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Shallow wetlands that occur primarily in semi-arid to arid environments, playas are keystone ecosystems in the western Great Plains of North America. Providing irreplaceable habitat for native plants and animals, including migratory birds, they are essential for the maintenance of biotic diversity throughout the region. Playas also serve to recharge the aquifer that supplies much of the water for the Plains states. At the same time, however, large-scale habitat changes have endangered playas across the Great Plains, making urgent the need to understand their ecology and implement effective conservation measures. This book provides a state-of-the-art survey of all that is currently known about Great Plains playa ecology and conservation. Loren Smith synthesizes his own extensive research with other published studies to define playas and characterize their origin, development, flora, fauna, structure, function, and diversity. He also thoroughly explores the human relationship with playas from prehistoric times, when they served as campsites for the Clovis peoples, to today's threats to playa ecosystems from agricultural activities and global climate change. A blueprint for government agencies, private conservation groups, and concerned citizens to save these unique prairie ecosystems concludes this landmark study.
"This volume brings together nineteen papers of interdisciplinary Quaternary science honoring Stephen Porter. Special Paper 548 features papers from six continents, on wide-ranging topics including glaciation, paleoecology, landscape evolution, megafloods, and loess. The topical and geographical range of the papers, as well as their interdisciplinary nature, honor Porter's distinct approach to Quaternary science and leadership that influence the field to this day"--
This book provides an overview of the distribution, properties, and function of soils in the U.S., including Alaska, Hawaii, and its Caribbean territories. It discusses the history of soil surveys and pedological research in the U.S., and offers general descriptions of the country’s climate, geology and geomorphology. For each Land Resource Region (LRR) – a geographic/ecological region of the country characterized by its own climate, geology, landscapes, soils, and agricultural practices – there is a chapter with details of the climate, geology, geomorphology, pre-settlement and current vegetation, and land use, as well as the distribution and properties of major soils including their genesis, classification, and management challenges. The final chapters address topics such as soils and humans, and the future challenges for soil science and soil surveys in the U.S. Maps of soil distribution, pedon descriptions, profile images, and tables of properties are included throughout the text.
This text, written by a leading researcher in the field, describes the origin and formation of lakes in order to give context to the question of how lacustrine deposits form. It explains the process of sedimentation in lakes and the chemistry of those deposits and describes how the age of lake deposits are determined. Additionally, this book shows how different groups of fossils are used in interpreting the paleontological record of lakes. In order to illustrate the more synthetic approaches to interpreting the history of lakes, the author also discusses such special topics as lake-level history, lake evolution, and the impact of environmental change on lakes.
The Southern High Plains of northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico are rich in Paleoindian archaeological sites, including such well-known ones as Clovis, Lubbock Lake, Plainview, and Midland. These sites have been extensively researched over decades, not only by archaeologists but also by geoscientists, whose studies of soils and stratigraphy have yielded important information about cultural chronology and paleoenvironments across the region. In this book, Vance T. Holliday synthesizes the data from these earlier studies with his own recent research to offer the most current and comprehensive overview of the geoarchaeology of the Southern High Plains during the earliest human occupation. He delves into twenty sites in depth, integrating new and old data on site geomorphology, stratigraphy, soils, geochronology, and paleoenvironments. He also compares the Southern High Plains sites with other sites across the Great Plains, for a broader chronological and paleoenvironmental perspective. With over ninety photographs, maps, cross sections, diagrams, and artifact drawings, this book will be essential reading for geoarchaeologists, archaeologists, and Quaternary geoscientists, as well as avocational archaeologists who take part in Paleoindian site study throughout the American West.