Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of The Farm As Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems With Ecosystems Edited By Dana L. Jackson And Laura L. Jackson, Richard Levins

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

The Farm as Natural Habitat shows how wildlife need not be banished to distant parks but can and should be integrated into our farming systems. Editors Dana and Laura Jackson have organized a delightful collection of eighteen essays, linked by insightful transitions, addressing "the connection between the grocery list and the endangered species list, between farms and nature." A related theme concerns the "bullying notion" that holds the advance of industrial, habitat-destroying agriculture as inevitable.

Review Of Aboriginal Conditions: Research As A Foundation For Public Policy Edited By Jerry P. White, Paul S. Maxim, And Dan Beavon, Nathalie Piquemal

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

Grounded in recent research, this book successfully identifies key issues hearing on the current social challenges Aboriginal people face in Canada. It speaks to policy makers, social scientists, and Aboriginal communities, three constituencies for which greater cooperation is advocated, given that such cooperation is essential for positive social development within Aboriginal communities. Much of the research informing the authors' reflections on current Aboriginal conditions is framed within social and scientific method, yet with special attention to evidence-based policy making. As such, the volume offers sharp insights into socioeconomic and cultural issues, including community dynamics and population outcomes, ethnic mobility and …

Review Of Engineering The Farm: Ethical And Social Aspects Of Agricultural Biotechnology Edited By Britt Bailey And Marc Lappe, Clark Wolf

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

During the last two centuries, America's Central Plains have been transformed by agriculture. But during the past thirty years, agriculture has been transformed by biotechnology, by the rise of bigger and bigger farms, and by the influence of corporate research and marketing of seeds, pesticides, and other agricultural products. This book collects a set or important essays critical or the technology that has shaped and irrevocably changed our agricultural institutions in recent decades. The authors included are almost all uniformly critical or biotechnology, corporate farming, and the internationalization of' agricultural markets and trade rules. Their essays are passionate, articulate, and …

Review Of Farming With The Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity On Farms And Ranches Text By Daniel Imhoff, Design By Roberto Carra, David Van Tassel

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

Cross a grain crop with a wild perennial, and we frequently get a big, bold plant that combines many of the best features of its parents. Farming with the Wild is a cross between a coffee-table book, a travelogue, and an agroecology textbook. A big, bold hybrid, its layout and photography are elegant and striking. The text is information-dense, yet largely free of technical jargon. Unlike its cousin, editor Andrew Kimbrell's Fatal Harvest (2002), this is an upbeat book focusing on success stories rather than the grim global outlook for both agriculture and wildlife.
The first sections chronicle Dan Imhoff …

Availability Of Suitable Habitat For Northern River Otters In South Dakota, Alyssa M. Kiesow, Charles D. Dieter

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

Currently, the northern river otter (Lontra canadensis) is listed as a threatened species in South Dakota. We determined whether adequate habitat was available for reintroducing river otters in South Dakota. The 17 rivers/creeks included in the analysis were selected according to stream size, water gradient, and water permanence. A vegetation transect was conducted and a water sample was collected at each study site, ranging from one to four per river. Rivers/creeks were rated (1 = least suitable to 5 = most suitable) according to habitat requirements of river otters in the following categories: stream characteristics, watershed features, water …

Review Of Eighteenth-Century Naturalists Of Hudson Bay By Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, And Mary Houston, Greg Michalenko

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

Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay by Stuart and Mary Houston, veteran Saskatchewan ornithologists and historians of northern Canadian exploration, and climatologist Tim Ball provides a welcome, colorful addition to McGill-Queen's University Press's thirty-four-volume Native and Northern Series.
The 1670 Crown charter to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) granted a vast trading territory including substantial parts of the northern Canadian Plains and a portion of North Dakota and Minnesota. Furs were brought from a network of posts for shipping out of Hudson Bay, primarily at Fort Churchill and York Factory. Most of the posts and their commercial activities were outside of …

Review Of Giving Voters A Voice: The Origins Of The Initiative And Referendum In America By Steven L. Piott, Allen Cigler

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

Recent decades have shown renewed interest in using the initiative and referendum, typically viewed by reformers as devices with the potential to broaden citizen awareness and participation, thereby curbing the influence of special interests in the policy process. To others, such direct policy making by citizens strikes at the very heart of representative democracy: considered deliberation by elected officials is bypassed and public policy may not he well thought out.

Evidence Of Holocene Climate Change In A Nebraska Sandhills Wetland, Barbara Nicholson, James B. Swinehart

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

The Nebraska Sandhills consist of 50,000 km² of dunes, currently stabilized by vegetation. Radiocarbon dates of paleosols, blocked paleovalleys, and sand beds found in interdunal wetlands suggest that the Holocene had significant periods of dune reactivation. A paleoecological investigation was conducted in Jumbo Valley, NE, in an interdunal wetland known to contain sand layers interbedded with peat. The sedimentary record in two cores is continuous, except for some loss due to surficial burns. Macrofossils indicate that the late Pleistocene was cool and wet, with current vegetation establishing around 12,000 years ago. Sand and bulk density profiles reveal significant periods …

Distribution Of Carnivore Burrows In A Prairie Landscape, Glennis Kaufman, Scott Kocher, Donald Kaufman

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

Mammals impact prairie ecosystems through burrowing activities. Burrows used by carnivores were studied in four habitat types at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, a native tallgrass prairie near Manhattan, KS. We surveyed nearly 40 km of l0-m-wide transects and counted burrows in upland, slope, and lowland prairie and along ravines. Burrows were placed selectively along slopes (7.3 per km) and to a lesser extent along edges of ravines (4.2), but only infrequently in upland (0.6) and never in lowlands (0.0). We also recorded features (e.g., location, aspect, and slope steepness) along slope transects at a 30 m intervals to estimate …

Great Plains Research, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2005 - Editorial Matter

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

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Higher Energy Prices On Great Plains Crop Farm Expenditures, Jeffrey Williams, Richard Nelson, Michael Langemeier

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

Use of energy-intensive inputs in agriculture in generally considered to be unresponsive to price increases in the short run. An increase in diesel and natural gas prices directly increases cots of energy used on farms for irrigation, machinery operation, and heating. Energy-intensive production inputs such as fertilizer prices also increase due to higher energy costs. This study assesses the impact of substantially higher energy prices in 2000 and 2001 on whole-farm production costs on 983 Kansas farms using actual whole-farm data. It is hypothesized that the impact on fuel, irrigation energy, and fertilizer costs will be significantly more than the …

Review Of Lewis And Clark On The Great Plains: A Natural History By Paul A. Johnsgard, Andrea Laliberte

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

In Lewis and Clark on the Great Plains: A Natural History, Paul A. Johnsgard takes us on the Lewis and Clark trail from Kansas to Montana, describing the flora and fauna Meriwether Lewis and Williams Clark encountered on their historic journey in 1804-1806. Johnsgard focuses on species initially described or discovered by Lewis and Clark and on known species for which the explorers uncovered new biological information. Readers will not only discover which species Lewis and Clark first identified, but why in some cases the explorers failed to be credited wit ha discovery because that species wasn’t formally named …

Depopulation And Rural Churches In Kansas, 1950-1980, Robert Wuthnow

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

Discussions of religion in the rural Great Plains present two radically different images: one of declining and abandoned churches, the other of surprising in congregational vitality. Both images purport to describe how rural churches are adapting to declining population, but neither view has been examined very systematically. Kansas provided a natural laboratory in which to examine the relationships between religion and rural depopulation. From 1950 to 1980 Kansas experienced the sharpest decline in number of farms in the state’s history. Yet population change in rural counties varied widely. I compare 39 rural counties that experienced the greatest depopulation with 30 …

Review Of Great Wildlife Of The Great Plains By Paul Johnsgard, Gregory A. Smith

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

Few authors have done more to increase awareness of the history, ecology, and inhabitants of the Great Plains than Paul Johnsgard. Great Wildlife of the Great Plains follows in the tradition of Johnsgard’s Birds of the Great Plains: Breeding Species and Their Distribution (1979), Prairie Birds: Fragile Splendor in the Great Plains (2001), and Faces of the Great Plains: Prairie Wildlife (2003). In Great Wildlife of the Great Plains, Johnsgard focuses on some of the most notable and characteristic terrestrial species in the region as well as additional species of conservation concern: 121 total species including 74 birds, 28 …

Great Plains Research, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2005 - News And Notes

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

Contents:
Conferences
Charles E. Bessey Award
Leslie Hewes Award

Potential Ecological Impact Of Diet Selectivity And Bison Herd Composition, Claudia Rosas, David Engle, James Shaw

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

Behavioral segregation between the sexes of bison (Bas bison), coupled with artificially manipulated sex ratios of bison herds, might profoundly influence prairie ecosystems. Therefore, we measured carbon isotopes in hair collected from bison from the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northeast Oklahoma to determine if adult male, adult female, and juvenile bison segregate on the basis of botanical composition of their diet. Sex ratio of bison herds in the Great Plains and behavioral differences between sexes were used to assess potential effects of sex ratio on tallgrass prairie. Botanical composition of diet differed among the three bison groups, in …

Review Of How The Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage In The Western United States, 1868-1914 By Rebecca J. Mead, Karen E. Campbell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Rebecca Mead has crafted a detailed history of suffrage campaigns in the western states. While her accounts are particularly rich for California, her definition of the West also includes Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Each chapter of How the Vote Was Won focuses on one or a handful of states, tracing the factors Mead identifies as critical to success (or failure) of campaigns for woman suffrage. More than this, she provides vibrant descriptions of the backgrounds of state suffrage leaders, their relationships with prominent national suffrage activists, the content of state suffragists' …

Notes And News- Spring 2005

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes and News

Frederick C. Luebke Award

Great Plains Symposium 2005

Northern Great Plains History And The Society For Military History 2005 Conference

International Cather Seminar 2005

Call For Papers: Western History Association 2006 Conference

Western History Association 2005 Conference

Review Of Cherokee Women In Crisis: Trail Of Tears, Civil War, And Allotment, 1838-1907 By Carolyn Ross Johnston, Rowena Mcclinton

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Johnston begins her book by sharing family stories passed down by her Cherokee female relatives whose narratives probably emanated from another ancestor, Caledonia, a victim of Cherokee Forced Removal (1838-1839). To quench her desire to learn more, Johnston seeks to furnish additional information about the sustaining power of women during times of extreme upheavals: forced displacement from the American South (1838-1839); the Civil War and its aftermath (1861-1877); and allotment in severalty of Cherokee lands (1887-1907). Following two other path breaking studies of Cherokee women, Theda Perdue's Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (1998) and Sarah H. Hill's Weaving …

Review Of Ghost Towns Alive: Trips To New Mexico's Past By Linda G. Harris, David Pike

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Not even ghost towns are exempt from progress. In New Mexico, some ghost towns are disappearing into the earth or being subsumed by ranches, while others are reincarnating themselves into outright tourist attractions. Accordingly, books about them are morphing from travel guides that tell us what we'll see, to coffee tables that show us what we missed. Ghost Towns Alive by Linda Harris is one of the former, but its artistic photos and clever, sensitive writing nod to the latter.

Harris offers her definition of "ghost town" as a place founded for a purpose, later to decline. By adding "accessible …

Review Of Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks And The Rise Of The American Indian Movement By Dennis Banks With Richard Erdoes, Akim D. Reinhardt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Richard Erdoes has established a veritable cottage industry by co-authoring the autobiographies of prominent Indians from the 1970s. Beginning with 1972's Lame Deer (with John Fire Lame Deer), he has since helped to produce works by Mary Crow Dog, Leonard Crow Dog, and even a sequel with Mary Crow Dog (a follow-up to their 1990 best seller, Lakota Woman). His most recent effort couples him with one of the American Indian Movement's founders, Dennis Banks. In some respects, this one is different. For starters, it comes from an academic publisher instead of a mass-marketing commercial press. In other respects, …

Review Of Ethnic Oasis: The Chinese In The Black Hills By Uping Zhu And Rose Estep Fosha, With Essays By Donald L. Hardesty And A. Dudley Gardner, William Wei

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The first thing readers should be made aware of is that the book's title is somewhat misleading. While the first two articles by Uping Zhu and Rose Estep Fosha focus on the Chinese in the Black Hills, the second two by Donald L. Hardesty and A. Dudley Gardner deal with the Chinese communities in Nevada and Wyoming, respectively. Perhaps more important, three of the four articles are actually about archaeology and what it reveals about the Chinese frontier experience rather than about the history and culture of the Chinese in the American West itself.

Billed as the background piece, Zhu's …

Wither The Fruited Plain: The Long Expedition And The Description Of The "Great American Desert", Kevin Z. Sweeney

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The view from Pikes Peak is breathtaking. Situated where the Great Plains meets the Rocky Mountains, one feels as if the whole nation is laid out before you. It is the perfect vantage point from which to write an inspirational anthem to the environmental magnificence of the United States. In the summer of 1893, Katherine Lee Bates, a Wellesley College English professor, sat on the summit of Pikes Peak, inspired by the panorama to pen the words to "America the Beautiful." Her poem was set to the tune "Materna" by Samuel Augustus Ward two years later to become one of …

Review Of Mount Rushmore: An Icon Reconsidered By Jesse Lamer & Great White Fathers: The Story Of The Obsessive Quest To Create Mt. Rushmore By John Taliaferro, David A. Wolff

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

DIFFERENT WAYS OF VIEWING A MONUMENT

Wandering through Keystone an evening not long ago and looking above the trees, I could see Mt. Rushmore in the distance. Apparently the lighting ceremony had just ended, and as I looked at those faces of Washington, Jefferson, T. R., and Lincoln, I felt a tinge of excitement. But why? I had seen them many times before. In fact, I spent a summer working for the concessionaire at the monument, serving food in the old Buffalo Dining Room. Every day I stared at those faces as I asked people if they wanted fried chicken …

Habitat And Nesting Of Le Conte's Sparrows In The Northern Tallgrass Prairie, Maiken Winter, Jill A. Shaffer, Douglas H. Johnson, Therese M. Donovan, W. Daniel Svedarsky, Peter W. Jones, Betty R. Euliss

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

ABSTRACT. Little is known about the breeding biology of the Le Conte's Sparrow (Ammodramus leconteil), probably because of its secretive nature. We provide new information on several aspects of Le Conte's Sparrow breeding biology, including rates of nest parasitism by Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) and potential factors affecting breeding densities and nesting success of the species. Our study was conducted in the tallgrass prairie of northwestern Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota during 1998-2002. Breeding densities varied among years, but this variation was not clearly linked to climatic patterns. Vegetation had some influence on densities of Le …

Habitat Preferences Of Migrant And Wintering Northern Harriers In Northwestern Texas, Caroll D. Littlefield, Douglas H. Johnson

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

We studied habitat preferences of northern harriers (Circus cyaneus) in 4 counties of the Southern High Plains of northwestern Texas from October 1989 to May 1995. Harriers generally arrived in late July and departed in April. They hunted over a variety of habitats in the study area but mainly in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands and vegetated playa basins. CRP grasslands, playa basins, and shortgrass prairie were used disproportionately to their availability, whereas winter wheat was used less than its availability. Brown harriers (adult females or subadults of either sex) foraged in CRP about as often as adult …

The Quintessential Companion For North American Birders, Lawrence D. Igl

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

How do birds drink? How fast can a hummingbird fly? Why do some birds balance on one leg? How fast can an ostrich run? Why do some birds hop and others walk? What is the most abundant bird in the world? As an avian ecologist, these are just a smidgen of the many questions I have been asked by the public during the past several years. To answer these and similar questions, I typically do not reach for a text on ornithology or avian ecology. Rather, I have come to rely on a number of quick-reference, encyclopedic resources on birds, …

Markov Chain Monte Carlo Estimation Of Species Distributions: A Case Study Of The Swift Fox In Western Kansas, Glen A. Sargeant, Marsha A. Sovada, Christiane C. Slivinski, Douglas H. Johnson

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

Accurate maps of species distributions are essential tools for wildlife research and conservation. Unfortunately, biologists often are forced to rely on maps derived from observed occurrences recorded opportunistically during observation periods of variable length. Spurious inferences are likely to result because such maps are profoundly affected by the duration and intensity of observation and by methods used to delineate distributions, especially when detection is uncertain. We conducted a systematic survey of swift fox (Vulpes velox) distribution in western Kansas, USA, and used Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) image restoration to rectify these problems. During 1997-1999, we searched 355 …

Population Genetic Structure In Migratory Sandhill Cranes And The Role Of Pleistocene Glaciations, Kenneth L. Jones, Gary L. Krapu, David A. Brandt, Mary V. Ashley

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

Previous studies of migratory sandhill cranes (Grus Canadensis) have made significant progress explaining evolution of this group at the species scale, but have been unsuccessful in explaining the geographically partitioned variation in morphology seen on the population scale. The objectives of this study were to assess the population structure and gene flow patterns among migratory sandhill cranes using microsatellite DNA genotypes and mitochondrial DNA haplotypes of a large sample of individuals across three populations. In particular, we were interested in evaluating the roles of Pleistocene glaciation events and postglaciation gene flow in shaping the present-day population structure. Our …

First Record Of Graphoderus Liberus (Coleoptera: Dytiscidae) In North Dakota, Bruce A. Hanson, Ned H. Euliss Jr., David M. Mushet

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

Graphoderus liberus is a moderate sized (11 to 12 mm) predaceous diving beetle (Coleoptera: Dytiscidae). Two species of Graphoderus have been recorded in North Dakota, G. perplexus, and G. occidentalis (Gordon and Post 1965, Hanson and Swanson 1989). Graphoderus liberus is transcontinental from New York to British Columbia, but it is more common along the coasts (Larson 1975). In Canada, G. liberus is uncommon; in Alberta only two specimens have been reported from woodland pools (Larson 1975). There have been no records of G. liberus occurring in North Dakota. Graphoderus liberus is easily distinguished from G. perplexus and G. …