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Describes the early exploration of Scotts Bluff by fur traders and the events that led to the establishment of the Scotts Bluff National Monument in Nebraska. Also includes a guide to the area and suggested readings.
Natural resource managers face a complex decision-making environment characterized by the potential occurrence of rapid and abrupt ecological change. These abrupt changes are poorly accommodated by traditional natural resource planning and decision-making processes. As recognition of threshold processes has increased, contemporary models of ecological systems have been modified to better represent a broader range of ecological system dynamics. Key conceptual advances associated with the ideas of non-linear responses, the existence of multiple ecological stable states and critical thresholds are more likely the rule than the exception in ecological systems. Once an ecological threshold is crossed, the ecosystem in question is not likely to return to its previous state. There are many examples and a general consensus that climatic disruptions will drive now stable systems across ecological thresholds. This book provides professional resource managers with a broad general decision framework that illustrates the utility of including ecological threshold concepts in natural resource management. It gives an entry into the literature in this rapidly evolving concept, with descriptions and discussion of the promising statistical approaches for threshold detection and demonstrations of the utility of the threshold framework via a series of case studies.
The Clean Water Act (CWA) requires that wetlands be protected from degradation because of their important ecological functions including maintenance of high water quality and provision of fish and wildlife habitat. However, this protection generally does not encompass riparian areasâ€"the lands bordering rivers and lakesâ€"even though they often provide the same functions as wetlands. Growing recognition of the similarities in wetland and riparian area functioning and the differences in their legal protection led the NRC in 1999 to undertake a study of riparian areas, which has culminated in Riparian Areas: Functioning and Strategies for Management. The report is intended to heighten awareness of riparian areas commensurate with their ecological and societal values. The primary conclusion is that, because riparian areas perform a disproportionate number of biological and physical functions on a unit area basis, restoration of riparian functions along America's waterbodies should be a national goal.
Recently, environmental scientists have been required to perform a new type of assessment-ecological risk assessment. This is the first book that explains how to perform ecological risk assessments and gives assessors access to the full range of useful data, models, and conceptual approaches they need to perform an accurate assessment. It explains how ecological risk assessment relates to more familiar types of assessments. It also shows how to organize and conduct an ecological risk assessment, including defining the source, selecting endpoints, describing the relevant features of the receiving environment, estimating exposure, estimating effects, characterizing the risks, and interacting with the risk manager. Specific technical topics include finding and selecting toxicity data; statistical and mathematical models of effects on organisms, populations, and ecosystems; estimation of chemical fate parameters; modeling of chemical transport and fate; estimation of chemical uptake by organisms; and estimation, propagation, and presentation of uncertainty. Ecological Risk Assessment also covers conventional risk assessments, risk assessments for existing contamination, large scale problems, exotic organisms, and risk assessments based on environmental monitoring. Environmental assessors at regulatory agencies, consulting firms, industry, and government labs need this book for its approaches and methods for ecological risk assessment. Professors in ecology and other environmental sciences will find the book's practical preparation useful for classroom instruction. Environmental toxicologists and chemists will appreciate the discussion of the utility for risk assessment of particular toxicity tests and chemical determinations.
Fort Union was established in 1851 by Colonel Edwin V. Sumner in the Wolf Creek Valley of New Mexico. It was an important point on the Santa Fe Trail until 1879, when the coming of the railroad changed the trading patterns that had started with the trail in 1821. Evidence of the past, in the form of crumblings [sic] walls and eroding ruts cut by wagons traversing the prairies, may be seen at Fort Union National monument. Visitors may note that six miles to the south, the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail joined the Cimarron Branch, the ruts still visible from the entrance road to the monument. The author of this study, Robert M. Utley, first researched Fort Union while he was with the National Park Service. He revised and updated his earlier material on the historic site for this study. Since retiring from the Park Service in 1980, he has devoted his time to writing. Two of his nonfiction works, an account of the Lincoln County War in New Mexico and a biography of Custer, won back-to-back Western Heritage awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1988 and 1989 -- Back cover.