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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Global Change In The High Plains Of North America, Jane H. Bock, William D. Bowman, Carl E. Bock
Global Change In The High Plains Of North America, Jane H. Bock, William D. Bowman, Carl E. Bock
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The High Plains of North America extends from Canada to northern Mexico. This grassland region is subject to prolonged drought, herbivory, and wildfire. Organisms that are indigenous to the High Plains are adapted to these environmental factors. Periodic droughts occur at inexact, but few year, intervals. The grazing by free ranging bison, the indigenous large herbivore, has been replaced by grazing of fenced domestic stock. Fire regimes throughout human occupation of the region have been greatly influenced by human activities. Cultivation of wheat and corn also is carried out in the region.
Predicted climate changes in this region are increased …
Review Of The Political Economy Of Manitoba, Edited By Jim Silver And Jeremy Hull, Ralph F. Harris
Review Of The Political Economy Of Manitoba, Edited By Jim Silver And Jeremy Hull, Ralph F. Harris
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The Political Economy of Manitoba analyses the evolution of social, economic, and political marginalization concomitant with a wide range of struggle and conflict experienced by the people of the province. Its chapters provide significant empirical evidence of the nature and scope of this evolution. Underlying objectives of the contributions to this book are the support of activists in their popular struggles and the stimulation of progressive innovations in political policy. Two main perspectives are used in presentation. Historical analysis is used to show the origins and progression of growth. Analysis of more recent developments portrays the changing social and economic …
The Lucanidae And Passalidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) Of Nebraska, Brett C. Ratcliffe
The Lucanidae And Passalidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) Of Nebraska, Brett C. Ratcliffe
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
A faunal study of the five species of Lucanidae and one species of Passalidae that occur in Nebraska is presented. All of these species are near the extreme western limit of their geographic range in North America, and five of the six species are reported from Nebraska for the first time. The treatment for each species consists of synonymy, description, general distribution, Nebraska locality records, temporal distribution in the state, remarks on identification, reference to larval descriptions when available, and information about the biology and ecology of each species when known. Distribution maps, showing the Nebraska records, are given for …
Great Plains-Rocky Mountain Division, Association Of American Geographers, 1991 Meeting, Richard A. Marston
Great Plains-Rocky Mountain Division, Association Of American Geographers, 1991 Meeting, Richard A. Marston
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The 46th annual meeting of the Great Plains-Rocky Mountain Division, Association of American Geographers, drew a record attendance of 270 to Laramie, Wyoming, on September 5–7, 1991. The Department of Geography at the University of Wyoming hosted participants from Alberta, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and South Dakota as well as from many other locations outside the Plains region.
The Rural-Urban Continuum And Environmental Concerns, J. Allen Williams Jr., Helen A. Moore
The Rural-Urban Continuum And Environmental Concerns, J. Allen Williams Jr., Helen A. Moore
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Studies have generally found rural residents to be less concerned about environmental problems than urbanites. This difference has been attributed primarily to a nature-exploitative attitude of farmers. The present study finds little support for this proposition, but an alternative explanation, derived from rational choice and exchange theory, is supported. Owner-operator farmers are different from tenants and absentee owners in their level of environmental concern and shift positions across the range of environmental issues, as do rural nonfarm and small town residents. Furthermore, urban respondents are not consistently more likely than all rural categories to show the greatest environmental concern.
Frontier Flintlocks: A Fault Tree Analysis Of Firearm Use At Contact Period Sites Of The Great Plains, Peter Bleed, Daniel Watson
Frontier Flintlocks: A Fault Tree Analysis Of Firearm Use At Contact Period Sites Of The Great Plains, Peter Bleed, Daniel Watson
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Gun part assemblages from several Euroamerican and Native American contact period sites from the Plains are compared as a way of examining how firearms were incorporated into Native technology of the Plains region. These data are interpreted in terms of a “fault tree analysis," an operations research technique that identifies potential points of failure in technical systems in order to study patterns of use, maintenance, and reliability. The analysis indicates distinctively different patterns of gun repair and treatment by Indians and Euroamericans but suggests that Indians were quite capable of repairing firearms and that they systematically reused parts from failed …
Farm Women's Labor Contributions To Agricultural Operations, Audie Blevins, Katherine Jensen
Farm Women's Labor Contributions To Agricultural Operations, Audie Blevins, Katherine Jensen
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Employment data for women living on farms/ranches in six Wyoming counties were gathered in 1985 and 1986 as part of a farm/ranch households survey. This paper focuses on female employment and its contribution to the economic viability of farm operations, by considering the importance of women's as well as men's employment in maintaining the economic viability of farming/ranching operations during a farm crisis and a wage boom. Although an equal percentage of females and males work off-farm, the data show gender-defined patterns. While size of farm operation was a major predictor of the likelihood of engaging in off-farm employment for …
Economic Development Programs In The Great Plains: The Example Of Nebraska, Michael Broadway
Economic Development Programs In The Great Plains: The Example Of Nebraska, Michael Broadway
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
In an effort to stem Nebraska's loss of population and create new employment opportunities, the State Legislature passed the Nebraska Employment and Investment Growth Act in 1987. The legislation provides various tax incentives to businesses that make new investments in the state or create "new jobs," the majority of which are located in metropolitan counties. However, the largest nuntber of jobs to result from this legislation is at IBP's beef-packing plant in Lexington. Previous studies of the impact of beef-packing plants upon small towns found high levels of social disruption associated with the arrival of the workers. Lexington, by contrast, …
Observed Variations In Great Plains Seasonal Temperatures During The Past Century, Nolan J. Doesken, Thomas B. Mckee
Observed Variations In Great Plains Seasonal Temperatures During The Past Century, Nolan J. Doesken, Thomas B. Mckee
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Time series of observed seasonal temperature data from selected locations on the American Great Plains contain a great deal of information on the nature and scales of climate variations over the past century. At four long-term stations in eastern Colorado, trends of increasing mean maximum and minimum temperatures occurred in all seasons except autumn; with most warming preceding 1940. Diurnal range has been decreasing considerably in recent decades, but long-term trends are not consistent at all locations. Interannual variability has also been changed but does not show a systematic trend.
Time series similarities across the Great Plains decay rapidly over …
Review Of Harry Kirke Wolfe: Pioneer In Psychology, By Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr., Daniel Bernstein
Review Of Harry Kirke Wolfe: Pioneer In Psychology, By Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr., Daniel Bernstein
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
While teaching at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Ludy Benjamin discovered that the first psychology professor at the University of Nebraska gained a place in the history of experimental psychology in the United States. Harry K. Wolfe received a doctorate from the University of Leipzig, where he studied with Wilhelm Wundt (one of the founders of experimental psychology). In 1889 Wolfe established the first undergraduate psychology laboratory in the United States. Benjamin has written this interesting and readable book about a great teacher. The story includes the saga of academic life at a fledgling public university, one man's experience of the debate …
Review Of Groundwater Levels In Nebraska, 1989, By Michael J. Ellis, Gregory V. Steele, And Perry B. Wigley, M. Stanley Dart
Review Of Groundwater Levels In Nebraska, 1989, By Michael J. Ellis, Gregory V. Steele, And Perry B. Wigley, M. Stanley Dart
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Groundwater Levels in Nebraska, 1989, continues the excellent record of Nebraska Water Survey Papers produced by the Conservation and Survey Division and the US Geological Survey. The authors provide full color cartographic displays that are accurate as well as highly readable. Some of the maps treat the state of Nebraska for summary purposes. However, the greater value is found in the nine subregional large scale maps that cover the entire state in detail. Each map clearly displays the areas of significant water-level change that has occurred from the period of first reliable record through 1989. For Nebraskans, it should be …
Review Of Sustainable Agriculture In Temperate Zones, Charles A. Francis, Cornelia Butler Flora, And Larry D. King, Eds., David R. Lighthall
Review Of Sustainable Agriculture In Temperate Zones, Charles A. Francis, Cornelia Butler Flora, And Larry D. King, Eds., David R. Lighthall
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
The editors of Sustainable Agriculture in Temperate Zones have succeeded in compiling the diverse range of issues orbiting the expansive and somewhat nebulous concept of sustainable agriculture. The book contains well-written chapters by established experts drawn primarily from the mainstream sustainable agriculture movement within US land grant universities. The strength of the book is the authors' cogent reviews of leading edge research in their respective fields of expertise. These areas include soil chemistry and biology, plant breeding, crop rotations and legumes, pest management, pasture management, conversion to sustainable systems, production economics, rural development, and agricultural policy. Added to this eclectic …
Review Of The Medicine Men: Oglala Sioux Ceremony And Healing, By Thomas H. Lewis, Elizabeth S. Grobsmith
Review Of The Medicine Men: Oglala Sioux Ceremony And Healing, By Thomas H. Lewis, Elizabeth S. Grobsmith
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Lewis' new book on Oglala ceremony and healing brings together observations and interpretations of his encounters with Lakota healers from the Pine Ridge Reservation during his stay there in the 1960s and 1970s. Lewis was readily incorporated into the community and entrusted with details of conceptions and sources of power which reflect both the relaxed political and social climate and the attitude of openness the Lakota then held about sharing knowledge of their traditions with outsiders. This is fortunate, both for Lewis and the reader, for much of the substance of what Lewis learned is fast disappearing as are the …
Review Of The Wild Oat Inflorescence And Seed: Anatomy, Development And Morphology, By M. V. S. Raju, David M. Sutherland
Review Of The Wild Oat Inflorescence And Seed: Anatomy, Development And Morphology, By M. V. S. Raju, David M. Sutherland
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This slim volume describes a detailed study of the reproductive parts of Avena farua, the wild oat plant--a common weed in the northern plains and the probable ancestor of the cultivated oat. The book integrates the author's own work with information from available literature and includes lengthy technical descriptions of the structure and the growth of the inflorescence, the floret, the ovule, the pollen grain, the embryo, the seed, and the young seedling. Throughout the work, the author relates the wild oat's structure and development to other grasses, other monocotyledons, and other seed plants, offering evolutionary interpretations of many …
Review Of Harvest Of Opportunity: New Horizons For Farm Women, By Lois L. Ross, Katherine Jensen
Review Of Harvest Of Opportunity: New Horizons For Farm Women, By Lois L. Ross, Katherine Jensen
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Journalist Lois Ross has organized interviews with twenty-four contemporary farm women of the Canadian prairie provinces into four categories of women's entrepreneurship in the face of the farm crisis of the 1980s. With only a six-page introduction to the volume and briefer chapter prefaces, it is in many ways a book ready to be written. The author defended the interviews, edited only for length and redundance, in the same ways I have often argued for "qualitative" research in saying that the words of the women themselves speak better to the "feelings or frustrations, apprehension or optimism, barriers and breakthroughs" than …
Review Of The Middle West: Its Meaning In American Culture, By James R. Shortridge, John Fraser Hart
Review Of The Middle West: Its Meaning In American Culture, By James R. Shortridge, John Fraser Hart
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
James R. Shortridge has cheerfully pursued the will-o'-the-wisp of trying to describe the "idea" of the Middle West in a book that was given the prestigious John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize of the Association of American Geographers in 1990. He argues that a careful reading of the kinds of popular publications that are indexed in the Renders' Guide to Periodical Literantre can reveal the personality and image of the region, what it originally meant to Americans, and how this meaning has changed. over time. Attempts to find meaning in places and things currently seem to be fashionable. Such efforts can be …
Review Of Farming The System: How Politicians And Producers Shape Canadian Agricultural Policy, By Barry K. Wilson, George E. Lee
Review Of Farming The System: How Politicians And Producers Shape Canadian Agricultural Policy, By Barry K. Wilson, George E. Lee
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Canadian agricultural policy has been undergoing major multidimensional changes over the past decade. They include how policy is developed, how different actors have become major and minor players, a redefinition of the major (and the mix of) objective function(s), and how the whole process is orchestrated. Farming the System is an exercise in describing and analyzing this decade of change. The book contains a vast amount of anecdotal information on the Canadian agricultural and political system. The content, structure, and style relies heavily on Wilson's background as a political scientist and as a journalist. The book contains thirteen chapters, however …
Great Plains Research: Editorial Matter, Volume 1, Number 2
Great Plains Research: Editorial Matter, Volume 1, Number 2
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Includes:
Cover
Publisher Information (The Center for Great Plains Studies)
Copyright page
Table of Contents
Editor’s Note
News and Notes
Annual Index
Calls for Papers (2)
Advertisements (2)
Instructions to Authors
Review Of Fire In North American Tallgrass Prairies, Scott L. Collins And Linda L. Wallace, Editors, Jane H. Bock
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
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 …
Sustainability Of The Great Plains In An Uncertain Climate, William E. Riebsame
Sustainability Of The Great Plains In An Uncertain Climate, William E. Riebsame
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
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 The Sociology Of U.S. Agriculture: An Ecological Perspective, By Don E. Albrecht And Steve H. Murdock, Keith D. Parker
Review Of The Sociology Of U.S. Agriculture: An Ecological Perspective, By Don E. Albrecht And Steve H. Murdock, Keith D. Parker
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Albrecht and Murdock provide a thorough examination and discussion of the changing structure of American agriculture. The authors, adopting an integrated approach, examine the major trends and changes in farming and the causes of these changes. This book provides a theoretically informed framework that allows dimensions central to the understanding of past, present, and possible future changes in the structure of American agriculture. The text examines ecological factors that influence and are influenced by the changing structure of agriculture. It describes the relationship between technology and agriculture. The authors discuss nonfarm organizations such as government and financial and economic institutions …
Review Of The Struggle For The Land: Indigenous Insight And Industrial Empire In The Semiarid World, By Paul A. Olson, Adolph M. Greenberg
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
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 Watering The Valley: Development Along The High Plains Arkansas River, 1870-1950, By James Earl Sherow, James R. Shortridge
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
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 …
35th Annual Midwest Groundwater Conference, Brad Rundquist
35th Annual Midwest Groundwater Conference, Brad Rundquist
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Midwestern scientists, policy experts, and natural resource managers face many challenges regarding groundwater management. Pressing problems include limiting and properly managing areas of groundwater decline, reducing contamination from agricultural and industrial chemicals, and fruitfully studying these issues. The original Midwest Groundwater Conference, in 1956, initiated the exchange of ideas between groundwater professionals working in the region. The 35th annual conference convened in Lincoln, NE, on October 17-19, 1990. The conference was sponsored by the University of Nebraska's Water Center, Conservation and Survey Division, Agricultural Research Division, and Geology Department, and by the Nebraska District of the US Geological Survey's Water …
Review Of Atlas Of American Indian Affairs, By Francis Paul Prucha, David J. Wishart
Review Of Atlas Of American Indian Affairs, By Francis Paul Prucha, David J. Wishart
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
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 …
Snow Cover Variability On The Northern And Central Great Plains, David A. Robinson, Marilyn G. Hughes
Snow Cover Variability On The Northern And Central Great Plains, David A. Robinson, Marilyn G. Hughes
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Winter snow cover duration has varied across the northern and central Great Plains of the United States throughout this century. Decade-to-decade variability has been common, and the timing of these fluctuations has differed considerably across the region. A general trend towards longer snow cover duration was noted from the 1920s and 1930s to the 1970s. Nine stations with continuous records of snow cover, temperature, precipitation, and snowfall dating back 61 to 97 years were studied. Snow cover fluctuations and trends are associated with changes of these other variables. Such relationships are complex and differ across the Great Plains. Correlations between …
Review Of Colorado Flora: Eastern Slope By William A. Weber., Robert B. Kaul
Review Of Colorado Flora: Eastern Slope By William A. Weber., Robert B. Kaul
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
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 Damming The Colorado: The Rise Of The Lower Colorado River Authority, 1933-1939, By John R. Adams, Jr., F. Andrew Schoolmaster
Review Of Damming The Colorado: The Rise Of The Lower Colorado River Authority, 1933-1939, By John R. Adams, Jr., F. Andrew Schoolmaster
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This book provides an insightful and useful case study of political compromise and regional conflict resolution stemming from the construction of multipurpose development projects on the Colorado River of Texas. The author focuses on the maneuvering of Texas politicians such as James P. Buchanan, J. J. Mansfield, and Lyndon B. Johnson in creating the Lower Colorado River Authority, and bringing a New Deal reclamation project complete with dams, reservoirs, and hydroelectric power stations to central Texas. The book is divided into six chapters, supplemented by a brief introduction, an extensive collection of footnotes, and an excellent bibliography.
Review Of Transportation Service To Small Rural Communities: Effects Of Deregulation, By John F. Due, Benjamin J. Allen, Mary R. Kihl, And Michael R. Crumm, L. Orlo Sorenson
Review Of Transportation Service To Small Rural Communities: Effects Of Deregulation, By John F. Due, Benjamin J. Allen, Mary R. Kihl, And Michael R. Crumm, L. Orlo Sorenson
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This excellent book deals with transportation service interaction between carriers (providers of rail, truck, bus, and airplane service) and the users of those services in low traffic density markets. The book educates the reader rather than attempting to persuade the reader to a point of view. It deals largely with changes occurring in transport regulation and technology in the decade of the 1980s and their impacts on services to smaller communities.
Review Of Agricultural Bioethics: Implications Of Agricultural Biotechnology, Steven M. Gendel, A. David Kline, D. Michael Warren, And Faye Yates, Eds., Vernon W. Ruttan
Review Of Agricultural Bioethics: Implications Of Agricultural Biotechnology, Steven M. Gendel, A. David Kline, D. Michael Warren, And Faye Yates, Eds., Vernon W. Ruttan
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This book is largely the product of a series of faculty discussions and a symposium held at Iowa State University in 1987. It represents a comprehensive treatment of the safety and regulatory issues, economic prospects, social considerations, and ethical dilemmas emerging from advances in molecular biology and agricultural biotechnology. Major attention is focused on bovine growth hormone bGH). The book is the most useful introduction to these issues available under one cover. It is also a book of highly uneven quality. The papers range from advocacy journalism to carefully reasoned argument and rigorous sifting of evidence. I particularly recommend the …