Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Pinchot Wire: Private Cash, Public Lands - Why The Katahdin Woods And Waters National Monument Matters, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Here’s how President Obama celebrated the National Park Service’s 100th birthday: with the stroke of his pen, he established the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine, one of the most innovative initiatives in U.S. environmental history. That’s because the 87,500-acre park, which encompasses some of the Pine Tree State’s most remarkable forests and waterways, is a gift of the Quimby family and comes with a $40 million endowment, a private-public partnership without parallel.

Embers, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

After living in Southern California for nine years, I should be used to fire season—and the fact that there is something called fire season—but I’m not.

My wife and I moved to the Southland in late summer 2007, and within the month we saw some of the region’s most horrific firestorms consume vast stretches of chaparral-cloaked foothills, deep canyons filled with alder and oak and, at higher elevations, thick stands of pine and cedar.

One View: Fire Fuels Regeneration In Eastern Sierra, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Sometimes it’s the small things that can best tell big stories.

Like the Marina Fire, which currently has burned a modest 800 acres to the north of Lee Vining, threatened but did not burn any structures, and whose greatest disruption has been periodically to shut down US 395. It hardly seems worth much attention.

Dead Trees Don’T Mean Catastrophe For California, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Nature knows what it’s doing. You’d never know that, though, from the panicked reaction to news that 66 million trees in California have died since 2005, including 26 million said to have perished just in the last few months.

The Erskine Fire And Public-Lands Management In The American West, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The Erskine Fire is big, fast and dangerous. Its power is evident in the tragic loss of life, the incineration of an estimated 150 structures and its rapid growth — more than 36,000 acres burned in its first 30 hours.

Fire Inevitable, Despite Attempts To Tame Chaparral, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

You didn’t need to fly into Ontario International Airport this past week to know that Southern California’s fire season had begun. But the view from 10,000 feet offered a unique perspective on how wildfires impact the region.

Rethinking La's Nature Through German Eyes, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Los Angeles might be more than 5700 miles from Berlin as a crow (or Luftansa) flies, but German culture—and most notably its varied perceptions of nature—have strongly influenced how those living in the Southland experience their environs.

Oft in the negative, to judge from the enduring legacy of Bertold Brecht’s sharp commentary about the City of Angeles in which he sheltered during the ravages of World War II. “They have nature here,” he jotted down in his diary in August 1941, and as “everything is so artificial, they even have an exaggerated feeling for nature, which becomes alienated.”

Rethinking: Wind, Wende, Wandel, Friederike Von Schwerin-High

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Umdenken: Von Der Natur Lernen (Rethinking: Learning From Nature): Some Personal Thoughts On The Goethe Institute Traveling Exhibition, Hans J. Rindisbacher

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Malheur Occupation In Oregon: Whose Land Is It Really?, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a 187,757-acre haven for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds in eastern Oregon, is usually a pretty peaceful place. But its calm was shattered on Saturday, January 2 when Ammon Bundy and a group of armed men broke into and occupied a number of federal buildings on the refuge, vowing to fight should the government try to arrest them. Their insurrectionary goal appears to be, simply put, to destroy the national system of public lands – our forests, parks and refuges – that was developed in the late 19th century to conserve these …

A Better Way To Restore Wildfire-Burned Forests, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Uncle Sam’S Badge: Identity And Representation In The Usda Forest Service, 1905–2013, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Howard Abbey could recall the exact moment when he learned that he had passed the forest ranger’s examination for the newly established USDA Forest Service (USFS). In the early morning of Aug. 1, 1905, while he was managing a team of horses pulling a mowing machine on the McIntosh Ranch in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, Allen Ray Powers, a Forest Assistant on the Plumas Forest Reserve, rode up and “informed me that I was wanted at the Forest Supervisor’s office in Quincy.” Abbey handed over the reins to his boss and walked the 2 miles to town where he …

Making Common Cause For Conservation: The Pinchot Institute And Grey Towers National Historic Site, 1963-2013, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and the donation of the Pinchot family home Grey Towers to the U.S. Forest Service. In the following essay, historian and Pinchot biographer Char Miller discusses how the Institute is applying Gifford Pinchot’s principles to contemporary environmental issues. It is adapted from Seeking the Greatest Good: The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot, his new history of the Institute, and is published with kind permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Let It Be, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Trash Talk: A Case Study Of Waste Analysis At Pomona College, Char Miller, Bowen Close

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Purpose: This paper presents the pedagogical initiatives associated with and the practical outcomes of a multi-student independent study that analyzed the campus waste stream and developed real-world solutions in accord with the college’s sustainability commitments and goals.

Design/methodology: The paper reviews the course structure, presents research findings and the individual student-developed solutions, and assesses their ability to reduce the campus’s waste stream.

Findings: Developing a class to audit the campus waste stream offers students an unusual educational opportunity to apply theoretical insights to and test these against a real-world problem; their analyses and projects also has helped …

The Once And Future Forest Service: Land-Management Policies And Politics In Contemporary America, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The news from the Far North is not good. In the spring of 2007, University of Alberta scientists reported that portions of the Canadian tundra were transforming into new forests of spruce and shrubs much more rapidly than once was imaginable. "The conventional thinking on treeline dynamics has been that advances are very slow because conditions are so harsh at these high latitudes and altitudes," reported Dr. Ryan Danby, a member of the UA research team. "But what our data indicate is that there was an upslope surge of trees in response to warmer temperatures. It's like [the forest] waited …

At The Creation: The National Forest Commission Of 1896-97, Gerald W. Williams, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Among the central forces in the creation of the legislation necessary to establish federal forestry was the National Forest Commission. Its members included some of the leading conservationists of the 1890s, including Charles Sprague Sargent and Gifford Pinchot; John Muir was an unofficial member. Its final report advocated the establishment of a national forest system and served as the basis for the so-called Organic Act, which cleared the way for active management on federal forests and grasslands. Unlike the other articles, this one contains several excerpted documents interspersed with exposition.

French Lessons: F.P. Baker, American Forestry, And The 1878 Paris Universal Exposition, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Although he never became a forester, F. P. Baker did much to advance the profession’s cause. Its potential became clear to him while serving as a U.S. Commissioner to the 1878 Paris Exposition, during which he reported on European forestry, its scientific methods and political meaning. Returning home, he was inspired to advance forestry in America.

Amateur Hour: Nathaniel H. Egleston And Professional Forestry In Post-Civil War America, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Nathaniel Egleston, the second head of the U.S. Division of Forestry (1883–1886), is a forgotten figure in the history of early American forestry. The one-time minister became a tireless advocate for trees in the post-Civil War era, writing innumerable and well-received essays and pamphlets. But his enthusiasm did not translate into administrative success, and he was replaced by Bernard Fernow, who in turn was succeeded by Gifford Pinchot; the pair’s scientific training signaled the professionalization of American forestry.

Deep Roots: The Late Nineteenth Century Origins Of American Forestry, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The U.S. Forest Service celebrated its centennial in 2005, an event that depended on a set of individuals who in the years immediately prior to the agency’s creation in 1905 labored quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, to defuse opposition to the idea of it within the executive and legislative branches. Surely the most crucial of these figures was Gifford Pinchot, then head of the Bureau of Forestry, and President Theodore Roosevelt: animating their activism was a shared conviction that conservation of the nation’s natural resources would save the United States from economic ruin and a collective faith that a …

Eminent Domain: B.L. Wiggins, Forestry, And The New South At Sewanee, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The history of the University of the South and of its forest is intertwined. The health of the forest—and of the university—hung in the balance when Benjamin Wiggins took charge of both in 1893.

An Open Field, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

It should have been during a similarly punishing and mercurial moment in late twentieth-century San Antonio, enveloped in a "furious storm of rain, of hail, or of snow," that I initially encountered Richard White's seminal historiographical essay. Such a convergence of art, life, and weather pattern might have defied reality, but it would have made for a fabulous narrative opening. That said, like the norther's rush, his article, which I read shortly after its publication in the August 1985 issue of the Pacific Historical Review, blew me away.

The Greatest Good, Char Miller, Rebecca Staebler

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The following is an excerpt from Chapter Two: ”Early Growth“ of The Greatest Good: 100 Years of Forestry in America. Through text and photographs the book explores the European roots of forestry, early forestry education and practice in the United States, the boom in research and production following World War II, and the technologies and practices that will see the profession into the 21st century.

Back To The Garden: The Redemptive Promise Of Sustainable Forestry, 1893-2000, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

As we struggle at the turn of the century to define and implement “sustainable forestry”— the next stage in the evolution of forest management in North America and the world—it is important to realize that its components have strong roots in the forestry profession. This article examines the relationship of forests and forestry with social equity issues during the last century. In the end, the author leaves us with a question: can sustainable forestry as we understand it today lead to conflict resolution? If not, what lies beyond sustainable forestry?

Grazing Arizona: Public Land Management In The Southwest, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

In February of 1999, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Michael Dombeck, placed a moratorium on road building on most roadless areas. In October, President Clinton put forth an initiative to prohibit road building on 40 million acres of roadless area. Such modifications in Forest Service land management decisions is not new as suggested by Char Miller in this look back at early grazing decisions by Pinchot. To be proactive and reactive at the same time in relation to changing social pressures and political realties may be the legacy of the agency.

Sunbelt Texas, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

What then is the Sunbelt, and Texas' place within it? The region first had to be recognized as a region, of course, and that has taken some doing. The term was initially employed in the late 1960s and soon came to loom large in the popular imagination. Still, its boundaries were and are inexact. Where is the Sunbelt? Some commentators have adopted an all-inclusive definition which links together those states south of the thirty-seventh parallel; an even more expansive version includes Virginia and the Pacific Northwest. Others rely on more precise, but no less problematic descriptions which, depending on the …

Olmos Park And The Creation Of A Suburban Bastion, Char Miller, Heywood T. Sanders

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

An examination of this small Texas community will also cast light on the larger world of which it was a part. The development of Olmos Park, then, was inextricably bound up with and reflective of the political machinations and social problems that dominated San Antonio in the first decades of this century. As Mauerman understood, the suburb was a fragment of the urban whole, an observation that needs to be pushed one step farther. The forces that shaped Olmos Park and determined its relations with San Antonio were also part of a national pattern, of tensions generated by the explosive …

The Rise Of Urban Texas, Char Miller, David R. Johnson

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Texas contains three of the nation's ten largest cities, but their existence has not yet affected the hold that the state's rural heritage has on Texas' imagination--or so Texans' attachment to two nineteenth-century cultural landmarks, the Alamo and the Chisholm Trail, would suggest. As the shrine of Texas liberty, the Alamo continually generates elegies to the manly courage and bravery of the fallen heroes of 1836.

James Eights, Albany Naturalist: New Evidence, Char Miller, Naomi Goldsmith

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Eights's contributions to scientific study and to the popularization of science have been understated and misunderstood.