local geomorphic setting. To test this conceptual model we conducted more than 60 solute tracer studies including a synoptic campaign in the 5th-order river network of the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Oregon, USA) and replicate-intime experiments in four watersheds. We interpret the data using a series of metrics describing river corridor exchange and solute transport, testing for consistent direction and magnitude of relationships relating these metrics to discharge and local geomorphic setting. We confirmed systematic decrease in river corridor exchange space through the river networks, from headwaters to the larger main stem. However, we did not find systematic variation with changes in discharge through time or with local geomorphic setting. While interpretation of our results is complicated by problems with the analytical methods, the results are sufficiently robust for us to conclude that space-for-time and time-for-space substitutions are not appropriate in our study system. Finally, we suggest two strategies that will improve the interpretability of tracer test results and help the hyporheic community develop robust datasets that will enable comparisons across multiple sites and/or discharge conditions.