Download or read book Sonoita Plain written by Carl E. Bock and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far to the south of Arizona’s sprawling metropolises, a rolling savanna of grass, oak, and mesquite rises above the surrounding deserts. The Sonoita Plain is a basin of a thousand square miles bracketed by mountains, a land once the domain of cowboys that is now more and more the focus of exurban development. These southwestern grasslands are both typical of and distinct from those of the Great Plains—similarly shaped by drought, grazing, and fire, but with a different flora and fauna, and the product of a different human history. The Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch is a tract of 8,000 acres on the Sonoita Plain that was established in 1968 by the Appleton family and that is now part of the sanctuary system of the National Audubon Society. To all appearances, it is an ordinary piece of land, but for the last 35 years it has been treated in an extraordinary way—by leaving it alone. No grazing to influence grass production. No dam building to hold back flash floods. No pest control. No fire-fighting. By employing such non-action, might we gain a glimpse of what this land was like hundreds, even thousands, of years ago? Through essays and photographs focusing on the Sanctuary and surrounding area, this book reveals the complex ecology and unique aesthetics of its grasslands and savannas. Carl and Jane Bock and Stephen Strom share a passion for the remarkable beauty found here, and in their book they describe its environment, biodiversity, and human history. People have dominated the world’s grasslands and savannas for so long that today we have no clear idea what these lands might be like without us. By understanding the lessons of the Sonoita Plain, we might gain such insight—and, more important, discover approaches to protecting the very things that attract us to such lands in the first place.
Download or read book Sonoita Plain written by Carl E. Bock and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch is a tract of 8,000 acres on the Sonoita Plain that was established in 1968 by the Appleton family and is now part of the sanctuary system of the National Audubon Society. To all appearances it is an ordinary piece of land, but for the last 35 years it has been treated in an extraordinary way - by leaving it alone. No grazing to influence grass production. No dam building to hold back flash floods. No pest control. No firefighting. By employing such nonaction, might we gain a glimpse of what this land was like hundreds, even thousands, of years ago? Through essays and photographs focusing on the Research Ranch Sanctuary and surrounding area, this book reveals the complex ecology and unique aesthetics of its grasslands and savannas. Carl and Jane Bock and Stephen E. Strom share a passion for the remarkable beauty found here, and in their book they describe its environment, biodiversity, and human history.
Download or read book The View from Bald Hill written by Carl E. Bock and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-05-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book brings together nearly every aspect of grassland research in the American Southwest and is written to appeal to both academics and the general public. It refutes conventional myths about some causes of grassland change, tests hypotheses in restoration ecology, and offers new perspectives on the recovery of ecosystems free from livestock grazing. It is a book that every naturalist or ecologist should read."—Conrad Bahre, author of A Legacy of Change "I expected another nature book. What I found was, to my surprise, a love story. Carl and Jane Bock visited the Research Ranch in the early 1970s and fell in love--with the Sonoita Plains, the plants and animals there, and the people who called it home. Like all good love stories, this one is full of passion and joy, excitement and disappointment, and sadness and humor. . . . With their successful blend of storytelling and scientific reporting, the Bocks share the most intimate details of their love affair and make the reader curious to learn more about this little-known land."—H. Ronald Pulliam, Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia "Jane and Carl Bock write precisely as well as lovingly of the dynamics of the distinctive grasslands near the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona. They also bring 25 years of first-rate science to bear on their topic. Their seasoned view of ecological and perceptual changes in this community are unique and will go a long way toward healing and restoring the remaining fragments of this biome in southeastern Arizona."—Gary Paul Nabhan, author of Cultures of Habitat
Download or read book Cowboy is a Verb written by Richard Collins and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2019-11-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the big picture to the smallest detail, Richard Collins fashions a rousing memoir about the modern-day lives of cowboys and ranchers. However, Cowboy is a Verb is much more than wild horse rides and cattle chases. While Collins recounts stories of quirky ranch horses, cranky cow critters, cow dogs, and the people who use and care for them, he also paints a rural West struggling to survive the onslaught of relentless suburbanization. A born storyteller with a flair for words, Collins breathes life into the geology, history, and interdependency of land, water, and native and introduced plants and animals. He conjures indelible portraits of the hardworking, dedicated people he comes to know. With both humor and humility, he recounts the day-to-day challenges of ranch life such as how to build a productive herd, distribute your cattle evenly across a rough and rocky landscape, and establish a grazing system that allows pastures enough time to recover. He also intimately recounts a battle over the endangered Gila topminnow and how he and his neighbors worked with university range scientists, forest service conservationists, and funding agencies to improve their ranches as well as the ecological health of the Redrock Canyon watershed. Ranchers who want to stay in the game don’t dominate the landscape; instead, they have to continually study the land and the animals it supports. Collins is a keen observer of both. He demonstrates that patience, resilience, and a common-sense approach to conservation and range management are what counts, combined with an enduring affection for nature, its animals, and the land. Cowboy is a Verb is not a romanticized story of cowboy life on the range, rather it is a complex story of the complicated work involved with being a rancher in the twenty-first-century West.
Download or read book Arizona s Scenic Roads and Hikes written by Roger Naylor and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arizona’s Scenic Roads and Hikes directs visitors toward the very best the state has to offer. Travel from sun-kissed deserts to the summits of snow-capped mountains, from the cosmic abyss of the Grand Canyon to the red rocks of Sedona and the soaring monoliths of Monument Valley. Visit ancient Native American villages, chase Old West legends, and get your kicks on Route 66. In this captivating new guide Roger Naylor features all twenty-seven of Arizona’s state-designated scenic and historic roads, including five National Scenic Byways. The stunning drives are arranged by region and include starting and ending points, mileage, photos, full descriptions, and suggestions on locally owned places to eat and sleep. Each road trip is paired with attractions and activities including nearby hiking trails. Create a lifetime of memories while exploring the details of Arizona’s endlessly diverse and amazing scenery. Travel writer Roger Naylor exclaims, “Welcome to my world.”
Download or read book Irrigation in the Rio Grande Valley New Mexico written by Frank E. Wozniak and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication reviews both published and unpublished sources on Puebloan, Hispanic, and AngloAmerican irrigation systems in the Rio Grande Valley. Settlement patterns and Spanish and Mexican land grants in the valley are also discussed. The volume includes an annotated bibliography.
Download or read book Water supply Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Trace written by Lauret Savoy and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a New Preface by the Author Through personal journeys and historical inquiry, this PEN Literary Award finalist explores how America’s still unfolding history and ideas of “race” have marked its people and the land. Sand and stone are Earth’s fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. One life–defining lesson Lauret Savoy learned as a young girl was this: the American land did not hate. As an educator and Earth historian, she has tracked the continent’s past from the relics of deep time; but the paths of ancestors toward her—paths of free and enslaved Africans, colonists from Europe, and peoples indigenous to this land—lie largely eroded and lost. A provocative and powerful mosaic that ranges across a continent and across time, from twisted terrain within the San Andreas Fault zone to a South Carolina plantation, from national parks to burial grounds, from “Indian Territory” and the U.S.–Mexico Border to the U.S. capital, Trace grapples with a searing national history to reveal the often unvoiced presence of the past. In distinctive and illuminating prose that is attentive to the rhythms of language and landscapes, she weaves together human stories of migration, silence, and displacement, as epic as the continent they survey, with uplifted mountains, braided streams, and eroded canyons. Gifted with this manifold vision, and graced by a scientific and lyrical diligence, she delves through fragmented histories—natural, personal, cultural—to find shadowy outlines of other stories of place in America. "Every landscape is an accumulation," reads one epigraph. "Life must be lived amidst that which was made before." Courageously and masterfully, Lauret Savoy does so in this beautiful book: she lives there, making sense of this land and its troubled past, reconciling what it means to inhabit terrains of memory—and to be one.
Download or read book Scenic Driving Arizona written by Stewart M. Green and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a memorable trip along 30 of Arizona's most spectacular landscapes and natural wonders--the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Monument Valley, and the Sonoran Desert--and enjoy special attractions and historical points along the way.
Download or read book Death Rattle Book 2 written by Carl Bock and published by AbsolutelyAmazingebooks.com. This book was released on 2022-03-23 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Shaken, not stirred takes on new meaning it this second installment in the modern-day western mystery series by Carl and Jane Bock. Their writing reflects solid knowledge of Arizona and its denizen. And their storytelling is as sharp as a serpent's tooth." —Nicolas Gilmartin Teranzi, Online Critics Corner There is a killer at large in the oak grasslands of southeastern Arizona whose weapon of choice is a deadly variety of southwestern rattlesnake. Deputy Sheriff Calvin Creede doesn't like snakes, but with the help of veteran herpetologist Dr. Hazel Smith and his fiancé, Maria Obregon, he seeks to find the mountain cave from which a collection of Mojave rattlesnakes recently was looted. Then he must determine which of a variety of suspects has taken them home. In this, the second installment of Arizona Borderland Mysteries, Carl and Jane Bock continue their story about a deputy sheriff in an isolated corner of Arizona's smallest county. It is a land once dominated by a few cowboys and their cattle, but Deputy Creede finds his job increasingly complicated by the trappings of southwestern exurbia, including vineyards, drugs, border tension, and high-end housing developments.
Download or read book Invasive Exotic Species in the Sonoran Region written by Barbara Tellman and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2023-12-19 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All over the planet, organisms of many species are appearing outside of their natural habitats—often carried by that particularly peripatetic species Homo sapiens. This book marks the first comprehensive attempt to address problems posed by expanding populations of exotic plant and animal species in the Sonoran Desert and adjacent grasslands and riparian areas. It describes the arrival and spread of non-native species as diverse as rats and saltcedar, covering both their impacts and the management of those impacts. It is estimated that as much as 60 percent of the vegetative cover of the Sonoita Creek-Patagonia Reserve, the first Nature Conservancy area designated in Arizona, is dominated by exotic plants, and that introduced fish pose a recurrent threat to the native fish of that area. Meanwhile at the Grand Canyon, invasives such as tamarisk, red brome, carp, and catfish are pervasive either in the Colorado River or in the patches of desert scrub along its shores. Throughout the Sonoran Desert and adjacent areas, from islands in the Sea of Cortés to desert grasslands, some six hundred species of non-native plants and animals have become established, with bullfrogs and Mediterranean grasses now common where they once never existed. The book brings together contributors from academia, government, and nonprofit organizations, including such experts as Gary Paul Nabhan, Richard Mack, and Alberto Búrquez-Montijo. They review historic and even prehistoric origins of non-native species—not only exotic plants, amphibians, and mammals but also insects, fish, and birds. They then examine significant problems in each major subregion and ecosystem and discuss control efforts. The volume contains the first compiled list of more than 500 naturalized exotic species in the Sonoran region. Invasive species issues are rapidly emerging as major environmental concerns both locally and worldwide. This book will assist professionals—ecologists, conservation biologists, and policy makers—involved in invasive species control in the Southwest and will be a rich resource for all concerned with protecting native species and their habitats.
Download or read book Forging a Sustainable Southwest written by Stephen E Strom and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forging a Sustainable Southwest is the story of how diverse groups of citizens in the Southwest have worked collaboratively to develop visions for land use that harmonize ecological, economic, cultural, and community needs.
Download or read book Proceedings of the First Biennial Conference on Research in Colorado Plateau National Parks written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Proceedings RMRS written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Future of Arid Grasslands written by Barbara Tellman and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1999-04 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of a conf. on the major problems facing grasslands in arid & semi-arid regions of the U.S. & Mexico & to seek solutions to those problems. Grasslands in many parts of the Southwest & northern Mexico are facing serious threats -- from urbanization & subdivision development to spread of invasive plant species to conflicts over grazing policy. Target groups for participation included private landowners, non-profit groups, government agencies, environmental advocates, economists, scientists, etc. Emphasized practical, hands-on mgmt. methods, including time in grasslands managed under a variety of techniques.
Download or read book Geological Survey Professional Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The National Gazetteer of the United States of America written by Geological Survey (U.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
