Welcome! William & Mary ScholarWorks preserves and provides access to the research and creative output of William & Mary's faculty, staff, and students.
William & Mary ScholarWorks
Recent Submissions
Publication Open Access The Science Behind Virginia’s Living Shoreline Standards: Resource for Coastal Decision-Making(2026-04-01)Virginia’s living shoreline standard promotes nature-based approaches that provide erosion control and water quality benefits, protect, restore or enhance natural shoreline habitat, maintain land–water connections and coastal processes, and, where possible, enhance coastal resilience. Under Code of Virginia § 28.2-104.1, a living shoreline is defined not by materials alone, but by its ability to deliver these functions. The central premise of this paper is that living shorelines should be defined by function rather than materials. To qualify, a project must use natural shoreline habitat as the basis for erosion control, provide water quality benefits, maintain land–water connectivity, and support the physical, chemical, and biological processes that sustain coastal systems over time. No single feature or material is sufficient on its own. When properly designed, living shorelines reduce erosion, improve water quality, support habitat, and enhance resilience to storms and sea-level rise, with benefits often increasing as biological communities establish and mature. In contrast, projects that add vegetation or habitat features to armored shorelines should not be classified as living shorelines if they fail to maintain connectivity and core coastal processes. This paper presents a science-based, process-oriented framework for evaluating whether a shoreline project functions as a living shoreline in practice.Publication Open Access Virginia Species Profiles 2024(2024)Virginia Species Profiles 2024 is a compiled reference document developed in collaboration with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Virginia Department of Transportation. The report summarizes life history, habitat requirements, breeding ecology, migration, food habits, Virginia occurrence, management considerations, and predicted coastal Virginia habitat suitability for selected wildlife and plant species of conservation, regulatory, or planning interest. Species covered include birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and plants, such as Bald Eagle, Black Skimmer, Diamondback Terrapin, Eastern Black Rail, Northeastern Beach Tiger Beetle, Northern Long-Eared Bat, Piping Plover, Saltmarsh Sparrow, Seabeach Amaranth, Tiger Salamander, and Virginia Quillwort. Each profile synthesizes relevant scientific literature and available occurrence information, and many include maps of predicted potential habitat produced by the Center for Coastal Resources Management at VIMS. The document is intended to support transportation planning, environmental review, habitat assessment, and conservation decision-making in coastal Virginia.Publication Open Access Altar(2026-05-04)Kidnapped from her home in the mountains of Mexico, a girl enters a world determined to change her.Publication Open Access A model archive for "Transport of Sediment and Particulate Mercury within Upstream Reaches of Galveston Bay in Response to Hurricane Harvey"(2026-06-30)This dataset includes model input and source code used in the manuscript submitted to JGR-Oceans (Du et al., 2026). In this work, the authors used a numerical model to study redistribution of contaminated sediment in upstream reaches of Galveston Bay during Hurricane Harvey. It also includes mercury data obtained from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) via FOIA request.Publication Open Access Glass Containers and Glass Tablewares from the Market Street Chinatown(Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project, 2026)The Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project is one of the longest-running community archaeology projects in North America and one of the largest material studies of a 19th century Chinatown. This legacy collection, excavated in the 1980s, contains a rich history of everyday life in the Market Street Chinatown in San Jose, California. While there have been extensive studies of the animal bone, plant remains, and ceramics from the site, this report is the first systematic analysis of the glass containers and tablewares. The results reveal that the inhabitants of the Chinatown were purchasing and consuming a range of goods in glass packaging: alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, preserved foods, medicines, and household products. These products clearly show that the residents of the Chinatown were engaging with local, national, and international markets, and incorporating new products into their diets and lives. In addition, glass containers can be strongly temporally diagnostic. New research into 26 companies whose products were found in the Chinatown are used to date the archaeological deposits, revealing a small but previously unrecognized post-Chinatown element in the collection. This company research, alongside the analysis of the glass corpus as a whole represents a substantial contribution to our understanding of 19th century Californian archaeology and to Chinese diaspora archaeology worldwide.