Understanding the effects of varying average annual precipitation on organic carbon in loess-derived soils can assist the reconstruction of paleoclimates from buried paleosol sequences as well as ...facilitate the prediction of soil organic carbon (SOC) change in response to future climate forcings. The goal of this study was to examine trends in SOC and its relationships to particle-size distribution (PSD) and soil aggregation in surface loess along a precipitation gradient in the Central Great Plains of the United States. Soil cores were collected from undisturbed portions of seven pioneer cemeteries to a depth of 50cm across a transect spanning northwest Kansas into western Missouri. Pioneer cemeteries were selected to minimize any effect from land use and disturbance. Soil cores were cut into 2.5-cm segments, which were prepared and analyzed for bulk density, SOC, and aggregated and disaggregated PSD from laser diffraction. Annual precipitation, depth, and PSD were used in the multivariate analyses to explain the distribution of SOC and complexed organic carbon (COC)—an indicator of soil physical quality—as well as bulk density. Precipitation was the variable that most explained SOC, COC, and bulk density. A proxy for microaggregation, geometric mean shift (GMS), was developed for this study and defined as the difference between the geometric mean of the aggregated and disaggregated PSDs. Microaggregation occurred below an OC:clay ratio of 0.163 in the upper 50cm of the loess-derived soils analyzed. Among the variables considered, COC had the highest coefficient of determination (R2=0.871). Our findings indicate that future climate forcings resulting in precipitation changes may have an effect on COC and, thus, soil physical quality of loess-derived soils.
•Soil properties were analyzed across a precipitation gradient.•Geometric mean shift proxy for soil aggregation was developed.•Soil organic carbon:clay ratio threshold was derived for loess soils.•Complexed soil organic carbon shows a strong relationship to precipitation.•Pedotransfer functions were derived based on texture, depth, and precipitation.
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Creating the Suburban School Advantage explains how American suburban school districts gained a competitive edge over their urban counterparts. John L. Rury provides a national overview of the ...process, focusing on the period between 1950 and 1980, and presents a detailed study of metropolitan Kansas City, a region representative of trends elsewhere. While big-city districts once were widely seen as superior and attracted families seeking the best educational opportunities for their children, suburban school systems grew rapidly in the post–World War II era as middle- class and more affluent families moved to those communities. As Rury relates, at the same time, economically dislocated African Americans migrated from the South to center-city neighborhoods, testing the capacity of urban institutions. As demographic trends drove this urban-suburban divide, a suburban ethos of localism contributed to the socioeconomic exclusion that became a hallmark of outlying school systems. School districts located wholly or partly within the municipal boundaries of Kansas City, Missouri, make for revealing cases that illuminate our understanding of these national patterns. As Rury demonstrates, struggles to achieve greater educational equity and desegregation in urban centers contributed to so-called white flight and what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan considered to be a crisis of urban education in 1965. Despite the often valiant efforts made to serve inner city children and bolster urban school districts, this exodus, Rury cogently argues, created a new metropolitan educational hierarchy—a mirror image of the urban-centric model that had prevailed before World War II. The stubborn perception that suburban schools are superior, based on test scores and budgets, has persisted into the twenty-first century and instantiates today's metropolitan landscape of social, economic, and educational inequality.
Red state religion Wuthnow, Robert
2012., 20111114, 2011, 2012-01-01
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No state has voted Republican more consistently or widely or for longer than Kansas. To understand red state politics, Kansas is the place. It is also the place to understand red state religion. The ...Kansas Board of Education has repeatedly challenged the teaching of evolution, Kansas voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state is a hotbed of antiabortion protest--and churches have been involved in all of these efforts. Yet in 1867 suffragist Lucy Stone could plausibly proclaim that, in the cause of universal suffrage, "Kansas leads the world!" How did Kansas go from being a progressive state to one of the most conservative?
Part memoir, part investigative report, My Grandfather's Prison recounts longtime journalist Serrano's search to discover whether his drunkard grandfather was murdered in solitary confinement. ...Serrano delves deep into Kansas City's ignoble past, showing us real-life characters who broaden our understanding of the city's history, such as sheriffs, political bosses, and the denizens of skid row. As Serrano gradually comes to terms with the darker side of his family history, he traces a parallel reconciliation of the city with its own sordid past.
Longitudinal connectivity is a fundamental characteristic of rivers that can be disrupted by natural and anthropogenic processes. Dams are significant disruptions to streams. Over 2,000,000 low-head ...dams (<7.6 m high) fragment United States rivers. Despite potential adverse impacts of these ubiquitous disturbances, the spatial impacts of low-head dams on geomorphology and ecology are largely untested. Progress for research and conservation is impaired by not knowing the magnitude of low-head dam impacts. Based on the geomorphic literature, we refined a methodology that allowed us to quantify the spatial extent of low-head dam impacts (herein dam footprint), assessed variation in dam footprints across low-head dams within a river network, and identified select aspects of the context of this variation. Wetted width, depth, and substrate size distributions upstream and downstream of six low-head dams within the Upper Neosho River, Kansas, United States of America were measured. Total dam footprints averaged 7.9 km (3.0-15.3 km) or 287 wetted widths (136-437 wetted widths). Estimates included both upstream (mean: 6.7 km or 243 wetted widths) and downstream footprints (mean: 1.2 km or 44 wetted widths). Altogether the six low-head dams impacted 47.3 km (about 17%) of the mainstem in the river network. Despite differences in age, size, location, and primary function, the sizes of geomorphic footprints of individual low-head dams in the Upper Neosho river network were relatively similar. The number of upstream dams and distance to upstream dams, but not dam height, affected the spatial extent of dam footprints. In summary, ubiquitous low-head dams individually and cumulatively altered lotic ecosystems. Both characteristics of individual dams and the context of neighboring dams affected low-head dam impacts within the river network. For these reasons, low-head dams require a different, more integrative, approach for research and management than the individualistic approach that has been applied to larger dams.
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Mosasaurs were widespread predators of the vast Cretaceous seas, and it is debated whether these extinct marine reptiles migrated to coastal environments to feed or reproduce. Here we investigate the ...potential for migration of mosasaurs through novel high-resolution sclerochronology that samples incremental growth lines in fossil mosasaur teeth and extracts oxygen isotopes from pristine enamel. Oxygen isotope trends of consecutive teeth are spliced to reconstruct one to seven month-long life histories of Platecarpus tympaniticus and Clidastes propython mosasaurs, respectively, collected from time-equivalent chalk deposits of the Western Interior Seaway and Mississippi Embayment of North America. The records of all individuals—two adults and one juvenile—are characterized by semi-regular depletions in oxygen isotope values, indicating travel from marine to freshwater coastal environments. Weekly to bi-weekly consumption of freshwater by two genera at diverse life stages implies that mosasaur osmoregulatory function was similar to their living sea snake relatives that drink freshwater periodically.
•We reconstruct palaeoecology of mosasaurs from coeval Kansas and Alabama chalk.•Oxygen isotopes in pristine fossil tooth enamel record changing aquatic habitats.•Two adults and one juvenile show a pattern of bi-weekly migration to freshwater.•Freshwater consumption suggests osmoregulation similar to living sea snakes.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
David Hanzlick traces the rise and evolution of women's activism in a rapidly growing, Midwestern border city, one deeply scarred by the Civil War and struggling to determine its meaning. Over the ...course of 70 years, women in Kansas City emerged from the domestic sphere by forming and working in female- led organizations to provide charitable relief, reform society's ills, and ultimately claim space for themselves as full participants in the American polity. Focusing on the social construction of gender, class, and race, and the influence of political philosophy in shaping responses to poverty, Hanzlick also considers the ways in which city politics shaped the interactions of local activist women with national women's groups and male-led organizations.
Soils in the Kansas Cherokee Prairies have formed in various parent materials and exhibit differences in the degree of expression of vertic properties. Despite large clay contents, few soils meet the ...criteria for a Vertisol. In an effort to investigate the cause of these differences, pedogenic processes, primarily clay illuviation and shrink–swell processes, were evaluated in eight pedons. Relatively high coefficient of linear extensibility (COLE) values were found in all soils. The clay mineralogy of four sites was dominated by smectite, but only two of those sites classified as Vertisols. In the other four sites, smectite was the most common clay mineral, yet there were several other clay minerals present in significant quantities. Disruption of illuvial clay features by shrink–swell movement was evident in the thin sections of all soils. Striated b‐fabrics dominated except in surface soils that exhibited a small COLE value and occurred above an argillic horizon. Linear planes lined with stress‐oriented clay and representing zones of shear failure were observed, along with argillans that had been distorted and embedded within the matrix by swelling pressure and soil movement. In conclusion, when present, a nonexpansive silty surface layer acts as a buffer and may limit shrink–swell by allowing expansive subsoils to dry more slowly.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
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