Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Sustainability Of The Great Plains In An Uncertain Climate, William E. Riebsame

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

The potential for social adaptation to climate change on the Great Plains is examined and a framework offered for sharpening the inquiry into regional agricultural sustainability. The future of Plains agriculture in a worsening climate depends on several factors, but a key characteristic is whether the system is fundamentally adaptable (able to change form and function markedly under new conditions) or resilient (likely to attempt to maintain "normal" operations via disaster relief and other social maintenance schemes in future droughts). In a cumulative climate deterioration, adaptive strategies are likely to yield less abrupt social dislocation, but debate over the sustainability …

Review Of Atlas Of American Indian Affairs, By Francis Paul Prucha, David J. Wishart

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

Anyone who has seriously studied United States-American Indian relations will be familiar with the work of Francis Paul Prucha. Perhaps the foremost scholar in this area, Prucha has published more than 20 books over the course of three decades, including the definitive synthesis of Federal Indian policy, The Great Father, which appeared in 1984 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Less well known is Prucha's abiding interest in maps. In the preface to his new book, an Atlas of American Indian Affairs, Prucha admits that he has "long been fascinated by graphic display of statistical data, especially the presentation of geographical …

Review Of Watering The Valley: Development Along The High Plains Arkansas River, 1870-1950, By James Earl Sherow, James R. Shortridge

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

Sherow is an environmental historian, one of an active group of scholars who have begun to assess Western development from a larger perspective than simple economic progress. He presents here an intelligent history and critique of water use in the upper Arkansas basin between Pueblo, Colorado, and Garden City, Kansas. In the years before 1950, developers never acknowledged water's place in the natural environment. Their plans soon required more water than was available but, rather than adjust to limitations, one exploiter blamed another and even more elaborate plans were conceived. It is a story that goes to the heart of …

Review Of Fire In North American Tallgrass Prairies, Scott L. Collins And Linda L. Wallace, Editors, Jane H. Bock

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

This book summarizes many of the modem studies on fire in the North American Great Plains, with special emphasis on the tallgrass areas. Grasslands, along with pine forests, have been the foci for much of the fire research on the North American continent. This volume summarizes a great deal of what is known about fire in tallgrass prairie and adjacent areas. It should be of interest to ecologists, systematists, agronomists, anthropologists, historians, and others whose research and teaching interests center. on the prairie. There are ten chapters written by 22 authors. The book is well edited; transitions among chapters are …

Review Of Northern Prairie Wetlands, Arnold Van Der Valk, Editor, Richard A. Gersib

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

This book provides an exceptionally thorough technical review of the ecology of both shallow and deepwater wetland systems within the prairie pothole region of the United States and Canada and the Sandhills region of Nebraska. The book developed from a regional wetland symposium sponsored by the National Wetlands Technical Council in 1985. It has been written to serve both wetland ecologists and managers, as well as people with a professional interest in northern prairie wetlands who may have but a limited background in wetland ecology. The book consists of 11 chapters that address key wetland components such as hydrology, water …

Review Of Colorado Flora: Eastern Slope By William A. Weber., Robert B. Kaul

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

All 2260 plant species of eastern-slope Colorado--from the continental divide east to the Nebraska and Kansas borders--can be identified using this book. That figure includes not only the native species but also the numerous introduced ones that survive without cultivation and often provide severe competition for the native flora. Much of Colorado's native plains flora was eliminated in the past century by plowing and by grazing livestock. It is largely replaced by a few durable native and many aggressive exotic species that thrive under those conditions, but remnants of the original flora exist on escarpments and in a few level …

Review Of The Struggle For The Land: Indigenous Insight And Industrial Empire In The Semiarid World, By Paul A. Olson, Adolph M. Greenberg

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

This book is based on the premise that solutions to the problems experienced by many resource management programs currently underway in the semiarid regions of the world can be found in indigenous systems of resource use. Developing out of a 1986 interdisciplinary symposium sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies, the book has contributors from agricultural development, anthropology, economics, English, environmental studies, history, law, native studies, and philosophy. Given the magnitude of the human and environmental problems in semiarid lands, a book intended to provide an indigenous counterpoint, as it were, to present use of those areas would not …

Review Of The Cherokees: A Population History, By Russell Thornton, Henry F. Dobyns

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

This volume discusses major dynamics of Cherokee population trends during historic times. That is, it describes the formation and fortunes of one ethnic minority in the United States. Such historic demography is necessarily limited by available information. Consequently, this discussion presents more (and more reliable) details about recent demographic trends than about earlier ones.

Drought Experience And Perception Of Climatic Change Among Great Plains Farmers, David M. Diggs

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

How humans perceive, respond, and adapt to long-term climatic change are questions of fundamental interest to nature and society researchers. This paper analyzes the effect of drought experience on Great Plains farmers' perceptions of long-term climate change. Approximately three-quarters of all farmers surveyed believed that the climate is, or is possibiy, changing. Drought experience, while perhaps not initiating concern for climate change, can solidify peoples' perceptions of the certainty and nature of the change. The potential cognitive heuristics used in the formation of climate change perceptions are discussed.

Introduction: Climate Change On The Great Plains, Paul A. Kay

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

The Center for Great Plains Studies has, for the past decade and a half, hosted annual symposia that draw scholars to address topics of regional interest. The symposium topic for 1990, "Climate Change on the Great Plains," was most timely, given the growing concern with global warming heightened by several years of drought stress in the late 1980s. Interest in this topic has a long lineage in the Center: the ninth symposium, in 1985, addressed "Social Adaptation to Semiarid Environments," and issues of drought and environment have appeared often in the pages of Great Plains Quarterly. The 1990 symposium …

Relationships Between 700 Mb Circulation Variations And Great Plains Climate, Daniel J. Leathers

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

The relationship between monthly midtropospheric circulation variations, occurring in the North American sector, and surface temperature and precipitation across the Great Plains is evaluated for the middle month of each season (January, April, July, and October). The results demonstrate that monthly Great Plains temperature variability is strongly associated with the major pattems of midtropospheric circulation variation during all months considered. Temporally, the strongest associations are observed during October. However, January, July, and April also exhibit spatially coherent regions of strong association. Spatially, the relationship tends to be strongest in the northern Plains, with decreasing association to the south. Precipitation-midtroposphere relationships …

Lowering Real Interest Rates Could Slow Global Warming, Craig S. Marxsen

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

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion have increased markedly in this century. Increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are thought likely to help produce a warming of global climate. Many strategies to reduce or reverse the anticipated global warming point to reductions of fossil fuel combustion as a primary ingredient. This paper examines the possibility of obtaining a decrease in world petroleum supply as a result of reducing interest rates relative to the rate of inflation.

Drought And Precipitation Fluctuations In The Great Plains During The Late Nineteenth Century, Cary J. Mock

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

Monthly precipitation data in the Great Plains from the late nineteenth century (1851–1890) were compared with modem analogs. Seasonal precipitation changes were identified since 1858–1877, depending on the amount of data available, and additional droughts were inferred back to 1851. Regional droughts did not clearly fit any cycle. Precipitation during fall and winter was less than 1951–1980 averages during most of the late nineteenth century. Wetter than modern average springs and summers occurred in the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s. Relationships of these conditions to changes in mid-tropospheric circulation are suggested. Results from this study can be used for verification of …

Hydroclimatic Variability On The Great Plains, Michael J. Keables

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

This study identifies the spatial variability of the hydroclimatology of the Great Plains. Spatial associations of monthly midtropospheric circulation anomalies, total precipitation, and mean stream discharge are identified using an unrotated principal component analysis. Three hydroclimatic associations, representing synoptic circulation features and associated precipitation and stream discharge patterns, identify specific circulation anomalies and corresponding spatial pattems of surface hydrology in the northern, central, and southern Great Plains. Results indicate that nearly 47% of the hydrologic (precipitation and stream discharge) variability during summer is attributed to synoptic-scale midtropospheric circulation anomalies, with sub-synoptic convectional processes accounting for approximately 42% of the hydrologic …

The Geologic Record Of Wind Erosion, Eolian Deposition, And Aridity On The Southern High Plains, Vance T. Holliday

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

Evidence of wind erosion, accumulation of airborne sediments, and drought is preserved on the Southern High Plains. Eolian deposition in the Holocene concentrated between 6000 and 4500 years ago. The Blackwater Draw Formation indicates episodic wind erosion and deposition in the past 1.6 million years. The Ogallala Formation suggests a vast, sandy eolian plain accumulated episodically between 4 and 11 million years. Warmer and drier conditions predicted for the region in a globally-warmer climate will thus be superimposed upon prevailing characteristics of wind and relative aridity that have dominated recent geologic time.

Great Plains Research: Editorial Matter, Volume 1, Number 1

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

Includes:

Cover
Publisher Information (The Center for Great Plains Studies)
Copyright page
Table of Contents
Editor’s Note
News and Notes
Calls for Papers (2)
Advertisements (2)
Instructions to Authors

The Experience And Expression Of Emotion In The Workplace: A Study Of A Corrections Organization, Vincent R. Waldron, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study evaluated Rafaeli and Sutton’s (1989) model of emotional expression in the workplace by examining descriptions of emotional interactions occurring among members of a state government agency. The results indicated that qualities of felt emotions influenced emotional expression, which in turn yielded changed relational perceptions and changed communication behavior subsequent to the emotional event. Content analysis of the event descriptions resulted in preliminary generalizations about the types of emotions experienced by members, the nature of repressed emotional messages, and the dimensions of relationship changes stemming from the emotional events. The results are interpreted as evidence of the importance of …

Following Dead Precedent: The Supreme Court's Ill-Advised Rejection Of Anticipatory Overruling, C. Steven Bradford

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Stare decisis is an integral, accepted principle of American and common-law jurisprudence. The idea that courts should follow past decisions, whether of the same or a higher court, was accepted before this nation was born and continues to be generally accepted today. Criticism of stare decisis is equally ancient, however. A countervailing tradition allows a court to overrule precedent to correct its errors and develop the law. "The life of the law has not been logic," Holmes wrote; "it has been experience." Stare decisis has never been an inexorable command in the American system; courts have always been willing to …

The Possible Future Of Private Rights Of Action For Proxy Fraud: The Parallel Between Borak And Wilko, C. Steven Bradford

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

This is a story of parallels-two cases decided by the United States Supreme Court eleven years apart, one now overruled, the other unchallenged for over twenty-five years. Both cases are important federal securities law decisions, but substantively they are quite different. In Wilko v. Swan, a 1953 decision, the Supreme Court held that predispute agreements to arbitrate claims arising under the Securities Act of 1933 (1933 Act) were unenforceable because arbitration would not adequately protect the rights the 1933 Act gave injured investors. In J.I. Case Co. v. Borak, decided in 1964, the Court held that persons injured …

Conflict Of Laws And The Attorney-Client Privilege: A Territorial Solution, Steven Bradford

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Choice-of-law issues have always been among the most difficult legal issues. Legal questions that are difficult when only one state is involved become herculean when a choice must be made from among the different laws of several jurisdictions. The difficulty of conflicts law is increased by the theoretical quarrels among courts and scholars. Scholars and judges are unable to agree on an underlying theory of choice of law, much less the result in particular cases. A number of different approaches compete for attention, producing an eclectic body of case law.

Originally, "vested rights" territorialism dominated choice of law. Courts applied …

Wake Up And Die Right: The Rationale, Standard, And Jurisprudential Significance Of The Competency To Face Execution Requirement, Robert F. Schopp

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Contemporary American criminal law prohibits the execution of those who are not competent to face execution. The state cannot execute convicted offenders, including those who have been sentenced to death for capital crimes under valid law and through acceptable procedures, unless those offenders are competent at the time of execution. Although this requirement applies in all states that practice the death penalty and traces its heritage deep into the common law, its exact formulation remains controversial as does the appropriate rationale and the corresponding procedure.'

Five identifiable questions have troubled courts and commentators. First, what rationale justifies this requirement? Second, …

The Psychotherapist's Duty To Protect The Public: The Appropriate Standard And The Foundation In Legal Theory And Empirical Premises, Robert F. Schopp

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Several states have established a duty on the part of psychotherapists to protect the public from harm caused by their dangerous patients. The Supreme Court of California initially articulated this duty in the widely discussed Tarasoff case where the court stated:

When a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession should determine, that his patient presents a serious danger of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger. This discharge of this duty may require the therapist ... to warn the intended victim or others... to …

Book Review: Modern Elementary Probability And Statistics, Douglas H. Johnson

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

This is an introductory textbook, "developed for, and class- tested in," first courses in elementary probability and/or statistics. The only prerequisite is high-school algebra. It has some nice features, but shortcomings in both substance and style detract from its value.

Review Of Shaping Educational Change: The First Century Of The University Of Northern Colorado At Greeley, Maxine Benson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1936, when a young instructor named James Michener was offered a position at the Colorado State College of Education in Greeley, his faculty mentors at the Ohio State University summer school warned him not to accept the job: "The sands of the desert are white with the bones of promising young men who went West and perished trying to get back East" (ix). Undeterred, Michener did go to Greeley, where he taught at the school's College High until 1941. He also acquired a master's degree as well as the historical background that he incorporated into his 1974 novel, Centennial …

Education On The Great Plains: An Introduction, Erwin H. Goldenstein

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Few people asked to identify outstanding exemplars of education in the United States would immediately think of the Great Plains or its people. And it may well be that the authors of the Land Ordinance of 1785 were more interested in enticing settlers to the old Northwest Territory than in providing financial support for education when they set aside one section of public land in every thirty-six sections for the support of education. Yet education has become very important to the immigrant peoples who have occupied the Great Plains over the past two centuries, and there can be little doubt …

Review Of Writing Saskatchewan: 20 Critical Essays, George E. Wolf

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Writing Saskatchewan is the gleanings of a symposium celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts held at Fort San in the Qu' Appelle Valley near Regina in June of 1987. Focusing on poetry (the long poem as well as the lyric), the novel, drama, and linked sequences of short stories, these essays collectively suggest the striking richness, range, and vitality of creative writing in the central prairie province-writing that is anything but provincial.

Review Of Five For The Land And Its People, Howard W. Ottoson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Every institution has its pioneers, its founding fathers, whose personal natures and work were instrumental in shaping the course of its development. This book is an account of five such men whose lives are reflected in what is today North Dakota State University.

Notes And News For Vol.11 No.3

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

No abstract provided.

"Pap" Singleton's Dunlap Colony: Relief Agencies And The Failure Of A Black Settlement In Easter Kansas, Joseph V. Hickey

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"T here are gathered at Dunlap and vicinity at the present time between 275 and 300 families of colored people, all of whom are succeeding quite well and many of whom are on the road to prosperity. The plan of Dunlap Colony is very simple, the chief reason, probably, of the success met with, being the fact that every settler is compelled to own his property, no renting being permitted ... as Mr. Atchison expressed it, "everyone is fat and happy . . ."

Review Of Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse Of Native American Indian Literatures, Kathryn Shanley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Back about eight or ten years ago, when Punk hit the American youth scene, there was a joke floating around. It went something like this: How did the dead baby get across the road? [Answer: Safety-pinned to the chicken.] Of course, in order to "get" the joke, you have to understand the Punk mentality and be able to recall instantly the joke that (as far as I can tell) has floated around children's playgrounds for the past several decades: Why did the chicken cross the road? [Answer: To get to the other side.] For Punks, the philosophically probing "why" is …