Land of Sweeping Plains

Land of Sweeping Plains
Author: Adrian Marshall
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2015-04-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1486300839

Native temperate grasslands are Australia’s most threatened ecosystems. Grasslands have been eliminated from across much of their former extent and continue to be threatened by urban expansion, agricultural intensification, weed invasion and the uncertain impacts of climate change. Research, however, is showing us new ways to manage grasslands, and techniques for restoration are advancing. The importance of ongoing stewardship also means it is vital to develop new strategies to encourage a broader cross-section of society to understand and appreciate native grasslands and their ecology. Land of Sweeping Plains synthesises the scientific literature in a readily accessible manner and includes a wealth of practical experience held by policy makers, farmers, community activists and on-ground grassland managers. It aims to provide all involved in grassland management and restoration with the technical information necessary to conserve and enhance native grasslands. For readers without the responsibility of management, such as students and those interested in biodiversity conservation, it provides a detailed understanding of native grassland ecology, management challenges and solutions and, importantly, inspiration to engage with this critically endangered ecosystem. Practical, easy to read and richly illustrated, this book brings together the grassland knowledge of experts in ethnobotany, ecology, monitoring, planning, environmental psychology, community engagement, flora and fauna management, environmental restoration, agronomy, landscape architecture and urban design.

Land of Sweeping Plains

Land of Sweeping Plains
Author: Nicholas S. G. Williams
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2015-04-22
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1486300820

Native temperate grasslands are Australia’s most threatened ecosystems. Grasslands have been eliminated from across much of their former extent and continue to be threatened by urban expansion, agricultural intensification, weed invasion and the uncertain impacts of climate change. Research, however, is showing us new ways to manage grasslands, and techniques for restoration are advancing. The importance of ongoing stewardship also means it is vital to develop new strategies to encourage a broader cross-section of society to understand and appreciate native grasslands and their ecology. Land of Sweeping Plains synthesises the scientific literature in a readily accessible manner and includes a wealth of practical experience held by policy makers, farmers, community activists and on-ground grassland managers. It aims to provide all involved in grassland management and restoration with the technical information necessary to conserve and enhance native grasslands. For readers without the responsibility of management, such as students and those interested in biodiversity conservation, it provides a detailed understanding of native grassland ecology, management challenges and solutions and, importantly, inspiration to engage with this critically endangered ecosystem. Practical, easy to read and richly illustrated, this book brings together the grassland knowledge of experts in ethnobotany, ecology, monitoring, planning, environmental psychology, community engagement, flora and fauna management, environmental restoration, agronomy, landscape architecture and urban design.

My Country

My Country
Author: Dorothea Mackellar
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015
Genre: Australian poetry
ISBN:

A broadside consisting of the words of Dorothea Mackellar's poem written in a calligraphic hand above a redish-toned desert scene showing two lizards and clumps of grass on a rocky outcrop. The image is digitally printed but has the title, punctuation amd the eyes of the lizards embellished with hand applied gold leaf.

American Harvest

American Harvest
Author: Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1644451166

An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it. In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize. American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.

Great Plains

Great Plains
Author: Ian Frazier
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2001-05-04
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1466828889

National Bestseller Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation. With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

The Wooleen Way

The Wooleen Way
Author: David Pollock
Publisher: Scribe Us
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781925849257

A remarkable memoir detailing a heroic and unswerving commitment to renew the severely degraded land on Wooleen, a massive pastoral property in Western Australia's southern rangelands. The outback conjures many images that the Australian psyche is built upon. Its grand vistas of sweeping dusty plains and its evocation of a tough pioneering spirit form the foundation of our prosperous culture. But these romantic visions often hide the stark environmental, economic, and social problems that have inadvertently been left in the wake of our collective past. Through retelling the struggle of his family amid droughts, financial ruin, depression, and death, David Pollock exposes the modern-day realities of managing a remote outback station. Forced by a sense of moral responsibility, he set out on an uncharted course to restore the 153,000 hectares of degraded leasehold land that he felt he was obliged to manage on behalf of the Australian people. Then, just at the point when that course seemed certain to fail, the project was saved by the generosity and faith of everyday Australians. This is an urgent story of political irresponsibility, bureaucratic obstinacy, industrial monopolization, and, above all, ecological illiteracy in a vast segment of the Australian continent. It is a familiar story of overexploitation. Yet it is also a story of the extraordinary ability of the natural environment to repair itself, given the chance. After over a decade of his hard-won insights, Pollock outlines in The Wooleen Way a specific and comprehensive plan to reverse the ecological damage done to the pastoral resource since European colonization. He also emphasizes the economic and social necessity of carrying it out, and of curbing the conquering human spirit so that it aligns with the subtle power of the natural landscape.

Out of the Dust (Scholastic Gold)

Out of the Dust (Scholastic Gold)
Author: Karen Hesse
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2012-09-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0545517125

Acclaimed author Karen Hesse's Newbery Medal-winning novel-in-verse explores the life of fourteen-year-old Billie Jo growing up in the dust bowls of Oklahoma. Out of the Dust joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ."A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands.To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. While others flee from the dust bowl, Billie Jo is left to find peace in the bleak landscape of Oklahoma -- and in the surprising landscape of her own heart.

Zen of the Plains

Zen of the Plains
Author: Tyra A. Olstad
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2014-05-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1574415522

Although spare, sweeping landscapes may appear "empty," plains and prairies afford a rich, unique aesthetic experience--one of quiet sunrises and dramatic storms, hidden treasures and abundant wildlife, infinite horizons and omnipresent wind, all worthy of contemplation and celebration. In this series of narratives, photographs, and hand-drawn maps, Tyra Olstad blends scholarly research with first-hand observation to explore topics such as wildness and wilderness, travel and tourism, preservation and conservation, expectations and acceptance, and even dreams and reality in the context of parks, prairies, and wild, open places. In so doing, she invites readers to reconsider the meaning of "emptiness" and ask larger, deeper questions such as: how do people experience the world? How do we shape places and how do places shape us? Above all, what does it mean to experience that exhilarating effect known as Zen of the plains?

Changes in the Land

Changes in the Land
Author: William Cronon
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 142992828X

The book that launched environmental history, William Cronon's Changes in the Land, now revised and updated. Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize In this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land, provides a brilliant inter-disciplinary interpretation of how land and people influence one another. With its chilling closing line, "The people of plenty were a people of waste," Cronon's enduring and thought-provoking book is ethno-ecological history at its best.