American Land Research Articles

The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater: David Hubbard and North Alabama’s Long Road to Disunion by Chris McIlwain

Reviewed by: The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater: David Hubbard and North Alabama’s Long Road to Disunion by Chris McIlwain William L. Barney The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater: David Hubbard and North Alabama’s Long Road to Disunion. By Chris McIlwain. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2020. 288 pp. $27.95. ISBN 978-1-5883-8411-9. The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater ably fulfills its goal of using the life of David Hubbard as a window into studying “the troubled birth of Alabama, its intermittent economic development, and its lengthy radicalization process” (ix). In doing so, it offers much to the student of Alabama history, especially in its treatment of the often neglected pre-1850 period dominated by issues related to banking and boom and bust economic cycles. It is less successful in adding to our understanding of secession sentiment in North Alabama. Born in Virginia in 1792, Hubbard emigrated to Tennessee with his family and there joined militia forces under Andrew Jackson. A wound he suffered in the battle of New Orleans was a valuable asset when he settled in North Alabama after the War of 1812 and plunged into the pursuits that consumed him until his world came crashing down in the Civil War – land speculation, politics, and populist appeals to non-slaveholders that combined a fervid defense of slavery with attacks on haughty aristocrats. Beginning with the uproar over nullification in the early 1830s, he never missed an opportunity to stake out an increasingly radical stance on behalf of southern rights. Hubbard was the driving force behind the building of the Tuscumbia, Courtland, and Decatur Railroad in North Alabama, the first railroad west of the Allegheny Mountains. Like other internal improvements funded by the legislature when times were flush, the railroad was undercapitalized and fell into chronic debt when credit markets collapsed in the next financial panic. The same was true of [End Page 176] Hubbard’s efforts to strike it rich by speculating in Native American land acquired by whites in a series of questionable, if not fraudulent, treaties. Working through surrogates in the legislature, he was able to stay one step ahead of his creditors and establish himself as a cotton planter with an enslaved work force. Positioning himself as a Calhoun Democrat, he served in both houses of the Alabama legislature and twice was elected as a congressman. Always tailoring his stand on state and national economic issues to best protect his precarious financial entanglements, he was viewed as too much of an economic maverick by the state’s planter elite to be included in their inner circle. Few of Hubbard’s personal papers have survived, and McIlwain had to rely mainly on legislative debates and newspaper accounts to piece together Hubbard’s life story. This results in extremely detailed descriptions of legislative maneuverings and overly long quotations that at times slowed the narrative down to a crawl. Another consequence was the gap between Hubbard’s economic activities and his political radicalism on sectional issues. Just what meaning and identity Hubbard found in assuming the role of the fire-eater is never systematically analyzed. Was it political opportunism, an attempt to link his public stand with the ambitions of other slaveholders who had enough wealth and power to want more and hence demanded no checks on the South’s quest to carve out limitless opportunities for the expansion and prosperity of slavery? This is a question that McIlwain leaves unanswered and perhaps could not answer. What is clear is that Hubbard, like countless other fire-eaters, agitated in relative obscurity compared to a William Lowndes Yancey, who could rely on his spell-binding oratory to gain a following, or a Robert Barnwell Rhett, who had a public platform for his views in the Charleston Mercury. For all his railing against the exclusion of Kansas as a slave state and proclaiming the South’s destiny to expand slavery to the tropics, Hubbard operated most effectively in the shadows as he prodded the legislature to stake out the most radical stance against alleged northern aggressions. [End Page 177] Whether, as suggested by McIlwain on several occasions, Hubbard served as a mentor to the post-nullification...

How does precipitation data influence the land surface data assimilation for drought monitoring?

Droughts are among the costliest natural hazards that occur annually worldwide. Their socioeconomic impacts are significant and widespread, affecting the sustainable development of human societies. This study investigates the influence of different forcing precipitation data in driving Land Surface Models (LSMs) and characterizing drought conditions. Here, we utilize our recently developed LSM data assimilation system for probabilistically monitoring drought over the Contiguous United States (CONUS). The Noah-MP LSM model is forced with two widely used precipitation data including IMERG (Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM) and NLDAS (North American Land Data Assimilation System). Soil moisture and evapotranspiration are known to have a strong relationship in the land-atmospheric interaction processes. Unlike other studies that attempted the individual assimilation of these variables, here we propose a multivariate data assimilation framework. Therefore, in both modeling scenarios, the data assimilation approach is used to integrate remotely sensed MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) evapotranspiration and SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) soil moisture observations into the Noah-MP LSM. The results of this study indicate that the source of precipitation data has a significant impact on the performance of LSM data assimilation system for drought monitoring. The findings revealed that NLDAS and IMERG precipitation can result in a significant difference in identifying drought severity depending on the region and time of the year. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that regardless of the precipitation forcing data product used in the land surface data assimilation system, our modeling framework can effectively detect the drought impacts on crop yield. Additionally, we calculated the drought probability based on the ensemble of soil moisture percentiles and found that there exist temporal and spatial discrepancies in drought probability maps generated from the NLDAS and IMERG precipitation forcings.

Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes by Cynthia-Lou Coleman

Reviewed by: Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes by Cynthia-Lou Coleman Sebastian Wurzrainer (bio) Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes by Cynthia-Lou Coleman Palgrave Macmillan, 2020 AS CYNTHIA-LOU COLEMAN (WAZHAZHE), a professor of communication at Portland State University, observes in Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes, "Only a handful of communication scholars . . . have examined Native American perspectives" (15). Using a concise, economic writing style, Coleman asserts that communication studies overemphasize how meaning is produced at the expense of considering the systemic inequities in this process, particularly as they relate to mainstream media's disregard for Native American perspectives. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas's notion of the public sphere, Michel Foucault's discussion of power, and William A. Gamson's and André Modigliani's ideas about interpretive packages, she offers a nuanced reading of an eclectic mix of news sources that covered the Kennewick Man and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) conflicts. She posits that the media constructed a framing for these events by drawing on a history of colonial tropes. For instance, the tribes that protested the mishandling of the Kennewick Man skeleton were regularly framed as "trouble-makers" beholden to "religiosity, myth or invention," recalling racist stereotypes of Indigenous peoples as savage and preindustrial (146–47). None of these insights are novel in the context of Indigenous studies, but that is not necessarily a criticism given that Coleman seeks to intervene in a field that typically overlooks Indigenous peoples. The opening chapters establish the "two prisms" through which Coleman filters the rest of the book: "the Media Hegemony Hypothesis" and "Indigenous Metaphysics" (143). She initially illustrates her premise by exploring the white supremacist pseudoscience of phrenology, specifically as it was applied to Native Americans such as the Sauk warrior Black Hawk. While the entire book is modular, this section—chapters 3 and 4—feels especially disconnected from Coleman's overall argument. She does, however, make a point that resonates across the book by coining the term "sciencing." As she repeatedly demonstrates, the performative "act of doing science" in the public sphere frequently overrules the actual validity of the science being done (37). The book transitions to an examination of the twenty-year conflict [End Page 158] surrounding the remains of Kennewick Man, a nine-thousand-plus-year-old skeleton found in 1996 in Washington State's Columbia River. In chapters 5 and 6, Coleman implies—but does not further explore—that phrenology influenced the anthropologists who initially classified Kennewick Man's skull as "Caucasoid." This classification fueled a fascination among media outlets about the possibility that the original inhabitants of Turtle Island were white. Coleman's most compelling argument is that the tribes who sought to reclaim Kennewick Man's remains soundly rejected the "Who was here first?" framing (74); they were instead concerned with their sovereign right to return their ancestor to the earth in accordance with their traditions. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the book, this highlights Coleman's reference to the media's systemic exclusion of Native worldviews (what she calls "Indigenous Metaphysics"). Coleman turns to the DAPL conflict in chapters 7 and 8, connecting it to three key events in the history of Sioux-settler interactions: the Battle of Greasy Grass, the death of Crazy Horse, and the Wounded Knee Massacre. She presents DAPL as an extension and reflection of this history, but she contends that in this most recent iteration, the Sioux were able to mobilize social media and bypass the hegemonic frameworks propagated by mainstream media. Coleman concludes on a more general note by highlighting how such instances of cultural resilience in a conflict like DAPL create the necessary groundwork for future Indigenous activists. Coleman's use of these prominent examples makes the book an ideal introduction to topics in Indigenous studies for entry-level undergraduates interested in environmental or communication studies. Yet this inevitably leaves ample room for further research. For instance, Coleman never really specifies what she means by "the media," leading to a series of conclusions that are apt but overly broad. She also concedes that "capitalism and colonialism" are...

Disentangling the last 1,000 years of human–environment interactions along the eastern side of the southern Andes (34–52°S lat.)

Researchers have long debated the degree to which Native American land use altered landscapes in the Americas prior to European colonization. Human-environment interactions in southern South America are inferred from new pollen and charcoal data from Laguna El Sosneado and their comparison with high-resolution paleoenvironmental records and archaeological/ethnohistorical information at other sites along the eastern Andes of southern Argentina and Chile (34-52°S). The records indicate that humans, by altering ignition frequency and the availability of fuels, variously muted or amplified the effects of climate on fire regimes. For example, fire activity at the northern and southern sites was low at times when the climate and vegetation were suitable for burning but lacked an ignition source. Conversely, abundant fires set by humans and infrequent lightning ignitions occurred during periods when warm, dry climate conditions coincided with ample vegetation (i.e., fuel) at midlatitude sites. Prior to European arrival, changes in Native American demography and land use influenced vegetation and fire regimes locally, but human influences were not widely evident until the 16th century, with the introduction of nonnative species (e.g., horses), and then in the late 19th century, as Euro-Americans targeted specific resources to support local and national economies. The complex interactions between past climate variability, human activities, and ecosystem dynamics at the local scale are overlooked by approaches that infer levels of land use simply from population size or that rely on regionally composited data to detect drivers of past environmental change.

Cavioids, Chinchilloids, and Erethizontoids (Hystricognathi, Rodentia, Mammalia) of the Early Miocene Pampa Castillo Fauna, Chile

Caviomorph rodents became important components of South American faunas after their Eocene arrival from Africa. Here we describe the cavioid, chinchilloid, and erethizontoid caviomorphs of the early Miocene Pampa Castillo fauna of southern Chile. This fauna's age and location make it key for resolving outstanding biostratigraphic questions concerning early Miocene Patagonian fossiliferous strata. Each of the four major caviomorph clades (“superfamilies”) is represented in the Pampa Castillo fauna, three whose members are detailed here: cavioids (3 genera; 3 species), chinchilloids (3 genera; 6 species), and erethizontoids (2 genera; 2 species). Abundantly represented taxa, e.g., Neoreomys australis, Perimys erutus, and Prolagostomus pusillus, corroborate previous work assigning the Pampa Castillo fauna to the Santacrucian South American Land Mammal “Age” (SALMA; inclusive of the “Pinturan”). Several taxa, including Eosteiromys, Perimys intermedius, and Perimys sp. nov.?, are also found in the lower and middle Pinturas Formation (lmPF) but not “core” Santacrucian faunas (from the Santa Cruz Formation [SCF] along the Río Santa Cruz and Atlantic coast), suggesting a distinctive resemblance between lmPF and Pampa Castillo rodents. Some authors consider the fauna from the lmPF to form the basis of a “Pinturan” SALMA or subage, considered to slightly predate core Santacrucian faunas, but which has yet to be formally recognized. The taxonomic composition of rodent fauna from Pampa Castillo, as well as relative abundance data, indicated a paleoenvironment intermediate between the closed forests of the lmPF and the mosaic of open and closed habitats of the core Santacrucian faunas from the SCF.

Hydrological drought characterization based on GNSS imaging of vertical crustal deformation across the contiguous United States

Continuous Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements allow us to track subtle elastic crustal deformation in the response to hydrological mass variations and provide an additional tool to independently characterize hydrological extremes (e.g., droughts and floods). In this study, we develop a time-varying GNSS imaging strategy that depends on the principal component analysis of GNSS-sensed vertical crustal displacement (VCD) in 2006–2020 and the monthly images of hydrology-induced deformation are generated for drought characterization across the contiguous United States. The first 12 principal components are selected in our time-varying imaging system, which account for 85% of the data variance. Considering that surface water loads are inversely correlated with the induced elastic vertical motions, we reverse the signs of the GNSS-imaged time series in all grids in subsequent studies (referred to as negative VCD (NVCD)). The GNSS-NVCD data generally correlate well with the water estimates from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS). Using the GNSS-imaged gridded NVCD products, we produce a GNSS-based drought severity index (GNSS-DSI) based on the climatological methodology, which is implemented by standardizing the GNSS NVCD anomalies that deviate from climatological normal. In most regions, strong linear correlations are accessible for GNSS-DSI relative to GRACE-DSI and the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI). The new drought monitoring tool, which is based solely on GNSS-measured vertical positions, is used for hydrological drought characterization (onset, end, duration, magnitude, intensity, and recovery); it succeeds in identifying well-documented historical droughts from the US drought monitor (USDM). Our study presents a new drought characterization framework using solely GNSS-measured hydrological loading displacements from a dense GNSS network, which has great potential to strengthen operational drought monitoring and assessment.

Review: We Are the Land: A History of Native California, by Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr.

The title We Are the Land sums up the argument of this book, a history of Indigenous people in the present-day state of California. Ten chapters, ranging from origin stories to 1980s land battles, survey Indigenous relationships to their lands over time despite colonial displacement. Two maps orient readers to territorial areas and the region remade by colonization. Short “special vignettes” between chapters interrogate San Diego, the Ishi Wilderness, and Rome, among other locations. The book posits that “California is both a place and an idea” (p. 3). While the place is Indigenous, the idea is a product of settler fantasies of Indigenous disappearance through pogroms, assimilation, and removal that this text thoroughly upends.An exploration of the many ways that the people understood and stewarded their lands, from stories, songs, and place names to hunts, controlled burns, and irrigation establish Native worlds. Kinship, trade, and ceremony knit people across space and ameliorate conflict. Oak savannahs and their acorns, an essential food source, represent the interconnectedness of Indigenous worldviews and the region itself.During exploratory contact Native people “forced the Spanish to adhere to social protocols,” incorporating strangers into their economic and political systems (p. 42). Viewed from the beaches, the foreign expeditions which are often at the center of historic narratives are instead transitory. Diseases and settlers were not.The Spanish missions intensify the disruptions of exploration and disease. Priests and soldiers “came to stay,” reorganizing the landscape into presidio districts, ranchos, and missions, and by clearing the land and introducing domesticated livestock that trampled Indigenous foods (p. 67). While the missions “exposed Indigenous People to violence,” Native people indigenized Catholicism, strategically used mobility to retain their autonomy, and formed new refugee communities (p. 74).The patterns of colonial oppression and the exploitation of Indigenous labor shape the rest of the book. Mexican independence led to the secularization of the missions and coincided with the rise of the hide and tallow industry, which relied on Native laborers. The Gold Rush and Americanization brought genocidal violence, treaties, and another system of unfree labor. Indigenous land claims and labor became increasingly entangled, with Mexican and then American land policies reflecting the necessity of Indigenous labor in California’s early agricultural industries.Equally important was Indigenous resistance, according to the authors, who carefully outline its patterns over time and space. In the twentieth century, Native people creatively leveraged boarding schools and allotment to protect their communities. Termination and relocation led to another period of dispersal but bars, Indian centers, and college campuses emerged as sites for urban organizing. By the end of the century, many tribes invested gaming revenues in lands they had lost decades before.This well-written, accessible book reconceives California as Indigenous land with a focus on the ongoing practices of colonization and resistance to it. While it uses the language of theoretical framings like settler colonialism and survivance lightly, the text itself is a powerful illustration of the ongoing challenges of colonialism and the Indigenous survival of its many formations.

Catchment scale runoff time-series generation and validation using statistical models for the Continental United States

We developed statistical models to generate runoff time-series at National Hydrography Dataset Plus Version 2 (NHDPlusV2) catchment scale for the Continental United States (CONUS). The models use Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) based Curve Number (CN) to generate initial runoff time-series which then is corrected using statistical models to improve accuracy. We used the North American Land Data Assimilation System 2 (NLDAS-2) catchment scale runoff time-series as the reference data for model training and validation. We used 17 years of 16-day, 250-m resolution NDVI data as a proxy for hydrologic conditions during a representative year to calculate 23 NDVI based-CN (NDVI-CN) values for each of 2.65 million NHDPlusV2 catchments for the Contiguous U.S. To maximize predictive accuracy while avoiding optimistically biased model validation results, we developed a spatio-temporal cross-validation framework for estimating, selecting, and validating the statistical correction models. We found that in many of the physiographic sections comprising CONUS, even simple linear regression models were highly effective at correcting NDVI-CN runoff to achieve Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency values above 0.5. However, all models showed poor performance in physiographic sections that experience significant snow accumulation.

The distribution and conservation status of Tapirus terrestris in the South American Atlantic Forest

Tapirus terrestris is the largest South American land mammal, with an extensive historical distribution and capable of occupying diverse habitats, and yet its populations have declined across its range. In order to provide baseline data on the conservation status of tapirs in the Atlantic Forest, we conducted a long-term study in one landscape, visited 93 forests, and received 217 expert reports over the 15-year study. We estimate that 2,665–15,992 tapirs remain in 48 confirmed populations, occupying 26,654 km2 of forest or 1.78% of its original range in the biome. Historically, hunting and deforestation were the main causes of decline, but today population isolation is the principal long-term threat. Vortex models indicate that 31.3–68.8% and 70.8–93.8% of the populations are demographically and genetically non-viable over the next 100 years, respectively, and that only 3–14 populations are viable when considering both variables. Habitat use data indicate that tapirs are adaptable to disturbed and secondary forests and will use diverse tree plantations and agricultural lands but hunting and highways keep populations isolated. Reserve staff report tapirs as common/abundant at 62.2% of the sites, and populations as stable and growing in 60% and 36% of the sites, respectively, and there is ample habitat in the biome for a population expansion, but overcoming the causes of isolation will be necessary for this to occur. Lack of adequate funding for protecting reserves is a chronic threat throughout the biome, especially in federal and state/provincial reserves, and increased funding will be necessary to implement effective conservation plans.

Investigating Temporal and Spatial Precipitation Patterns in the Southern Mid-Atlantic United States

The investigation of regional vulnerability to extreme hydroclimatic events (e.g., floods and hurricanes) is quite challenging due to its dependence on reliable precipitation estimates. Better understanding of past precipitation trends is crucial to examine changing precipitation extremes, optimize future water demands, stormwater infrastructure, extreme event measures, irrigation management, etc., especially if combined with future climate and population projections. The objective of the study is to investigate the spatial-temporal variability of average and extreme precipitation at a sub-regional scale, specifically in the Southern Mid-Atlantic United States, a region characterized by diverse topography and is among the fastest-growing areas in North America. Particularly, this work investigates past precipitation trends and patterns using the North American Land Data Assimilation System, Version 2 (NLDAS-2, 12 km/1 h resolution) reanalysis dataset during 1980–2018. Both parametric (linear regression) and non-parametric (e.g., Theil-Sen) robust statistical tools are employed in the study to analyze trend magnitudes, which are tested for statistical significance using the Mann-Kendall test. Standard precipitation indices from ETCCDI are also used to characterize trends in the relative contribution of extreme events to precipitation in the area. In the region an increasing trend (4.3 mm/year) is identified in annual average precipitation with ~34% of the domain showing a significant increase (at the 0.1 significance level) of +3 to +5 mm/year. Seasonal and sub-regional trends are also investigated, with the most pronounced increasing trends identified during summers along the Virginia and Maryland border. The study also finds a statistically significant positive trend (at a 0.05 significance level) in the annual maximum precipitation. Furthermore, the number of daily extremes (daily total precipitation higher than the 95th and 99th percentiles) also depicts statistically significant increases, indicating the increased frequency of extreme precipitation events. Investigations into the proportion of annual precipitation occurring on wet days and extremely wet days (95th and 99th percentile) also indicate a significant increase in their relative contribution. The findings of this study have the potential to improve local-scale decision-making in terms of river basin management, flood control, irrigation scheme scheduling, and stormwater infrastructure planning to address urban resilience to hydrometeorological hazards.

Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith

Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith

EL REGISTRO DEL TIPOTERIO PACHYRUKHOS (MAMMALIA, NOTOUNGULATA) Y EL CHINCHÍLLIDO PROLAGOSTOMUS (MAMMALIA, RODENTIA) EN LA FORMACIÓN SANTA CRUZ (MIOCENO TEMPRANO–MEDIO) AL SUR DEL RÍO COYLE, PATAGONIA, ARGENTINA

The continental early–middle Miocene Santa Cruz Formation (SCF) from Patagonia is one of the most important stratigraphic units of southern South America in terms of the terrestrial Neogene record. Its fossil content was pivotal for establishing the succession of Cenozoic faunas from Patagonia and formed the basis of the Santacrucian South American Land Mammal Age. Despite the updated knowledge recently achieved, the stratigraphic distribution of many taxa within the SCF remains to be clarified. That is the case with the typothere notoungulate Pachyrukhos and the chinchillid rodent Prolagostomus. New information on the stratigraphy of the SCF along the north bank of the Río Gallegos and Cabo Buen Tiempo (Santa Cruz Province), together with a detailed analysis of the provenance information of the specimens in the principal old museum collections, sheds light on the record of these taxa south to Río Coyle. Our results show that the first recorded occurrence of both taxa in the area was between ~17 Ma and 17.41 Ma, restricted to the upper part of the SCF, including the upper part of the Estancia La Costa Member at Cañadón Las Totoras-Monte Tigre, and the superimposed Estancia La Angelina Member along the Río Gallegos and Cabo Buen Tiempo. Their presence suggests a trend to aridification in the upper part of the SCF south to the Río Coyle. These results are consistent with recent information obtained from other locations of the SCF north to the Río Coyle.

Maybe So, Maybe Not: Canis lepophagus at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, Idaho, USA

A canid dentary is described from the Pliocene Glenns Ferry Formation at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, south-central Idaho, USA. The specimen possesses traits in alliance with and measurements falling within or exceeding those of Canis lepophagus. The dentary, along with a tarsal IV (cuboid) and an exploded canine come from the base of the fossiliferous Sahara complex within the monument. Improved geochronologic control provided by new tephrochronologic mapping by the U.S. Geological Survey-National Park Service Hagerman Paleontology, Environments, and Tephrochronology Project supports an interpolated age of approximately 3.9 Ma, placing it in the early Blancan North American Land Mammal Age. It is conservatively referred to herein as Canis aff. C. lepophagus with the caveat that it is an early and robust example of that species. A smaller canid, initially assigned to Canis lepophagus and then to Canis ferox, is also known from Hagerman. Most specimens of Canis ferox, including the holotype, were recently reassigned to Eucyon ferox, but specimens from the Hagerman and Rexroad faunas were left as Canis sp. and possibly attributed to C. lepophagus. We agree that these smaller canids belong in Canis and not Eucyon but reject placing them within C. lepophagus; we refer to them here as Hagerman-Rexroad Canis. This study confirms the presence of two approximately coyote-sized canids at Hagerman and adds to the growing list of carnivorans now known from these fossil beds.

Changes in rainfall seasonality inferred from weathering and pedogenic trends in mid-Miocene paleosols of La Tatacoa, Colombia

The authigenic clay mineral assemblage of paleosol profiles and trends in their bulk geochemical evolution provide insight into the intensity of past chemical weathering regimes. These climate-sensitive weathering products can be used to interpret regional changes of the soil moisture regime, which in turn reflects upon the nature of rainfall seasonality (e.g., unimodal vs. bimodal). A conspicuous color change in the overbank deposits and paleosols of the mid-Miocene Honda Group of La Tatacoa, Colombia, is suggestive of a climatic transition which affected the fauna of La Venta - a mid-Miocene fossiliferous site and significant component of the South American Land Mammal Age (SALMA) classification. This study aims to determine how the paleopedology of this region records the climatic transition that modified the annual patterns of rainfall and soil moisture, forcing a change from the gray-colored paleosols hosted by the La Victoria Formation (~13.6 to ~13.1 Myr) to the red-beds of the Villavieja Formation (~13.1 to 12.0 Myr). In the La Victoria profile, the pedogenic fraction of the clay assemblage indicates that vermiculite, chlorite/HIV mixed-layered clays and high concentrations of base cations (Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+) developed in a poorly drained paleosol under reducing (low Eh) and above-neutral pH conditions. By contrast, the presence of kaolinite, goethite and hematite in the red-beds paleosols implies more oxidizing conditions (high Eh), whereas pedogenic vermiculite and smectite suggest a pH close to or mildly below neutral. A common detrital source (parent material) is inferred for both sets of paleosols. However, more intense chemical weathering towards aluminium rich clay in the Villavieja red-bed fossil soils indicates a change in soil humidity from a poorly drained soil environment of a seasonally flooded wetland system to an alternating regime of humidity and drought on a better drained floodplain. The variation in soil moisture is consistent with a change in seasonality from a unimodal rainfall regime in the case of the La Victoria paleosols to bimodal conditions in the case of the paleosols of the Villavieja Fm. After the establishment of a fully glaciated Antarctica and the global climate transition into the Mi-4 glacial stage at ~13.1 Ma, an increased rate of continental weathering along the paleotropical fringe could have been caused by a stronger temperature gradient between the equator and South Pole, shifting the Intertropical Convergence Zone northward and the rainfall patterns with it.

Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories by Benjamin B. Olshin (review).

Reviewed by: Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories by Benjamin B. Olshin Guan Zeng-Jian (bio) Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories By Benjamin B. Olshin. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Pp. 458. Human history, as recorded in written accounts, covers only a small period of time compared to what is known as prehistory, human civilization before the use of writing. Prehistoric civilization is commonly understood through the interpretation of historical sites and archaeological excavations. But is there any other way to understand this period? And does other evidence shed light on questions such as whether the development of human civilization is linear, or an alternation of periodic [End Page 237] growth and decline? How did the dissemination of human knowledge, especially in prehistoric times, proceed? These are the issues Benjamin B. Olshin explores in his book Lost Knowledge. Olshin has his own understanding of the above problems. He believes that the development of human civilization may be cyclical, and in the prehistoric period it may also reach a level beyond our imagination, but the literature fails to record this. Knowledge passed on from generation to generation orally will eventually exist in various legends in a certain deformation. Olshin's book describes a new method to interpret the technical knowledge that may exist in the prehistoric period from these legends. Olshin focuses on the technical knowledge of the prehistoric period, especially ideas about machines and equipment. This decision makes sense, because if we want to understand societies at that time, it is crucial to understand their technical knowledge and their level of technological achievement, as these expressed and shaped, to a large extent, those societies. In explaining his choice of materials, Olshin writes that "it is important to understand that technological descriptions are bound to appear in works—even fictional ones—produced by any society that is making devices and experimenting with technology, even in an informal way" (p. 166). The word "informal" here means the materials the author used were not official historical documents. This argument relates to his understanding of knowledge dissemination. The author states that in prehistorical times, knowledge about various crafts and technologies was passed down without the organizational structures such as schools or guilds that assumed this role in later times. Oral transmission from generation to generation has made myths and folk tales the main carriers for preserving and disseminating these knowledges and therefore provides a glimpse of the basic appearance of ancient technical knowledge. To find evidence of prehistorical technology, the author does not focus on ancient sites and archaeological discoveries, but on early texts. He claims that their authors expressed the ancient technical characteristics they knew, thus proving the existence of these ancient technologies. This is an approach not many historians and archaeologists have applied. Another commendable aspect of Lost Knowledge is its attention to cultural diversity. The author traces a diverse range of technologies, including legends of aircraft, magic mirrors, the missing land of Atlantis, the story of Gyges and his magic ring in Plato's Republic, etc. For each technology, the author has collected descriptions from cultural regions as wide ranging as Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Oceania, and Native American lands. This makes for a colorful narrative and supports the author's conjecture about the mode of knowledge dissemination. The weakness of the author's argument is that he rarely analyzes the purpose and nature of these texts. He does not clearly explain whether the technical knowledge he describes really existed at the time, despite strongly [End Page 238] suggesting it did. This would require comparison with historical relics and archeological evidence. Nevertheless, this book makes us aware that myths and legends may shed some light on the history of technology. Guan Zeng-Jian Guan Zeng-jian is a distinguished professor at the School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He presided over the 2015 China National Social Science Fund major project "The History of Metrology in China" and has published the books Kao Gong Ji: The World's Oldest Encyclopaedia of Technologies (Brill, 2019) and Geschichte der chinesischen Metrologie (NW Press, 2016) in cooperation with Konrad Herrmann. Citation: Zeng-jian, Guan...

Unraveling the Relationship Between Tropical Storms and Agricultural Drought

AbstractDrought and tropical storm (TS) are associated with water deficit and surplus, respectively. Soil moisture is a key component in the hydrological cycle that plays an important role in monitoring drought and reflects the infiltrated or stored water due to TS rainfall. Therefore, soil moisture information can be used for the assessment of whether TS can ameliorate severe drought conditions. Here, we use downscaled 1 km Soil Moisture Active Passive data set generated at the Center for Complex Hydrosystems Research at the University of Alabama, and Hurricane Database 2nd generation to examine the coincidence of extreme events between agricultural droughts and Atlantic TS in the contiguous United States from 2015 to 2019. The Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) matching approach is employed to correct the bias using the root zone soil moisture data provided by the North American Land Data Assimilation System Phase 2 (NLDAS‐2), and then weekly Standardized Soil Moisture Index is calculated for characterization of agricultural drought. As a result, we estimate the frequency of TS impacted regions in the US, the ratio of droughts ameliorated and exacerbated by TS, and the regions where TS highly affect the offset of drought. Our findings indicate detailed spatial information of the offset of drought conditions based on a high‐resolution data set and provide potential information in terms of mitigating drought and TS for the future.

Potential caveats in land surface model evaluations using the US drought monitor: roles of base periods and drought indicators

The US drought monitor (USDM) has been widely used as an observational reference for evaluating land surface model (LSM) simulation of drought. This study investigates potential caveats in such evaluation when the USDM and LSMs use different base periods and drought indices to identify drought. The retrospective national water model (NWM) v2.0 simulation (1993–2018) was used to exemplify the evaluation, supplemented by North American land data assimilation system phase 2 (NLDAS-2). Over their common period (2000–2018), in distinct contrast with the USDM which shows high drought occurrence (>50%) in the western half of the continental US (CONUS) and the southeastern US with low occurrence (<30%) elsewhere, the NWM and NLDAS-2 based on soil moisture percentiles (SMPs) consistently show higher drought occurrence (30%–40%) in the central and southeastern US than the rest of the CONUS. Much of the differences between the LSMs and USDM, particularly the strong LSM underestimation of drought occurrence in the western and southeastern US, are not attributed to the LSM deficiencies, but rather the lack of long-term drought in the LSM simulations due to their relatively short lengths. Specifically, the USDM integrates drought indices with century-long periods of record, which enables it to capture both short-term (<6 months) drought and long-term (⩾6 months) drought, whereas the relatively short retrospective simulations of the LSMs allows them to adequately capture short-term drought but not long-term drought. In addition, the USDM integrates many drought indices whereas the NWM results are solely based on the SMP, further adding to the inconsistency. The high occurrence of long-term drought in the western and southeastern US in the USDM is further found to be driven collectively by the post-2000 long-term warm sea surface temperature (SST) trend, cold Pacific decadal oscillation and warm Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation, all of which are typical leading patterns of global SST variability that can induce drought conditions in the western, central, and southeastern US. Our findings highlight the effects of the above caveats and suggest that LSM evaluation should stay qualitative when the caveats are considerable.

Subseasonal prediction performance for South American land–atmosphere coupling in extended austral summer

AbstractLand–atmosphere feedbacks, through water and energy exchanges, provide subseasonal‐to‐seasonal predictability of the hydrological cycle. We analyse subseasonal land–atmosphere coupling over South America (SA) during extended austral summer for the soil moisture‐to‐precipitation and soil moisture‐to‐air temperature feedback pathways. We evaluate subseasonal hindcasts from global forecasting systems from the UK Met Office, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts and the Center for Weather Forecast and Climate Studies (CPTEC), for the common period of 1999–2010, against two reanalyses. Biases in land–atmosphere states are established in the first week of hindcasts and increase with lead time. By Week 5, all the models only demonstrate good performance over northern, northeastern and southeastern SA for soil moisture and evapotranspiration and over tropical and subtropical SA for temperature. The hindcasts show stronger coupling at longer lead–lag between variables than reanalyses. Our results highlight possible deficiencies in feedbacks between soil moisture and precipitation in CPTEC and NCEP forecasts over the Amazon due to initial dry soil moisture biases, and in feedbacks between soil moisture and temperature for all four investigated models over southeastern SA due to erroneous representations of evapotranspiration.

Dietary niches of creodonts and carnivorans of the late Eocene Cypress Hills Formation.

Modern North American carnivorous mammal assemblages consist of species from a single clade: the Carnivora. Carnivorans once coexisted with members of other meat-eating clades, including the creodonts (Hyaenodontida and Oxyaenida). Creodonts, however, went extinct in North America during the late Eocene and early Oligocene, potentially due to niche overlap and resource competition with contemporary carnivorans. In this study, we employ a community ecology approach to understand whether the dietary niches of coexisting creodonts and carnivorans overlapped during the late Eocene (Chadronian North American Land Mammal Age), a time when creodonts were dwindling and carnivorans were diversifying. We quantify niche overlap based on inferences of diet from carnassial tooth shape estimated using Orientation Patch Count, Dirichlet’s Normal Surface Energy, and linear dental measurements as well as from body mass for all species in the Calf Creek Local Fauna of Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan (Treaty 4 land). Although creodonts and carnivorans shared characteristics of their carnassial tooth shape, suggesting similar chewing mechanics and feeding habits, we find that marked differences in body size likely facilitated niche partitioning, at least between the largest creodonts and carnivorans. Calculations of prey focus masses and prey mass spectra indicate that only the smallest creodont may have experienced significant competition for prey with the coeval carnivorans. We suggest that the ultimate extinction of creodonts from North America during the late Eocene and Oligocene was unlikely to have been driven by factors related to niche overlap with carnivorans.

Validation of North American land data assimilation system Phase 2 (NLDAS-2) air temperature forcing and downscaled data with New York State station observations

Climate and meteorological factors including temperature and associated heat exposure metrics are related to environmental health risk factors and the incidence of health effects. While meteorological station data provide a good source of point measurements, temporal and spatially consistent temperature data are needed for health studies. Reanalysis data such as the North American Land Data Assimilation System’s (NLDAS) 12 km gridded product are an effort to resolve spatio-temporal environmental data issues. With funding from the NASA Applied Sciences Program, the NLDAS 12 km air temperature product has been downscaled to 1 km using MODIS Land Surface Temperature patterns. Limited validation of the native 12 km NLDAS reanalysis data has been undertaken. Our objective is to evaluate the accuracy of both the 12 km and 1 km downscaled products using the US Historical Climatology Network station data geographically dispersed across New York State for 2006, 2009, and 2010. These years were selected by a climatological analysis over the past 10 years that found 2006 to be a reference year with near-normal temperatures, 2009 a cool year and 2010 a warm year. Statistical methods including correlation, scatterplots, time series and summary statistics were used to determine the accuracy of the remotely sensed maximum and minimum temperature products. The effects of elevation and terrain slope on remotely sensed temperature product accuracy were determined with 10 m digital elevation data. National Land Cover Land Use data was used to determine the effect of mixed pixels on the accuracy of the NLDAS products. Results show the downscaled temperature product improves accuracy over the native 12 km temperature product with average correlation improvements from 0.82 to 0.87 for minimum and 0.76 to 0.85 for maximum temperatures. Higher terrain slope was related to lower correlations between stations and remotely sensed products. Stations in pixels with higher percentages of open water tended to have higher correlations. Our results inform health studies using remotely sensed temperature products to determine health risk from excessive heat by providing a more robust assessment of the accuracy of the 12 km NLDAS product and additional accuracy gained from the 1 km downscaled product.