Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Science At Engineer Cantonment, Hugh H. Genoways, Brett C. Ratcliffe, Carl R. Falk, Thomas E. Labedz, Paul R. Picha, John R. Bozell

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

Conclusions

It is our contention that Thomas Say, Titian Peale, Edwin James, and their colleagues of the Stephen Long Expedition of 1819–1820 were heavily engaged in scientific research, which took the form of the first biodiversity inventory undertaken in the United States. This accomplishment has been overlooked both by biologists and historians, but it should rank among the most significant accomplishments of the expedition. The results of this inventory continue to inform us today about environmental, faunal, and floral changes along the Missouri River in an area that is known to be an ecotone between the deciduous forests of the …

Spring-Migration Ecology Of Northern Pintails In South-Central Nebraska, Aaron T. Pearse, Gary L. Krapu, Robert R. Cox Jr., Bruce E. Davis

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Spring-migration ecology of staging Northern Pintails, Anas acuta, was investigated in south-central Nebraska, USA. Habitat associations, local movements, settling patterns, arrival dates, residency times and survival were estimated from 71 radiomarked pintails during spring 2001, 2003 and 2004, and diet determined from 130 females collected during spring 1998 and 1999. Seventy-two percent of pintail diurnal locations were in palustrine wetlands, 7% in riverine wetlands, 3% in lacustrine wetlands, 6% in municipal sewage lagoons and irrigation reuse pits and 10.5% in croplands. Emergent wetlands with hemi-marsh conditions were used diurnally more often than wetlands with either open or closed vegetation …

Open To Horror The Great Plains Situation In Contemporary Thrillers By E. E. Knight And By Douglas Preston And Lincoln Child, A. B. Emrys

Great Plains Quarterly

From the agoraphobic prairie where the father of Willa Cather's Antonia kills himself, to the claustrophobic North Dakota town of Argus devastated by storm in Louise Erdrich's "Fleur," to Lightning Flat, the grim home of Jack Twist in Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," much Great Plains literature is situational, placing human drama in the context of historicalor contemporary setting. Isolation, fierce weather, and inherent pressures on survival remain primary, and the Plains is a character in itself that appears as a presence, whether foregrounded or ghostly, in works that cannot help but evoke the Great Plains then and now. The Plains' …

Cultural Survival And The Omaha Way Eunice Woodhull Stabler's Legacy Of Preservation On The Twentieth,Century Plains, Elaine M. Nelson

Great Plains Quarterly

In the summer of 2004 I pulled into the rock and gravel driveway of a small blue home in Walthill, Nebraska, a community in the northern part of the Omaha Indian reservation. Feeling nervous about the large and unavoidable sign reading "BEWARE OF DOG," I knocked on the screen door. I was welcomed with wild barking from inside before I heard a man's voice yell, "Rambo! Hush up! Rambo, get down!" Startled, I nearly dropped my books and tape recorder. The door swung open. I expected to be faced with a Doberman/German shepherd/ pit bull mix; instead, I looked down …

Mapping Agricultural Land Cover For Hydrologic Modeling In The Platte River Watershed Of Nebraska, Patti R. Dappen, Ian C. Ratcliffe, Cullen R. Robbins, James W. Merchant

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Throughout the western United States, natural resources managers are attempting to address the growing, and often competing, demands that municipal, agricultural and environmental interests have for water. The Platte River Cooperative Hydrology Study (COHYST) is a multi-agency effort that seeks to improve understanding of the ecology, geology, and hydrology of the Platte River watershed in central and western Nebraska. Information regarding the types, areal extent, and locations of crops (especially irrigated crops) is critical for estimating consumptive use of water. Digital land-cover and land-use datasets of the central and western Platte River valley have been prepared for four years: 1982, …

Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, 1819-1820: America's First Biodiversity Ineventory, Hugh H. Genoways, Brett C. Ratcliffe

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

It is our thesis that members of the Stephen Long Expedition of 1819-20 completed the first biodiversity inventory undertaken in the United States at their winter quarters, Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, in the modern state of Nebraska. This accomplishment has been overlooked both by biologists and historians, but it should rank among the most significant accomplishments of the expedition. The results of this inventory allow us to evaluate the environmental, faunal, and floral changes along the Missouri River in the intervening nearly 190 years. The historical records form a visual image of a dynamic riverine system in which a highly …

Historic And Recent Distributions Of Elk In Nebraska, Kent A. Fricke, Michael A. Cover, Scott E. Hygnstrom, Scott R. Groepper, Hugh H. Genoways, Kit M. Hams, Kurt C. Vercauteren

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Elk (Cervus elaphus) were historically found throughout North America but were extirpated from Nebraska and much of the Great Plains in the 1880s due to consumptive uses by settlers, miners, market hunters, and others. Elk began to reappear in Nebraska in the 1950s and 1960s, and established a stable, nonmigratory population that currently consists of seven herds and an estimated 1,400 individuals throughout western and central Nebraska. The reappearance and subsequent persistence of elk in Nebraska suggests there is adequate habitat to support a self-sustaining population. The general movement of elk eastward may lead to an eventual statewide …

Grassland Birds In Restored Grassland Of The Rainwater Basin Region In Nebraska, Jill Sporrong Utrup, Craig A. Davis

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Conservationists and managers mention grassland restorations as a conservation strategy to reverse the decline of grassland bird populations in the Great Plains. In the Rainwater Basin Region of southcentral Nebraska, state and federal resource agencies have used grassland restorations to protect wetlands from sedimentation and agrichemical runoff. These grassland restorations may also provide important habitat for breeding grassland birds. In this paper, we describe the abundance, composition, nesting success, and habitat requirements of breeding birds in grassland restorations in the Rainwater Basin Region. We observed 14 grassland bird species in 12 grassland restorations. The most abundant species were dickcissels ( …

Avian Response To Meadow Restoration In The Central Great Plains, Rosalind B. Renfrew, Douglas H. Johnson, Gary R. Lingle, W. Douglas Robinson

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Native grassland is one of the most heavily degraded of all North American ecosystems, and restoration of altered grasslands is a tool used to mitigate some of the biological ramifications of past land use practices. Providing habitat for grassland-dependent bird species often is one of the many goals of restoration. We evaluated the efficacy of meadow restoration for breeding birds in the Nebraska Platte River Valley by comparing the bird community and vegetation structure on 25 natural (original sod) and 25 restored meadows. We conducted principal components analyses on the vegetation structure and on the bird community, and modeled the …

Adversaries And Allies Rival National Suffrage Groups And The 1882 Nebraska Woman Suffrage Campaign, Carmen Heider

Great Plains Quarterly

In September 1882, Nebraska was the setting for a significant moment in the history of the United States women's rights movement: the two rival suffrage organizations, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), both held their annual conventions in Omaha, an event Sally Roesch Wagner describes as "an unprecedented move." Furthermore, the AWSA and NWSA "act[ed] in conjunction with the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association" to schedule speakers during the 1882 campaign. Susan B. Anthony even participated in the AWSA thirteenth annual meeting held in Omaha in 1882. "I feel at home," she said, "on …

"Men Alone Cannot Settle A Country": Domesticating Nature In The Kansas-Nebraska Grasslands, Chad Montrie

Great Plains Quarterly

W h e n she traveled to Kansas from New York in November 1875 to join a husband who had gone west six months earlier, Sarah Anthony faced bitter disappointment. Her daughter, who made the journey as well, remembered that her mother often cried during the first few months. "[T]hese pioneer women [were] so suddenly transplanted from homes of comfort in the eastern states," wrote the daughter, "to these bare, treeless, wind swept, sun scorched prairies - with no conveniences - no comforts, not even a familiar face. Everything was so strange and so different from the life they had …

"The Greatest Evil" Interpretations Of Indian Prohibition Laws, 1832-1953, Jill E. Martin

Great Plains Quarterly

Highway 407 in Shannon County South Dakota crosses the Pine Ridge Reservation and, like the reservation, ends at the Nebraska border. When the road turns into Nebraska Highway 87 you enter the unincorporated town of Whiteclay. What also changes, besides the highway numbers, is the legal sale of alcohol. The Ogallala Sioux prohibit alcohol on their land, but this prohibition ends in Whiteclay. Seven liquor stores in this town of 30 residents, all of whom are Anglo-American, sell more than four million cans of beer each year. The two-mile stretch of road between Pine Ridge and Whiteclay is a path …