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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Invasion Dynamics And Biological Control Prospects For Sericea Lespedeza In Kansas, Thomas Eddy, Jeff Davidson, Brian Obermeyer
Invasion Dynamics And Biological Control Prospects For Sericea Lespedeza In Kansas, Thomas Eddy, Jeff Davidson, Brian Obermeyer
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Sericea lespedeza [Lespedeza cuneata (Dum.-Cours.) G. Don], an exotic, drought-hardy perennial legume was first introduced into the United States from Japan. It was planted from the 1930s through the 1950s as a forage crop, for healing erosion scars on farmlands, establishing cover on mine spoils, and as cover for wildlife. The species range was unintentionally increased in the 1980s when seeds harvested from infested rangelands were planted on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres. Sericea lespedeza has spread to extensive areas of native prairie and other lands not under cultivation in the more humid regions of the Great Plains in …
Migration And Counter-Urbanization In The Edwards Plateau Of Texas, 1985-1990, Jason Holcomb
Migration And Counter-Urbanization In The Edwards Plateau Of Texas, 1985-1990, Jason Holcomb
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Unlike most of the Great Plains, Texas's Edwards Plateau lies near large, rapidly growing metropolitan centers. County-to-county migration data for the period 1985-1990 were used to examine migration patterns in Edwards Plateau counties. Weighted standard distance and stream efficiency values were used to analyze county immigration fields of 28 nonmetropolitan counties. A key finding was that net in-migration to counties closest to metropolitan areas was not mere "urban spillover." There were also indications that counterurban migration extended beyond metropolitan-adjacent counties to more sparsely populated destinations. Counterurbanization was occurring from central counties of the nation's largest metropolitan areas and some Texas …
Habitat Use And Migration Patterns Of Sandhill Cranes Along The Platte River, 1998 – 2001, Craig Davis
Habitat Use And Migration Patterns Of Sandhill Cranes Along The Platte River, 1998 – 2001, Craig Davis
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
During spring migration, sandhill cranes (Crus Canadensis) rely on the central Platte River valley in Nebraska as a staging area to replenish depleted energy and nutrient reserves. From mid-February to mid-April 1998-2001, we conducted ground and aerial surveys of sandhill cranes in the central Platte River valley. Peak numbers of sandhill cranes (121,000-285,000 cranes) detected during ground surveys occurred in mid-March (1998, 2001) or early March (1999, 2000). From 42% to 55% of the cranes occurred in cornfields, 26%-38% in lowland grassland, 7%-13% in alfalfa, and 2%-12% in other habitats (soybean, winter wheat, shrub-grassland, upland grassland). In general, …
The Impact Of Immigration On A Local Economy: The Case Of Dawson County, Nebraska, Orn Bodvarrson, Hendrik Van Den Berg
The Impact Of Immigration On A Local Economy: The Case Of Dawson County, Nebraska, Orn Bodvarrson, Hendrik Van Den Berg
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The Hispanic population of Lexington, seat of Nebraska's Dawson County, increased nearly tenfold between 1990 and 2000, from just over 400 to about 4,000, and the city's population grew from 6,600 to over 10,000. Economic trends in the 1990s contrast sharply with the previous decade, when the county's population and overall employment declined rapidly. This episode of immigration provides a unique opportunity to analyze the economic impact of immigration on a local economy. Traditional models of immigration, which focus almost entirely on the effects of immigration on labor supply, predict that immigration depresses wages and raises unemployment rates. However, census …
Differential Population And Income Migration In The Great Plains, 1995- 1998, Alexander Vias, Charles Collins
Differential Population And Income Migration In The Great Plains, 1995- 1998, Alexander Vias, Charles Collins
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The depopulation of the Great Plains continues to draw the attention of rural scholars. However, a number of aspects of migration in the region remain poorly understood. For example, what differences exist among migrants in terms of their economic characteristics? Recent research shows that there is tremendous variability in the amount of income each migrant brings to or takes from a region. Using county-level Internal Revenue Service data for migration flows between 1995 and 1998, we explore the spatial patterns of income and population migration, while contrasting the income flows of in-migrants versus out-migrants. The results show that income flows …
Review Of The Failure Of National Rural Policy: Institutions And Interests By William P. Browne, Donna Barnes
Review Of The Failure Of National Rural Policy: Institutions And Interests By William P. Browne, Donna Barnes
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
William Browne argues that there is a distinct bias in US policy, one that privileges farmers and results in the neglect of nonagricultural rural problems. He locates the source of this pro-farm bias in the influential political power block created when farm interests mobilized and successfully pushed for the creation of the Department of Agriculture and other institutions that collectively form the Agricultural Establishment. The farm paradigm for rural development came to dominate policy talk so completely that competing rural policy paradigms were quickly dismissed. Declining rural communities and the growth of rural poverty were dealt with indirectly and ineffectively …
Great Plains Research - Volume 13, Number 2, Fall 2003
Great Plains Research - Volume 13, Number 2, Fall 2003
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Reviews Of Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy Of Industrial Agriculture And The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy Of Industrial Agriculture, Edited By Andrew Kimbrell, Charles A. Francis
Reviews Of Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy Of Industrial Agriculture And The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy Of Industrial Agriculture, Edited By Andrew Kimbrell, Charles A. Francis
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Fatal Harvest introduces and dispels key myths about industrial agriculture: greater efficiency; safe and nutritious food that is cheap to consumers; benefits to wildlife and environment; how biotechnology will save the world. In essays by leading proponents of a more equitable and sustainable food system, the book presents compelling evidence that alternative systems guided by an agrarian ethic will better address our food needs while protecting our natural environment and soil resources.
Wendell Berry cites the separation of people from their food supply and natural environment as a causal factor in our ready acceptance of today's industrial agriculture. When we …
Relationship Between Community Satisfaction And Migration Intentions Of Rural Nebraskans, Rebecca J. Vogt, John C. Allen, Sam Cordes
Relationship Between Community Satisfaction And Migration Intentions Of Rural Nebraskans, Rebecca J. Vogt, John C. Allen, Sam Cordes
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Though many nonmetropolitan counties in the United States experienced population gains in the 1990s, many of the nonmetropolitan counties in the Great Plains continued to experience population declines. Thus, the reasons that people are moving need to be explored. This paper examines possible reasons by analyzing the relationship between community satisfaction and migration intentions of nonmetropolitan Nebraskans. Data used for this analysis were from an annual survey mailed to 6,500 residents living in nonmetropolitan counties in the state. The survey data were analyzed at two levels. First, demographic comparisons were made between those who planned to stay in their communities …
Great Plains Research – Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2003
Great Plains Research – Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2003
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Range And Population Size Of The American Burying Beetle (Coleoptera: Silphidae) In The Dissected Hills Of South-Central Nebraska, Mark Peyton
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus Olivier) is the only insect found in Nebraska currently on the federal endangered species list. I conducted surveys in 1995, 1996, and 1998 to determine range and population size of the American burying beetle in south-central Nebraska, A total of 826 individuals were captured during these three years, A Sequential Bayes Algorithm was used to estimate population size based on mark and recapture data. Results from this study and other studies identify the range of this population in south-central Nebraska as an approximately 4,500 km2 area located south of the Platte River in …
Geography Of Population Change And Redistribution Within The Post-Frontier Great Plains, J. Clark Archer, Richard Lonsdale
Geography Of Population Change And Redistribution Within The Post-Frontier Great Plains, J. Clark Archer, Richard Lonsdale
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The popular vision of the Great Plains as a region of ongoing population decline is only partly appropriate. In a fundamental transformation of the population geography previously set in the late 19th century, there is an emerging divide between growing metropolitan centers concentrated along the region's periphery and a vast interior struggling to hold its traditional rural population. The size and geographical distribution of population within the Great Plains region is examined over time with the aid of cartographic and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques. Intercensal net migration rates estimated using the vital statistics-based residual method are mapped by county …
Fish Community Persistence In Eastern North And South Dakota Rivers, Jeffrey Shearer, Charles Berry, Jr.
Fish Community Persistence In Eastern North And South Dakota Rivers, Jeffrey Shearer, Charles Berry, Jr.
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Over the past 25 years, the James River in North and South Dakota has experienced records in minimum and maximum discharge. Our objectives were to compare: (1) the fish community in the main river after dry (1988-90) and wet (1993-2000) years, and (2) the fish community of both the main river and tributaries between dry (1975) and wet (1998-2000) years. In South Dakota in the main river, there were 10 families and 29 species after several dry years and 11 families and 35 species after several wet years. Percichthyidae was the additional family after the wet years. Basinwide, there were …
Sustainability And Historical Land-Use Change In The Great Plains: The Case Of Eastern Colorado, William J. Parton, Myron Gutmann, William Travis
Sustainability And Historical Land-Use Change In The Great Plains: The Case Of Eastern Colorado, William J. Parton, Myron Gutmann, William Travis
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The Great Plains is one focus of the debate in the United States over appropriate land use and sustainability. Within the Plains region, eastern Colorado represents a case study that permits researchers and policymakers to focus on important relationships between agricultural land use, population change, and the sustainability of agriculture, environment, and communities. Colorado Front Range urban areas experienced large increases in population from 1950 to 2000 that resulted in a 35% reduction in total farmland. In the urban fringe region, farmland declined rapidly since 1978 and harvested irrigated cropland declined by 16% since 1990. Rural population in eastern Colorado …
Changes In Asian And Hispanic Population In The Cities Of The Great Plains, 1990-2000, Evelyn Ravuri
Changes In Asian And Hispanic Population In The Cities Of The Great Plains, 1990-2000, Evelyn Ravuri
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
In several areas of the United States previously not known for foreign populations, the number of Hispanics and Asians have increased in the past two decades. I examined the percentage change for Hispanics and for Asians for 41 cities in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota between 1990 and 2000. Hispanics and Asians are then disaggregated by ethnic subgroup, and regression analysis is used to determine the characteristics of cities that attract or repel different subgroups for both 1990 and 2000. In 2000 Mexicans, Other Hispanics, and Vietnamese were attracted to cities with low income …
Constructing The Cooper Model Of Folsom Bison Kills On The Southern Plains, Leland Bement
Constructing The Cooper Model Of Folsom Bison Kills On The Southern Plains, Leland Bement
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The Cooper model postulates that a dichotomy exists in the size and seasonality of bison kill sites from the Folsom age (10,800- 10,200 years ago). This dichotomy is a result of changing settlement and subsistence patterns, from population aggregation in the late summer and early fall for large-scale kills, to a dispersed pattern with small bison kills during all other seasons. Attendant to the change in human population aggregation and number of bison harvested are changes in bison butchering techniques, choice of camp location, and ritual activity. It is postulated that ritual activity of an aggregated group is manifest in …
Migrations Of Grassland Communities And Grazing Philosophies In The Great Plains: A Review And Implications For Management, Joe C. Truett
Migrations Of Grassland Communities And Grazing Philosophies In The Great Plains: A Review And Implications For Management, Joe C. Truett
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Ecologists commonly separate Great Plains grasslands communities into types based on grass height: shortgrass prairie, mixed-grass prairie, and tallgrass prairie. Grass height correlates directly with precipitation and thus lessens with distance westward and with drought. Grass height correlates inversely with grazing intensity and thus shortgrasses expand eastward when grazing pressures are great and shrink westward when grazing pressures relax. Evidence about past distributions of shortgrasses, coupled with the prehistoric and historic abundances of large grazers and the black-tailed prairie dog (a shortgrass indicator), suggest a far-eastward occurrence of shortgrass prairie in the late Pleistocene (despite a relatively wet climate), a …
Book Review Of Cranes The Noblest Flyers: In Natural History And Cultural Lore By Alice Lindsey Price, Felipe Chavez-Ramirez
Book Review Of Cranes The Noblest Flyers: In Natural History And Cultural Lore By Alice Lindsey Price, Felipe Chavez-Ramirez
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This book is one of several dealing with cranes in recent years. Most offer general information and are not intended to be technical. As someone deeply interested in the plight of cranes, I applaud these efforts for increasing the general public's awareness of cranes and their conservation problems. It is well known that cranes in general have held important connections with human cultures in various parts of the world. Cranes the Noblest Flyers is an effort to explore and present some of those connections, intertwined with information on the family members and the situation of their representatives in current-day North …
Review Of Science And Native American Communities: Legacies Of Pain, Visions Of Promise Edited By Keith James, Dave Pruett, Ernest Stromberg
Review Of Science And Native American Communities: Legacies Of Pain, Visions Of Promise Edited By Keith James, Dave Pruett, Ernest Stromberg
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Science and Native American Communities, a provocative collection of essays from an unprecedented 1997 conference of Native American professionals in academia, science, engineering, and health sciences, explores "the uneasy meeting ground" between Western science and traditional wisdom.
Education, particularly in the sciences, is not value-neutral to Native peoples. Rather than education's poster children, many of the text's nineteen contributors are survivors of failed educational experiments: mission schools, boarding schools, externally imposed values, forced relocations. To editor Keith James (Onondaga), a professor of psychology, "Education has historically been associated with physical and sexual abuse and the emotional and cultural battery …
Book Review Of Climate Change Impacts On The United States: The Potential Consequences Of Climate Variability And Change. A Report Of The National Assessment Synthesis Team, Us Global Change Research Program, Susan Capalbo
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Addressing the potential consequences of climate variability and change can be best summarized in terms of tradeoffs: tradeoffs between short-term and long-term impacts; tradeoffs among sectors and regions; and tradeoffs among national-level versus more regional-level impacts. Evidence of these tradeoffs is presented in this comprehensive report by the National Assessment Synthesis Team (NAST) for the US Global Research Program. Its findings are based on analysis of historical data, model projections, and scientific research. A key assumption in the report is the absence of major interventions to reduce continued growth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Book Review Of Watershed: Reflections On Water By Grant Macewan, Lee Foote
Book Review Of Watershed: Reflections On Water By Grant Macewan, Lee Foote
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Watershed, the last of forty-eight books by Grant MacEwan, was completed in the year of his death and published posthumously. This work integrates his ninety-seven years as a keenly informed student of western Canadian water issues. Three attributes make it noteworthy. First, The Source: MacEwan was an excellent observer and student of water-related development, personal struggles, politics, and environmentalism in western Canada. Second, Voice: poetic yet spare prose embodies a voice of western scholarship free from romantic pandering. Third, Temporal Scope: Grant MacEwan renders a first-person account and commentary across a century of change.
Review Of Toxic Plants Of North America By George E. Burrows And Ronald J. Tyrl, James Pfister
Review Of Toxic Plants Of North America By George E. Burrows And Ronald J. Tyrl, James Pfister
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
During the spring of 1884 the livestock industry in Kansas was faced with financial ruin when a veterinarian diagnosed foot and mouth disease (FMD). The highly contagious FMD was widespread in parts of the US, and an outbreak in Kansas would have resulted in quarantine for the state's beef, swine, and sheep herds. Experts later determined that the correct diagnosis was non-infectious ergotism, caused by ingestion of prairie hay (primarily Elymus spp.). The panic and turmoil surrounding the ergotism incident launched subsequent investigations into poisonous plants by the newly-formed Bureau of Animal Industry within the Department of Agriculture.
Book Review Of A Green And Permanent Land: Ecology And Agriculture In The Twentieth Century By Randal S. Beeman And James A. Pritchard, Kristin Ahlberg
Book Review Of A Green And Permanent Land: Ecology And Agriculture In The Twentieth Century By Randal S. Beeman And James A. Pritchard, Kristin Ahlberg
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Concentrating on the ideological underpinnings of American agriculture, Beeman and Prichard illuminate the 20th-century debate over defining and implementing suitable agricultural practices and policies. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression and World War II, farmers, environmentalists, federal officials, and academics found agriculture influenced by a growing ecological movement. Techniques purporting a better urban-rural balance, soil conservation, and organic fertilization were favored by individuals seeking an alternative to the economic and social despair experienced by Americans during the 1930s and 1940s. The agricultural establishment troika of agribusiness, land-grant universities, and the United States Department of Agriculture eschewed such ideas until …
Reverse Migration And Nonmetropolitan Employment In Four Great Plains States, 1970-1980, A. Olu Oyinlade
Reverse Migration And Nonmetropolitan Employment In Four Great Plains States, 1970-1980, A. Olu Oyinlade
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
During the rural renaissance of the 1970s, the United States experienced a reverse migration pattern in which the flow of migration was predominantly urban to rural, unlike the traditional rural to urban flows. This migration phenomenon was equally experienced in the North Central Region, which includes the Great Plains states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas.
This study investigated the impact of the reverse migration phenomenon on employment in eight industry categories in three categories of counties in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. Findings show that net migration had differential impacts on employment by industry category …
High Plains Regional Aquifer Study Revisited: A 20-Year Retrospective For Western Kansas, Jeffrey Peterson, Daniel Bernardo
High Plains Regional Aquifer Study Revisited: A 20-Year Retrospective For Western Kansas, Jeffrey Peterson, Daniel Bernardo
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The most comprehensive water policy analysis conducted on the High Plains region to date was the High Plains Ogallala Regional Aquifer Study completed in 1982. Twenty years later, we had a unique opportunity to compare the projections from this study with the changes that actually occurred over the past two decades. Specific comparisons were made for the area of western Kansas overlying the High Plains Aquifer. These comparisons revealed some significant differences in the status of the aquifer and in the region's economic development, relative to the predictions of the study. Most notably, contrary to the study's predictions, irrigated area …
Annual Index - Great Plains Research Vol. 13 No. 2, 2003
Annual Index - Great Plains Research Vol. 13 No. 2, 2003
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Annual Index
Review Of Willard Cochrane And The American Family Farm By Richard A. Levins, Frederick Kirschenmann
Review Of Willard Cochrane And The American Family Farm By Richard A. Levins, Frederick Kirschenmann
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This slim volume combines two compelling stories: a personal and touching introduction to Willard Cochrane, the man and the professional agricultural economist; and a thoughtful analysis of the politics and industrial intrigue that shaped American farm policy during the past eight decades. The theme that ties them together is the independent family farm in America. This double-faceted story puts a human face on a critical dilemma that has confronted America since the time of Thomas Jefferson: Americans have always embraced the family farm, but conversely they have never been able to create an enduring environment in which family farmers could …
Review Of Medicine Ways: Disease, Health, And Survival Among Native Americans Edited By Clifford E. Trafzer And Diane Wiener, Benjamin Kracht
Review Of Medicine Ways: Disease, Health, And Survival Among Native Americans Edited By Clifford E. Trafzer And Diane Wiener, Benjamin Kracht
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
At first glance, the articles in this anthology appear to be a motley assortment of readings pertaining to Native American health issues, past and present. Upon further examination, however, the essays-written by American Indian and non-Indian historians, anthropologists, and health care professionals-weave a theme relating sociopolitical and socioeconomic variables to historic epidemiology, demonstrating that the processes of colonialism and neocolonialism continue to affect Native American health and health care. A major tenet of the book is that definitions of disease, illness, health, and well-being constructed by non-Indian scholars and health care personnel do not consider Native voices at the individual …
Book Review Of Science At The American Frontier: A Biography Of Dewitt Bristol Brace By David Cahan And M. Eugene Rudd, Robinson Yost
Book Review Of Science At The American Frontier: A Biography Of Dewitt Bristol Brace By David Cahan And M. Eugene Rudd, Robinson Yost
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Though not among the most influential American physicists of the late 19th century, DeWitt Bristol Brace (1859-1905) played significant roles in creating the Department of Physics at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and in developing extremely sensitive instrumentation attempting to measure the motion of the hypothetical ether relative to the Earth (more commonly called "ether drift"). As the book's title suggests, another of its major themes is the transmission of scientific knowledge, physics in particular, from German and East Coast American universities to the remoteness of the Great Plains. It is within this contextual framework that Science at the American …
Book Review Of Geoarchaeology In The Great Plains Edited By Rolfe D. Mandel, John Wyckoff
Book Review Of Geoarchaeology In The Great Plains Edited By Rolfe D. Mandel, John Wyckoff
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This volume emerged from the 1992 symposium "Geoarchaeological Research in the Great Plains: A Historical Perspective" held in conjunction with the fiftieth annual meeting of the Plains Anthropological Society in Lincoln, Nebraska. Edited by the symposium's organizer, it includes an introduction and summary by Mandel and seven chapters covering portions of the Great Plains. Areas identified and contributing authors include the Southern High Plains (Vance T. Holliday), the Southern Osage Plains (C. Reid Ferring), Kansas and Northern Oklahoma (Rolfe D. Mandel), Eastern Plains and Prairies (E. Arthur Bettis), Nebraska (David W. May), the Northwestern Plains (John Albanese), and the Northern …