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Book Review: Crisis & Opportunity: Sustainability In American Agriculture By John E. Ikerd, Paul B. Thompson

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

Although Ikerd’s philosophy is quite perceptive in its instincts, one could enumerate many internal contradictions in execution. In fact, the primary value of Crisis & Opportunity may be that it is a collection of speeches that encouraged and emboldened small farmers and advocates of alternative agriculture throughout the Midwest. As such, it documents the perceptions, values, and myths, inconsistent as they might be, that animated and motivated a group of rural Midwesterners not unjustly laboring under the self-image of an oppressed and victimized minority during a critical period in the formation of the sustainable agriculture movement.

Book Review: Saskatchewan: Geographic Perspectives Edited By Bernard D. Thraves, M.L. Lewry, Janis E. Dale, And Hansgeorg Schlichtmann, Tom Carter

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

If the book has a weakness, it is the absence of a strong focus on social geography. Various chapters bring social issues into the discussion, but there is no detailed attention to poverty, health, housing, education, and other aspects of social geography. That aside, this collection offers an excellent portrayal of the geography of Saskatchewan. It will be an invaluable resource for years to come, offering a choice vantage point from which to engage future geographical perspectives on Saskatchewan.

Review Of "Landscapes Of Colorado: Mountains And Plains." By Ann Scarlett Daley And Michael Paglia, Rose Glaser Fredrick

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Landscapes of Colorado: Mountains and Plains, with a historical overview by Ann Scarlett Daley, the book's curator, and text by Michael Paglia, is a handsome survey of contemporary landscape painters and photographers working in the state. One could argue with a choice here and there. For example, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, European installation artists who have lived in New York since 1964 and created just one major work for Colorado in 1972, Valley Curtain, Grand Hogback, with one more in the planning stages for 2011, are said to have "a long commitment to Colorado." Though their work is seminal, …

Review Of "Postwestern Cultures: Literature, Theory, Space." Edited By Susan Kollin, Donna Campbell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Postwestern Cultures addresses "the highly charged and continually shifting meanings" of a space that occupies an outsized, even mythic place in the national imaginary: the American West. The essays in this collection do not focus on this myth or its deconstruction in recent history, criticism, and media; rather, they set out to question, through approaches ranging from ecocriticism and critical regionalism through theories of space and gender, the viability, potency, and destructive power of its iconography. By calling into question the fixed positioning of the West in the national imagination-its history, its material culture, and its status as a "pre-lapsarian, …

Deathscapes, Topocide, Domicide The Plains In Contemporary Print Media, Christina E. Dando

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The American print media are a powerful mechanism for communicating information about places and environment to the American public. When it comes to a landscape such as the Great Plains, experienced by many Americans as either sleep-through land in a car or flyover land in a plane, the print media may be their only real source of information about this landscape, excluding 30 second soundbites which occasionally appear in electronic media. Often perceived as monotonous or dull, the Plains has been overlaid with powerful images, of garden or desert, of Dust Bowl or Buffalo Commons. But recent media coverage of …

Review Of Nebraska Moments. By Donald R. Hickey, Susan A. Wunder, And John R. Wunder, Kent Blaser

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The original version of Nebraska Moments, authored by Don Hickey in 1992, admirably filled an important niche as an accessible, eminently readable introduction to many of the highlights of Nebraska history. Susan and John Wunder have thoroughly revised and updated this delightful book for a new generation of readers. The changes to the earlier edition are substantial, including a number of entirely new chapters. The book opens with one of them, on the ill-fated Spanish Villasur expedition, which allows the Wunders to explore the preLouisiana Purchase era of Nebraska history. All five final chapters-on the Kearney Arch, the rape …

Review Of Does People Do It?: A Memoir. By Fred Harris, Kenny L. Brown

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

U.S. Senator Robert S. Kerr-often called the "uncrowned king of the Senate"-died in 1963. In a special election the next year, Fred Harris, a Democratic state senator, surprisingly defeated highly popular football coach Bud Wilkinson to serve out the rest of Kerr's term. Reelected in 1966 and remaining a senator until 1973, the young and energetic Harris allied with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program. As senator, he pushed legislation to aid agricultural interests in Oklahoma and the Southern Plains, called for reforms to alleviate racism, introduced bills supporting various American Indian groups, and served on the Kerner Commission, which studied …

Prevalence Of West Nile Virus In Migratory Birds During Spring And Fall Migration, Robert J. Dusek, Robert G. Mclean, Laura D. Kramer, Sonya R. Ubico, Alan P. Dupuis Ii, Gregory D. Ebel, Stephen C. Guptill

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

To investigate the role of migratory birds in the dissemination of West Nile virus (WNV), we measured the prevalence of infectious WNV and specific WNV neutralizing antibodies in birds, principally Passeriformes, during spring and fall migrations in the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways from 2001–2003. Blood samples were obtained from 13,403 birds, representing 133 species. Specific WNV neutralizing antibody was detected in 254 resident and migratory birds, representing 39 species, and was most commonly detected in northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis ) (9.8%, N = 762) and gray catbirds ( Dumetella carolinensis ) (3.2%, N = 3188). West Nile virus viremias …

A Robust, Multisite Holocene History Of Drift Ice Off Northern Iceland: Implications For North Atlantic Climate, John T. Andrews, Dennis Darby, Dennis Eberle, Anne E. Jennings, Matthias Moros, Astrid Ogilvie

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

An important indicator of Holocene climate change is provided by evidence for variations in the extent of drift ice. A proxy for drift ice in Iceland waters is provided by the presence of quartz. Quantitative xray diffraction analysis of the < 2 mm sediment fraction was undertaken on 16 cores from around Iceland. The quartz weight (wt.)% estimates from each core were integrated into 250-yr intervals between −0.05 and 11.7 cal. ka BP. Median quartz wt.% varied between 0.2 and 3.4 and maximum values ranged between 2.8 and 11.8 wt.%. High values were attained in the early Holocene and minimum values were reached 6–7 cal. ka BP. Quartz wt.% then rose steadily during the late Holocene. Our data exhibit no correlation with counts on haematite-stained quartz (HSQ) grains from VM129-191 west of Ireland casting doubt on the ice-transport origin. A pilot study on the provenance of Fe oxide grains in two cores that cover the last 1.3 and 6.1 cal. ka BP indicated a large fraction of the grains between 1 and 6 cal. ka BP were from either Icelandic or presently unsampled sources. However, there was a dramatic increase in Canadian and Russian sources from the Arctic Ocean ~1 cal. ka BP. These data may indicate the beginning of an Arctic Oscillation-like climate mode.

Ground And Surface Temperature Variability For Remote Sensing Of Soil Moisture In A Heterogeneous Landscape, Mario A. Giraldo, David Bosch, Marguerite Madden, Lynn Usery, Michael Finn

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

At the Little River Watershed (LRW) heterogeneous landscape near Tifton Georgia US an in situ network of stations operated by the US Department of Agriculture–Agriculture Research Service-Southeast Watershed Research Lab (USDA–ARS-SEWRL) was established in 2003 for the long term study of climatic and soil biophysical processes. To develop an accurate interpolation of the in situ readings that can be used to produce distributed representations of soil moisture (SM) and energy balances at the landscape scale for remote sensing studies, we studied (1) the temporal and spatial variations of ground temperature (GT) and infra-red temperature (IRT) within 30 by 30 m …

Problems With The Claim Of Ecotype And Taxon Status Of The Wolf In The Great Lakes Region, Matthew A. Cronin, L. David Mech

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Koblmuller et al. (2009) analyzed molecular genetic data of the wolf in the Great Lakes (GL) region of the USA and concluded that the animal was a unique ecotype of grey wolf and that genetic data supported the population as a discrete wolf taxon. However, some of the literature that the researchers used to support their position actually did not, and additional confusion arises from indefinite use of terminology. Herein, we discuss the problems with designation of a wolf population as a taxon or ecotype without proper definition and assessment of criteria.

Koblmuller et al. (2009) wrote ‘The GL …

Updating The 2001 National Land Cover Database Land Cover Classification To 2006 By Using Landsat Imagery Change Detection Methods, George Xian, Collin Homer, Joyce Fry

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The recent release of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001, which represents the nation's land cover status based on a nominal date of 2001, is widely used as a baseline for national land cover conditions. To enable the updating of this land cover information in a consistent and continuous manner, a prototype method was developed to update land cover by an individual Landsat path and row. This method updates NLCD 2001 to a nominal date of 2006 by using both Landsat imagery and data from NLCD 2001 as the baseline. Pairs of Landsat scenes in …

Panarchy: Discontinuities Reveal Similarities In The Dynamic System Structure Of Ecological And Social Systems, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Craig R. Allen, Lance Gunderson

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

In this paper, we review the empirical evidence of discontinuous distributions in complex systems within the context of panarchy theory and discuss the significance of discontinuities for understanding emergent properties such as resilience. Over specific spatial-temporal scale ranges, complex systems can configure in a variety of regimes, each defined by a characteristic set of self-organized structures and processes. A system may remain within a regime or dramatically shift to another regime. Understanding the drivers of regime shifts has provided critical insight into system structure and resilience. Although analyses of regime shifts have tended to focus on the system level, new …

Unearthing Archaeology: A Study Of The Recent Coverage Of Selected English-Language Archaeology Journals By Multi-Subject Indexes And By Anthropological Literature, David C. Tyler, Yang Xu, Emily Dust Nimsakont

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Librarians, faculty, and professional researchers, and students already encounter difficulties in locating journal articles for the field of archaeology, yet, in the current budgetary climate, librarians needing to reduce subscription costs may be tempted to cancel smaller, discipline-specific indexes in favor of large multi- subject indexes with broad coverage. This study examines and compares the coverage provided to 208 archaeology and archaeology-related journals and magazines by six multi-subject indexes (Academic Search Premier, ArticleFirst, eLibrary, IngentaConnect, Wilson OmniFile, Web of Science) and by anthropology’s primary index, Anthropological Literature, over a twenty year period (1988–2007).

From The Self To The Nation: Willpower In José María Salaverría, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

José María Salaverría’s (1873-1940) inclusion into Spain’s so-called Generation of 1898 seems questionable for many critics. In classical studies about the writers of this generation, such as those by José Luis Abellán, Donald Shaw or Inman Fox, Salaverría is not present. Even in more recent works, for instance Nuevas perspectivas sobre el 98 (1999), edited by John Gabriele, or Spain’s 1898 Crisis (2000), edited by Joseph Harrison, no chapter investigates Salaverría’s contributions to Spanish literature in this period. Salaverría shares many characteristics with the members of the Generation of 1898: He was born in the same era, grew up in …

Recent Occurrence Of An American Black Bear In Nebraska, Justin D. Hoffman, Sam Wilson, Hugh H. Genoways

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

We report on a young male, cinnamon-phase American black bear (Ursus americanus) that was collected in northwestern Nebraska on May 12, 2008. This specimen represents the first black bear taken in Nebraska since 1907. Cranial characteristics and mass of the individual indicated a 15–16-month old bear. This bear may have dispersed from the Laramie Mountains in southeastern Wyoming along the North Platte River into western Nebraska. This record adds to the growing number of cases where large carnivores are reinvading previously occupied territory in the Great Plains. These reinvasions potentially have broad ecological implications to local prey populations …

Pilgrimage Places And Sacred Geometries, Robert Stoddard

Geography Program: Faculty Publications

Pilgrimage flows, often involving millions of people, attract the attention of scholars seeking to explain these patterns of movement. A multitude of explanations have been attempted, but none has provided an entirely satisfactory understanding about why certain sites attract worshippers to undertake the sacrifices of pilgrimage. It is recognized that, from the perspective of many religious traditions, Earth space is not homogeneous - that specific places are sacred and different from the surrounding profane land. The reasons certain locations are holy and attract pilgrims from afar have long evoked the geographic question: Why are pilgrimage places distributed as they are? …

The Coordination Pyramid: A Perspective On The State Of The Art In Coordination Technology, Anita Sarma, David Redmiles, André Van Der Hoek

School of Computing: Technical Reports

Effective coordination is essential for any group work and has been studied widely in the fields of Management Science and Organizational Behavior. A classic definition of coordination is “the management of task dependencies” as proposed by Thompson [16], who distinguished among pooled tasks, where the results of individual actions are simply aggregated; sequential tasks, where the output for one is the input for another; and reciprocal tasks, where work flows back and forth between tasks. More recently, Malone and Crowston [12] developed detailed catalogs of general types of interdependencies that occur across many domains, and particular types of dependencies that …

Paleolimnological Evidence Of The Effects On Lakes Of Energy And Mass Transfer From Climate And Humans, Peter R. Leavitt, Sherilyn C. Fritz, N. J. Anderson, P. A. Baker, T. Blenckner, L. Bunting, J. Catalan, D. J. Conley, W. O. Hobbs, E. Jeppesen, A. Korhola, S. Mcgowan, K. Rühland, J. A. Rusak, G. L. Simpson, N. Solovieva, J. Werne

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

The premise of this article is that climate effects on lakes can be quantified most effectively by the integration of process-oriented limnological studies with paleolimnological research, particularly when both disciplines operate within a common conceptual framework. To this end, the energy (E)–mass (m) flux framework (Em flux) is developed and applied to selected retrospective studies to demonstrate that climate variability regulates lake structure and function over diverse temporal and spatial scales through four main pathways: rapid direct transfer of E to the lake surface by irradiance, heat, and wind; slow indirect effects of E via changes in …

Estimating Hydraulic Conductivity From Drainage Patterns Derived From Dem -- A Case Study In The Oregon Cascades, B. P. Grudzinski, W. Luo, Daryll Pederson

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Hydraulic conductivity is an important parameter in hydrology which describes the ease with which water moves through porous media. This parameter is also important in understanding the hydrology of Mars. On Earth, this parameter can be measured by conducting controlled experiments in laboratories or conducting pumping tests in the field. This study introduces a new method of estimating hydraulic conductivity from drainage dissection pattern derived from digital elevation model (DEM). This method can be applied to Mars if it is robustly tested on Earth.

Estimating Hydraulic Conductivity From Drainage Patterns Derived From Dem-A Case Study In The Oregon Cascades, B. P. Grudzinski, W. Luo, Darryll T. Pederson

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Hydraulic conductivity is an important parameter in hydrology which describes the ease with which water moves through porous media. This parameter is also important in understanding the hydrology of Mars. On Earth, this parameter can be measured by conducting controlled experiments in laboratories or conducting pumping tests in the field. This study introduces a new method of estimating hydraulic conductivity from drainage dissection pattern derived from digital elevation model (DEM). This method can be applied to Mars if it is robustly tested on Earth.

Prpl: An Open-Source General-Purpose Parallel Raster Processing Programming Library, Qingfeng Guan

Geography Program: Faculty Publications

pRPL is an open-source general-purpose programming library developed by the author to parallelize almost any raster-processing algorithm with any arbitrary neighborhood configuration, and support any data type. This paper introduces the advanced features of pRPL, compares it with other similar programming libraries, and demonstrates the performance of a parallel geographic Cellular Automata (CA) model developed using pRPL with real-world datasets. In conclusion, pRPL effectively reduces the development complexity of parallel programming, and efficiently reduces the computing time.

A New Record Of Procynosuchus Delaharpeae (Therapsida: Cynodontia) From The Upper Permian Usili Formation, Tanzania, D. Marie Weide, Christian A. Sidor, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Roger M. H. Smith

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Procynosuchus, the best-known Permian cynodont, has a remarkably broad geographic range, with records stretching from southern Africa to Europe. Fossils' of Procynosuchus are most common in the Upper Permian Dicynodon Assemblage Zone of South Africa, but also occur in coeval East African rocks. Currently, there is one documented occurrence from the Madumabisa Mudstone Formation of Zambia, and two specimens from the Usili (=Kawinga) Formation of Tanzania. The Tanzanian specimens include a poorly preserved, incomplete skull and a partial cranium originally attributed to Parathrinaxodon proops. The latter is now considered a subjective junior synonym of Procynosuchus delaharpeae. Here we …

A System For Estimating Bowen Ratio And Evaporation From Waste Lagoons, Rezaul Mahmood

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Wildlife Collisions With Aircraft: A Missing Component Of Land-Use Planning For Airports, Bradley F. Blackwell, Travis L. Devault, Esteban Fernández-Juricic, Richard A. Dolbeer

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Projecting risks posed to aviation safety by wildlife populations is often overlooked in airport land-use planning. However, the growing dependency on civil aviation for global commerce can require increases in capacity at airports which affect land use, wildlife populations, and perspectives on aviation safety. Our objectives were to (1) review legislation that affects airports and surrounding communities relative to managing and reducing wildlife hazards to aviation; (2) identify information gaps and future research needs relative to regulated land uses on and near airports, and the effects on wildlife populations; and (3) demonstrate how information regarding wildlife responses to land-use practices …

Landscape Genetics Of Raccoons (Procyon Lotor) Associated With Ridges And Valleys Of Pennsylvania: Implications For Oral Rabies Vaccination Programs, J. Jeffrey Root, Robert B. Puskas, Justin W. Fischer, Craig B. Swope, Melissa A. Neubaum, Serena A. Reeder, Antoinette J. Piaggio

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Raccoons are the reservoir for the raccoon rabies virus variant in the United States. To combat this threat, oral rabies vaccination (ORV) programs are conducted in many eastern states. To aid in these efforts, the genetic structure of raccoons (Procyon lotor) was assessed in southwestern Pennsylvania to determine if select geographic features (i.e., ridges and valleys) serve as corridors or hindrances to raccoon gene flow (e.g., movement) and, therefore, rabies virus trafficking in this physiographic region. Raccoon DNA samples (n = 185) were collected from one ridge site and two adjacent valleys in southwestern Pennsylvania (Westmoreland, Cambria, Fayette, …

A Modeling And Spatio-Temporal Analysis Framework For Monitoring Environmental Change Using Npp As An Ecosystem Indicator, Robert Crabtree, Christopher Potter, Randall Mullen, Jennifer Sheldon, Shengli Huang, Joshua Harmsen, Ann Rodman, Cathie Jean

United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Publications

We present and describe a modeling and analysis framework for monitoring protected area (PA) ecosystems with net primary productivity (NPP) as an indicator of health. It brings together satellite data, an ecosystem simulation model (NASA–CASA), spatial linear models with autoregression, and a GIS to provide practitioners a low-cost, accessible ecosystem monitoring and analysis system (EMAS) at landscape resolutions. The EMAS is evaluated and assessed with an application example in Yellowstone National Park aimed at identifying the causes and consequences of drought. Utilizing five predictor covariates (solar radiation, burn severity, soil productivity, temperature, and precipitation), spatio-temporal analysis revealed how landscape controls …

Increased Survival Of Western Corn Rootworm On Transgenic Corn Within Three Generations Of On-Plant Greenhouse Selection, Lisa N. Meihls, Matthew L. Higdon, Blair D. Siegfried, Nicholas J. Miller, Thomas W. Sappington, Mark R. Ellersieck, Terrence A. Spencer, Bruce E. Hibbard

Department of Entomology: Faculty Publications

To delay evolution of insect resistance to transgenic crops producing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins, nearby ‘‘refuges’’ of host plants not producing Bt toxins are required in many regions. Such refuges are expected to be most effective in slowing resistance when the toxin concentration in Bt crops is high enough to kill all or nearly all insects heterozygous for resistance. However, Bt corn, Zea mays, introduced recently does not meet this ‘‘high-dose’’ criterion for control of western corn rootworm (WCR), Diabrotica virgifera virgifera. A greenhouse method of rearing WCR on transgenic corn expressing the Cry3Bb1 protein was used in …

A Hand Of Steel In A Velvet Glove: Purpose And Fulfillment Through The Gender Sphere, Sylvie A. Shires

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Modern audiences have come to believe that the nineteenth-century woman was oppressed by a patriarchal society and that until women obtained the vote, they had no voice, and could exert no influence to improve either their lot or that of others. While many scholarly secondary sources, as well as popular culture, strongly support this view, this research challenges it, and posits that this generally accepted interpretation echoes stereotypes that became strong with the second wave of feminism, in the 1960s, but is not representative of nineteenth-century middle-class women in the Anglo-Saxon world.

This research examines the British middle-class woman of …

Synopsis Of The Oryctini (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae) From The Brazilian Amazon, Hector Jaime Gasca Alvarez, Claudio Ruy Vasconcelos Da Fonseca, Brett Ratcliffe

Insecta Mundi

The Oryctini (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae) is a large tribe of worldwide distribution with approximately 26 genera and 230 species. Fourteen genera and 113 species are found in the Neotropical region. Knowledge of the tribe in the Neotropics is fragmentary, necessitating further studies that address taxonomy, biology, and geographical distribution patterns. This study surveyed the Oryctini of the Brazilian Amazon. The composition of the group in the study area consisted of 7 genera, 18 species and 2 subspecies found in 7 states, 91 municipal districts, and approximately 167 specific localities. States with larger number of species are Amazonas and Pará, with …