Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The purpose of this dissertation is to trace the development of the Southern Illinois Conference of The Methodist Church. The primary sources for the study were The Minutes of the Annual Conferences, The Minutes of the Illinois Conference, and the Journal of the Southern Illinois Conference. Secondary sources had to be used for much of the early history. Methodism began in England and was brought to America by Wesley's preachers. Francis Asbury supervised the spread of Methodism from the Eastern seaboard into the Ohio River Valley [TRUNCATED]

Due to the loss and degradation of wetland habitat it has become accepted that active management of remaining habitat is needed to provide sufficient resources for migrating and wintering waterfowl. Numerous studies have documented increased seed production and waterfowl use on actively managed wetlands; however, no studies have evaluated the cost of active management or compared the cost effectiveness of actively and passively managed wetlands. I surveyed a random sample of restored wetlands in southern Illinois in 2005 and 2006 to compare the cost effectiveness of actively and passively managed wetlands. Actively managed wetlands had a greater percent cover of common waterfowl foods, Echinochloa spp. and Panicum spp., but also tended to have a greater percent cover of Xanthium strumarium, a common nuisance species. Actively managed wetlands also had greater waterfowl densities in 2005 and 2006. Duck energy-days were calculated from fall 2005 and fall 2006 seed biomass data and used as an effectiveness measure in the cost effectiveness analysis. In 2005, actively managed wetlands tended to provide more "duck energy-days" than passively managed wetlands, however, no difference was observed in 2006. Actively managed wetlands cost nearly 7 times more to restore per hectare, and nearly 3 times more to manage per hectare, than passively managed wetlands. My results suggest that although actively managed wetlands have the potential to provide more foraging resources for waterfowl, the cost effectiveness of actively and passively managed wetlands is similar. Choosing passive management as the typical restoration option would allow for more acres restored and may therefore be more beneficial to waterfowl, as well as other wildlife groups. When managers are faced with fixed budgets, management effectiveness could be enhanced if costs were considered in addition to the benefits of each management alternative.

Throughout the Central Hardwoods, fire return interval dramatically increased during the period of Euro-American settlement. Fire was used as a tool for clearing land and improving forage for grazing. The Shoal Creek study site is located in Jackson County, Illinois, 8 km southwest of Murphysboro. Shoal Creek is situated at the northern extent of the Illinois Ozark Hills, classified as a Subsection of the Ozark Highlands Section. The region is unglaciated and loess caps are 10 m deep on the ridgetops and 1-3 m deep on side slopes. Results show the site was frequently burned (MFI=2.95) from 1887 to 1946 during post-settlement. Fire waned from the site in the 1930's and the last major fire occurred in 1946. By this time, Shawnee National Forest had become established in southern Illinois and fire suppression was the preferred management technique. Thirty three fire scarred Quercus-Carya cross sections were opportunistically sampled from a southwest aspect. Cross sections were sanded to 600 grit and skeleton plots were used to determine signature years for cross-dating purposes. Year and seasonality of individual fire scars, and approximate pith date were determined for each sample to be utilized in FHX2. Recruitment history revealed that overstory oak-hickory species established under favorable conditions in the early 20th century. Timber was harvested from the site around 1900 and intense fires followed for the next 30 yrs. A small pulse of Acer-Fagus germinated as fire frequency decreased on-site during the 1930's and a significant pulse established immediately after the last recorded fire in 1946. Superposed epoch analysis (SEA) determines the influence of immediate weather patterns and overall climate trends surrounding fire event years. SEA was run to compare fire event years at Shoal Creek with PDSI climate reconstructions. For the 95% confidence interval, there was not a significant association between fire and climate. In the Central Hardwoods, lightning is associated with rainstorms and fires burn in both dry years and wet years so the relationship between fire and climate is not strong. The Shoal Creek study site will be compared with the Sugar Creek study site (located in the Shawnee Hills) to see if similarities in the historical fire regime and recruitment exist between the two physiographic provinces. If rehabilitation of oak-hickory dominated forest stands is the management objective, the results of this study will aid in fire cycle planning of frequency and seasonality. Managers may consider the MFI for rehabilitation burns, and range of fire intervals for long-term maintenance burns. However, prescribed burns are not the only answer for managers. Fire must be used in accordance with silvicultural techniques that mimic natural disturbance regimes such as TSI and shelterwood harvests which create large overstory gaps suitable for oak-hickory recruitment.

Extreme precipitation in Illinois contributes to impacts across diverse landscapes, posing threats to agriculture in rural areas and infrastructure in urban centers. Previous studies have reported an increase in the frequency of heavy precipitation in the region and projected its amplification under climate change. However, these findings are often characterized by inconsistent and/or inappropriate approaches for estimating historical trends and their significance and often lack process-based understanding regarding future changes in extreme event climatology. This study aims to obtain robust regional extreme precipitation trends and relate those trends to large-scale circulation and humidity. The climatology and trends of daily extreme precipitation are established by applying a peaks-over-threshold approach to the newly developed NOAA NCEI nClimGrid-D dataset which includes daily precipitation totals at 5-km resolution. For trend estimation, we use Theil-Sen estimation with three approaches designed to emphasize correction of inflation in the significance of the estimated trends: (1) a “naïve” approach in which we simply consider the direct output of the Theil-Sen method and assess significance using a traditional Mann-Kendall test, (2) an approach based on a modified Mann-Kendall test to account for serial autocorrelation in the assessment of significance, and (3) an approach that also controls for the false discovery rate associated with a large number of tests by considering field significance. To relate these trends to large scale drivers, a multivariate self-organizing map is constructed based on standardized 500 mb geopotential height and 850 mb specific humidity obtained from the ECMWF ERA-5 reanalysis dataset. We use a Monte Carlo experiment to identify weather types most associated with extreme precipitation in the area. Temporal and spatial characteristics of the identified weather types are then analyzed to better understanding their role in changes in the frequency of extreme precipitation events across the region. As expected, the results indicate a stark contrast between the naive and more complex approaches for significance testing, where controlling for autocorrelation and test multiplicity reduces the spatial extent of significant trends across all extreme precipitation thresholds. Extreme precipitation in Illinois is found to be associated with a small number of specific weather types characterized by distinct patterns of geopotential height and humidity. Furthermore, the weather types most frequently associated with extreme precipitation are increasing in frequency, suggesting that changes in atmospheric circulation related to moisture transport and convergence are a major contributor to changes in extreme precipitation in Illinois.

The primary objective of this thesis was to analyze trends among demographic profiles and personalities identified by the CliftonStrengths® assessment (formerly Clifton StrengthsFinder®) of Illinois FFA state officers in order to better understand and improve the team dynamics and training provided by National FFA facilitators and Illinois FFA staff. The population analyzed included Illinois FFA officers elected from 2006-2019. Major findings include a positive trend among male candidates advancing through the Illinois FFA major state officer election process, though also identified a trend of females being elected more during the years more females originally run for office. Geographic representation of major state officers remained fairly consistent among the Illinois FFA districts, though large differences were identified in the representation from specific Illinois FFA sections. Various trends were also identified among gender representation and personality trends from each of the different Illinois FFA districts. Personality trends were identified among Illinois FFA major state officers, and differences were identified, most notably within the Strategic Thinking Domain, between Illinois FFA major state officer talent themes and those of state FFA officers nationwide. A pendulum affect was also identified in the talent theme domains most prevalent among Illinois FFA major state officers over time.

This study concerns the people of the mining communities throughout the state of Illinois during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In the thirty-four years following the 1897 bituminous miners' strike and the subsequent 1898 event in Virden, the people of the Illinois mining communities developed a perspective and a standard of living that shaped their character. During these years, Illinois miners were thoroughly unionized and used the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) as a vehicle to advance their lives and the lives of their families. Indeed, in 1923, the aging Mary Harris "Mother" Jones herself pointed to Illinois as "the best organized labor state in America" in her written request to be buried in the Mt. Olive, Illinois union cemetery. This perspective held by the people of the Illinois mining communities, herein labeled the "Illinois perspective," shaped every aspect of their lives including their values, economic decisions, and their union policies. Though the events for this perspective took hold following the 1897 strike, its roots go back farther in time to the Chartist movement in England. From these British immigrant beginnings and through the inclusion of new immigration from southern and eastern Europe at the turn of the century, Illinois miners and their families addressed the devastation of their industry and their way of life in ways that were fundamentally different than miners in other locales. When national union bureaucratization, as exemplified in the larger than life figure of John L. Lewis, threatened regional control and statewide decision making in the 1930s, many Illinois mining families abandoned the UMWA and created the Progressive Miners of America (PMA) in hopes of regaining regional control and weathering their extremely difficult present. Current scholarship regarding Illinois miners from this era generally focuses on specific regions within the state or on the "Illinois Mine Wars" of the 1930s when members of the badly fractured mining district fought with, and sometimes killed, one another. This study brings the state of Illinois together as one united district during its time frame of concentration and argues all regions of the state shared this united perspective. Various primary sources, oral histories, contemporary newspaper accounts, and a statistical analysis of the 1908 Macoupin County Coal Miners' Application Book help to explain how these people lived their lives and why it was possible for them to do so.

This study describes the Illinois coal industry’s response to the rising challenges of air pollution regulation and competition in the energy market from natural gas and oil throughout the twentieth century. Importantly, this dissertation fills a significant gap in the historiography of Illinois coalmining, and is the first historical study based on two key, yet unused, sets of historical documents. This is a mining history and a cultural history of a system of understanding and knowledge that first developed in the Illinois Mining Institute and then in State of Illinois organizations. As the industry’s leaders organized their approaches to resolving issues they generated a culture of industry preservationism based on the ideas of mechanization, automation, expansion, research and development, politics and policy, and coal preparation and conversion. In doing so, they came to identify their movement with modernity and as they looked ahead in time with futurity. These ideas became the principles around which they forged their social connections and formed their understandings of the problems the industry faced. This study spans from a period often defined by its volatile and contentious labor–management negotiations and labor unrest, the so-called “coal wars,” to the announcement of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which according to some began his Administration’s so-called “war on coal.” This study illustrates four major historical shifts during this century-long transformation: First, this movement of Illinois coal industry preservationism, focused on interfuel completion and air pollution control, diverged from the industry’s ongoing response to organized labor. Second, in response to the rise of environmentalism and federal environmental regulations, industry leaders and State of Illinois officials began to expand on the integration of the principles of Illinois coal industry preservationism and the state’s political and policy agendas. Third, despite that industry leaders had sustained the production of Illinois coal for many decades, the movement declined in the wake of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and the rise of the natural gas industry in the energy market during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Fourth, in reaction to the constraints of the domestic market and pollution laws, the Illinois coal industry began to sell the majority of its product overseas. Additionally, this study highlights few historical continuities. For one, those seeking to preserve the Illinois coal industry espoused the idea that their industry played a key role in the nation’s security and energy independence. They likewise held the belief that technological solutions would continue to solve the industry’s problems. The people behind this movement had every reason to view their industry through those lenses. After all, Illinois coal had helped the country win two world wars, and it offered a potential solution to the oil supply crises that resulted from cold war upheavals. In the end, however, the two problems that pushed industry leaders to generate the movement in the first place, interfuel competition and air pollution regulation, left it fractured, diminished, and in decline.

An examination of contemporary Catholicism told through the stories of a priest undergoing a crisis of vocation, a young man alienated from his family, and an immigrant struggling to keep his family together. / Master of Fine Arts

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 162-164. / by Donna Margaret Ducharme. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Bibliography: leaves 261-267. / by Kari J. Moe. / M.C.P.