Question: Who was an American writer responsible for a dissertation concerning  the towns and districts built near sediment formations around Lake Superior?

A Dissertation Concerning the Nature of True Virtue is a work by American Christian reformer, theologian, author and, pastor Jonathan Edwards originally published posthumously in 1765.  The work was published jointly with "A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World". <SEP>  A prolific writer of over 20 books and 100 journal articles, Landis’s work spanned the fields of rural sociology, Natural Resource Sociology, Sociology of Education, Adolescence, Social Control, and many other topics.  Born in Cuba, Illinois, Landis was raised in a fundamentalist religious upbringing, before attending Greenville College and eventually the University of Michigan for a Masters Degree and The University of Minnesota for a PhD.  After graduation from the University of Minnesota in 1931, Landis joined the faculty of South Dakota State University (then called South Dakota State College) as an assistant professor in the Department of Rural Sociology.  His PhD dissertation on Minnesota's Iron Range was published as the book "Three Iron Mining Towns: a study in cultural change", now considered a landmark in Natural Resource Sociology.  In 1935 he joined the faculty of the Washington State University (at the time called the State College of Washington), eventually becoming the official State Professor of Sociology, as well eventually Dean of the Graduate School at Washington State.  Landis was elected and served as President of the Rural Sociological Society from 1945-1946. Paul Henry Landis, (5 March 1901 – 30 August 1985) was an American sociologist. <SEP> The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) or Keweenawan Rift is a 2000 km long geological rift in the center of the North American continent and south-central part of the North American plate.  It formed when the continent's core, the North American craton, began to split apart during the Mesoproterozoic era of the Precambrian, about 1.1 billion years ago.  The rift failed, leaving behind thick layers of rock that are exposed in its northern reaches, but buried beneath later sedimentary formations along most of its western and eastern arms.  Those arms meet at Lake Superior, which is contained within the rift valley.  The lake's north shore in Ontario and Minnesota defines the northern arc of the rift.  From the lake, the rift's eastern arm trends south to central lower Michigan.  The western arm runs from Lake Superior southwest through portions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska to northeastern Kansas. <SEP>  Despite the word "range," the iron ranges are not mountain chains, but outcrops of Precambrian sedimentary formations containing high percentages of iron.  These cherty iron ore deposits are Precambrian in age for the Vermilion Range, while middle Precambrian in age for the Mesabi and Cuyuna Ranges, all in Minnesota.  Similarly, the Gogebic Range in Wisconsin and the Marquette Iron Range and Menominee Range in Michigan.  Natural ores and concentrates were produced from 1848 until the mid 1950s, when taconites and jaspers were concentrated and pelletized started to become the major source of iron production. Iron Range refers collectively or individually to a number of elongated iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada.