American Landscape Research Articles

Regional landscape change triggered by Andean uplift: The extinction of Sparassodonta (Mammalia, Metatheria) in South America

Sparassodonta, a Metatherian monophyletic group, was the main mammalian carnivore predator clade in South America from the Paleogene to the Early Pliocene (c. 66–3.5 Ma). However, there is still no consensus on the causes of their demise. Here, we use the fossil record and Bayesian diversification models to infer the origination and extinction rates for Sparassodonta. Then, we evaluate if their demise can be attributed to global temperature changes, Andean uplift, biotic interactions with their competitor and prey clades, and body mass evolution. That is biotic aspects in the context of the Red Queen model, abiotic aspects in the context of the Court Jester model, and an intrinsic lineage attribute. Our results show that this lineage is characterized by a positive near-zero net diversification rate indicating that the clade maintained a relatively low but stable diversity until the Middle Miocene when an increase in extinction rate drove them to decline and eventual extinction. Moreover, our results support the idea that a drastic regional landscape change triggered by the Andean uplift process affected their diversification dynamics, eventually driving them to extinction. These environmental changes could explicitly affect Sparassodonta lineages due to their ever-present vulnerability to extinction by near-zero net diversification rate and their highly specialized ecology that could have constrained adaptation to new South American landscapes. • We evaluate biotic and abiotic hypotheses to understand the causes of the Sparassodonta extinction. • We estimate the Sparassodonta macroevolutionary trajectories and evaluate their relationship with biotic and abiotic factors. • We find that Sparassodonts did not succumb to biotic interactions (competition and predation) or body size evolution. • The Sparassodonta decline resulted from the regional landscape changes during the Miocene associated with Andean uplift.

Review: Picturesque Literature and the Transformation of the American Landscape, 1835–1874, by John Evelev

Review: <i>Picturesque Literature and the Transformation of the American Landscape, 1835–1874</i>, by John Evelev

From the Editor

From the Editor

Study on landscape evaluation and optimization strategy of Central Park in Qingkou Town

This article mainly discusses the evaluation and optimization of the green space utilization value of comprehensive parks used by people in dense urban areas based on the desire for green and healthy living in the postepidemic era. As a qualitative study of urban parks, this study builds an evaluation system based on the American landscape performance series and combines it with comprehensive indicators of China’s urban parks, including environmental performance (such as park planning, infrastructure, trails, and vegetation), health performance (such as cultural education, park activities, and transportation accessibility) economic performance (such as tourist consumption and stimulating the development of surrounding construction) and three other aspects: conducting a site evaluation; evaluating observed behavior, interviews and questionnaires; and performing the analytic hierarchy process–coefficient of variation weight comprehensive evaluation analysis. Additionally, the park comprehensive index, land use index, traffic convenience, park vitality index and other dynamic changes are analyzed over time. The purpose is to explore the foundation of urban parks after the epidemic. The role of the urban park environment in sustainable ecological development is verified, and appropriate optimization and improvement actions are determined.

Discovering the Legacy of Hispanic/Spanish and South American Landscapes through Geohistorical Sources: The Geographical and Topographical Relations of Philip II

Landscapes have history and memory, which are eloquent generators of testimonies and traces on the processes of the landscape that take place today, and that will take place in the future. In recent years, numerous methods of analysing land and landscape patterns have been developed and evaluated, based on the multiplicity of these type of geographic and historical data sources, which have developed the concept of the geohistorical source. The goal of these sources of information allows us to historically reconstruct landscapes. With this in mind, the basic objective of the present research is to approach a geohistorical source with a wide spatial spectrum in Europe and America: the geographical and topographical relations of Philip II. This source has been chosen for the quality, quantity, variety and systematization of the data it provides on the territory and landscape of the crown of Castile. In addition, it ended up being the model of how to obtain organized and homogeneous knowledge of a large spatial area, considering the geographical, anthropological and historical data of the different territories. This geohistorical source is reliable, because the local authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical, are questioned, as they are the ones who inhabit, use, and, at different levels, govern the territory and its people.

The Archaeology of Southeastern Native American Landscapes of the Colonial Era

The Archaeology of Southeastern Native American Landscapes of the Colonial Era

Adapting a Japanese Facing Technique to the Treatment of an American Landscape Plan

ABSTRACT Facings have a long history in the treatment of East Asian paintings on silk or paper to protect the surface of the painting during remounting. Materials and methods vary, but most facings involve the temporary attachment of some type of paper to the surface of the work with water or a weak, water-soluble adhesive. Contemporary Japanese practices have developed a multi-layered facing process using rayon paper and Japanese kozo paper, adhered together with funori, a natural seaweed adhesive, and wheat starch paste. The resulting composite is designed to provide a balance of protection, support, flexibility and removability as well as to extend and control treatment time. Adapting this facing process can facilitate the treatment of works on paper that are too damaged to handle safely or treatments where staff are limited. Past cases describe the removal of drawings, and historic wallpaper from secondary supports or mounts using facings. As there is limited information on Japanese facings available in published literature, this article describes the materials and methods of the original process in detail and applies its use to the treatment of a severely damaged nineteenth-century American landscape plan.

Migration data collection and management in a changing Latin American landscape

Abstract While many Latin American countries have a tradition of receiving migrants, including the countries selected as case studies, there are no institutionalized mechanisms for the integration and settlement of migrants. The objective of this article is to explore how to improve migration data collection and management in a region that does not have many migration integration policies in place. I assess the state of migration data collection and management in three case studies: the city of Cucuta in Colombia, the North Huetar Region in Costa Rica, and the city of Monterrey in Mexico. The three countries publish data exclusively at the national level, rather than the local or municipal. Despite all case studies having a variety of administrative data, mainly in the form of entries and exits by nationality, these data are not enough to properly identify the sociodemographic characteristics of migrant populations in a country, and much less in specific cities. I make recommendations divided into three main themes to improve migration data in Latin America.

Whitman's Sketches of New Orleans: A City, and an Artist, by Glimpses

Whitman's Sketches of New Orleans:A City, and an Artist, by Glimpses Bonnie Carr O'Neill The poet of "Song of Myself" identifies himself as "Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son." The assertion of an identity at once particular and general is audacious, but it also reflects a philosophy of belonging derived from unique circumstances. As a journalist in the 1840s, Whitman's daily labors required him to represent the generality to the particular, to address a local audience on matters pertaining not only to that population, but also to a greater, imagined national community. Whitman's poetry benefits from that journalistic practice as it represents vast and varied American landscapes, as he shows in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd": Lo, body and soul—this land,My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn. (ll. 89–92) North and South, rivers and prairies: all are united as part of the same land. These varied and oppositional references were not abstract to Whitman. In crafting them, he drew from personal knowledge. In 1848, he traveled with his teenaged brother Jeff from New York to New Orleans. Whitman worked as an exchange editor of the New Orleans Daily Crescent, and Jeff worked odd jobs for the newspaper, before the brothers returned north after four months. The journeys to New Orleans from New York and back again carried Whitman as far from New York as he would ever go, and on those trips he saw more of the US than most of his fellow New Yorkers would ever see firsthand. His travels made present the discussions over territorial expansion, slavery, the [End Page 111] Mexican War, and so many other subjects that Whitman would have encountered in the newspapers he read and worked for. The details of his journeys, as well as his New Orleans journalism, are collected in the engaging new volume Walt Whitman's New Orleans, edited by Stefan Schöberlein. Schöberlein's brief introduction provides biographical context to the New Orleans writings, explaining the relevant details of Whitman's travels with Jeff, their living situations in New Orleans, Whitman's working life in the city, and his experiences of New Orleans life and culture. Although Whitman's time in New Orleans was brief, the interlude influenced him profoundly, as Schöberlein explains. For one thing, New Orleans was for Whitman a site of sexual liberation. The Calamus sequence of poems, eventually published in the 1860 Leaves of Grass, offers the most intimate expressions of same-sex desire in Whitman's canon; scholars believe the poems to have been inspired by someone Whitman knew in New Orleans. By including a transcription of Whitman's manuscript drafts in the appendix, the volume invites readers to consider the New Orleans journalism in relation to Whitman's creative development. Likewise, Schöberlein argues that the New Orleans journalism provides a link to the poetry Whitman eventually produced. In particular, Schöberlein points out the correspondences between Whitman's journalistic portraits of people he observes in New Orleans and the men and women he includes in his many social catalogs throughout the poetry. Finally, Schöberlein also suggests that the political and cultural diversity of New Orleans contributed to Whitman's evolving idea that "republicanism … is an egalitarian practice, not a set of institutions" (xxiii). In the Crescent journalism, that practice entails openness to the range of people and experience New Orleans affords. Scholars have long known of Whitman's New Orleans interlude, so this collection does not break new biographical ground. It does, however, bring together and make readily available a body of work that is typically accessible only in the scholarly edition of Whitman's journalism or in the archives. It joins Walt Whitman's Selected Journalism, edited by Douglas A. Noverr and Jason Stacey, as one of the very few anthologies of Whitman's journalism suitable for individual or classroom use. Noverr and...

A Conversation About Landscapes and Preservation as Justice

From the conservation of sites of enslavement, freedman villages, segregated cities, or memorials of remembrance like cemeteries and parks, African Americans have and continue to shape our shared American landscape. This article captures a dynamic conversation between landscape designer, MacArthur Fellow, and public artist Walter Hood and Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. They discuss the importance of preserving Black landscapes that make visible African American struggle and achievement.

Toksyczne przedmieścia. Radioaktywne dziedzictwo St. Louis w soczewce projektów Allany Ross

The article follows the radioactive history of St. Louis featured in the works of the artist and activist Allana Ross. Her artistic practice presents an interesting, interdisciplinary approach to the social and environmental problems connected to the radioactive contamination of the city. The aforementioned contamination (apart from the workers directly involved in the processing of the uranium ore) affected mainly the lower middle-class families living in the outskirts. From the early 1940s until the late 1960s St. Louis based chemical company Mallinckrodt was the major manufacturer of uranium utilized in the Manhattan Project and later on in the development of the American national atomic energy programme. As the result of the negligence of many social and political actors, the radioactive waste produced by Mallinckrodt spread over the city’s suburbs contaminating air, soil and water. These facts, however, were not publicly known for many years. Just recently they received the publicity that they demanded. Even though the radioactive contamination of St. Louis dates back to the 1940s, the affected areas had not been taken care of till the late 1980s, when the city was included into FUSRAP and Superfund programmes, which were established by the U.S. government to “clean the radioactive mess”left recklessly in the American landscape some decades ago. The author of the article adopts the notion of negative heritage introduced by Lynn Meskell (2002) to interpret the significance of the radioactive contamination of the region and contextualize the works of Ross. The artist herself understands her projects, which may as well fall into the recently established category of artivism, as adaptive strategies for the slowly approaching environmental catastrophe. In a more general sense Ross calls out not only for the redefinition of St. Louis negative radioactive heritage, but also for the new culture of nature and new modes of human –environment relations.

Review of An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain

This is an exhibition review of An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain, which took place at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from May 14, 2020, to January 18, 2021. The exhibition was a comprehensive survey of the photographer An-My Lê’s work, which addressed the complexity and politicization of the American landscape and the people found within it. This review explores the difficulty of interpreting Lê’s work and the inability to come away with clear answers about the contradictions that the American landscape and its inhabitants embody.

Relating Knowledge and Perception of Sustainable Landscape Practices to the Adoption Intention of Environmentally Friendly Landscapes

The influence of traditional residential landscapes on humans and the environment has provoked a discussion on maintaining landscapes in a sustainable way and conserving water resources. Traditional American landscapes require water-intensive management. Previous research has discussed potential negative impacts on the environment from prevalent improper landscaping maintenance techniques. To mitigate long-term consequences, sustainable landscape management programs aim at protecting the environment from harmful inputs and conserving water. Among alternative practices, converting fully turfgrass lawns to sustainable landscapes is recommended. The Florida Friendly Landscaping (FFLTM) initiative is one such program designed to minimize negative impacts while maintaining and improving landscapes’ aesthetic characteristics. Although technological advancements in lawn care services have rapidly developed in the past few decades (e.g., smart irrigation systems), the level of homeowners’ knowledge and perceptions regarding sustainable practices are still at the forefront of potential factors that influence the widespread adoption of sustainable lawn management. Relatively few studies have investigated how homeowners’ knowledge and perceptions of sustainable landscapes affect adoption decisions. This study adapted Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior as a framework to examine how individuals’ knowledge and perceptions of sustainable landscapes influence their adoption intention, and to predict their pro-environmental behavior. We found that homeowners’ knowledge about lawns and landscapes (more knowledgeable) is positively correlated with their sustainable landscape adoption intention. Additionally, homeowners’ perceptions of landscape conservation practices (more agreeable with sustainable landscape practices) are positively correlated with sustainable landscape adoption intentions. The implications for policymakers and water conservation programs are discussed.

Land-Based Art Criticism: (Un)learning Land Through Art

AbstractThis article provides an overview of how land-based settler colonial critique can reorient art criticism and art education to expand the scope of art and art practice to critical considerations of land politics and social justice, particularly in terms of the repatriation of Indigenous lands. In particular, land-based perspectives can help to rethink place/land by offering decolonizing methods for critiquing Western works of art that address place. Art educators’ ability to understand and critique settler colonialism in art has been hindered by Eurocentric art criticism. This article seeks to reveal settler colonial imperatives and ambitions regarding land through a critical analysis of American landscape paintings and land art. This piece further examines contemporary Indigenous artists’ site-specific works through adopting decolonial, land-based inquiry. Land-based art criticism interrupts the dominant mode of art inquiry to more comprehensively analyze art associated with place/land and expand the scope of social, cultural, and political understandings of social equity.

Truth or Consequence: How the 1950s Quiz Show Scandal Shaped American Audiences

This paper offers an overview of the 1950s American quiz show scandal that revolved around the ‘rigging’ of CBS and NBC programs The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One during an unprecedented transformation and rapid growth of the postwar American media landscape.

Forging Transnational Identities in Italian American Chick Lit: The Novels of Adriana Trigiani and the Ethnic Bildungsroman

Abstract The highly successful writing career of Italian American author Adriana Trigiani is examined from the perspective of diaspora theory and transnational studies to reveal how the abiding value of her work lies in its ability to offer a provocative new model of the ethnic Bildungsroman, or novel of education. This essay probes the seemingly facile label of “Chick Lit” often applied to Trigiani's work to redefine the genre as a dynamic site of ethnic women's empowerment, one that invites women to rediscover their salient role in the Italian American landscape. By highlighting the agency that has been heretofore invisible in the life stories of our first-generation immigrant great-grandmothers and grandmothers working as seamstresses and shoemakers, Trigiani inspires new generations of Italian American women, now pharmacists and writers, to take up the mantle of their forebears to become engaged, proactive members of society, always infused with the best traditions of Italian diaspora sisterhood.

Alexander WILSON, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez, Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991; 335 pages. $24.95 (paper)

Alexander WILSON, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez, Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991; 335 pages. $24.95 (paper)

Editor’s Note

Previous articleNext article FreeEditor’s NoteTanya SheehanTanya Sheehan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs more Americans come to terms with racial inequities and injustice in the United States, I have been asking more urgently, What can a journal devoted to interpreting archives of the past contribute to a critical reevaluation of the present? How might publishing histories of the visual arts in the US, built upon primary sources, effect change in a society defined and divided by race?New research in this issue offers ways into these questions by addressing topics as disparate as an elite nineteenth-century circle of white writers and painters, a collective of Black artists founded in the tumultuous year of 1968, and the feminist iconography of a Cuban-American artist. Peter Betjemann introduces us to the New York Sketch Club, whose work he argues was shaped by racial violence. Reflections on the American landscape by its famous members associated with the Hudson River School promoted ideas deeply invested in Indian removal and African slavery. Chris Dingwall takes us inside AfriCOBRA’s commitment to forging an autonomous community of Black artists in a racist, capitalist society. Members of this group not only created a unique aesthetic to express Black experiences, but they also deftly navigated the boundaries between art and economics, seeking to control their work’s commercial value. Finally, Xuxa Rodríguez hears in Ana Mendieta’s interview with critic Judith Wilson the specific experiences of a feminist, exiled, and bilingual woman of color—not reflections of white desires. Rodríguez reinterprets Mendieta’s oeuvre as speaking to the peculiar condition of displacement and unbelonging that comes with living as both a Cuban in exile and a racialized American citizen.These essays uncover the racial politics that engulf, and often directly motivate, art-making in the US. While Betjemann points to the long history of such politics, which white aesthetics has worked to deny, Dingwall and Rodríguez underscore the cruciality of centering archives of BIPOC artists and listening attentively to the stories they tell, especially if those stories challenge dominant narratives about American art and racist assumptions about non-white others. Such archives include the papers of Nela Arias-Misson and Consuelo Jiménez Underwood, both profiled in this issue.We are also pleased to share two commissions: a curatorial intervention by Kevin M. Murphy, who asks what researchers can do when they encounter seemingly indecipherable sources, and an insightful analysis by Jennifer Liese of the artist talk, an enduring genre that has received surprisingly little critical attention. We look forward to focusing on the interpretation of oral archives in a special issue planned for 2023. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Archives of American Art Journal Volume 60, Number 2Fall 2021 Sponsored by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/717523 Views: 748 © 2021 The Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Landscape Ecology in Mexico: Evolution, Research, Education and Future (Selected Theoretical and Meta-Scientific Aspects)

Abstract Context:The impulse to write this contribution was the effort of co-authors to bring the European landscape ecologist closer to the development, research &amp; didactic approaches and possible future development of landscape ecology in Mexico from the theoretical, metascientific and applied point of view. Purpose: The purpose of the metascientific approach, in this case meta-landscape ecological approach, is to increase the degree of generalization of existing empirical-methodological, theoretical-application and didactic knowledge and results of landscape-ecological research, so that generally valid landscapeecological regularities and principles can be determined The aim was to acquire new generalizing and holistic qualities and perspectives in the field of landscape ecology in Mexico at this level. Methods: The two-step methodical procedure was elaborated, using metascientifically oriented landscape ecological and ecological Mexican literature, complemented by our studies and personal experience. Results: In this way, new knowledge, representing the added value and meaning of landscape ecologicalevolution, research, education and future development in Mexico was gained. It will serve also to Mexican landscap ecologists. Conclusiones: Mexican landscape ecology, lying at the intersection of European and American landscape ecology, can be described as integrative, idiographic-nomothetic at the spatial level of the landscape in the contact zone of European and American research approaches and principles.

The Surgeon's Role in Addressing Racism and Achieving Health Equity.

In the United States, the nation's health is not an organic outcome. It is not a coincidence that certain groups of people living in the United States experience higher premature death rates or poorer health outcomes than others. For centuries, racial and ethnic as well as geographic differences in health outcomes have been part of the American landscape, so entrenched in society that many people fail to recognize that health inequities were intentionally derived. A national crisis tends to magnify inequities in our society, but even more alarming is the fact that as the country becomes more racially and ethnically diverse in the coming years, the health inequities are projected to worsen if we do not proactively and immediately address them. As we continue to grapple with the lasting impact of the pandemic, it is of vital importance that we utilize this time to acknowledge, understand, and seriously address the health inequities that have historically plagued the country for over 400years. As the United States works overtime to stem the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic, it must also work equally hard to move in a more equitable, inclusive, and healthier direction, not only because of the more than 83000 Americans dying prematurely each year but also because of the economic and national security toll it will have if not effectively addressed.