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Endangered Species Bulletin, May/June 2003 - Vol. Xxviii No. 3

Endangered Species Bulletin

In this issue:
4 Conserving Wildlife of the Americas: Mexico’s Strategic Role
6 Conservation Along the Border
7 The Kemp’s Ridley: Recovery in the Making
10 Conserving Cacti in México
12 Black-footed Ferrets Thrive in Mexico
14 California Condors Return to Mexico
16 Nightly Wings, Nectar Sips
18 California Red-legged Frog: Jumping to Survival
20 Binational Conservation Grows from the Ground Up
22 Aquatic Life in the Sonoran Desert
24 Jaguar Conservation in the Borderlands
26 Corridors for Migration
27 Pronghorn Races Against Extinction
30 The Masked Bobwhite at Buenos Aires NWR
31 Regional News and Recovery Updates
32 Box …

Nebraska Earth Systems Education Network – Spring 2003

Nebraska Earth Systems Education Network

Content:

NESEN Name Change

NATS Annual Fall Conference, Looking for Presenters

AASG Meeting to be Held in Lincoln

USGS Fact Sheet on Lincoln Ground Water

Nebraska Forestry Shortcourse By Christine Meyer

An Exciting New Inquiry-Based Geoscience Field Course at UNL By Richard Levy

Bonnstetter Wins National Honor By Kylee Anderson

NESEN Web Features ‘Sites of the Week’ By Kylee Anderson

Studying disease ecology in ancient cultures leads to lessons in health management By Karen Stork

UNL Leads Program to Help Schools With Pesticide Use By Steve Ress

Governor to Proclaim ‘State Geology Week’ for Gathering of State Geologists By Aine …

Great Plains Research – Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2003

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

No abstract provided.

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 (through 2013)

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 …

Title And Contents- Spring 2003

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Great Plains Quarterly

Spring 2003 Vol. 23 No.2

CONTENTS

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION Charles A. Braithwaite

EXCERPTS FROM THE LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS; AN EPIC OF DISCOVERY, THE ABRIDGMENT OF THE Definitive NEBRASKA EDITION; THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE PLAINS Gary E. Moulton

"A PRAIRIE CHILDHOOD" BY EDITH ABBOTT: AN EXCERPT FROM THE CHILDREN'S CHAMPION, A BIOGRAPHY OF GRACE ABBOTT John Sorensen

COME TO THE "CHAMPAGNE AIR": CHANGING PROMOTIONAL IMAGES OF THE KANSAS CLIMATE, 1854-1900 Karen De Bres

BOOK REVIEWS

Theodore Binnema Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains By JAMES E. SHEROW

Gerald Betty Comanche Society: …

Come To The "Champagne Air" Changing Promotional Images Of The Kansas Climate, 1854 -1900, Karen De Bres

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Euro-American settlers poured into Kansas during the second half of the nineteenth century, and there they encountered a hostile and unpredictable climate. Rainfall patterns were erratic, and the extremes of temperature were both demanding and daunting. Countering these conditions, or at least tempering them, became a task for a variety of individuals and organizations. The work was straightforward: to transform the image of Kansas in order to attract prospective immigrants. As historian Carl Becker wrote, this was not easy: Until 1895 the whole history of the state was a series of disasters, and always something new, extreme, bizarre, until the …

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 (through 2013)

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

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

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 …

Great Gathering On The Great Plains, Paul A. Johnsgard, Michael Forsberg

Paul Johnsgard Collection

Early spring along the Platte River is sheer magic. For more than a month migratory sandhill cranes pour into central Nebraska, attracted by the shallow river’s abundant roosting sites and nearby meadows and farms for feeding. Looking like legions of gray ghosts from a distance, the birds often cover wet meadows and cornfields from one end to the other. Flocks of a thousand or more fly low over the river, their voices rising and falling as they approach, pass overhead and disappear. With nearly a half-million cranes stopping here each spring, the placid Platte is transformed into the site of …

The Politics Of Cather’S Regionalism: Margins, Centers And The Nebraskan Commonwealth, Guy Reynolds

Department of English: Presentations

Willa Cather remains a central figure in literary regionalism because she puts the central tenets of regionalism under intellectual pressure. One of the most familiar ways of thinking about American regions has been to think about an opposition between ‘section’ and ‘region’. Region tends to be used to define a geographical area, whereas a section denotes political or cultural identity. Cather is almost a sectionalist in her focus on the cultural and intellectual distinctiveness of the Nebraskan Commonwealth; but the very term itself links Nebraska to Virginia, rupturing a simple sense of section. Cather has a geographer’s sense of regional …

Cropwatch No. 2003-2, March 7, 2003, Lisa Brown Jasa

Crop Watch (1994–2005)

Inside

Drought workshops…………..12

Prevented planting…………..12

Controlling winter annuals…………..14

Emergency tillage in wheat…………..15

Fertilizing in a drought…………..16

NRDs & fertilizer rates…………..16

Revised pesticide regs…………..17

Bt resistance management…………..18

Drought/livestock issues…………..19

Hay & forage hotline…………..19

Pesticide disposal…………..20

Pesticide sales warning…………..20

A Celebration Of The Journals Of The Lewis And Clark Expedition, Paul Royster

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

Remarks at reception honoring Gary Moulton for the completion of the 13-volume edition, the publication of the 10-volume paperback edition, the publication of the one-volume compilation, and the inauguration of the online pilot project and website http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu; at the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, February 28, 2003. Remarks include a publication history of the scholarly edition 1983-2003, and its importance to the fields of Western history, American literature, native American studies, geography, and the literature of discovery and exploration. Topics include funding, outreach, honors, participants, and the impact on the scholarly world and on the local economy.

Effects Of Holocene Climate Change On Mercury Deposition In Elk Lake, Minnesota: The Importance Of Eolian Transport In The Mercury Cycle, W.F. Cannon, Walter E. Dean, John H. Bullock Jr.

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Sediments in Elk Lake, Minnesota, consist of 10,400 varve layers that provide a precise chronology for Holocene fluctuations in climate and biota recorded in the strata. Progressively greater concentrations and accumulation rates of mercury since ca. A.D. 1875 reflect deposition of anthropogenic mercury additions to the atmosphere. Within the Holocene record are numerous short intervals in which mercury concentrations and accumulation rates exceed the modern values. The highest mercury concentrations formed ca. 8 ka, coincident with a rapid change from cool, moist conditions to warm, dry conditions. A related change in flora from pine forest to prairie caused destruction of …

Bibliography Of Helminth Species Described From African Vertebrates 1800-1967, Albert G. Canaris, Scott Lyell Gardner

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty Publications

Parasite lists, hosts lists, and bibliographies for Trematoda, Cestoda, Nematoda, and Acanthocephala.
100 pages.

L'Identité Québécoise En Ligne, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Le présent article se composera donc de deux parties. S'organisant autour de plusieurs tensions dans les valeurs québécoises, la première passera en revue le contenu de nombreux sites Internet. Elle mettra ainsi en lumière certains choix culturels des Québécois qui caractérisent leur mode de vie de ceux des Français, des États-Uniens et des Canadiens anglais. On trouvera ensuite, en appendice, une évaluation critique des principaux portails et sites Web généralistes qui traitent du Québec dans les domaines de la langue, de l'histoire, de la culture et de la géographie. L'interprétation de l'identité québécoise dans la première partie est proposée comme …

Urban Canada Geese In Georgia: Assessing A Golf Course Survey And A Nuisance Relocation Program, Larkin A. Powell, Michael J. Conroy, Kipling S. Balkcom, Joe Caudell

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Nuisance complaints about Canada geese (Branta canadensis), have risen in recent years. In Georgia, managers have responded by relocating some nuisance geese to rural areas. During 1993–1996, we used band recoveries of relocated geese to determine the efficacy of relocation as a management strategy. We also used data from a post-card survey of golf courses to monitor the urban subpopulation of Canada geese in Georgia during 1998–2001. Flocks considered by golf course superintendents to be a nuisance were larger (1998: 48.8 geese, 1999: 71.5, 2000: 73.2, 2001: 67.2) than nonnuisance flocks (1998: 13.1 geese, 1999: 16.7, 2000: 25.8, 2001: 18.1). …

Planning For Population Viability On Northern Great Plains National Grasslands, Fred B. Samson, Fritz L. Knopf, Clinton W. Mccarthy, Barry R. Noon, Wayne R. Ostile, Susan M. Rinehart, Scott Larson, Glenn E. Plumb, Gregory L. Schenbeck, Daniel N. Svingen, Timothy W. Byer

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Broad-scale information in concert with conservation of individual species must be used to develop conservation priorities and a more integrated ecosystem protection strategy. In 1999 the United States Forest Service initiated an approach for the 1.2 x 106 ha of national grasslands in the Northern Great Plains to fulfill the requirement to maintain viable populations of all native and desirable introduced vertebrate and plant species. The challenge was threefold: 1) develop basic building blocks in the conservation planning approach, 2) apply the approach to national grasslands, and 3) overcome differences that may exist in agency-specific legal and policy requirements. Key …

Helping Students Help Each Other: Making Peer Feedback More Valuable, Linda B. Nilson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Student peer feedback can be emotionally biased, misinformed, and/or superficial. This essay discusses two types of feedback that yield neutral, valid, and detailed information and enhance students’ audience awareness.

Modernist Space: Willa Cather’S Environmental Imagination In Context, Guy J. Reynolds

Department of English: Faculty Publications

One of the things that Cather’s writing teaches us is that space, especially “natural” space, is always mediated, always shaped. Cather’s own framing of nature was informed by some very specific, historically particular ideas. The modernity of Cather’s environmental imagination is illustrated by a comparison between her fictionalization of American spaces and Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural formation of space. An “environmental imagination” is at once an imagination of the environment and an imagination formed or created by the environment. Cather worked repeatedly toward this doubled state, finding a heightened, mystical state-of-being when we are both formed by and in mastery …

Toward A Symbiosis Of Ecology And Justice: Water And Land Conflicts In Frank Waters, Johns Nichols, And Jimmy Santiago Baca, Thomas Lynch

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The literary form that dominates writing, and thinking, in the American West is what has become known, definitively, as "the Western." The all-too-familiar narrative describes the advance of Anglo-Saxon pioneers into a primitive and untamed West, spreading the forces of civilization in their wake. A countertradition, however, is prevalent in the Southwest. What we might suitably call "the Southwestern" describes the incursion of an aggressive foreign culture into an already settled region. In this narrative, the conflict is not over how to impose culture and tame and settle the land, but how to protect the culture that already exists and …

Remote Sensing Estimates Of Boreal And Temperate Forest Woody Biomass: Carbon Pools, Sources, And Sinks, Jiarui Dong, Robert Kaufmann, Ranga Myneni, Compton Tucker, Pekka Kauppi, Jari Liski, Wolfgang Buermann, V. Alexeyev, Malcolm Hughs

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The relation between satellite measurements of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), cumulated over the growing season, and inventory estimates of forest woody biomass carbon is estimated statistically with data from 167 provinces and states in six countries (Canada, Finland, Norway, Russia and the USA for a single time period and Sweden for two periods). Statistical tests indicate that the regression model can be used to represent the relation between forest biomass and NDVI across spatial, temporal and ecological scales for relatively long time scales. For the 1.42 billion ha of boreal and temperate forests in the Northern Hemisphere, the …

Remote Sensing Estimates Of Boreal And Temperate Forest Woody Biomass: Carbon Pools, Sources, And Sinks, Jiarui Dong, Robert K. Kaufmann, Ranga B. Myneni, Compton J. Tucker, Pekka E. Kauppi, Jari Liski, Wolfgang Buermann, V. Alexeyev, Malcolm K. Hughes

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The relation between satellite measurements of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), cumulated over the growing season, and inventory estimates of forest woody biomass carbon is estimated statistically with data from 167 provinces and states in six countries (Canada, Finland, Norway, Russia and the USA for a single time period and Sweden for two periods). Statistical tests indicate that the regression model can be used to represent the relation between forest biomass and NDVI across spatial, temporal and ecological scales for relatively long time scales. For the 1.42 billion ha of boreal and temperate forests in the Northern Hemisphere, the …

History Of Food Acceptance Research In The Us Army, Herbert L. Meiselman, Howard G. Schutz

United States Army: Publications

The history of food acceptance research by the US Army in Chicago and Natick is reviewed. The review covers the staff of the two research centers, the research programs, and the significant accomplishments of the Army laboratories from the 1940s to the present. Accomplishments begin with the development of the nine-point hedonic scale, and the development of the first Food Acceptance Laboratory. Further accomplishments include studies of sensory psychophysics, food preferences, food choice and food intake. The laboratories designed methods and conducted research on the role of consumer variables in the acceptance of food products and food service systems. Recent …

Retrieval Of Subpixel Snow-Covered Area And Grain Size From Imaging Spectrometer Data, Thomas H. Painter, Jeff Dozier, Dar A. Roberts, Robert E. Davis, Robert O. Green

United States Army: Publications

We describe and validate an automated model that retrieves subpixel snow-covered area and effective grain size from Airborne Visible/ Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data. The model analyzes multiple endmember spectral mixtures with a spectral library of snow, vegetation, rock, and soil. We derive snow spectral endmembers of varying grain size from a radiative transfer model; spectra for vegetation, rock, and soil were collected in the field and laboratory. For three AVIRIS images of Mammoth Mountain, California that span common snow conditions for winter through spring, we validate the estimates of snow-covered area with fine-resolution aerial photographs and validate the estimates …

Endangered Species Bulletin, January/February 2003 - Vol. Xxviii No. 1

Endangered Species Bulletin

In this issue:
4 A Century of Conservation
9 Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge
12 Refuges Are a Flight Path to Recovery
14 An Amphibious Assault
18 Community Helps Save Laguna Atascosa’s Wildlife
20 The Key Deer: Back From the Brink
22 Research on Fox Squirrel Reaps Rewards
24 Refuge for an Ice Age Survivor
27 “Habitats” Featured on Geography Action!
28 Bringing Tiger Beetles Together
30 Share the Beach: Teamwork for Turtles
32 The Treasures of the Ozark Plateau
34 The Dynamic Dunes
36 This Partnership is for the Birds!
38 Hard Work Brings Results at Chincoteague

Action Education In Land Use Decisions: Student Views On Urbanization And Farmland Loss, Mindi Schneider, Charles A. Francis, Dick Esseks

CARI Extension and Education Materials for Sustainable Agriculture

Loss of prime farmland is a serious concern in the United States and around the globe. With rapid urban population increases, the activities and perceived needs of concentrated groups of people result in the swallowing of some of the most fertile lands in this country. Today we have just under 2 acres of productive farmland per person in the United States. Given the current population growth rate due to births and immigration, plus the present rate of farmland loss, World Watch Institute estimates that we will have about 0.6 acres or one-third as much farmland available per person by 2055--a …

Global Optical Lightning Flash Rates Determined With The Forte Satellite, Tracy E. Light, Sean M. Davis, William Boeck, Abram Jacobson, David Suszcynsky

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Using FORTE photodiode detector (PDD) observations of lightning, we have determined the geographic distribution of nighttime flash rate density. We estimate the PDD flash detection efficiency to be 62% for total lightning through comparison to lightning observations by the TRMM satellite's Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS), using cases in which FORTE and TRMM viewed the same storm. We present here both seasonal and total flash rate maps. We examine some characteristics of the optical emissions of lightning in both high and low flash rate environments, and find that while lightning occurs less frequently over ocean, oceanic lightning flashes are somewhat more …

Mid-Holocene Climates Of The Americas: A Dynamical Response To Changed Seasonality, S. P. Harrison, J. E. Kutzbach, Z. Liu, P. J. Bartlein, B. Otto-Bliesner, Daniel R. Muhs, I. C. Prentice, R. S. Thompson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Abstract Simulations of the climatic response to mid- Holocene (6 ka BP) orbital forcing with two coupled ocean–atmosphere models (FOAM and CSM) show enhancement of monsoonal precipitation in parts of the American Southwest, Central America and northernmost South America during Northern Hemisphere summer. The enhanced onshore flow that brings precipitation into Central America is caused by a northward displacement of the inter-tropical convergence zone, driven by cooling of the equatorial and warming of the northern subtropical and mid-latitude ocean. Ocean feedbacks also enhance precipitation over the American Southwest, although the increase in monsoon precipitation there is largely driven by increases …

Unprecedented Last-Glacial Mass Accumulation Rates Determined By Luminescence Dating Of Loess From Western Nebraska, Helen M. Roberts, Daniel R. Muhs, Ann G. Wintle, Geoff A. T. Duller, E. Arthur Bettis Iii

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

A high-resolution chronology for Peoria (last glacial period) Loess from three sites in Nebraska, midcontinental North America, is determined by applying optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to 35–50 µm quartz. At Bignell Hill, Nebraska, an OSL age of 25,000 yr near the contact of Peoria Loess with the underlying Gilman Canyon Formation shows that dust accumulation occurred early during the last glacial maximum (LGM), whereas at Devil’s Den and Eustis, Nebraska, basal OSL ages are significantly younger (18,000 and 21,000 yr, respectively). At all three localities, dust accumulation ended at some time after 14,000 yr ago. Mass accumulation rates …

Paleolimnology Of Lake Tanganyika, East Africa, Over The Past 100 K Yr, Christopher A. Scholz, John W. King, Geoffrey S. Ellis, Peter K. Swart, J. Curt Stager, Steven M. Colman

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

New sediment core data from a unique slow-sedimentation rate site in Lake Tanganyika contain a much longer and continuous record of limnological response to climate change than have been previously observed in equatorial regions of central Africa. The new core site was first located through an extensive seismic reflection survey over the Kavala Island Ridge (KIR), a sedimented basement high that separates the Kigoma and Kalemie Basins in Lake Tanganyika.

Proxy analyses of paleoclimate response carried out on core T97-52V include paleomagnetic and index properties, TOC and isotopic analyses of organic carbon, and diatom and biogenic silica analyses. A robust …