bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Harvard and the Real World
Authors: Keller Morton , Keller Phyllis
Published: November 2020

Conant liked to recall that he became president of Harvard in the same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt became president of the United States and Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. The University would feel the impact of what those others wrought. More than ever before in its long history, Harvard during the 1930s and 1940s found itself enmeshed in the affairs of the world outside. Harvard had a presence in the early New Deal: but aside from alumnus FDR and Felix Frankfurter, not a very conspicuous one. The Alumni Bulletin took note of the absence of Harvard faculty in FDR’s early Brains Trust, and in 1936 Conant estimated that only five or six out of a staff of eighteen hundred had been granted leaves of absence since 1930 to work for the federal government. A member of the Economics department, asked about Harvard’s lack of visibility in Washington, replied: “We are standing by for the next New Deal!” Nor was the New Deal popular with a preponderantly Republican faculty and student body. In a Crimson poll in the fall of 1934, undergraduates opposed Roosevelt’s policies by 1,149–704, the faculty by 141–50. Though Conant voted for FDR, he was careful to preserve the outward forms of political neutrality. But conservative alums soon had a Harvard New Dealer they loved to hate: Law Professor Felix Frankfurter, ace recruiter for the New Deal, eminence grise to FDR, Vienna-born Jew. A fund-raiser reported trouble with donors over Frankfurter in the spring of 1934, and Mrs. Charles Francis Adams, the wife of Harvard’s former treasurer, “quizzed” Conant “heavily on whether or not Felix Frankfurter was a dangerous communist.” Conant had ample opportunity to polish up what became his standard response to radicalism-at-Harvard complaints: indignant denial that students were taught sedition and appeals to “the glorious tradition of freedom which is our heritage.” When an alumnus wanted to know what the University was doing about indoctrination by New Dealish professors, Conant quickly changed the subject to academic freedom: “democracy is made safe only to the extent that a reasonably tolerant point of view is engendered in the people at large.
The Ascendant Faculty
Authors: Keller Morton , Keller Phyllis
Published: November 2020

The most substantial legatee of Harvard’s new affluence was the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. These were years of heady growth in that body’s numbers, salary, perks, and power. It is not surprising that many professors later looked back wistfully to a Golden Age stretching from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. When Pusey arrived in 1953, nearly half of the 448 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had Harvard Ph.D.s. But the old Harvard habit of promoting from within was declining. Of 68 senior appointments between 1953 and 1957, more than half came from other schools; only six had come up through the College, the Harvard Graduate School, and the junior faculty. Harvard College graduates, 25 to 30 percent of the faculty in the Conant era, dropped to 5 to 10 percent in the Pusey years. Meritocracy had come into its own. Dean of the Faculty McGeorge Bundy, in office from 1953 until 1961, presided over the ascendancy of the professoriat. He was deeply committed to the meritocratic ideal of a faculty made up of the best and the brightest. He closely tracked the present state and future prospects of the Arts and Sciences departments. Biology worried him: it was a large department dominated by men in their fifties and sixties, “whose center of gravity is toward traditional taxonomy and the fulfillment of the great nineteenth century prospects of biology, rather than toward the new and growing subjects of a biochemical and biophysical character.” It divided into “the traditionalists, the neutralists, and a small fighting group of modernists. . . . The modernists are outnumbered, but it is my strong impression that they are our most promising and significant contributors to biological science. . . . I don’t think we ought to let ourselves be outweighed by entrenched voting power in this field full of growing new edges.”
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Authors: Keller Morton , Keller Phyllis
Published: November 2020

The changes of style and sensibility in Harvard’s governance during the last third of the twentieth century had close parallels in the academic realm. The faculty, like the bureaucracy, became more professional, more specialized, more worldly. Nevertheless, in most respects Harvard’s academic fundamentals in the magic year 2000 were pretty much what they had been half a century before. Faculty autonomy, the disciplinary pecking order, the tension between teaching and research, the sheer intellectual quality, range, and vigor of the place: these remained alive and well. Harvard changed more between 1940 and 1970 than it did between 1970 and 2000. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences traditionally was Harvard’s academic core. Medical School administrator Henry Meadow spoke in 1974 of the “religious” feeling that the FAS departments were the heart of the University, their faculty the real Harvard professors. By the end of the century that was a less self-evident proposition. The crisis of the late 1960s, the intellectual and career problems afflicting the humanities and the social sciences, and Derek Bok’s ideal of a more socially engaged and useful University eroded FAS’s privileged place. Yet the College and the Arts and Sciences departments still made the largest claim on the University’s assets and on its public reputation. The FAS deanships of Paul Buck in the 1940s and McGeorge Bundy in the 1950s gave their office a place in Harvard affairs second only to the president. John Dunlop, appointed to stanch the flow of institutional blood after the events of 1969, made way in 1973 for fellow economist Henry Rosovsky, who held the post until 1984 and then came back for a fill-in year in 1990. Rosovsky’s was one of the notable deanships in Harvard’s history, and he played a major role in the University’s glissade from meritocracy to worldliness. Like his predecessors Buck, Bundy, Ford, and Dunlop, Rosovsky had not gone to Harvard College. Unlike them he was Harvard’s first Jewish, and foreign-born, dean. He came to the United States in 1940, a thirteen- year-old refugee from Hitler’s Europe, and went to college at William and Mary.
Epilogue: Today and Tomorrow
Authors: Keller Morton , Keller Phyllis
Published: November 2020

As of the year 2000, Harvard was stronger academically, financially, and in national and international reputation than ever before in its (and perhaps any university’s) history. The sources of this preeminence— Harvard’s iconic national and international standing; the quality of its students, faculty, libraries, laboratories, and plant; its access to the money that made it all possible—showed no signs of diminishing at the century’s turn: quite the contrary. Old rivals Yale, Chicago, Columbia, Berkeley were not, by common consent, what they once had been. New challenger Stanford was something else again, but could not yet claim equal superpower status. Harvard’s is an archetypal American success story. And a number of other American universities have had comparable trajectories since World War II. That has been the record of the past. The question for the future: will the great American research universities—and in particular, Harvard—thrive in the decades to come as they have in decades past? Harvard’s age, wealth, quality, and prestige may well shield it from any conceivable vicissitudes. But if history teaches anything, it is that every institution, however successful, carries within it the seeds of future trouble. Times, values, social demands change. A century ago, the leading German universities had a similarly dominant position in the world of higher education. That preeminence, to understate the matter, did not last. In 1986, a half century after its 1936 fete, Harvard had another special birthday to celebrate, its 350th. Sesquis are not centennials, and the 350th Celebration (that was its official name; the proper Latin title, “Tercentennial Quinquagesimal,” was a clear nonstarter) did not carry the symbolic heft of the 1936 Tercentary. Still, more than a third of a thousand years of institutional survival was nothing to sniff at. Nor was there a shortage of achievements to commemorate. The Harvard of 1936 had seemed rich and substantial at the time; who could have foreseen what it would be fifty years later?
What’s Wrong with My Muscles?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

Since most fibromyalgia patients complain of aching and spasm in their muscles, common sense suggests that there must be something wrong with the muscle. This is easier said than agreed upon. For the last 80 years, researchers have been looking for the key to muscle pathology in fibromyalgia. As of this writing, there are highly respected investigators who feel that there is little if anything wrong with fibromyalgia muscles. However, other equally regarded researchers have presented evidence that abnormal muscle metabolism is the linchpin for what goes awry in the disorder. Why are there such discrepancies? Let’s explore what goes on in our muscles. Our body has 640 different muscles, which constitute as much as 40 percent of our weight. When physicians look at muscles of fibromyalgia patients under a simple microscope, they generally appear normal. In fact, muscles must be looked at under an electron microscope (which magnifies the tissue thousands of times) in order to find any consistent abnormalities. In this setting there are subtle alterations, including the deposition of a chemical, glycogen, swollen and abnormal cell organelles known as mitochondria, increased DNA fragmentation ragged red fibers, and smeared muscle cell membranes. Some investigators have shown that magnesium levels are low in the muscles of fibromyalgia patients. So where are the disagreements? Fibromyalgia patients are generally deconditioned. In other words, they are out of shape. Of course, many more people are out of shape than have fibromyalgia, but studies of muscles from out-of-shape people also show some of these alterations. If fibromyalgia muscles don’t look very different from normal muscles under themicroscope, where else can we look for muscle pathology? Muscle strength can be decreased or normal in fibromyalgia, and published studies conflict as to whether or not muscle fatigue is present. Nevertheless, people who are out of shape also have decreased muscle strength. Let’s look at blood flow to muscles. Muscles are fueled by oxygen, which is supplied and carried by arteries. Some muscles in fibromyalgia do not get enough oxygen. “Angina” of the muscles can develop, producing pain if the oxygen supply is decreased.
How Do Stress, Sleep, Hormones, and the Immune System Interact and Relate to Fibromyalgia?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

In medical school, students learn about the human body by organ system. They spend a few weeks on the heart, then the lung, followed by the gastrointestinal tract. Eventually the whole body is covered. One of the fascinating developments in the last decade has been the functional linkage and new connections of seemingly diverse body systems. Fibromyalgia research finally hit its stride when important studies connected the nervous system, the endocrine (hormone) system, and the immune system. This enabled physicians to devise improved strategies to help fibromyalgia patients. Basic background information provided in this chapter will be expanded upon in later parts of the book when we review treatments. Within the brain is a small region known as the hypothalamus. It makes releasing hormones that travel down a short path to the pituitary gland, which makes stimulating hormones. The stimulating hormones send signals to tissues where hormones are manufactured for specialized functions. Table 3 and Figure 9 show how thyroid, cortisol, insulin, breast milk, and growth hormone are made along the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. We have already mentioned that emotional stress can bring on or aggravate fibromyalgia. At the National Institutes of Health and the University of Michigan, studies have firmly established some of the factors important in this relationship. The role of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), the precursor or ancestor of the steroid known as cortisol, has been the focus of much of this work. Even though CRH levels are normal in fibromyalgia, CRH responses (stress responses) to different forms of stimulation are blunted. CRH has many important interactions other than leading to the production of steroids. Its expression can be increased by stress, serotonin, and estrogen. Endorphins promote the secretion of CRH. Decreased sympathetic nervous system activity in the adrenal glands and substance P, as well as nitric oxide, can turn off CRH production. Rats with abnormally low stress responses develop many of the features we associate with fibromyalgia. How do these interrelationships translate into a fibromyalgia patient’s feeling of being unwell? The answer is not clear. However, these studies suggest that fibromyalgia patients do not respond normally to acute stress and do not release enough adrenalin.
I Reinvent Agriculture
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

Many of us who work with pencil, pen, or computer like to vary the intellectual routine by doing something “real.” Some build cabinets and canoes, some sing in choral groups, others join first aid squads. I take care of our garden. Gardening is an especially good activity for eggheads because it combines physical labor with the opportunity to be creative. Unlike the ideas in the books I write, however, my creations in the gar-den are quickly put to the test. My experience last summer is a case in point. I like to eat what I grow, so I have little patience with flowers and other ornamentals. I tolerate the ones that were planted around the house when we first arrived: yew, hemlock, cherry laurel, forsythia, flame azalea—the usual things provided by botanically challenged, cost-conscious builders. If these woody perennials get sick I do what I can for them, given my lack of knowledge and low level of interest. Some times I fertilize, sometimes I continue to refrain from fertilizing, depending on my intuition in the particular case. The same goes for watering. Our flame azalea is down to one tiny branch with eleven leaves on it, about the same as last year. I don’t know whether I am keeping it alive against all odds, or preventing it from making the full recovery that it would be capable of if cared for by somebody else. I view my role in the treatment of our ornamental plantings like that of the remote HMO clerk who makes the critical decisions in a complex medical case; any unfortunate consequences of my ignorance are not of great concern. Fruits and vegetables are another matter. I am not much more knowledgeable about them than about azaleas, but I try a lot harder. Because this is a story about vegetables, I will skip the fruits, except to note that we pick our own sour cherries, figs, peaches, plums, grapes, apricots, and apples—in sharply decreasing order of abundance (squirrels got all of my apples this year).
Teaching Field Ecology
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

The first thing I did when I arrived at Rutgers in the late summer of 1974was to plan the courses I would teach. My principal fall course was to be based on one that I had helped teach for a few years at Barnard College: The Natural History of the New York Area. At Barnard, I had learned the subject by accompanying far more experienced colleagues—Tony Warburton, an evolutionary biologist, and Patricia Dudley, an ecologist—on their field trips. Now, in New Brunswick, I had a new teaching partner, Jim Applegate, a wildlife biologist, but I didn’t anticipate any changes. Jim listened to my plans for the course with gratifying attention and enthusiasm. He had only a few questions. “What are we going to call the course?” “‘The Natural History of the New York Area,’” I answered, “or may be ‘The Natural History of New Jersey.’ That’s what it is, isn’t it?” “Sure. But we already have our course in General Ecology, which you run. That’s mostly theoretical, indoor classroom learning. Why not call the new course ‘Field Ecology’ and design it to let students who have had General Ecology apply their knowledge to the real world? In other words, we want to teach them more than descriptive natural history—they should understand the ecological and human processes that make each place what it is.”This meant a pretty complete rethinking of the course, which I hadn’t expected to do, but I grudgingly agreed. Thus began what has be-come the most remarkable experience of my teaching career. For the first three or four years, we taught together: two different sections a week, each with the two of us and fourteen students crammed into a fifteen-passenger van for field trips that lasted from 1:00 to 6:30 P.M. From the start we decided that there would be almost no class-room teaching, just field trips, regardless of weather. And so we have witnessed the majestic silence of a white cedar swamp in the October sun-shine, have walked the springy, low-tide–bared Spartina salt marsh in torrential rain, and have given final exams on abandoned landfills during snowstorms.
More Field Ecology: Rightofway Island
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

On all but one of the field trips in my Field Ecology course, I take my students to the sorts of places that they have been to before: the beach, the pinelands, the Highlands forest, farms, old fields, streams, salt marshes, suburbs. But on the third trip, after the ones to the campus and to the experimental plots at Hutcheson Forest, we go to a place that is, for all its superficial familiarity, altogether different and exotic. This trip is to America’s deserted empire, what the person who knew it best, ecologist Frank Egler, described as the Right of way Domain. Right-of-way land comprises at least fifty to seventy-five million acres in the United States, an area larger than New England. It is disposed as long strips of property along railroad tracks, roads, and canals; under power lines; and above buried pipelines. Many of these rights-of-way, even those in heavily populated areas, are scarcely ever visited by people—they are cut off from human presence by fences, no-trespassing signs, patrolling police, dense vegetation, and a scarcity of reasons to set foot in them. True, some abandoned rights-of-way have been put to use. The tow-path and adjacent land along the old Delaware–Raritan Canal, which winds its way for many miles through central New Jersey, has become a very long, very narrow, very popular state park. Indeed, this is the park that has helped protect the forest along the Millstone River, which I de-scribed earlier. Hunters love the rights-of-way under power lines, which attract deer and small game. And disused railroad lines have been turned into foot and bike trails in several parts of the country. But many rights-of-way, totaling a huge amount of land, go for months or years without feeling a human step or hearing a human voice. These places are them-selves neither urban nor suburban nor rural; neither settled nor wilder-ness. They are a quintessential part of what author James Howard Kunstler has called “the geography of nowhere.” In my right-of-way trip we start with a boggy strip of land above a transcontinental gas pipeline.
Degrees of Intimacy
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

When we arrived in Vancouver at the start of our vacation, the tabloid headline at the newspaper stand caught our attention. “World’s Bravest Mom,” it shrieked. We stopped to read. The story was simple; it needed no journalistic embellishment. Dusk, August 19, 1996. Mrs. Cindy Parolin is horseback riding with her four children in Tulameen, in southern British Columbia’s Okanagan region. Without warning, a cougar springs out of the vegetation, hurtling at the neck of one of the horses. In the confusion, Steven Parolin, age six, falls off his horse and is seized by the cougar. Mrs. Parolin, armed only with a riding crop, jumps off her horse and challenges the cougar, which drops the bleeding child and springs at her. Ordering her other children to take their wounded brother and go for help, Mrs. Parolin confronts the cougar alone. By the time rescuers reach her an hour later, she is dying. The cat, shot soon afterward, was a small one, little more than sixty pounds. Adult male cougars can weigh as much as 200 pounds, we learn the next day from the BC Environment’s pamphlet entitled “Safety Guide to Cougars.” We are on our way to Garibaldi Provincial Park, where we plan to do some hiking, and have stopped in the park head-quarters for information. “Most British Columbians live all their lives without a glimpse of a cougar, much less a confrontation with one,” says the pamphlet, noting that five people have been killed by cougars in British Columbia in the past hundred years. (Actually, the number is now higher; cougar attacks have become increasingly common in the western United States and Canada in recent years.) “Seeing a cougar should be an exciting and rewarding experience, with both you and the cougar coming away unharmed.”However, the pamphlet notes, cougars seem to be attracted to children as prey, possibly because of “their high-pitched voices, small size, and erratic movements.” When hiking, “make enough noise to prevent surprising a cougar . . . carry a sturdy walking stick to be used as a weapon if necessary,” and “keep children close-at-hand and under control.”
Human Ecology as a Problem of Ecological Design
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

Whatever their particular causes, environmental problems all share one fundamental trait: with rare exceptions they are unintended, unforeseen, and sometimes ironic side effects of actions arising from other intentions. We intend one thing and sooner or later get something very different. We intended merely to be prosperous and healthy but have inadvertently triggered a mass extinction of other species, spread pollution throughout the world, and triggered climatic change—all of which undermines our prosperity and health. Environmental problems, then, are mostly the result of a miscalibration between human intentions and ecological results, which is to say that they are a kind of design failure. The possibility that ecological problems are design failures is perhaps bad news because it may signal inherent flaws in our perceptual and mental abilities. On the other hand, it may be good news. If our problems are, to a great extent, the result of design failures, the obvious solution is better design, by which I mean a closer fit between human intentions and the ecological systems where the results of our intentions are ultimately played out. The perennial problem of human ecology is how different cultures provision themselves with food, shelter, energy, and the means of livelihood by extracting energy and materials from their surroundings (Smil 1994). Ecological design describes the ensemble of technologies and strategies by which societies use the natural world to construct culture and meet their needs. Because the natural world is continually modified by human actions, culture and ecology are shifting parts of an equation that can never be solved. Nor can there be one correct design strategy. Hunter-gatherers lived on current solar income. Feudal barons extracted wealth from sunlight by exploiting serfs who farmed the land. We provision ourselves by mining ancient sunlight stored as fossil fuels. The choice is not whether or not human societies have a design strategy, but whether that strategy works ecologically and can be sustained within the regenerative capacity of the particular ecosystem. The problem of ecological design has become more difficult as the human population has grown and technology has multiplied. It is now the overriding problem of our time, affecting virtually all other issues on the human agenda.
Verbicide
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

He entered my office for advice as a freshman advisee sporting nearly perfect SAT scores and an impeccable academic record—by all accounts a young man of considerable promise. During a 20-minute conversation about his academic future, however, he displayed a vocabulary that consisted mostly of two words: “cool” and “really.” Almost 800 SAT points hitched to each word. To be fair, he could use them interchangeably as “really cool” or “cool . . . really!” He could also use them singly, presumably for emphasis. When he became one of my students in a subsequent class I confirmed that my first impression of the young scholar was largely accurate and that his vocabulary, and presumably his mind, consisted predominantly of words and images derived from overexposure to television and the new jargon of computer- speak. He is no aberration, but an example of a larger problem, not of illiteracy but of diminished literacy in a culture that often sees little reason to use words carefully, however abundantly. Increasingly, student papers, from otherwise very good students, have whole paragraphs that sound like advertising copy. Whether students are talking or writing, a growing number have a tenuous grasp on a declining vocabulary. Excise “uh . . . like . . . uh” from virtually any teenage conversation, and the effect is like sticking a pin into a balloon. In the past 50 years, by one reckoning, the working vocabulary of the average 14-year-old has declined from some 25,000 words to 10,000 words (“Harper’s Index” 2000). This reflects not merely a decline in numbers of words but in the capacity to think. It also reflects a steep decline in the number of things that an adolescent needs to know and to name in order to get by in an increasingly homogenized and urbanized consumer society. This is a national tragedy virtually unnoticed in the media. It is no mere coincidence that in roughly the same half century the average person has learned to recognize more than 1,000 corporate logos but can recognize fewer than 10 plants and animals native to their locality (Hawken 1993, 214).
Soil Stratigraphy
Authors: Holliday Vance T.
Published: November 2020

Soils have been employed in archaeological stratigraphy since at least the 1930s, including topical discussions of the significance of soils in stratified deposits (e.g., Leighton, 1936, 1937; Bryan and Albritton, 1943). This apparently was for several reasons. The unique physical and chemical properties that distinguish soils from sediments make soils quite useful for stratigraphic subdivision and correlation. In particular, pedologic features, most notably soil horizons, are often the most visually prominent features in stratified deposits. Furthermore, much of the early archaeological pedology was done by individuals trained in Quaternary geology (e.g., Leighton, 1937; Bryan, 1941a; Bryan and Albritton, 1943; Movius, 1944, pp. 49–62), in which soils have been recognized as stratigraphically important since the late 19th century (Bowen, 1978, pp. 10–56; Finkl, 1980; Tandarich, 1998a). The recognition of soils and the differentiation of soils from sediments in archaeological contexts is one of the most fundamentally significant aspects of geoarchaeological stratigraphy. This initial step in stratigraphic interpretation is crucial to most of the applications of pedology and soil geomorphology discussed in subsequent chapters. Because soils indicate periods of stability or hiatuses in deposition, the identification of soils or the lack thereof in a stratigraphic sequence provides information on the number of depositional episodes and intervals of stability. The identification of specific soil horizons also provides clues to the degree and duration of soil development, the nature of the soil-forming environment, and the kinds of soil-forming processes that may affect the archaeological record. Further, tracing of soils from exposure to exposure is a key aspect of correlating strata and interpreting the evolution of archaeological landscapes. This chapter presents a discussion of some principals of soil stratigraphy, and the following chapter focuses on the archaeological significance of soils as stratigraphic units. This chapter begins with a discussion of basic stratigraphy, which is one of the fundamental components of field-based geoscience. That section is followed by a closer look at soil stratigraphy, including a summary of both formal and informal soil stratigraphic nomenclature as well as a discussion of the unique characteristics of soils when used as stratigraphic markers and their archaeological implications.
Introductory Overview
Authors: Smith Raymond C. , Goodin Douglas G.
Published: November 2020

Elias argues (chapter 18, p. 370) that ecosystems are shaped by environmental changes that have occurred over thousands of years so that the century to millennial timescale is of particular significance because “it is on these timescales that ecosystems form, break apart, and reform in new configurations.” Within this context, the authors for the three chapters in part IV evaluate evidence for climate variability since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the present. They evaluate the biological responses to these longer term changes and highlight the importance of past climatic conditions on current ecosystem function. If we view, as Elias does, glacial climate as a filter through which ecosystems have passed, then variability since the LGM comprises a significant fraction of the biotic history that shaped current ecosystems. This is an overriding theme for this section. Fountain and Lyons (chapter 16), examining a dry valley ecosystem in Antarctica (MCM), evaluate various proxy records to establish the historic context of their landscape. They argue that this historical context is important for a full understanding of ecosystems and that it is especially important for the MCM ecosystem. Providing an excellent example of legacy, the effect of past imprints on current ecosystem function, they present evidence that past climatic variations truly dictate current ecosystem status. During the LGM, ice blocked the current Taylor Valley, forming a lake that contained phytoplankton and algal mats. Subsequent warming eliminated the blockage, drained the large lake, forming several smaller ones, and established the current landscape. The former large lake supplied nutrients to the soil and current lakes. Fountain and Lyons (p. 334) state that “the vital importance of climatic legacy in the dry valleys is due to its extreme environment, low biodiversity, and short food chains.” They also observe a “polar amplification,” whereby the sharp solid/liquid phase transition of water allows small changes in climate to produce relatively large variations in ecosystem response. The Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research site (JRN) is representative of the desert shrubland and desert grassland ecosystems of the southwestern United States. Monger (chapter 17) makes use of a range of biotic (packrat middens, fossil pollen), abiotic (chronological data on lake levels, position of alpine glaciers and rock glaciers) and soil-geomorphic evidence to create a working hypothesis of the bioclimatic changes during the last 20,000 years. There is a remarkable consistency in these proxy estimates given their diversity.
Millennial-Scale Climate Variability and Ecosystem Response at the Jornada LTER Site
Authors: Monger H. Curtis
Published: November 2020

The Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research (JRN LTER) program consists of studies superimposed on three research entities, the Jornada Experimental Range, the Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center, and the Desert Soil-Geomorphology project (figure 17.1). The JRN site is in the northern part of the Chihuahuan Desert and represents, for the LTER network, the desert shrubland and desert grassland ecosystems of the southwestern United States. Climate data at the Jornada site and surrounding area span the last 110 years. Ecological data span the last 144 years. Despite having over 100 years of data, researchers at the Jornada LTER have struggled to answer the focal question of this book: How have ecosystems responded to climatic variability? This is because, simultaneous with climate, another important factor has had a major impact on ecosystems—human land use. Cattle grazing, brush control, and habitat fractionation have merged with climate to produce external pressures on Jornada ecosystems (Schlesinger et al. 1990; Havstad et al. 2000). Even more uncertain is the cause-and-effect relationship between climate and ecosystems in prehistoric times. Here evidence is limited to indicators, such as former lake shorelines, plant fossils in packrat middens, fossil pollen, 13C/12C ratios in paleosols, and erosion rates. When some indicators are used by themselves, circularity arises if a conclusion about ecosystem response to climate change is based on an inference about climate change, which is based, in turn, on ecosystem change. For example, grasslands increased at the end of the middle Holocene as the result of increased rainfall, where the interpretation of increased rainfall is based on increased grass pollen in the middle Holocene sediments (Freeman 1972). Although focusing on millennial-scale climate and ecosystem variability, this chapter briefly discusses historic variability for comparison and as a means for describing the setting. The historic-prehistoric boundary for the Jornada area has been set at A.D. 1850 (table 17.1). Located at 32.5º N and 106.8º W, in New Mexico, USA, the Jornada LTER site is in the Basin and Range province (Peterson 1981), which is characterized by parallel mountain ranges separated by structural basins filled with Cenozoic sediments (Hawley 1986). Elevations at the Jornada range from 1,180 m (3,870 ft) in the Rio Grande floodplain to 2,749 m (9,012 ft) in the Organ Mountains.
Climate Variability in Tallgrass Prairie at Multiple Timescales: Konza Prairie Biological Station
Authors: Goodin Douglas G. , Fay Philip A.
Published: November 2020

Climate is a fundamental driver of ecosystem structure and function (Prentice et al. 1992). Historically, North American grassland and forest biomes have fluctuated across the landscape in step with century- to millennialscale climate variability (Axelrod 1985; Ritchie 1986). Climate variability of at decadal scale, such as the severe drought of the 1930s in the Central Plains of North America, caused major shifts in grassland plant community composition (Weaver 1954, 1968). However, on a year-to-year basis, climate variability is more likely to affect net primary productivity (NPP; Briggs and Knapp 1995; Knapp et al. 1998; Briggs and Knapp 2001). This is especially true for grasslands, which have recently been shown to display greater variability in net primary production in response to climate variability than forest, desert, or arctic/alpine systems (Knapp and Smith 2001). Although the basic relationships among interannual variability in rainfall, temperature, and grassland NPP have been well studied (Sala et al. 1988; Knapp et al. 1998; Alward et al. 1999), the linkages to major causes of climate variability at quasi-quintennial (~5 years) or interdecadal (~10 year) timescales in the North American continental interior, such as solar activity cycles, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and the North Pacific Index (NP), are less well understood. In this chapter, we will examine how interannual, quasi-quintennial, and interdecadal variation in annual precipitation and mean annual temperature at a tallgrass prairie site (Konza Prairie Biological Station) may be related to indexes of solar activity, ENSO, NAO, and NP, and in turn how these indexes may be related to aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP). Specifically, we present (1) period-spectrum analyses to characterize the predominant timescales of temperature and precipitation variability at Konza Prairie, (2) correlation analyses of quantitative indexes of the major atmospheric processes with Konza temperature and precipitation records, and (3) the implications of variation in major atmospheric processes for seasonal and interannual patterns of ANPP. The Konza Prairie Biological Station (KNZ), which lies in the Flint Hills (39º05' N, 96º35' W), is a 1.6-million-ha region spanning eastern Kansas from the Nebraska border to northeastern Oklahoma (figure 20.1). This region is the largest remaining tract of unbroken tallgrass prairie in North America (Samson and Knopf 1994) and falls in the more mesic eastern portion of the Central Plains grasslands.
Visions of a Post–Territorial Order
Authors: Goldsmith Jack , Wu Tim
Published: November 2020

A decade before the Yahoo case, two men in different parts of America began to use the Internet for the first time. One was Julian Dibbell, a New Yorker and pop music writer who covered technology issues for the Village Voice. The other was John Perry Barlow of Wyoming, a libertarian, lyricist, and cattle rancher who looked the years he had spent traveling with the Grateful Dead. Dibbell and Barlow were very different people. Dibbell, born in the 1960s, was a member of what people in the ’90s called Generation X. Barlow was writing rock-and-roll songs when Dibbell was born, and he never lost the passion or political purpose of the 1960s. But the two had this in common: neither were native computer geeks, and both were lucid, even lyrical writers who wanted to communicate the Internet experience to regular people. In popular magazines like Wired and the Village Voice, they did just this. Dibbell and Barlow became the great explorers of the cyberspace age. Like Henry Stanley, the Welsh-American journalist who famously recounted his expeditions in Africa, Dibbell and Barlow had discovered an exotic place and wanted to tell others about it. As with any explorers, the tales they brought back reflected their own experience and assumptions more than objective reality. Nonetheless, these stories articulated a powerful vision: a new frontier, where people lived in peace, under their own rules, liberated from the constraints of an oppressive society and free from government meddling. Through the writings and actions of Dibbell, Barlow, and others, this chapter and the next depict the era when it was widely believed that cyberspace might challenge the authority of nation-states and move the world to a new, post-territorial system. Today, notions of a selfgoverning cyberspace are largely discredited. But the historical significance of these ideas cannot be ignored. They had an enormous impact on Internet writers and thinkers, firms, and even the U.S. Supreme Court—an influence that is still with us today. To understand the reality and forgotten virtues of territorial government, we must first understand the possibilities and attractions of a place once called cyberspace.
The Conceptual Basis of LTER Studies in the Alaskan Boreal Forest
Authors: Yarie John , Viereck Leslie A.
Published: November 2020

The boreal forest occupies 10% of the ice-free terrestrial surface and is the second most extensive terrestrial biome on Earth, after tropical forests (Saugier et al. 2001). It is a land of extremes: low temperature and precipitation, low diversity of dominant plant species, dramatic population fluctuations of important insects and mammals, and a generally sparse human population. The boreal forest is also a land poised for change. During the last third of the twentieth century, many areas of the boreal forest, such as western North America and northern Eurasia, warmed more rapidly than any other region on Earth (Serreze et al. 2000). This pattern of warming is consistent with projections of general circulation models. These models project that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, will cause the global climate to warm and that the warming will occur most rapidly at high latitudes (Ramaswamy et al. 2001). If we accept the projections of these models, the climate of many parts of the boreal forest will likely continue to warm even more rapidly than it has in the past. The ecological characteristics of the boreal forest render it vulnerable to warming and other global changes. Because the boreal forest is the coldest forested biome on Earth, organisms are adapted to low temperatures, and many of its physical and biological processes are molded by low temperature. Permafrost (permanently frozen ground) is widespread and governs the soil temperature and moisture regime of a large proportion of the boreal forest. Yet permafrost temperatures are close to the freezing point throughout much of interior Alaska (Osterkamp and Romanovsky 1999), so only a slight warming of soils could greatly reduce the extent of permafrost. Low temperature and anaerobic soil conditions associated with permafrost-impeded drainage constrain decomposition rate, leading to thick layers of soil organic matter. Consequently, boreal soils account for about a third of the readily decomposable soil organic matter on Earth (McGuire et al. 1995). This represents a quantity of carbon similar to that in the atmosphere. Fire is another process that could rapidly return this undecomposed carbon from the organic layers of the soil to the atmosphere.
Floristic Diversity and Vegetation Distribution in the Alaskan Boreal Forest
Authors: Viereck Leslie A. , Walker Marilyn D.
Published: November 2020

Although modern forests have occupied interior Alaska for only 13,000 years, their floristic composition and patterns of distribution have remained relatively stable for the past 5,000 years (Chapter 5). Here, at the current northern limit of forests, severe environmental conditions have prevented migration of new species from the south. The Bering Sea has isolated Alaska from a taxonomically distinct flora in Eurasia. Mountains to the north (Brooks Range) and south (Alaska Range) of interior Alaska have restricted the potential for latitudinal shifts of species in response to millennial-scale variations in climate. The stability of the Alaskan vegetation mosaic for the past 5,000 years contrasts with the substantial vegetation movements that have occurred in the eastern Canadian boreal forest (Bergeron et al. 2004). Because of this long-term stability, the distribution of Alaska’s boreal vegetation reflects a clear imprint of current environmental patterns on the landscape. This strong link between current environment and vegetation facilitates the use of state factors (Chapter 1) as a framework for describing floristic patterns, although barriers to past migration could lead to rapid vegetation change, if new species were to arrive in Alaska. In this chapter we describe the major patterns of diversity and distribution in interior Alaska forests and discuss their potential future changes. The common and scientific names of species mentioned in this chapter are given in Table 6.1. The composition of the boreal forest varies greatly throughout its circumpolar range in response to differences in both current environment and geoclimatic history. The primary species, those that give the forest is distinctive appearance, include broadleafed deciduous trees, needle-leafed evergreens, and needle-leafed deciduous trees. In Alaska, the predominant conifers are white and black spruce (Picea glauca and P. mariana, respectively); larch (Larix laricina) tends to be local; and pine is absent in interior Alaska but a prominent component of the forests to the east in the Yukon and the Northwest Territory, Canada. Important deciduous trees are two poplars (aspen [Populus tremuloides] and balsam poplar [P. balsamifera]) and paper birch (Betula neoalaskana; previously treated as B. papyrifera).
Mammalian Herbivory, Ecosystem Engineering, and Ecological Cascades in Alaskan Boreal Forests
Authors: Bryant John P. , Ruess Roger W.
Published: November 2020

The mammalian herbivores of the taiga forests include members of the largest (moose) and smallest (microtines) vertebrates that inhabit North American terrestrial biomes. Their abundance in a particular area fluctuates dramatically due to seasonal use of particular habitats (moose) and external factors that influence demographic processes (microtines). The low visibility of herbivores to the casual observer might suggest that these animals have minimal influence on the structure and the function of boreal forests. On the contrary, seedling herbivory by voles, leaf stripping by moose, or wholesale logging of mature trees by beaver can profoundly change forest structure and functioning. These plant-herbivore interactions have cascading effects on the physical, chemical, and biological components of the boreal ecosystem that shape the magnitude and direction of many physicochemical and biological processes. These processes, in turn, control the vertical and horizontal interactions of the biological community at large. Herbivores act as ecosystem engineers (Jones et al. 1994) in that they reshape the physical characteristics of the habitat, modify the resource array and population ecology of sympatric species, and influence the flux of energy and nutrients through soils and vegetation. Additionally, many herbivores are central to a variety of human activities. Both consumptive and nonconsumptive use of wildlife represents a pervasive aspect of life in the North. In this chapter, we examine the interactions of mammalian herbivores with their environment, with an emphasis on moose, and attempt to delineate the biotic and abiotic conditions under which herbivores influence the phenotypic expression of vegetation. We also examine the role of herbivores, and of wildlife in general, in the context of human perceptions and interactions with their environment. Human-environment interactions are both direct and indirect and pertain to a variety of social expressions. The relationship between humans and wildlife has economic, cultural, and psychological dimensions, which underscore the importance of these animals in a broader social, as well as ecological, context. Northern ecosystems such as the boreal forest are characterized by extreme seasonality and pronounced change in resource availability between summer and winter. Not surprisingly, these conditions are reflected in the population dynamics of the animals that inhabit these environments, particularly in smaller-bodied herbivores.