This thesis deals with the negative interrelationship between climate fluctuation and cattle ranching during the 1880s. The focus is on three large ranches that were used as case studies on the Texas Panhandle. These ranches were selected because of their size, longevity, and the number of primary documents that were available at the Panhandle Plains Museum and Archive in Canyon, Texas. The temporal focus is from 1880 to 1890. The primary documents that have been examined are letters from ranchers to the Capitol Syndicates that owned the ranch and the financial documents of each ranch. Scientific journals that examined grassland ecology, animal ecology, and climate were used in conjunction with the primary documents. The combination of these sources led to a nuanced reinterpretation of a cattle disaster from the 1880s. The disaster was a massive loss of stock through a series of extremely cold winters and a drought that lasted several years. In the wake of this disaster, through the use of technology, these ranches were able to recover and increase their stock numbers beyond what they were prior to the years dominated by stock losses and low cattle prices.

This thesis deals with the negative interrelationship between climate fluctuation and cattle ranching during the 1880s. The focus is on three large ranches that were used as case studies on the Texas Panhandle. These ranches were selected because of their size, longevity, and the number of primary documents that were available at the Panhandle Plains Museum and Archive in Canyon, Texas. The temporal focus is from 1880 to 1890. The primary documents that have been examined are letters from ranchers to the Capitol Syndicates that owned the ranch and the financial documents of each ranch. Scientific journals that examined grassland ecology, animal ecology, and climate were used in conjunction with the primary documents. The combination of these sources led to a nuanced reinterpretation of a cattle disaster from the 1880s. The disaster was a massive loss of stock through a series of extremely cold winters and a drought that lasted several years. In the wake of this disaster, through the use of technology, these ranches were able to recover and increase their stock numbers beyond what they were prior to the years dominated by stock losses and low cattle prices.

Riparian ecosystems are valuable to the ecological and human communities that depend on them. Over the past century, they have been subject to shifting management practices to maximize human use and ecosystem services, creating a complex relationship between water policy, management, and the natural ecosystem. This has necessitated research on the spatial and temporal dynamics of riparian vegetation change. The San Acacia Reach of the Middle Rio Grande has experienced multiple management and river flow fluctuations, resulting in threats to its riparian and aquatic ecosystems. This research uses remote sensing data, GIS, a review of management decisions, and an assessment of climate to both quantify how riparian vegetation has been altered over time and provide interpretations of the relationships between riparian change and shifting climate and management objectives. This research focused on four management phases from 1935 to 2014, each highlighting different management practices and climate-driven river patterns, providing unique opportunities to observe a direct relationship between river management, climate, and riparian response. Overall, we believe that management practices coupled with reduced surface river-flows with limited overbank flooding influenced the compositional and spatial patterns of vegetation, including possibly increasing non-native vegetation coverage. However, recent restoration efforts have begun to reduce non-native vegetation coverage.