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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (4 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2014)

Ordinarily, an analysis of income differentials based on standard metrics, such as the variance statistic or the gini coefficient, implicitly weights income differentials among different places the same, regardless of whether some pairs of places are more economically interdependent than others. The problem with the assumption that all pairs of places are uniformly interdependent is that changes in those income differentials considered to be less relevant to the inequality concern being addressed may quantitatively obscure acute changes of more relevant differentials.

This dissertation has three main chapters. The common aim of each chapter is to incorporate geographic information into a metric's formulation in order to make it more relevant to an explicit concern. Each of the chapters of the dissertation share three objectives: develop a spatial view of inequality based on a concern; incorporate the spatial view into a metric's formulation using a spatial weights matrix; evaluate if the results based on spatial assessments diverge from aspatial ones.

An important empirical finding of this research is that a proposed intra-city, inter-race inequality metric registers acute differentials among latino and white

neighborhoods that an additive decomposition metric does not register. A key conceptual finding is the paradox that spatial inequality metrics formulated for different concerns can register the same change in opposite directions.

    Cover page: Assessing Inequality using Geographic Income Distributions
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2016)
    Abstract:What factors are related to establishment dynamics following disturbance in late-successional versus second-growth tropical forests of the Pacific islands? Are those relationships robust to interannual fluctuations in establishment? In three sites juveniles were enumerated in 30 (5 × 5-m) subplots within 45 × 50-m tree plots in 2004 and 2005, 2.5 and 3.5 y following a Category-3 tropical cyclone (hurricane), in the Vava'u Island Group, Kingdom of Tonga. Recruitment was almost three-fold greater in the second sample period. Spatial pattern of focal species density was related to density of other juveniles, proximity of conspecific adults and canopy cover in the two years using Seemingly Unrelated Regression. Shade-tolerant species were the most abundant recruits in late-successional sites, establishing near-conspecific adults and other juveniles, while shade-establishing species were recruiting in gaps in second-growth forest where they also constitute the canopy trees. This pattern, observed in both years, reinforces divergent successional trajectories for second-growth and late-successional forest.
      Cover page: Heterogeneous tree recruitment following disturbance in insular tropical forest, Kingdom of Tonga
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2021)
      We report microplastic densities on windward beaches of Oahu, Hawai`i, USA, an island that received about 6 million tourist visits a year. Microplastic densities, surveyed on six Oahu beaches, were highest on the beaches with the coarsest sands, associated with high wave energy. On those beaches, densities were very high (700-1700 particles m-2), as high as those recorded on other remote island beaches worldwide. Densities were higher at storm tide lines than high tide lines. Results from our study provide empirical data on the distribution of microplastics on the most populated and visited of the Hawaiian islands.
        Cover page: Microplastic pollution on island beaches, Oahu, Hawai`i
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2022)
        Wildland–urban interfaces (WUIs), the juxtaposition of highly and minimally developed lands, are an increasingly prominent feature on Earth. WUIs are hotspots of environmental and ecological change that are often priority areas for planning and management. A better understanding of WUI dynamics and their role in the coupling between cities and surrounding wildlands is needed to reduce the risk of environmental hazards, ensure the continued provisioning of ecosystem services, and conserve threatened biodiversity. To fill this need, we propose an expanded framework for WUIs that not only conceptualizes these interfaces as emergent and functional components of socioecological processes but also extends them vertically from the bedrock to the top of the vegetation and horizontally across heterogeneous landscapes. This framework encourages management that reconciles pervasive trade-offs between development and resulting multiple environmental impacts. Focusing on southern California as a case study, we use the framework to facilitate integration across disciplines and between scientists and managers.
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