The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks exposed vulnerabilities to U.S. homeland security and defense, leading U.S. officials to analyze threats to domestic and international interests. Terrorist attacks against food and water supplies (agro-terrorism), were deemed a national security threat because of the assessed fear, economic instability, and social instability that could occur following a food shortage. Research indicated a comprehensive response plan does not exist across the federal, state, and local levels of government to mitigate the public's possible responses to a perceived threat to food security and food shortages following an agro-terrorist attack. This ethnographic case study analyzed the perceived threats to food security and the possible responses to food shortages in Yuma, Arizona (the 'winter lettuce capitol of the world'). Coleman and Putnam's theories of social capital served as the theoretical framework for this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews of nine residents and six experts from Yuma's departments of government to examine the relative atmospherics between the citizens and government officials. Findings indicated that a comprehensive plan does not exist, and perceived fears and the lack of knowledge about emergency preparedness in a society with high social capital and community resilience can still create the conditions for chaos and anomie. Recommendations include improving communication, education, and expectation management of citizens. Implications for social change include improving public awareness and individual responsibility for preparedness, as well as assisting policymakers in maintaining social capital to deter social disorganization and anomie during disasters.

Against a Divided Land is a tale of escape from the poverty of the Yuma Indian reservation, the flight of a young girl and her family into modern American in the 1970's. The stories in the collection emerge via the narrator: a forty-year-old woman exploring landscape and memory. Her recollections as a mother and international traveler, juxtaposed alongside her childhood on the reservation, reveal the unique concerns of Native Americans in the era of government relocation and displacement. The stories in this collection paint a picture of United States subculture rarely seen. The accounts link the narrator to the past in surprising ways as they push forth with a modern voice, imagining a brighter future: a future filled with both loss and beauty. From Africa to the Southwest, the characters in these essays seek relationships across typical boundaries.

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Understanding species-habitat relationships for endangered species is critical for their conservation. However, many studies have limited value for conservation because they fail to account for habitat associations at multiple spatial scales, anthropogenic variables, and imperfect detection. We addressed these three limitations by developing models for an endangered wetland bird, Yuma Ridgway's rail (Rallus obsoletus yumanensis), that examined how the spatial scale of environmental variables, inclusion of anthropogenic disturbance variables, and accounting for imperfect detection in validation data influenced model performance. These models identified associations between environmental variables and occupancy. We used bird survey and spatial environmental data at 2473 locations throughout the species' U.S. range to create and validate occupancy models and produce predictive maps of occupancy. We compared habitat-based models at three spatial scales (100, 224, and 500 m radii buffers) with and without anthropogenic disturbance variables using validation data adjusted for imperfect detection and an unadjusted validation dataset that ignored imperfect detection. The inclusion of anthropogenic disturbance variables improved the performance of habitat models at all three spatial scales, and the 224-m-scale model performed best. All models exhibited greater predictive ability when imperfect detection was incorporated into validation data. Yuma Ridgway's rail occupancy was negatively associated with ephemeral and slow-moving riverine features and high-intensity anthropogenic development, and positively associated with emergent vegetation, agriculture, and low-intensity development. Our modeling approach accounts for common limitations in modeling species-habitat relationships and creating predictive maps of occupancy probability and, therefore, provides a useful framework for other species.

From the Proceedings of the 1975 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 11-12, 1975, Tempe, Arizona / A direct osmosis plant can reclaim twenty to thirty thousand acre feet of Wellton-Mohawk brackish drainage water using no more nitrogen fertilizer than is normally used in the Yuma, Coachella valley, Imperial Valley and the bordering Mexican areas. On a per-acre basis ammonium sulfate-driven direct osmosis can reclaim about one percent of the total irrigation requirement from 3000 ppm brackish water. In addition to the ammonium sulfate-driven direct osmosis efficiency, the by-product energy recovery of the manufacture of the fertilizer and the low technology inherent in direct osmosis processes make direct osmosis an appealing water reclaiming process.