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Never Land, W. Scott Olsen

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

According to W. Scott Olsen, there are two reasons for flying. The first is just to get somewhere. The second has nothing to do with destination. It is this second reason, expressing our deepest curiosity and our longings for infinity, grace, and clarity, that Never Land explores. At once frankly philosophical and engagingly practical, the book combines accounts of touring in the air, the history of flight, the sensations of flying, and the technical acts and facts of navigating, piloting, lifting off, and landing. As it brings together many views on flight, Never Land also chronicles Olsen’s own personal journey—his …

Perimeters Of Democracy, Heather Fryer

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

During times of conflict, Americans have worried that enemies within would twist freedom of speech into a weapon of propaganda and use freedom of assembly to unleash violent internal chaos. As a result, the government isolated and confined within federal communities groups that they deemed dangerous. Within these so-called cultural structures of realistic democracy, the government awkwardly attempted to protect citizens while curbing their rights and freedoms. It is no accident that the government’s enclosed worlds were most numerous in the American West, where abundant open space has long symbolized the glory of American freedom and progress. Heather Fryer looks …

Mining Archaeology In The American West, Donald L. Hardesty

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Mining played a prominent role in the shaping and settling of the American West in the nineteenth century. Following the discovery of the famous Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, mining became increasingly industrialized, changing mining technology, society, and culture throughout the world. In the wake of these changes Nevada became an important mining region, with new people and technologies further altering the ways mining was pursued and miners interacted. Historical archaeology offers a research strategy for understanding mining and miners that integrates three independent sources of information about the past: physical remains, documents, and oral testimony. Mining Archaeology in …

Editing Eden, Frank Hutchins, Patrick C. Wilson

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Recent scholarship on the Amazon has challenged depictions of the region that emphasize its natural exuberance or represent its residents as historically isolated peoples stoically resisting challenges from powerful global forces. The contributors to this volume follow this lead by situating the discussion of the Amazon and its inhabitants at the intersections of identity politics, debates about socioeconomic sovereignty, and processes of place making. Editing Eden focuses on case studies from Amazonian Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador regarding the themes of indigeneity, community making, development politics, and the transcendence of indigenous/nonindigenous divides. Portraits of the Amazon emerge through an analysis of …

Great Plains Quarterly Volume 30/ Number 3 / Summer 2010 -- Editorial Matter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents

Book Reviews

Book Notes

Notes and News

"Picturing The Past" Farm Women On The Grasslands Frontier, 1850-1900, Sara Brooks Sundberg

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

According to a widely used, recently published college survey text about westward expansion in the United States, "rural life in the great open spaces of the trans-Mississippi west was filled with hard work, monotony, and often stultifying isolation." The textbook goes on to say, "Nowhere were the physical hardships more starkly revealed than in the lives of pioneer women." The authors emphasize this point with a passage from Hamlin Garland's autobiography describing his family's pioneer experience on the prairie: '''My heart filled with bitterness and rebellion, bitterness against the pioneering madness which had scattered our family, and rebellion toward my …

The World’S Temperate Grasslands Conservation Priorities Great Plains Studies (Spring 2010)

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Plate 2. Identified priorities for conservation of the world’s temperate grasslands. Figure produced by Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, 2009.

Book Review: Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park, 1909-1939 By Jennifer Brower, Alan Maceachern

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Buffalo National Park stands as both a high and a low point in the history of the Canadian national park system. In 1908, it was created near Wainwright, Alberta, as a reserve, and soon a park, to house Plains bison being shipped from Montana; the park’s existence helped to restore the near-extinct species. The bison population grew too swiftly, in fact, leading to deteriorated range conditions and rampant tuberculosis. In a misguided attempt to alleviate this pressure, the Parks Branch in the 1920s shipped tubercular Plains bison to Wood Buffalo National Park, consequently infecting and hybridizing the purebred wood bison …

Book Review: Cranes: A Natural History Of A Bird In Crisis By Janice M. Hughes, Paul A. Johnsgard

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Janice Hughes’s research has mostly involved evolutionary studies of cuckoo-like birds. Thus I would not have expected her to produce what is easily the best account of America’s effort to save from extinction the whooping crane, one of our rarest and, arguably, most beautiful birds. Over the years there have been several book-length accounts of these efforts, by authors such as Robert Doughty, J.J. McCoy, Faith McNulty, and Jerome Pratt. None of these is as complete, as well written, or as compelling as this book. Additionally, it is the most up-to-date, bringing the story of the whooping crane’s recovery program …

News And Notes Great Plains Studies (Spring 2010)

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

CONFERENCES

PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT

CHARLES E. BESSEY AWARD

LESLIE HEWES AWARD

THE GREAT PLAINS DISTINGUISHED BOOK PRIZE

Global Trends In Private Protected Areas And Their Implications For The Northern Great Plains, Jeff Langholz

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Like many parts of the world, the Northern Great Plains faces immense challenges to sustainable land use. Privately owned conservation areas have emerged as a potential solution. This article reviews five global trends in so-called private protected areas and discusses their implications for the Northern Great Plains. The trends point to five recommendations to the Northern Great Plains community: (1) act now to tap rapidly growing policy support; (2) combine many models, including private protected areas that are owned by individuals and groups, formal and informal, large and small, and are dedicated to strict protection as well as sustainable use; …

Great Plains Research Spring 2010 Front Matter

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Saving the World’s Grasslands: An Introduction Richard Edwards and Richard P. Reading, Guest Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Global Trends in Private Protected Areas and Their Implications for the Northern Great Plains Jeff Langholz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …

Book Review: Rewilding The West: Restoration In A Prairie Landscape By Richard Manning, Mace Hack

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Rewilding the West gives a first impression of being the story of an innovative conservation project—creation of a 3.5 million-acre wildlife preserve from both public and private lands, restocked with bison and other traditional Plains wildlife—in the Missouri Breaks of eastcentral Montana. However, Manning only devotes thirteen pages to the project at the end of the book, with a few additional references to it scattered throughout. Instead, he traces the history of the site, from the days of the bison to modern times. In doing so, he provides a fascinating and useful frame of reference for current conservation efforts in …

Review Of Regionalism And The Humanities Edited And With An Introduction By Timothy R. Mahoney And Wendy J. Katz, John E. Miller

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Emerging out of a 2003 conference in Lincoln, Nebraska, organized by the Consortium of Regional Humanities Centers, the sixteen disparate essays included in this engaging volume, ably edited and introduced by Timothy Mahoney and Wendy Katz, testify to the catholicity and vitality of the "new regionalism" in American studies. They both illustrate and justify what has been labeled by some the "local turn" in humanities scholarship. Because of the location of the conference on the border between the Midwest and the Great Plains, half of these essays focus upon those two regions. Each author assumes that place matters-that in addition …

Great Plains Quarterly, Volume 30, Issue 2, Spring 2010, Editorial Matter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Masthead

Contents

Book Reviews

Book Notes

Notes and News: FREDERICK C. LUEBKE AWARD, CALLS FOR PAPERS, 2010 WILLA CATHER SPRING CONFERENCE, WEB RESOURCES OF INTEREST

Distribution Of Rain Gardens In Lincoln Nebraska: Are Rain Gardens More Likely To Be Built Near Bodies Of Water, Eric Voecks

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Abstract Rain gardens are an important tool in reducing the amount of stormwater runoff and accompanying pollutants from entering the city’s streams and lakes, and reducing their water quality. This thesis project analyzed the number of rain gardens installed through the City of Lincoln Nebraska Watershed Management’s Rain Garden Water Quality Project in distance intervals of one-eighth mile from streams and lakes. This data shows the distribution of these rain gardens in relation to streams and lakes and attempts to determine if proximity to streams and lakes is a factor in homeowners installing rain gardens. ArcGIS was used to create …

A Proposed Plan For Managing Eastern Nebraska's Saline Wetlands, Vandhana Rabadinanth

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Abstract Eastern Nebraska’s saline wetlands play a major role in Nebraska’s environmental place in the world. Besides the role of scientific changes being important, education also is essential in the conservation of these wetlands. Through the observation of Salt Creek tiger beetle (Cicindela nevadica lincolniana) and soil electroconductivity, I propose that we need to reform Nebraska’s education system to help schools play a bigger part in environmental issues such as this one. There is a drastic trend in the correlations between Salt Creek tiger beetle populations and wetland degradation. Since many Lincoln residents have a limited knowledge of what is …

Distribution Of Dioecious Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) Along An Environmental Gradient In Ogallala, Ne, Taylor Sloey

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the sex distribution and energy allocation of dioecious Eastern Red Cedars (Juniperus virginiana) along an environmental resource gradient. The trees surveyed were growing in a canyon located at the University of Nebraska’s Cedar Point Biological Research Station in Ogallala, Nebraska. Due to the geography of this canyon, environmental factors necessary for plant growth should vary depending on the tree’s location within the canyon. These factors include water availability, sun exposure, ground slope, and soil nitrogen content, all of which are necessary for carbon acquisition.

Juniperus virginiana is a dioecious conifer. Dioecious …

Baseline Rockfall Rates And Rockfall Protection In Virginia, Brian Bruckno

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Current approaches to rockfall hazard and risk mitigation have been dominated by a model in which rockfall is treated as a global slope stability phenomenon which is mainly triggered by precipitation, freeze-thaw, or root wedging. The methods implemented by many public agencies and private entities developed from this conceptualization. These methods, such as the Rockfall Hazard Rating System, Key Block and Key Group Analysis, and remote sensing using LIDAR or digital images, are best applied to the end-members of slopes, such as pure engineered soil or structurally simple and consistent rock slopes. Slopes exhibiting complex structure, slopes that cross formations …

European Integration, Identity, And National Self Interest: The Enduring Nature Of National Identity, Tyler R. White

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In the 1950s as European integration begun a group of scholars called the neofunctionalists suggested that as political and economic institutions were created, technical spillovers from integration would result in a new ‘European identity.’ More than 50 years later, Euroenthusiasts have touted the European Union (EU) as being the institution that will bring Europe together and create a unified ‘European identity.’ While many elites and technocrats feel a closer association to ‘Europe’ there is little evidence that identities are changing as a result of European integration. This dissertation analyzes historical, academic, and journalistic accounts to look for evidence that European …

"The Coming Tide": Viewpoints On The Formation Of U.S. Federal Indian Termination Policy, 1945–1954, Samuel H. Herley

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Despite the painful legacy of post-World War II federal Indian policy, the issue of termination during the era had nuanced elements that meant different ideas to different groups and individuals. Especially during its formulation prior to its widespread implementation across the United States starting in 1953, there existed division and even confusion as to what termination entailed. Those charged with making difficult decisions on termination during the formative years of the policy also came from diverse backgrounds and held varying, even shifting, viewpoints on the issue. Individual perspectives on termination had much to do with not only race, class, and …

Fearing The "Turban'd Turk": Socio-Economic Access To Genre And The "Turks" Of Early Modern English Dramas And Broadside Ballads, Katie S. Sisneros

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores an important means for the non-noble and non-gentry population of England to read and interpret the figure of the Turk as textually represented: the broadside ballad. Cheap to print and produced on an expansive scale, broadside ballads had access to economic and geographic segments of England beyond the reach of the drama. Aimed at a far more general audience than theater-goers (especially during the Restoration period), broadside ballads provide an alternative literary interpretation of the Turk, one long-neglected in Anglo-Ottoman studies. Current scholarship’s almost-exclusive focus on drama has led to a progress narrative positing an evolution in …

Book Review: Colorado Water Law For Non-Lawyers By P. Andrew Jones And Tom Cech, Glenn Patterson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Water touches the lives of all of us every day, and so, at least indirectly, do the rules that govern its allocation. Since the days of the Anasazi, and of the northern Mexican communities of irrigated farms, and especially since the 1859 gold rush, Colorado has been a leader in the development of water law in the arid West. For years, interested lay readers have faced an important gap when searching for information about Colorado water law. Justice Greg Hobbs’s Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Water Law, 3rd ed. (2009) is well written and helpful, but by design is brief …

Narrative Mappings Of The Land As Space And Place In Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, Karen E. Ramirez

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

At the conclusion of Willa Cather's 1913 novel O Pioneers!, Alexandra Bergson muses about landownership, and more broadly about the human-land relationship, by reflecting on the transience of the county plat map, one of the most popular forms of mapping rural America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These maps were not only housed at the county clerk's office; by the 1880s and 1890s, while Cather was living in Nebraska, commercialized survey maps periodically were collected and published in large, colorful county atlases, also called plat books, becoming among the most widely circulated maps of rural areas …

"It's Now We've Crossed Pease River" Themes Of Voyage And Return In Texas Folk Songs, Ken Baake

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Stories of development from childhood to adulthood or of journeying through a 1ifechanging experience to gain new knowledge are replete in oral and written tradition, as exemplified by the Greek epic of Odysseus and countless other tales. Often the hero journeys naively to an alien land and then, with great difficulty, returns home wiser but forever scarred. Such a journey can take the hero to a terrible place, from which he may escape physically, but from which he can never escape emotionally. The hardship of travel and its ensuing lessons is a common theme in human narratives, its protean form …

Counter-Mapping As Place-Framing: Naturalized Injustice, De-Naturalized Community And Organizing For Social Change On Google Earth, Joshua P. Ewalt

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, I perform an analysis of counter-mapping on Google Earth as a process of organizing for social change. I address the process of mapping the virtual earth as an act of place-framing, an organizing process by which space is transformed to place so as to motivate action on the part of current and potential organizational adherents. Specifically, I argue that there are at least two ways in which place is framed on Google Earth so as to motivate action: place as “naturalized injustice” and place as “de-naturalized community.” Using the analytical vocabulary of collective action framing, and Martin’s …

Livestock Protection Dogs In The 21st Century: Is An Ancient Tool Relevant To Modern Conservation Challenges?, Thomas M. Gehring, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Jean-Marc Landry

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Europe and North America share a similar history in the extirpation and subsequent recovery of large carnivore and ungulate species. Both continents face challenges and opportunities for managing human-wildlife conflict at the junction of livestock production and wildlife conservation. Predation of livestock and disease transmission between wildlife and livestock is an ongoing and escalating worldwide issue. In order to manage this conflict, producers need effective tools, and they have used livestock protection dogs (LPDs) for reducing predation for well over 2000 years. We review the history of the use of LPDs, including the loss of information on their use and …

Economic And Fiscal Impact Of Omaha’S Henry Doorly Zoo On Omaha And Nebraska The 2009 Update, Eric Thompson

Bureau of Business Research Publications

Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo is among the largest and most affordable zoos to visit in North America. The nationally-known Zoo further makes a significant contribution to the economy of the City of Omaha and the State of Nebraska. The Zoo attracted 1.56 million visitors, and their spending, in 2009 including many visitors from outside of Omaha and outside of the State of Nebraska.

This study estimates the economic impact of Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo during 2009. The Zoo generated an economic impact on the city and state economy by 1) attracting new visitors to Omaha and Nebraska, 2) encouraging existing …

Gasoline: The Achilles' Heel Of U. S. Energy Security, Robert W. Weaver

United States Department of Energy: Publications

The United States must balance securing our energy future with protecting our environment from climate change. A holistic approach is required to solve this complex problem. We must reduce demand for petroleum, improve energy efficiency, and develop feasible alternative energy solutions to include emission capture technologies.

The United States remains the largest consumer of energy products in the world and is the second leading producer of green house gas (GHG) emissions. Our dependence on imported petroleum is undermining our control of our national security interests. Petroleum comprises 63% of the United States’ energy consumption, with the transportation sector accounting for …

Northern Great Plains Network Vital Signs Monitoring Plan, Robert A. Gitzen, Marcia Wilson, United States National Park Service, Northern Great Plains Inventory And Monitoring Network, Mike Bynum, John Wrede, Joshua J. Millspaugh, Kara J. Paintner

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

The condition of natural resources in parks and other units of the National Park Service (NPS) is fundamental to this agency’s mission to manage park resources “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Park managers are increasingly confronted with complex and challenging resource management issues and need a broad-based understanding of the status and trends of park resources for the long-term protection of park ecosystems. The National Park Service has initiated a long-term ecological “Vital Signs” monitoring program to provide the minimum infrastructure needed to track the overall condition of natural resources in parks and to provide early …