Great Mountains Research Articles

The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains

The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains

Quantitative representation of mountain objects extracted from the global digital elevation model (GTOPO30)

A methodology was developed previously by the authors for the segmentation of the Global Digital Elevation Model (GTOPO30) to three terrain classes (mountains, basins and piedmont slopes) and it was applied to the Great Basin Section (south-west USA). In the present research effort, mountain objects were identified through a connected component-labelling algorithm applied on the mountain terrain class. Taking into account the physical and perceptual attributes of the Great Basin mountain features, 12 morphometric attributes were defined for the mountain objects and were used as descriptors in their parametric representation. Finally, classification of mountain objects through the implementation of a K -means clustering algorithm resulted in four clusters of mountain objects that appeared to be spatially arranged to distinct geographic regions. The results were compared with existing maps and they were found to be in accordance with existing physiographic descriptions. It is concluded that the derived parametric representation of mountain objects carried sufficient physiographic information and it can be used for mountain classification. The conclusions point out the physiographic information content of GTOPO30 and its value and applications to regional geology and space geomorphology.

Ice wedges of the Dalton Highway, Alaska

North America’s largest oilfield was discovered in 1968 at Prudhoe Bay; it contained over ten billion barrels of recoverable oil about 3000 m beneath the Arctic Coastal Plain. Its development changed Alaska’s economy for ever, and included building the oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. The haul road alongside the pipeline is still the only road across northern Alaska, and was named the Dalton Highway when it was opened to public access. It crosses the wilderness of the Brooks Range (⇓Fig. 1), and allows completion of a north–south traverse of Alaska, across a broad range of geology and geomorphology; it was the destination for a Geologists’ Association field trip in 1999, when these notes were compiled. Fig. 1. A truck on the Dalton Highway across soliflucted slopes north of the Atigun Pass over the Brooks Range. The two great mountain ranges of Alaska, the Alaska Range in the south and the Brooks Range in the north (⇓Fig. 2), are accumulations of accreted terranes on the convergent plate margins of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans respectively, and both developed major icecaps during the Pleistocene; large glaciers are still fed by Pacific-derived rainfalls on the Alaska Range, but there is none today on the drier Brooks. The intervening Yukon valley and the Arctic Coastal Plain are cold deserts in the mountain rain shadows; they are classic periglacial environments (⇓Ferrians 1994). Their total lack of glaciation throughout the Pleistocene is perhaps most famed for the consequent survival of many rich placer gold deposits, notably in the Klondike valley, just over the border in Canada (⇓Waltham 1995). Fig. 2. Major geomorphological features across Alaska. Permanently frozen ground develops where all the groundwater freezes due to the cooling effect of the air. Continuous permafrost occurs where the mean annual air temperature is lower than about …

Landmarks on the Iron Road: Two Centuries of North American Railroad Engineering

Table of Contents: Preface Chapter 1 - Across the Waters Chapter 2 - Across Great Mountains Chapter 3 - Railroads Below GroundChapter 4 - Yards, Docks and Terminals Chapter 5 - Lost Landmarks Bibliography

Churchill Peaks and the politics of naming

AbstractThe highest mountain in North America bears two official names. While most visitors to Denali National Park in Alaska are familiar with the mountain's official name ‘McKinley,’ and with the frequently used Athabaskan name ‘Denali,’ the mountain also has a second official name: Churchill Peaks. This article traces the history and politics of naming Alaska's famous mountain, including the events that led to the addition of Churchill Peaks. Those events began when President Lyndon Johnson was unable to attend Winston Churchill's funeral in January 1965. The resulting controversy surrounding the naming of the great mountain reflects the ambiguous and often troubled relations between the national government and the remote northern periphery of the country.

Early-successional dynamics of single-aged mixed hardwood stands in a southern New England forest, USA

The pattern of stand development was studied in two mixed-species single-aged stands that originated after true clearcutting at the Great Mountain Forest in northwestern Connecticut. One stand was located on a mesic swale-till site and the other on a more xeric thin-till site. At the time of cutting all sprout growth and advanced regeneration was eradicated, except for 1-year-old red oak ( Quercus rubra) seedlings. Twenty-eight years after the stands originated trees were stratified by shade tolerance such that the canopies were dominated by the intolerant species (paper birch Betula papyrifera, gray birch B. populifolia, pin cherry Prunus pensylvanica) with mid-tolerant species (black birch B. lenta, black cherry P. serotina) becoming prevalent. The number of stems was decreasing but the basal area was steadily increasing. The pattern in species-specific growth rates and crown position were common to both sites; but there were also differences between the sites in the sizes of trees and positioning of the mid-tolerant trees in the canopy. At age 28 the more mesic swale-till site had fewer, taller trees, with pioneer species more typical of northern hardwood climates. On this site red oak was doing poorly, all gray birch and eastern white pine ( Pinus strobus) had died, black birch and black cherry were beginning to dominate the canopy of the stand, and a significant understory of beech ( Fagus grandifolia) had developed through the encroachment of root suckers from the stand edge. Sugar maple ( Acer saccharum), white ash ( Fraxinus americana) and eastern hemlock ( Tsuga canadensis), all significant components of the swale-till site before clearcutting, were noticeably absent. On the thin-till site red oak had not attained the canopy of the stand but was still a significant component of the mid-story with red maple ( A. rubrum). However, black birch was self-thinning more rapidly on the thin-till site than that of the swale-till suggesting that red oak and red maple might well dominate the canopy within another 20 years. In general, the diameter growth rate of the thin-till site currently lags behind the swale-till by approximately 10 years.

Reintroducing Prairie Dogs into Desert Grasslands

ecosystem on two sites p rairie dogs (Cynomys spp.) historically occupied much of the short-grass regions of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain West from Canada to Mexico (Hall, 1981:412-415). Early naturalists found that prairie dogs were a conspicuous part of the grassland biota, some estimating them to number into the billions (Foster and Hygnstrom, undated). But during the last hundred years they have declined to a small fraction of their original abundance because of poisoning programs and later from infection with the introduced bacterium Yersinia pestis, which causes sylvatic plague (Miller et al., 1994). Early travelers and settlers encountered the black-tailed prairie dog (C. ludovicianus), the most abundant and widespread of the four species found in the United States, over much of the shortgrass region of the Great Plains and southwestern deserts (Fig. 1). It symbolized early western grasslands as prominently as bison (Bison bison) or pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana). But by 1990, this once-common animal had dwindled to a remnant of its original numbers (Miller et al., 1994). Current interest in the recovery of prairie dogs matches, in intensity if not in general popularity, that of the early ranchers and government agents in eradicating them. Two recent collections of papers (Clark et al., 1989; Oldemeyer et al., 1993), both assembled by agency effort, and a technical book (Hoogland, 1995) at-

On fast integration in geoid determination

In gravimetric geoid determination, there are three integrals to be evaluated: Stokes, terrain correction and potential. Using geographical grid data, the straightforward evaluation gives an `exact' summation but is very time-consuming. This paper proposes a new method which is based on the modification of the integrated 2D or 3D function into a 1D (spherical distance angle) function applied to an optimal quadrature. The advantages are: a) It is exact (without approximation, especially the singularities have been removed) and can be used for all the three integrals; b) It involves gridded data and is easy to handle; c) It greatly speeds up the computation. A great mountain area, the southern Alps, has been chosen to test the new method. Numerical tests show that: compared with the straightforward evaluation, the new technique consumes on average only 1.23% of CPU time for the three integrals without adversely affecting accuracy.

The magnetic susceptibility of modern soils in China and its use for paleoclimate reconstruction

Magnetic susceptibility of more than 160 modern silty soil samples in China was measured to assess the relationship between the magnetic susceptibility and modern climatic parameters. Correlation between magnetic susceptibility and mean annual temperature (MAT) or mean annual precipitation (MAP), shows a complex picture and no single function can be found to fit all the data on the national scale. In East China, where East Asian monsoon plays an important role for the climate conditions, magnetic susceptibility increases with the increase of MAT or MAP in temperate semi-arid regions of the Loess Plateau and surrounding areas. This can be attributed to increasing intensity of pedogenesis which would favor the formation of strongly magnetic minerals and/or reduce depositional rate of eolian dust. Magnetic susceptibility tends to decrease with the increase of temperature and precipitation in the tropical and subtropical warm and humid regions of the vast areas south of the Yangtze River. This may be explained by pedogenic transformation of iron-bearing minerals to weakly magnetic minerals. Between these two different correlation patterns, 15°C of MAT and/or 1200 mm of MAP seem to be the thresholds. In West China, the correlation becomes quite complex in the great mountains and vast sedimentary basins in the north-west. This may be due to the prevailing continental climate in this region and topographic contrast within short distance. The correlation for the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau is not clear because very few samples were collected. Fluctuations of paleo-temperature and paleo-precipitation at Luochuan for the last 130 ka were estimated using the climofunction obtained from this study.

Juvenile Tree Survivorship as a Component of Shade Tolerance

With a view toward understanding species‐specific differences in juvenile tree mortality and the community‐level implications of these differences, we characterized juvenile survivorship of 10 dominant tree species of oak transition‐northern hardwood forests using species‐specific mathematical models. The mortality models predict a sapling's probability of dying as a function of its recent growth history. These models and species‐specific growth functions (published elsewhere), characterize a species' shade tolerance. Combined growth and mortality models express a sapling's probability of mortality as a function of light availability. We describe the statistical bases and the field methods used to calibrate the mortality models. We examined inter‐ and intraspecific variation in juvenile mortality across three sites: Great Mountain Forest (low pH, nutrient poor soils) in northwestern Connecticut, a calcareous bedrock region (neutral pH, nutrient rich soils) also in northwestern Connecticut, and a site in central‐western Michigan (low pH, nutrient poor soils). Interspecific differences in juvenile mortality have profound effects on community dynamics and composition; the importance of these effects is demonstrated through a spatially explicit simulator of forest dynamics (SORTIE). The 10 species we examined occupy a continuum of survivorship levels at 1% of full sun. There was surprisingly little intraspecific variation in mortality functions for sugar maple, American beech, eastern hemlock, and white ash between the Great Mountain and Michigan sites. However, there was a striking increase in survivorship for sugar maple in the calcareous site. Differences in survivorship among the sites are correlated with soil pH and presumably nutrient availability. Growth rates in high‐light and low‐light survivorship are inversely correlated across species; as level of shade tolerance increases, a species grows more slowly in high light and exhibits increased survivorship under low light. Our results indicate that interspecific differences in sapling mortality are critical components of forest community dynamics.

On the paleoenvironment of the northern Great Basin and adjacent Rocky Mountains

On the paleoenvironment of the northern Great Basin and adjacent Rocky Mountains

Forest models defined by field measurements: I. The design of a northeastern forest simulator

We introduce a new spatially explicit model of forest dynamics. The model is constructed from submodels that predict an individual tree's growth, survival, dispersal, and recruitment, and submodels that predict the local availability of resources. Competition is entirely mechanistic; plants interfere with one another only by depleting resources. We also describe maximum likelihood methods for estimating each of the submodels from data collected in the field. Over the past two years, we collected the necessary data for the dominant tree species in the Great Mountain Forest (Norfolk, Conn.). We report estimates of submodels for each species, and show that the calibrated population dynamic model predicts the structure and dynamics of natural forests. Finally, we contrast our model with the JABOWA–FORET family of forest models.

Preserving the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains

Preserving the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains

Quest for Fire: How Trickster Brought Fire to the People

Quest for Fire was written for De-Ba-Je-Mu-Jig, and toured Ontario during November and December of 1990 A child’s play: imagination and reality, mixed , on various levels in a child’s mind. It begins in the present day, with the sweetest little boy in the world bored almost to tears. His older sister is given the task of entertaining him while Mother steps out to visit gramma. Older Sister gingerly coaxes him out of his mal aise with a story, and then gets caught up in the story herself as th e boy’s imagination shifts into gear and the Trickster and other mythical creatures race about the living room. Upon reaching the top of a great mountain, Trickster realizes he needs the help of his Blueberry Sisters if he is indeed going to get fire for the people.

An Energy Analysis of the Production at the Great Copper Mountain of Falun During the Mid 17th Century

An analysis is made of the energy inputs in the production of copper in Falun, Sweden, in the mid 17th century. This mine produced at that time more than half of the world production of copper. The dominant role of the forests is identified and the contribution to Sweden's wealth and security described, enabling Sweden to develop to the most powerful nation in Northern Europe during the period 1560-1720.

George Catlin's Geology

George Catlin, the noted Nineteenth Century painter of American Indians had a deep interest in geology which, in the late years of his life, was to lead him far astray. He wrote a strange little book, entitled The Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America, that was published by Trubner & Co. of London in 1870. In that work Catlin hypothesized that under the great mountain chains of North and South America there existed subterranean vaults, through which tumultuous rivers ran, debouched in the Gulf of Mexico, and intermingled to become the Gulf Stream. The fury of this torrent flung American Indians, clinging to driftwood and rafts, as far as the coasts of Europe.

Higher education media management in the 90s

If we were to describe the typical school as revealed through this survey, we would make the following points: 1. Schools housed media services mainly in academic divisions, with the result being that the emphasis was mainly on service to the classroom teacher. 2. Administration of media centers was often a one-person job, with the average school spending about $38.71 per student, or $225,000 for all non-print operations, a large portion of that on personnel. 3. Non-print operating personnel included 1.5 administrators, 1 clerical person, 2 people concerned with maintenance and media distribution, 1.5 people engaged in media production, and just over 9 student helpers. 4. The non-print media operation spent about 15% of its funding on commodities and equipment. Our mythical center had a static year in terms of personnel, but if changes were made, staff was added rather than eliminated. 5. A representative media center at the twoyear school level was housed within a main library operation and often shared staff with other functions of the library service. A fouryear school media center, on the other hand, was a separate operation, often headed by a director who reported to a central academic administrator. 6. Finally, the typical media center operation was found on a campus of 5,800 students, located in the Great Lakes or Rocky Mountain regions, and if it provided any services beyond the normal media distribution or production functions, most often maintained a regional film library which served nearby schools.

Primates of the Lac Pelletier Lower Fauna (Eocene: Duchesnean), Saskatchewan

Four genera of primates are present in the early to mid-Duchesnean Lac Pelletier Lower Fauna. Phenacolemur leonardi sp.nov., Trogolemur sp., Omomys sp., and Macrotarsius cf. M. montanus make up the latest diverse primate assemblage known from North America and from the Great Plains. This primate assemblage is similar to the earliest Duchesnean assemblage from the Wood locality, Badwater Creek area of central Wyoming, and primate genera appear to have been widely distributed through the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains in the Uintan–Duchesnean.

Venus: A Contrast in Evolution to Earth

Of the planets, Venus and Earth are by far the most similar in primary properties, yet they differ markedly in secondary properties. A great impact into Earth is believed to have created its moon and removed its atmosphere; the lack of such an impact into Venus apparently led to a greatly differing atmospheric evolution. The lack of an ocean on Venus prevents the recycling of volatiles and inhibits subduction, so that its crust is probably more voluminous than Earth's, although distorted and quite variable in thickness. Venus's upper mantle appears to be depleted in both volatiles and energy sources because, in addition to the lack of volatile recycling, melts of mantle rocks are more dense than their solid matrix at pressures above 8 gigapascals and hence sink if they occur at depths below 250 kilometers. Appreciable energy sources persist at great depths to sustain the few great mountain complexes. The greatest current problem is reconciling the likelihood of a voluminous crust with indications of considerable strength at shallow depths of 20 to 100 kilometers.

Developments in Coal in 1989

In 1989, 5424 United States mines in 26 states produced a record 981.8 million tons of coal, an increase of 3.4% from a revised 949.7 million tons produced in 1988. Of this coal, the Eastern coal province produced 47.1%, the western coal provinces (Northern Great Plains, Rocky Mountain, Pacific Coast, and Alaska) produced 32.5%, the Interior coal province produced 14.6%, and the Gulf coal province produced 5.8%. This production distribution is almost identical to that of 1988. Wyoming produced 171.1 million tons of coal from 2 coal provinces, leading the United States for the second consecutive year. Kentucky again ranked a close second with 170.5 million tons of coal from 2 coal provinces. West Virginia again was third with 151.83 million tons, Pennsylvania again was fourth with 71.8 million tons, and Illinois again was fifth with 60.4 million tons. These 5 states produced 63.7% of United States coal production in 1989 compared to 63.4% in 1988. In rank, the total U.S. coal production was 0.3% anthracite, 69% bituminous, 21.7% subbituminous, and 9% lignite. By age, 62% was Pennsylvanian, 30% was Tertiary, and 8% was Cretaceous. The percentage distribution of the production by age is unchanged from 1988. Bituminous coal's share of the production in 1989 increased 3.7% from 1988 at the expense of subbituminous, due to significantly increased production in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana. Lignite production for montan wax extraction has been taking place on a small scale for many years at 1 mine in the Ione field in California and is included for the first time in this report. In Canada in 1989, 29 mines produced 70.51 million MT of coal, a decrease of 0.2% from 1988. The 3 western provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan) accounted for 94.3% of Canada's coal production in 1989, a 0.1% decrease from a revised 94.4% in 1988. By rank, 55% was bituminous, 29.7% subbituminous, and 15.3% lignite.