Whether profiling the chief of the last hunter-gatherers on the river, an early settler witnessing her first prairie fire and a modern wildlife biologist using fire to manage prairies, the manager of ...the Granger Farmer's Co-op Creamery, or a landowner whose bottomlands are continually eaten away by floods, Faldet steadily develops the central idea that people are walking tributaries of the river basin in which they make their homes.Faldet moves through the history of life along the now-polluted Upper Iowa, always focusing on the ways people depend on the river, the environment, and the resources of the region. He blends contemporary conversations, readings from the historical record, environmental research, and personal experience to show us that the health of the river is best guaranteed by maintaining the biological communities that nurture it. In return, taking care of the Upper Iowa is the best way to take care of our future.
Most studies of emancipation's consequences have focused on the South. Moving the discussion to the North, Leslie Schwalm enriches our understanding of the national impact of the transition from ...slavery to freedom.Emancipation's Diasporafollows the lives and experiences of thousands of men and women who liberated themselves from slavery, made their way to overwhelmingly white communities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and worked to live in dignity as free women and men and as citizens.Schwalm explores the hotly contested politics of black enfranchisement as well as collisions over segregation, civil rights, and the more informal politics of race--including how slavery and emancipation would be remembered and commemorated. She examines how gender shaped the politics of race, and how gender relations were contested and negotiated within the black community. Based on extensive archival research,Emancipation's Diasporashows how in churches and schools, in voting booths and Masonic temples, in bustling cities and rural crossroads, black and white Midwesterners--women and men--shaped the local and national consequences of emancipation.
To many rural Iowans, the stock market crash on New York's Wall Street in October 1929 seemed an event far removed from their lives, even though the effects of the crash became all too real ...throughout the state. From 1929 to 1933, the enthusiastic faith that most Iowans had in Iowan President Herbert Hoover was transformed into bitter disappointment with the federal government. As a result, Iowans directly questioned their leadership at the state, county, and community levels with a renewed spirit to salvage family farms, demonstrating the uniqueness of Iowa's rural life. Beginning with an overview of the state during 1929, Lisa L. Ossian describes Iowa's particular rural dilemmas, evoking, through anecdotes and examples, the economic, nutritional, familial, cultural, industrial, criminal, legal, and political challenges that engaged the people of the state. The following chapters analyze life during the early Depression: new prescriptions for children's health, creative housekeeping to stretch resources, the use of farm "playlets" to communicate new information creatively and memorably, the demise of the soft coal mining industry, increased violence within the landscape, and the movement to end Prohibition. The challenges faced in the early Great Depression years between 1929 and 1933 encouraged resourcefulness rather than passivity, creativity rather than resignation, and community rather than hopelessness. Of particular interest is the role of women within the rural landscape, as much of the increased daily work fell to farm women during this time. While the women addressed this work simply as "making do, " Ossian shows that their resourcefulness entailed complex planning essential for families' emotional and physical health. Ossian's epilogue takes readers into the Iowa of today, dominated by industrial agriculture, and asks the reader to consider if this model that stemmed from Depression-era innovation is sustainable.Her rich rural history not only helps readers understand the particular forces at work that shaped the social and physical landscape of the past but also traces how these landscapes have continued in various forms for almost eighty years into this century.
In this portrait of Dubuque, Iowa, Russell Johnson combines personal narratives with social, political, and economic analysis to shed new light on what the War meant for one city and for the rapidly ...growing north. Johnson examines the experiences of Dubuque's soldiers and their families to answer crucial questions: What impact did the Civil War have on the economic and social life of Dubuque? How did military service affect the social mobility of veterans? And how did army service, as a form of industrial organization, help create a modern workforce? Warriors into Workers makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the formation of American industrial society, and addresses key issues in labor history, military history, political culture, and gender.
We examined the impact of three different sample preparation methods on bulk soil geochemistry data obtained from a hand‐held, portable X‐ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer. We generated data from ...a soil core recovered from the surface, downward into unaltered loess, and into a buried soil at a site in eastern Iowa. Samples were scanned (i) directly from field‐moist soil cores; (ii) after drying, grinding, and being loosely massed in plastic cups; and (iii) as pressed‐powder pellets. Data derived using these methods were compared with data obtained from a standard benchtop X‐ray fluorescence (XRF) unit. Generally, the results indicated that data from pressed powder pellets often provide the best correlation to benchtop XRF data, although the results were sometimes element or compound specific. Calcium oxide, Fe2O3, and K2O generally provided the strongest correlations between pXRF‐ and XRF‐reported values; SiO2 data were more problematic. Field‐moist pXRF scans generally underestimated element concentrations, but the correlations between pXRF and benchtop XRF measurements were greatly improved after applying pXRF‐derived calibration standards. In summary, although element/compound data provided by pXRF showed significant relationships to benchtop XRF data, the results are improved with proper sample preparation (i.e., drying, grinding, pressing) and usually by calibrating the pXRF data against known standards.
In this study, detailed field experiments were conducted at three hillslopes in southeast Iowa with different agricultural management practices, namely Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), no-till, ...and conventional till, to identify the effects of land use on saturated hydraulic conductivity, Ksat, variability. On average, 40 measurements per field were concomitantly performed using an array of semi-automated double ring infiltrometers (DRIs) to ensure adequate spatial representation of Ksat per hillslope. The semi-automated DRIs allowed for continuous operation up to 200h so that a “true” steady state condition could be reached during the monitoring period. These measurements were complemented with pedon measurements for soil texture, bulk density, and other biogeochemical properties at the same locations. A statistical analysis showed that Ksat exhibited a log-normal distribution and the harmonic mean of the Ksat values proved to be the most representative mean. Two distinct patterns were observed in the developed Ksat spatial distribution maps for the three hillslopes. The map for the CRP hillslope showed a “strip pattern” while the cultivated fields depicted a “mosaic pattern”. The strip pattern at the CRP was attributed to past flow-driven preferential erosion along the main drainage-way, which removed the finer soil fractions and exposed a loam substratum with a relatively higher sand content that yielded higher Ksat values in the drainage-way. The mosaic patterns in the no-till and tilled fields were attributed to the mixing of soil from cultivation during the crop rotations. A correlation analysis between Ksat and different soil properties confirmed the patterns shown in the Ksat maps and further revealed the correspondence of Ksat with key soil properties. Soil texture dominated the infiltration process in soils with a higher sand content (>15%), whereas bulk density dominated the infiltration process in soils experiencing the effects of compaction due to agricultural activity.
•The harmonic mean is the most representative mean of Ksat.•Legacy of concentrated erosion results to “strip pattern” for Ksat.•Mixing of soil due to cultivation and rainsplash yields a “mosaic” pattern.•Intense cultivation led to Ksat spatial variability over three orders-of-magnitude.
Blood and anger, bragging and pain, are all part of this young Iowa soldier's vigorous words about war and soldiering. A twenty-year-old farmer from Council Bluffs, Charles O. Musser was one of the ...76,000 Iowans who enlisted to wear the blue uniform. He was a prolific writer, penning at least 130 letters home during his term of service with the 29th Iowa Volunteer Infantry.Soldier Boymakes a significant contribution to the literature of the common soldier in the Civil War. Moreover, it takes a rare look at the Trans-Mississippi theater, which has traditionally been undervalued by historians.Always Musser dutifully wrote and mailed his letters home. With a commendable eye for historical detail, he told of battles and marches, guerrilla and siege warfare, camp life and garrison soldiering, morale and patriotism, Copperheads and contraband, and Lincoln's reelection and assassination, creating a remarkable account of activities in this almost forgotten backwater of the war.
•LiDAR surveys were conducted for the Iowa River during the 2008 Iowa flood in the US.•This huge data set was processed automatically to retrieve flood inundation maps.•Assessment shows the ...LiDAR-derived flood information has appreciable accuracy and resolution.•LiDAR has the potential be an alternative remote sensing method to document floods.
Can we use Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), an emergent remote sensing technology with wide applications, to document floods with high accuracy? To explore the feasibility of this application, we propose a method to extract distributed inundation depths from a LiDAR survey conducted during flooding. This method consists of three steps: (1) collecting LiDAR data during flooding; (2) classifying the LiDAR observational points as flooded water surface points and non-flooded points, and generating a floodwater surface elevation model; and (3) subtracting the bare earth Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from the flood surface elevation model to obtain a flood depth map. We applied this method to the 2008 Iowa flood in the United States and evaluated the results using the high-water mark measurements, flood extent extracted from SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) imagery, and the near-simultaneously acquired aerial photography. The root mean squared error of the LiDAR-derived floodwater surface profile to high-water marks was 30cm, the consistency between the two flooded areas derived from LiDAR and SPOT imagery was 72% (81% if suspicious isolated ponds in the SPOT-derived extent were removed), and LiDAR-derived flood extent had a horizontal resolution of ∼3m. This work demonstrates that LiDAR technology has the potential to provide calibration and validation reference data with appreciable accuracy for improved flood inundation modeling.
At least fifty-six frontier forts once stood in, or within view of, what is now the state of Iowa. The earliest date to the 1680s, while the latest date to the Dakota uprising of 1862. Some were vast ...compounds housing hundreds of soldiers; others consisted of a few sheds built by a trader along a riverbank. Regardless of their size and function-William Whittaker and his contributors include any compound that was historically called a fort, whether stockaded or not, as well as all military installations-all sought to control and manipulate Indians to the advantage of European and American traders, governments, and settlers.Frontier Forts of Iowadraws extensively upon the archaeological and historical records to document this era of transformation from the seventeenth-century fur trade until almost all Indians had been removed from the region.
The earliest European-constructed forts along the Mississippi, Des Moines, and Missouri rivers fostered a complex relationship between Indians and early traders. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1804, American military forts emerged in the Upper Midwest, defending the newly claimed territories from foreign armies, foreign traders, and foreign-supported Indians. After the War of 1812, new forts were built to control Indians until they could be moved out of the way of American settlers; forts of this period, which made extensive use of roads and trails, teamed a military presence with an Indian agent who negotiated treaties and regulated trade. The final phase of fort construction in Iowa occurred in response to the Spirit Lake massacre and the Dakota uprising; the complete removal of the Dakota in 1863 marked the end of frontier forts in a state now almost completely settled by Euro-Americans.
By focusing on the archaeological evidence produced by many years of excavations and by supporting their words with a wealth of maps and illustrations, the authors uncover the past and connect it with the real history of real places. In so doing they illuminate the complicated and dramatic history of the Upper Midwest in a time of enormous change. Past is linked to present in the form of a section on visiting original and reconstructed forts today.
Contributors:
Gayle F. CarlsonJeffrey T. CarrLance M. FosterKathryn E. M. GourleyMarshall B. McKusickCindy L. NagelDavid J. NolanCynthia L. PetersonLeah D. RogersRegena Jo SchantzChristopher M. SchoenVicki L. Twinde-JavnerWilliam E. Whittaker
