Yecheng (Kent) Cao

About

Yecheng (Kent) Cao is an Assistant Professor of Art and Archaeology at Duke Kunshan University, specializing in the art and archaeology of early China with a broad interest in Eurasian cultural interconnections. His research focuses on the development of the indigenous bronze industry in the Yangtze River region of South China from the 14th to the 9th century BCE. Cao's forthcoming monograph, based on art historical and technical analysis, examines how the expansion of the Erligang state from the Central Plain in the 15th century BCE facilitated the dissemination of advanced bronze art and metallurgy, and how Yangtze societies assimilated foreign artistic traditions while independently developing their own bronze practices. This work offers new perspectives on China's formation from its frontiers and contributes to theoretical models of transregional transmission of ideas and technologies in early complex societies. Cao's next book project explores the revival of bronze archaism and antiquarianism in Song China and Kamakura Japan, aiming to provide a nuanced account of the interplay between political aspirations, ritual prestige, and artistic renaissance in Middle Period East Asia. He is actively engaged in digital humanities, collaborating with colleagues in experimental physics, electrical engineering, computer science, and media art to integrate interdisciplinary methods into humanities research. Notably, he participated in the "Ancient Art and Higgs Boson:…

Research topics

• Geology
• Environmental science
• Climatology
• Ecology
• Meteorology
• Botany
• Geography
• Physics
• Physical geography
• Atmospheric sciences

Selected publications

• Elevation filters seed traits and germination strategies in the eastern Tibetan Plateau

  Ecography · 2020 · 43 citations

  Seeds are the colonizing propagules for many plants and may therefore contribute to the filtering of species during the process of colonization and community assembly. Environmental filtering of seed traits may occur among species and influence community composition, or within species and influence the environmental breadth that a given species inhabits. To test for evidence of such filtering of seed traits, we measured morphological and germination traits of seeds of 408 angiosperm species coll…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Weather-Dependent Nonlinear Microwave Behavior of Seasonal High-Elevation Snowpacks

  Remote Sensing · 2020 · 22 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Ensemble predictions of the seasonal snowpack over the Grand Mesa, CO (~300 km2) for the hydrologic year 2016–2017 were conducted using a multilayer snow hydrology model. Snowpack ensembles were driven by gridded atmospheric reanalysis and evaluated against SnowEx’17 measurements. The multi-frequency microwave brightness temperatures and backscattering behavior of the snowpack (separate from soil and vegetation contributions) show that at sub-daily time-scales, the ensemble standard deviation (i…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Snow Ensemble Uncertainty Project (SEUP): Quantification of snowwater equivalent uncertainty across North America via ensemble landsurface modeling

  2020-09-15 · 15 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract. The Snow Ensemble Uncertainty Project (SEUP) is an effort to establish a baseline characterization of snow water equivalent (SWE) uncertainty across North America with the goal of informing global snow observational needs. An ensemble-based modeling approach, encompassing a suite of current operational models, is used to assess the uncertainty in SWE and total snow storage (SWS) estimation over North America during the 2009&ndashl2017 period. The highest modeled SWE uncertainty…

  PublisherDOI

• Topographic controls on active microwave behavior of mountain snowpacks

  Remote Sensing of Environment · 2022-11-28 · 12 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Indirect Estimation of Boreal Vegetation Contributions to SAR Backscatter Measurements – Toward Operational Retrievals of Snow in Forest Areas        

  2023-08-14 · 8 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Yueqian Cao1, and Ana P. Barros21. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA* Correspondence: barros@illinois.eduAbstract: A radar observing system simulator consisting of a coupled snow hydrology (MSHM) and radiative transfer model (MEMLS) was modified to include vegetation contributions to the total backscatter from the ground-snow-vegetatio…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ana P. Barros

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  13 shared

• Melissa L. Wrzesien

  Goddard Space Flight Center

  8 shared

• Shugong Wang

  Goddard Space Flight Center

  7 shared

• David M. Mocko

  Goddard Space Flight Center

  7 shared

• Rhae Sung Kim

  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

  7 shared

• Michael Durand

  5 shared

• Paul R. Houser

  George Mason University

  5 shared

• Lawrence Mudryk

  Environment and Climate Change Canada

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Duke University

  2022

• B.S., Atmospheric Sciences

  Lanzhou University

  2014

• Exchange Undergraduate, Meteorology

  University of Reading

  2014

Awards & honors

• Support from Smithsonian Institution
• Support from Henry Luce Foundation
• Support from Getty Research Institute
• Support from American Council of Learned Societies

Similar researchers at Duke University

• Charles Changh-50
• Xingshi Caih-31
• Stephanie Andersonh-13