William & Mary ScholarWorks

Welcome! William & Mary ScholarWorks preserves and provides access to the research and creative output of William & Mary's faculty, staff, and students.

W&M Faculty and Researchers are encouraged to submit their content for inclusion in ScholarWorks.

Recent Submissions

Open Access
Development dreams and riparian realities in Nepal: hydropower expansion, local lifeways, and the politics of river futures
(Institute of Physics Publishing, 2026-06-26) Burchett, Patton; Sritharan, Narayani; Lohani, Sapana; Arts & Sciences
Hydropower is widely framed as a clean pathway to energy security, economic growth, and climate adaptation. Yet its governance remains dominated by technical and economic approaches that prioritize measurable outputs and market-oriented outcomes while marginalizing local communities’ needs, concerns, and ways of knowing and relating to rivers. Nepal offers a particularly revealing case for examining these dynamics. Drawing on interviews with policy and sectoral elites alongside ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous and other riparian communities, this paper juxtaposes top–down governance framings of hydropower development with lived experiences of livelihood disruption, cultural loss, and ecological displacement. We argue that hydropower development in Nepal operates through an ‘epistemic regime’ that shapes what counts as valid knowledge and how rivers are perceived and managed. This regime renders rivers, risks, and impacts legible in technical and financial terms while marginalizing relational and place-based understandings of river systems, livelihoods, and stewardship. Across policy and planning discourse, we identify four recurring themes: treatment of water as a strategic techno-economic asset; technocratic governance and hollowing of participation; unequal distributions of benefits and burdens; and compensation regimes that normalize loss. Our findings show that local perspectives are excluded not simply because of consultation or implementation failures, but because the institutions governing hydropower systematically limit whose knowledge and experiences count in decision-making. The infrastructure that follows (dams, diversions, tunnels, roads, etc) reshapes river ecosystems while reducing socio-ecological impacts to measurable forms of loss. These changes undermine subsistence livelihoods and long-standing river-care practices, pushing households toward precarious wage labor and migration. We conceptualize these processes as a structural ‘triple bind’ for riparian communities: normalization of dispossession, constrained livelihood recovery, and weakening of cultural-ecological stewardship. The paper concludes that just and resilient energy futures require reworking the epistemic foundations of hydropower development under climate change.
Open Access
Maasai Women's Perspectives on Equitable Ranger Programs in Kenya
(Institute for Integrative Conservation, 2025-01-06) Boyd, Corinne; Perry-Smith, Jana; Kileken, Ketito (Cynthia); Dicenta, Mara; Garroutte, Erica; Kayiaa, Hellen; Meneto, Pheona; Arts & Sciences
Women play a disproportionately important role in conservation and community well-being but often face barriers to engagement and empowerment in the conservation field. Women ranger programs have become a popular strategy for engaging women and the unique role they play in their societies, in the protection of wildlife and ecosystem services. Despite their popularity, there lacks an understanding from women rangers about how to best structure programs to promote the conservation and well-being goals for women rangers. The primary objective of the research was to document the perspectives of the South Rift Association of Land Owners (SORALO) women rangers on how to best structure the women's ranger program, aiming to understand the role of women in Maasai culture, investigate lessons from other programs, explore SORALO's goals, and examine perspectives on multi-gender initiatives. Using interviews and observational data, the study revealed key findings about the program in southern Kenya. Women rangers balance multiple identities as Maasai women and conservation professionals, navigating evolving societal roles and gender-specific challenges while having significant community impacts. The research highlights the importance of mutual support between men and women rangers and the need for programs to adapt to changing roles. These insights can inform the design of more inclusive and effective conservation initiatives that leverage the unique strengths and perspectives of women rangers, benefiting organizations like SORALO and others seeking to develop or enhance women ranger programs.
Open Access
LEK as an Avenue for River Herring Restoration in the Rappahannock River
(Institute for Integrative Conservation, 2022-01-01) Shrimali, Malvika; Dicenta, Mara; Ogburn, Matthew; Legett, Henry; Arts & Sciences
As underrepresented communities continue to fight for an equal voice in conservation, environmental organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of Indigenous and local ecological knowledge (LEK) in restoration and management projects. This literature review explores how institutions such as the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center can build more respectful and equitable partnerships with local communities in river herring restoration efforts in Virginia’s Rappahannock River. Drawing on literature from conservation, Indigenous studies, fisheries co-management, and political ecology, as well as archival research and interviews with scientists and local fishers, this report offers guidelines for developing collaborative relationships that acknowledge historical and ongoing colonial power dynamics within environmental science. The report argues that scientific institutions must recognize how Western scientific ecological knowledge (WSEK) has historically marginalized or compartmentalized local knowledge systems. Indigenous and local ecological knowledges are often holistic, relational, place-based, and shaped through long-term interactions with the environment, while Western conservation approaches frequently prioritize reductionist and managerial forms of expertise. Through examples from fisheries management and oral histories connected to river herring in Virginia, the report examines how conservation projects can unintentionally reproduce colonial hierarchies when local communities are treated as stakeholders rather than equal partners. To address these challenges, the report outlines four stages for building respectful conservation partnerships: understanding historical and colonial contexts, recognizing different research paradigms, designing collaborative management structures, and developing long-term relationships grounded in reciprocity, accessibility, and mutual respect. Ultimately, this report is intended as a practical guide for scientists and conservation organizations seeking to develop more equitable and collaborative restoration partnerships.
Open Access
Genomic Offsets Predict Survival With Low Accuracy in a Marine Common Garden
(Wiley, 2026-07-04) Rumberger, Camille A.; Eppley, Madeline; Bajaj, Kiran; Mongillo, Nicole; Katuski, Shelley; Small, Jessica A.; Lotterhos, Kathleen; VIMS
Predicting how populations will respond to climate change is an urgent priority in evolutionary and conservation biology. Genetic and environmental influences have long been known to impact responses to shifting climates, giving rise to the development of genomic offset methods that attempt to predict the degree of maladaptation following environmental change. Although these methods have the potential to improve our understanding of populations' responses to climate change, questions remain about how well they predict fitness in a diversity of systems. Here, we pair genomic offsets with a large-scale common garden experiment to investigate how fitness of a marine mollusc, Crassostrea virginica, varies across environmental gradients and to validate offset predictions against empirical fitness. We find that at two common garden sites in the Chesapeake Bay, Northern oysters had the lowest survival and growth, whereas Southern oysters had similar survival and growth to local wild oysters and selection lines. We compared survival and length to offset predictions, finding higher method performance at the lower salinity, moderate disease site than at the higher salinity, higher disease site. The inclusion of disease in the offset model training additionally impacted offset method performance, though the effect varied between common garden sites, fitness proxies and across methods. Despite a nearly 50% difference in survival across sites, the magnitude of offset predictions to both common gardens was similar, highlighting issues with extrapolating offset predictions across species ranges. Performance of genomic offset methods in this system was not adequate to make real-world predictions to environmental stressors.
Open Access
Conceptual Design and Environmental Assessment of the Whiting Creek Dredging and Beneficial Use Shoreline Restoration Project
(Shoreline Studies Program, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, 2026-03) Milligan, Donna; Kowal, Julianna C.; Green, Cameron W.; Wilcox, Christine A.; Hardaway Jr, C. Scott; Ziegler, Gabrielle M.; VIMS
Whiting Creek is a federally authorized shallow-draft navigation channel in Middlesex County, Virginia, that provides public access to the Rappahannock River and Chesapeake Bay. Authorized in 1945, the channel has experienced recurring shoaling, necessitating periodic maintenance dredging to restore safe navigation. The objective of this study was to develop a conceptual dredging and beneficial use design to restore the authorized channel dimensions of 70 ft in width and -4 ft Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW), with 1 ft of allowable overdepth (-5 ft MLLW total dredge depth). Updated bathymetric surveys, digital elevation modeling, volumetric analyses, and sediment characterization were completed to quantify dredging requirements and evaluate the suitability of dredged material for beneficial use. Approximately 18,700 cubic yards of sediment were identified above the authorized dredge template. Grain size and chemical analyses indicated the dredged material consists of approximately 94% sand and contains no contaminants above regulatory detection limits, making it suitable for shoreline placement. A beneficial use placement was designed along an eroding shoreline immediately east of the channel to stabilize the shoreline, reduce erosion, and beneficially reuse dredged material. By integrating navigation maintenance with shoreline restoration, the proposed design improves public access while enhancing long-term coastal resilience and maximizing the value of dredged material as a natural resource.