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In The Future of the Southern Plains, scholars bring the region to the forefront by asking important questions about its past and suggesting prospects for its future. The contributors, some of them natives of the region, bring to their work a blend of scholarship and personal experience. They match intellectual sophistication with deep affection for a place defined primarily as western Texas, Oklahoma, and eastern New Mexico. Within this volume is a story about America, a story about limits, and a story about challenging those limits. Seven historians, one geographer, and a paleoclimatologist contribute a wealth of observation, analysis, and commentary on the environmental characteristics and history of the Southern Plains. They address such themes as failing communities, scarce water, endangered species, and disappearing ways of life—and the possible results of these developments not only in the Southern Plains but elsewhere on the globe. Based on presentations at a symposium sponsored by the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, these essays treat the most important aspects of life on the Southern Plains today, from climate, politics, and religion to business and environmental renewal. Contributors and topics include: Sherry L. Smith: Introduction Dan Flores: Environmental destruction and preservation John Miller Morris: Corporations and family farms Diana Davids Olien: Oil production John Opie: Water management Jeff Roche: Political history Yolanda Romero: Political history Elliott West: Exploration Connie Woodhouse: Droughts
In the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms.Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.
Between 2016 and 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Southern Plains Climate Hub led a project to assess the impacts of the recent historic 2016 and 2018 wildfires on the Southern Plains. Titled the 2016-2018 Southern Plains Wildfire Assessment, this project was coordinated with multiple agencies and organizations across the region including the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP) a NOAA Regional Integrated Science and Assessment (RISA) team,University of Oklahoma's Center for Spatial Analysis, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Grazinglands Research Laboratory, among others. Elements of this project included three local stakeholder events across the affected region as well as are search component investigating characteristics of vegetation recovery within these areas. The findings of both are coupled in this assessment report to encourage the risk reduction measures of future wildfire recovery and preparedness efforts across the Southern Plains.
In July 2017, the conference, Resilient Southern Plains Agriculture and Forestry in a Varying and Changing Climate, reviewed the status and needs for the future in the Southern Plains relative to irrigation and dryland farming, range and livestock, confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and forestry. The conference was at the Redlands Community College in El Reno, Oklahoma in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Climate Hub. Participants included stakeholders, researchers, and extension faculty as well agencies' representatives. Conference attendees agreed that the climate outlook is greater variability with positive and negative expectations for pests and diseases. Major themes included: increased diversification to maintain the local economies over the next several years resulting from the mining of the Ogallala Aquifer; irrigation evolution to dryland crops or pasture production; and a strong need to protect the rangeland resources of the region. For CAFOs the major concern was locally produced feed, particularly forages. The conference was structured into two main components. The first -- assessing the current state of knowledge -- centered on seven white papers written by regional experts: Climate Considerations; Food and Fiber Production Systems; Range, Grassland, and Livestock Management; CAFOs; Forestry, Arthropod Pests and Plant Disease; Economic Drivers. Formal presentations of these papers served to outline the status, challenges, gaps, and opportunities for production agriculture across the Southern Plains within the context of climate extremes and changes. The second working component -- understanding and prioritizing science and service requirements -- utilized breakout sessions where scientists and stakeholders identified challenges and opportunities to mitigate climate-driven production risks for regional agriculture. The goal was to take an optimistic view by identifying resources and capacities that exist in the Southern Plains to address those challenges, including proactive, cross-boundary research and extension team development. A roadmap for future research and extension will be developed based on the conference.
America's Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write, "it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals." In a work that is at once a lyrical evocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory—and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them at the hands of market hunters and ranchers and ultimately a federal killing program in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Great Plains with its wildlife intact dazzled Americans and Europeans alike, prompting numerous literary tributes. American Serengeti takes its place alongside these celebratory works, showing us the grazers and predators of the plains against the vast opalescent distances, the blue mountains shimmering on the horizon, the great rippling tracts of yellowed grasslands. Far from the empty "flyover country" of recent times, this landscape is alive with a complex ecology at least 20,000 years old—a continental patrimony whose wonders may not be entirely lost, as recent efforts hold out hope of partial restoration of these historic species. Written by an author who has done breakthrough work on the histories of several of these animals—including bison, wild horses, and coyotes—American Serengeti is as rigorous in its research as it is intimate in its sense of wonder—the most deeply informed, closely observed view we have of the Great Plains' wild heritage.
examines relations between Southeastern Indians who were removed to Indian Territory in the early nineteenth century and Southern Plains Indians who claimed this area as their own. These two Indian groups viewed the world in different ways. The Southeastern Indians, primarily Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, were agricultural peoples. By the nineteenth century they were adopting American "civilization": codified laws, Christianity, market-driven farming, and a formal, Euroamerican style of education. By contrast, the hunter-gathers of the Southern Plains-the Comanches, Kiowas, Wichitas, and Osages-had a culture based on the buffalo. They actively resisted the Removed Indians' "invasion" of their homelands. The Removed Indians hoped to lessen Plains Indian raids into Indian Territory by "civilizing" the Plains peoples through diplomatic councils and trade. But the Southern Plains Indians were not interested in "civilization" and saw no use in farming. Even their defeat by the U.S. government could not bridge the cultural gap between the Plains and Removed Indians, a gulf that remains to this day.
A collection of letters and articles written by Caroline Henderson between 1908 and 1966 which provide insight into her life in the Great Plains, featuring both published materials and private correspondence. Includes a biographical profile, chapter introductions, and annotations.