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Notes And News- Spring 2007

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

NOTES AND NEWS

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Review Of The Science, Impacts And Monitoring Of Drought In Western Canada: Proceedings Of The 2004 Prairie Drought Workshop Edited By Dave Sauchyn, Madhav Khandekar, And E. Ray Garnett, Virginia Wittrock

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

Drought is not an unusual phenomenon on the Canadian prairies or the U.S. Great Plains. There were many short-term droughts in the prairies during the 20th century that generally lasted one to two years (e.g., 1961, 1988). The Canadian prairies multi-year drought event (1999-2003+) has been considered similar in severity to the 1930s drought years.

The 2004 Prairie Drought Workshop resulted in 76 scientists and resource managers gathering in Calgary, Alberta, to share information on drought science, impacts, and monitoring. Presenters examined the impacts on agriculture, stream flow, forests, and ground water, including potential impacts under a changed climate. Though …

Review Of Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait By Matt White, David Taylor

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

Nowadays, the Blackland Prairies of north Texas are the kind of landscape most people think of as great for subdivisions and strip malls: generally flat, easily bulldozed, and not too far from Dallas-Fort Worth. Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait traces a similar utilitarian vision of the prairie in 19th-century pioneer descriptions as well: good for plowing, grazing, and-once the buffalo and Native Americans are exterminated-not too far from outposts of commerce. The book serves as an environmental jeremiad for a place too easily seen as useful and thus too often ignored for preservation. Matt White gives readers a context in …

Evapotranspiration Estimation And Scaling Effects Over The Nebraska Sandhills, Venkataramana Sridhar

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

Quantifying evapotranspiration (ET) over vast ecosystems such as the Sandhills of Nebraska is crucial in linking the surface, subsurface, and atmospheric processes affecting a region. There are numerous methods of obtaining large-scale ET estimates, but most are constrained by the availability of data. This study investigates implementation of an approach that uses a simple land-cover-based standardized tall (ETrs) and short (ETas) surface reference crop evapotranspiration and crop coefficient to compute actual ET over various spatial and seasonal scales. Subsequently, computed ETrs was used to get the preliminary estimate of regional ET over the entire Sandhills at the 30 m scale …

Review Of Native Americans In The School System: Family, Community, And Academic Achievement By Carol J. Ward, Jon Reyhner

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

The title of this volume promises more than the content delivers. The heart of the book is information from Ward's 1992 University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, which focused on the social and cultural reasons leading to students dropping out of school. Her first two chapters provide a good review of research on dropouts and Indian education; the following six focus on the results of her 1987-1989 study of 698 Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and white high school students attending the Colstrip Public, St. Labre Catholic, and Busby Tribal Schools in Montana. Fifty-two percent of the students in this study were Indian, …

Great Plains Research, Volume 17, Number 1: News And Notes

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

No abstract provided.

Review Of Soils In Archaeological Research By Vance T. Holliday, Rolfe D. Mandel

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

When I teach geoarchaeology, I tell students on the first day of class that "soils are the canvas for much of the archaeological record." Just as an artist's canvas holds and affects the paint, soils hold archaeological materials, and soil-forming processes strongly influence the preservation and spatial pattern of cultural deposits. Given this close relationship between soils and the material remains of humans, we have long needed a treatise that addresses all aspects of soils from an archaeological perspective. Vance Holliday's latest book, Soils in Archaeological Research, does this and more.

Evaluation Of The College Experience Among American Indian Upperclassmen, Terry Huffman, Ron Ferguson

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

This article reports partial findings from a five-year study that examined the attitudes, perceptions, and expectations regarding higher education among a sample of American Indian students attending a predominantly non-Indian university. Most notably, this article examines some of the factors associated with two specific personal assessments of the college experience: (1) the impact of college upon their appreciation of Native American heritage and (2) the level of satisfaction with the college experience.

Review Of Global Warming In The 21st Century. Volume 1: Our Evolving Climate Crisis; Volume 2: Melting Ice And Warming Seas; Volume 3: Plants And Animals In Peril By Bruce E. Johansen, Robert Harriss

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

There is compelling evidence that Planet Earth is on the path to an era of global warming that has serious implications for the well-being of both people and nature. This three-volume synthesis of literature will be a marvelous place for both the public and new scholars interested in global warming to begin their pursuit of the subject. The author captures the best of the scientific literature and press materials appearing in recent years. The utility of these volumes as a resource for gaining a broad background or pursuing a particular aspect of global warming is enhanced by Johansen's talent for …

Great Plains Research, Volume 17, Number 1: Frontmatter

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

No abstract provided.

Review Of Harvest For Hope: A Guide To Mindful Eating By Jane Goodall With Gary Mcavoy And Gail Hudson, Charles A. Francis

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

One of the world's preeminent experts on primate behavior, author Jane Goodall now invests her boundless energy traveling and speaking about conservation. After years of studying chimpanzees in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania, Goodall found their very existence threatened by poachers, by encroachment of farming into their habitat, and by global forces far from their wild environment. She is now on a mission to inform the public about what is wrong with our society and its impact on the planet. Harvest for Hope catalogs the problems and provides practical solutions.

Review Of Taxing Illusions: Taxation, Democracy And Embedded Political Theory By Phillip Hansen, Neil Brooks

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

Every society possesses a social contract establishing the obligations its members assume toward one another. By and large, this implicit contract governs how a society allocates responsibility for achieving its social and economic goals to the major forms of social organization; in particular, how it divides responsibilities between the public ordering process, represented, in the main, by the government, and private ordering processes, represented by the market but also by families and community organizations. As is well documented, over the past 25 years the terms of the social contract have changed dramatically in most Anglo-American countries, including Canada. The role …

Review Of Laws And Societies In The Canadian Prairie West, 1670-1940 Edited By Louis A. Knafla And Jonathan Swainger, Thomas M.J. Bateman

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

For all intents and purposes, the settlement of the Canadian prairie was the founding of a new society using materials brought to the new land along with those close at hand. Of course, preexisting aboriginal society had to be supplanted in the course of this founding. In both the supplanting and the founding, the rule of law as we currently know it was a principal means and end of the settlement process.

Review Of Deep Time And The Texas High Plains: History And Geology By Paul H. Carlson, J. Brett Cruse

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

This brief book is a history of the Lubbock Lake Landmark site, a nationally recognized archeological site located on the Texas southern High Plains on the north side of the city of Lubbock. The location has been the subject of intense investigations by archaeologists since 1939. Paul H. Carlson, a noted author and professor of history at Texas Tech University, states that his purpose was to go back through what John McPhee called "deep time" to show how the Lubbock Lake location was formed and was used by humans through time. He accomplishes this in five chapters.

Population Characteristics And Health Service Use By Latino Immigrants To Southwest Missouri, Suzanne E. Walker, Susan Dollar, Ravilldra G. Amonker

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

The rapid influx and new demographic patterns of Latino immigrants to the United States have precipitated numerous pressing issues, among them health and healthcare disparities. The relatively recent phenomenon of high Latino immigration rates to rural areas is increasingly common in the Midwest and Great Plains states, where they are drawn by the labor market. A rural setting, low socioeconomic status, and high concentrations of minorities have been shown to be closely intertwined, and such regions are often medically underserved. Such describes rural southwest Missouri, where we collected data in four counties on demographics, socioeconomic factors, healthcare perceptions, and use …

Review Of The Search For A Common Language: Environmental Writing And Education Edited By Melody Graulich And Paul Crumbley, Denise Tillery

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

This edited collection grew out of a symposium held at Utah State University in Logan in 2002. According to the editors, the symposium's purpose was to "publicly explore the particular ways environmental writing educates the public through a fusion of science and literary expression." The Search for a Common Language achieves that purpose by including short prose pieces-ranging from memoirs, essays on specific locations, and scientific papers - as well as poetry on natural themes. The range of topics and genres and the inclusion of poetry provide a variety of ways to talk about the environment and reach out to …

Sulfate Mineral Paragenesis In Pennsylvanian Rocks And The Occurrence Of Slavikite In Nebraska, R. Matthew Joeckel, K. D. Wally, S.A. Fischbein, P.R. Hanson

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

The acid weathering of pyrite-bearing Pennsylvanian clastic sedimentary rocks in southeastern Nebraska locally produces the secondary sulfate minerals alunogen, copiapite, epsomite, felsobanyaite/basaluminite, gypsum, halotrichite, jarosite, rozenite, and slavikite. Of these mineral occurrences, four are first-time discoveries in the state or the surrounding region. Slavikite (NaMg₂Fe₅ (S0₄)₇ (OH) ₆• 33H₂0), which has been reported only once before in North America and from a handful of sites in Europe and South America, was found in abundance at an outcrop at Brownville, NE. The pH values in 1:1 solutions of deionized water of the …

Review Of The Real Roadrunner By Martha Anne Maxon, Janice M. Hughes

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

This lively little book is the ninth installment in the Animal Natural History Series published by University of Oklahoma Press. Its author, Martha Maxon, has aptly chosen to reveal the true nature of the greater roadrunner, a veritable icon of southwestern bird life. Perhaps no one is better able to accomplish this: Maxon arguably possesses greater intimate knowledge of roadrunners' private lives than any other ornithologist.

Review Of Ogallala Blue: Water And Life On The High Plains By William Ashworth, Sandra Zellmer

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

William Ashworth, an environmental historian and prolific writer, grips our attention in lyrical yet urgent terms in Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the High Plains. Ogallala Blue stands beside John Opie's Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land (1993) and Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (1986) as a "must read" book for anyone who cares about the future of water resources.

Review Of Applying Nature's Design: Corridors As A Strategy For Biodiversity Conservation By Anthony B. Anderson And Clinton N. Jenkins, Curtis Freese

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

Habitat loss and fragmentation, which in turn result in the fragmentation of species populations and ecosystem processes, are the primary causes globally of species endangerment and extinction. Corridors are an attempt to defragment the landscape and enable the movement of individuals, nutrients, and energy between habitat patches.

Review Of 'Pictures Bring Us Messages' / Sinaakssiiksi Aohtsimaahpihkookiyaawa: Photographs And Histories From The Kainai Nation By Alison K. Brown And Laura Peers With Members Of The Kainai Nation, Susan Berry

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

In August 1925, University of Oxford anthropologist Beatrice Blackwood spent two days on the Blood Reserve in southern Alberta, home to the Kainai Nation. Assisted by the Indian Agent, she toured the reserve and took 33 photographs. Blackwood was investigating potential links among "race," culture, and environment, and some of her photographs were anthropometric in nature. Others, showing men working in fields or girls at residential school, portrayed a culture in transition. Upon her return to Britain, Blackwood deposited the Kainai photographs with Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum.

Review Of This Land: A Guide To Central National Forests By Robert H. Mohlenbrock, James R. Brandle

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

Robert Mohlenbrock's guide to the national forests of the central U.S. provides the traveling naturalist with a wealth of information on the wide array of national forest lands in the heart of the country. Part of a three-volume series of field guides, this volume covers the states of Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. While most of the forests are along the western and eastern borders of the Great Plains, readers will find a detailed travelog for a National Forest within a day's drive of most areas within the region. While not the focus …

Assessing The Free Land Programs For Reversing Rural Depopulation, Max Lu, Darci A. Paull

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

A number of small towns in the Great Plains have recently started to offer free land and other incentives to entice new residents in the hope of reversing persistent depopulation. Based on in-depth interviews, this study assesses the initial performance of the free land programs in six small towns in central Kansas and analyzes the factors that have affected the migration decisions of the new residents. The initial results of these programs have been impressive. Not only have they attracted multiple new residents and increased enrollments in local schools, but they have also elevated long-time residents' pride in their community …

Review Of The Biology Of Freshwater Wetlands: Biology Of Habitats By Arnold G. Van Der Valko, Ned H. Euliss, Jr.

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

Wetland ecology is a relatively new field that developed from an initial interest in a few direct benefits that wetlands provide to society. Consequently, much early scientific work was stimulated by economic returns from specific wetland services, such as production of peat and provision of habitat for economically valuable wildlife (e.g., waterfowl and furbearers). Over time, societal interest in wetlands broadened, and these unique habitats are now valued for many additional services, including some that bear non market value. Common examples include carbon sequestration, flood reduction, water purification, and aesthetics. The increased recognition of the importance of wetlands has generated …

Water Rights And Land Values In The West-Central Plains, Allan Jenkins, Bruce Elder, Ram Valluru, Paul Burger

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

Irrigation is vital to the economic activity of the west-central Great Plains. The crops grown, the distribution of center-pivot irrigation systems, and the basic transportation infrastructure is the same in northwest Kansas, northeast Colorado, and southwest Nebraska. But buyers of agricultural land face a different price for irrigated cropland in each of the states, even when the production characteristics of the land are similar. After accounting for factors like productivity and local property tax differences, we argue that it is the difference in water marketing rights between the three states that explains the price difference. The link between land values …

Review Of The Other Alberta: Decoding A Political Enigma By Doreen Barrie, Gurston Dacks

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

Doreen Barrie should have subtitled this book "Advocating a Different Identity" because this is its basic thrust. In Barrie's view, today's wealthy, modern, and expansive Alberta should abandon its historic grievances and hostility towards Ottawa. Instead, it should embrace a new narrative emphasizing "the positive qualities Albertans possess . . . the contributions the province has made to the country . . . and that Albertans share fundamental Canadian values with people in other parts of Canada and are eager to playa larger role on the national stage."

The October 1998 Flood Of The Upper Guadalupe River System, Central Texas, Richard A. Earl

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

The October 1998 flood on the upper Guadalupe River system was produced by a 24-hour precipitation amount of 483 mm at one station, over 380 mm at several other stations, and up to 590 mm over five days, precipitation amounts greater than the 100-year storm as prescribed in Weather Bureau Technical Papers 40 (1961) and 49 (1964). This study uses slope-area discharge estimates and published discharge and precipitation data to analyze flow characteristics of the three major branches of the Guadalupe River on the Edwards Plateau. The main channel of the Guadalupe has a single large flood-control structure at Canyon …

Review Of Watchable Birds Of The Black Hills, Badlands And Northern Great Plains By Jan L. Wassink, Paul A. Johnsgard

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

In the sometimes odd vernacular of bird watchers, "watchable" refers to those species that for the most part are fairly easily observed and, by virtue of their behavior or other features, are deemed especially interesting. Of the roughly 400 bird species that occupy the region selected by Wassink (including all of both Dakotas and Nebraska, plus the High Plains of eastern Montana, Wyoming, and northeastern Colorado), he has chosen 84 to discuss individually. One or more generally high-quality color photos of each of these species are included. He has also included color photos of 71 "similar" species, usually of forms …

The Limits Of “No-Limit”, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

One must acknowledge and even admire the passion that writer and photographer Ann Jones brings to the different causes she embraces as she meanders along the paths of her rather eclectic career, now spanning over three decades. Her first book, Uncle Tom’s Campus (1973), examines how her students, in a predominantly African-American college, were being shortchanged by the system. In the late 1990s, she took off across Africa in search of a legendary tribe ruled by women and supposedly noted for its embrace of “feminine” principles of tolerance, diplomacy, and compromise, and returned to publish a travelogue-cum-utopian Weltanschauung set in …

The Trouble With Rights, David L. G. Rice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Do human rights imply enforcement powers? Do they require police or armies? How many soldiers would it take to secure universal human rights? What sort of weaponry would suffice?