Thesis (B.S.)--University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse, 2009. / Also available online. Includes bibliographical references (p. 28-32).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Doctor of Philosophy / Geography / Lisa M. Harrington / The population of the American Great Plains has grown steadily but unevenly. While metropolitan areas − primarily on the peripheries of the Plains − have expanded, significant interior portions have experienced decades of outmigration and the challenges that accompany the exodus. Geographers have explored the interplay between rural population loss and service consolidation, the many reasons people leave, the age-specific dynamics of those leaving, and the varied strategies being employed at different scales to coax people back. The vantage point of the residents who remain in emptying spaces has received little attention, however. Grounded theory guided a sequential mixed method approach to gain a better perspective on the aspects of place that contribute to an individual’s rootedness in the most rural and depopulating portions of the central Great Plains. Questionnaires were mailed in 2015 to 1,000 randomly-sampled households in ten counties of Kansas and Nebraska. Counties were selected on the most rural USDA ERS Rural-Urban Continuum and Urban-Influence Codes, ERS typology identifying population loss, and the most geographically-remote USDA Frontier and Remote Area designation. Focus groups were conducted after the mailed questionnaires in the county seats of three of counties that received the mailed survey. Correlation and contingency analyses were used to explore relationships within the closed-ended questionnaire responses for statistical significance. Open-ended responses provided depth to the closed-ended material. Results of the focus groups provided rich qualitative data that triangulated with quantitative results and offered a holistic view of the aspects of place encouraging someone to remain in a depopulating region. The elements of place encouraging rootedness were similar between the responses on the mailed questionnaire and those from the participants in the three focus groups. Rootedness was most associated with a sense of belonging. Rooted respondents also indicated that they felt good about where they live. In addition, many rooted individuals perceive themselves to be insiders in the community and view community spirit to be strong. Questionnaire results suggest that being involved with the community had a positive relationship with levels of rootedness. Rooted respondents were also more likely to perceive the visual appearance of their nearby surroundings favorably. A significant concern was the need for more vocational services within the focal study counties. A lack of sufficient trained individuals was seen as a reflection of institutional fast-tracking of students out of the area combined with a lack of support for motivating young people to apply their skills locally. Communities within the study area are not in danger of disappearing anytime soon, but their populations’ continued downward trajectory undermines their viability over the long term. Strategies like a shift in local educational approaches and inclusive activities aimed at those more likely to leave may encourage new roots to be put down or nurture roots to grow deeper, thus helping to curb outmigration.

Master of Science / Department of Biology / Martha E. Mather / Understanding the empirical relationships between biotic diversity and components of the environment is crucial for effective research and management, particularly in highly disturbed watersheds. The Smoky Hill River is a semi-arid prairie stream with a historic native fish community that is adapted to the extreme and highly variable climatic and hydrological conditions characteristic of the Great Plains streams. Following a literature review on environmental variables, diversity responses, and analysis methods, I evaluated the importance of land use, flow, discontinuities (dams, confluences), and stream type (mainstem-tributary) variables in explaining fish richness using AICc model selection with multiple linear, Poisson and negative-binomial regressions. I then compared these results from 48 sites across three watershed regions to those from a long-term monitoring dataset (ST) using the same candidate variables. Finally, I examined phylogenetic patterns of the fish community using ordination analyses. Patterns and drivers of biodiversity differed with watershed region, land use, stream type, and flow. Fish species richness in the Smoky Hill watershed was negatively correlated with percent developed land in the Lower region of the watershed, but positively correlated with percent herbaceous grassland, the reference prairie condition, in the Upper region of the watershed. Summer mean flow was consistently and positively related to species richness in the Middle and Upper regions of the watershed where flow was limited. In the Lower region of the watershed, species richness was higher in the more flow-moderate tributaries relative to high-flow mainstem sites. In the Middle and Upper flow-limited regions, species richness was lower in the low-flow tributaries than main stem sites. Families of fish species were also related to region and stream type (mainstem vs. tributary). A comparison of two databases showed how different goals, questions, and methods result in different insights, emphasizing the need for establishing a priori goals before sampling.

Master of Science / Department of Horticulture and Natural Resources / Charles J. Barden / Windbreaks were originally promoted across the Great Plains region of the U.S to reduce wind erosion in general. A review paper published nearly 30 years ago showed yield increases for a variety of crops associated with windbreaks. However, with the widespread use of no-till systems in all farming and advanced crop genetics, the question is “Do windbreaks still provide a yield benefit?” This study compared multiple years of data from protected and unprotected fields across Kansas and few sites in Nebraska looking at relative crop yield differences of five crops: soybeans, wheat, corn, sorghum and sunflowers. Georeferenced data already existed, generated by automated combine yield monitors, and stored on farmer's computers. There were three sets of data collected for each field. The first level is general field level information, using aerial photography and on-site observations to measure the characteristics of the windbreak (length, height and density). The second was from the yield monitor; this data was analyzed with ArcGIS 10.3.1 to visualize windbreak interaction with crop yield. Multiple means comparisons (protected versus unprotected) through two sample T-tests were conducted to determine if the yield in protected areas of fields was significantly different from the yield in unprotected areas. The third data-layer is climate data that was factored into yield analysis to compare wet, normal and dry growing seasons through a Chi-Square 2x2 test analysis. Optical density of windbreaks from leaf-on/off ground-based photos was assessed using SigmaScan Pro 5.0 software as possibly an important factor influencing the windbreak effect. Finally, the yield loss was estimated from the windbreak footprint to see if yield increases are enough to compensate for the area taken out of crop production. Results showed that soybeans (81 crop/years) had the most positive response to windbreak effect with a yield increase 46% of the time, with a 16% average yield increase. Sorghum (31 crop/years) had the highest average yield increase with 25%. Narrow windbreaks (1 to 2 tree rows with an average of 52 ft. width) and those on the north edge of fields resulted in yield increases which compensated for the footprint of the windbreak more often than wider windbreaks on the south edges of fields. Significant yield increases were less than the decreases in the protected area. There was no evidence to show the windbreak effect on yield had any association with critical month precipitation for any crop or orientation group. According to the results obtained, modern hybrids and varieties are possibly less responsive to yield increases due to windbreak effect than older crop varieties. Future studies should collect more data from fields with different windbreak widths distributed more widely across the region to confirm these results. Overall, this project updated our knowledge of windbreak/crop yield interactions and may possibly influence their future role as a conservation practice in the Great Plains.

The chalicothere Moropus was a rare perissodactyl present in the Great Plains region of North America through much of the Miocene. A temporal gap in named species of Moropus is present in the early Hemingfordian North American Land Mammal Age. This gap is filled by specimens currently referred to as Moropus sp. from the Batesland Formation in southwest South Dakota, and unnamed specimens of Moropus in the Runningwater Formation in northwestern Nebraska. A comparison of the fossils of Moropus nsp. from the Batesland Formation with those of previously described chalicothere species from the Greats Plains region, such as Moropus elatus, Moropus hollandi, Tylocephalonyx skinneri, Moropus merriami, and Moropus matthewi, in addition to Metaschizotherium bavaricum and Metaschizotherium fraasi from the Miocene of Southern Germany, illustrates that there are substantial differences in morphology between equivalent skeletal elements. Based on these findings, I propose that the specimens of Moropus from the Batesland Formation belong to a new species.

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / James E. Sherow / This dissertation contributes to the environmental, agricultural, and technological history of the modern United States by examining pesticide use and the debates surrounding them in the Great Plains from the 1940s to the 1980s. Specifically, it addresses the relationships among aerial sprayers, farmers, agriculturalists, and grassroots concepts of toxicity that emerged from mid-century technological and environmental changes. It argues that pesticides as well as a variety of weeds and insects actively transformed the tools, attitudes, and regulatory policies of their users. Historians of agricultural chemical use in America have focused on the political debates over DDT, the social activism against pesticides that Rachel Carson inspired with her best-selling book Silent Spring (1962), the growth in federal regulatory policy in the 1970s, and the contentious reactions by the chemical and agricultural industries. This study offers a new, ground-level history of pesticides by showing how aerial sprayers, farmers, and agriculturalists developed custom chemical applications and conceptualized toxicity as each related to the technological and environmental changes in the region. Drawing on multiple sources, including agricultural experiment station reports, scientific studies, government documents, farm journals, landowner and aerial spray pilot correspondence, and oral histories, this study explores how local producers changed with their chemicals, spray planes, and pests to develop an environmental ethos that understood toxicity as a synthetic and natural danger. Although opposition to pesticides became central to modern environmentalism, debates around pesticides‘ effectiveness and dangers did not come only from activists or government regulators. Beginning just after World War II, landowners and spray pilots in the fields and rural airstrips of the Great Plains took the hazards of agricultural chemicals seriously, critiquing how and why pesticides were used for decades after. By viewing chemicals, spray planes, and pests, as well as landowners, pilots, and agriculturalists as equal forces in the regional transformation of farming landscapes, this dissertation highlights a new history of pesticides, agriculture, and the environment. Farmers and custom applicators did not simply follow the economic goals of agribusiness. Nor did they dismiss the dangers of pesticides. Rather, they constructed their own standards of injury and environmental risk that stressed accuracy, regulation, and a reasonable certainty of safety—a result of the equally transformational influences of chemicals, pests, and the region. This study finally offers new insights into the creation of national chemical policy and the regulatory debates over pesticides during the 1960s and 1970s.

The growth rings of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) often contain a high frequency of false intra-annual growth bands, which complicates the dendrochronology of this species. However, exactly dated false rings replicated among many trees can reflect major weather changes during the growing season. Sixty-one trees from two sites (Oklahoma and Kansas) were dated and used to compile replicated chronologies of false rings at both locations extending from AD 1700–2000. False-ring events during the modern instrumental era were compared with the daily weather data from nearby stations. Significant false-ring events occurred at both locations during years that experienced a dramatic late-growing season weather reversal, when an extended period of high temperatures and drought was followed by prolonged cool and wet conditions. Synoptic weather maps for these events indicate that all ten replicated false-ring events in the instrumental era occurred during the highly unseasonable penetration of a cold front into the region. However, none of the significant false-ring events occurred in the same year at both sites. These separate false-ring chronologies indicate that there may be phenological differences in the timing of radial growth in redcedar between Kansas and Oklahoma, and that the weather conditions responsible for false-ring formation often occur at the mesoscale and do not often impact central Kansas and northcentral Oklahoma simultaneously.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-04T11:45:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Florinda_Roque.pdf: 390806 bytes, checksum: b1a602cdf4e3deed9823cc46d23386e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004-04-02 / The Brazilian people can get no satisfaction about the public attendance o healthy sector. It means that the Government politic has been inefficient to maintain a universal healthy system for population. So, the persons who have some better financial conditions, are looking for alternatives on private enterprise to protect themselves, as well as their dependents. Also, the private companies have adopted these strategic fringe benefits to offers to their employees. In Brazil, the healthy plans operators are responsible to attending about thirty five millions of users, considering that this number was bigger in the past. Actually, there are more than hundred operators, which are the following types: Group Medicine, Insurance Company, Self Management and Co-operative of doctors. The insolvency and financial problems of some companies in that sector had as consequence the stop on attendance of users, after contributing for many years. So the society began making pressure to quick the process of regulation on this area, and in 1998 it was approved the law 9656/98, after this it was included many provisory measures and norms, as the creation of a regulatory agency with many regulatory norms. With the sector regulation, it was necessary the juridical orderings of the operator's accounting standards. These juridical orderings brings the obligation of publishing the financial statements and models for this publication. This research analyzed some aspects of the financial statements and the quality of disclosures in the years 2001 and 2002, with intention of reflects if the ways of disclosure presentation helps the users to realize a complete analysis before decide for purchasing healthy plan. / O atendimento insatisfat??rio ?? popula????o na ??rea da sa??de mostra que o Estado ?? ineficiente para manter um sistema universal para atender satisfatoriamente toda a popula????o nessa importante ??rea. Como conseq????ncia, as pessoas de melhor poder aquisitivo buscam na iniciativa privada as alternativas para prote????o da sua sa??de e de seus dependentes. Tamb??m as empresas se valem dessas op????es para oferecer aos seus colaboradores um benef??cio adicional e importante, para a maioria dos trabalhadores, que ?? a assist??ncia m??dica em grupo. No Brasil, as operadoras de planos de sa??de s??o respons??veis pelo atendimento de aproximadamente trinta e cinco milh??es de usu??rios, sendo que este n??mero j?? foi maior. Existem atualmente mais de mil operadoras, classificadas nos tipos Medicina de Grupo, Seguradora, Auto Gest??o e Cooperativa de Trabalho M??dico. A fal??ncia de v??rias empresas deixou muitos usu??rios sem atendimento, mesmo depois de v??rios anos de contribui????o. Tais acontecimentos originaram uma press??o por parte da comunidade de usu??rios, no sentido de agilizar o processo de regulamenta????o dessas atividades, que resultou na aprova????o, em 1998, da Lei n?? 9656/98. Depois disto surgiram outras medidas provis??rias e normas, como a cria????o de uma ag??ncia reguladora, a qual emitiu v??rias normas reguladoras. A regulamenta????o do setor provocou, por sua vez, o ordenamento jur??dico e a normatiza????o dos procedimentos cont??beis das operadoras, os quais, entre outras exig??ncias, determina a obrigatoriedade de publicar as demonstra????es cont??beis, de acordo com os modelos contidos nas normas divulgadas. Esta pesquisa analisou a qualidade das evidencia????es, as pr??ticas cont??beis que as Operadoras de Plano de Sa??de foram obrigadas a seguir de acordo com a Lei n?? 9656/98 e alguns aspectos econ??micos-financeiros, analisados atrav??s do ??ndice de giro operacional das operadoras de plano de sa??de modalidade medicina de grupo no Estado de S??o Paulo, nos anos de 2001 e 2002 no intuito de refletir sobre as exig??ncias de uma sociedade globalizada.