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Browsing by Subject "Natural history"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Assessing the Impacts of Field Days for Youth
    (2007) Seidel, Wayne; Liukkonen, Barb; Meyer, Nathan
    This is a 30-slide Powerpoint (pdf format) abbreviated content presentation that assesses the value of and education program with outdoor field days for children. The program is not identified, and a narrative report of this study could not be found. The slides show a variety of activities (forestry station, conservation station, research station, etc.) with small classes rotating between them. There are no accompanying notes, and the PPT slides are in bullet-point format. The authors note that a short survey and focus groups were done with learners and their teachers. The study makes the following conclusions: “Students remembered details and concepts; All participants valued event; Clear evidence of learning and behavior change; Opportunity & willingness to more fully integrate event with classroom work; Regular evaluation will help improve the program” The following implications were listed: Following Best Practices can help improve learning and stewardship; Single-day field day events can have both short- and long-term impacts; Regular evaluation will help improve the program.”
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    Empire of Ice: Arctic Natural History and British Visions of the North, 1500-1800
    (2019-05) Miller, Emelin
    This dissertation uses methods from history of science and environmental history to understand how British imperialists—politicians, fur traders, and naturalists—rationalized the Arctic between 1550 and 1800. Through early modern understandings of natural history, geography, and medicine, Britons crafted a narrative of the north that positioned it as a British colonial landscape ripe for exploration and exploitation. Beginning with the first English settlement in the New World on a northern island in Baffin Bay, I explore how English imperialists John Dee and Richard Hakluyt used Arthurian legends, classical geography, and the rhetoric of empiricism to cast the north as a place that was in need of British governance and necessary for the success of the British Empire. The second chapter examines how Hudson’s Bay Company employees who made observations about northern wildlife and climate experienced the north in the early eighteenth century. For fur trader-naturalists, provisioning food was a central preoccupation in conveying to Europeans the habitability of northern lands, especially in the context of paternalist attitudes towards indigenous peoples. This is juxtaposed with a debate over the existence of the Northwest Passage, highlighting the political stakes of making knowledge claims about northern climates. The third chapter examines how eighteenth-century Britons overlaid European ideas of health upon northern indigenous peoples to justify Hudson’s Bay Company treatments of Cree and Athapascan employees: in short, cold climates produced dispassionate behaviors in native peoples, making them immune to the effects of illness, pain, and emotional abuse. This contrasted with Britons who attested to the health of northern climates, calling into question European criteria about healthfulness. The last chapter focuses on the late eighteenth-century Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant who viewed the Arctic as part of the British Empire, and wrote a natural history of Arctic Zoology, positioning the north geographically within the confines of British sovereignty over nature. Ultimately, each chapter demonstrates the long history of British claims of possession over the Far North, priming it for exploration in the nineteenth century, and reminding us that scientific knowledge can work to dispossess indigenous peoples and construct monolithic and damaging environmental narratives.
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    The Geology of Minnesota, Vol. 2 of the Final Report
    (Minnesota Geological Survey, 1888) Winchell, N.H.; Upham, Warren
    Summary of the geological and natural history studies carried out in Minnesota between 1872 and 1901. Published in 6 volumes. Vol 2 summarizes geologic and natural history information by county between 1882-1885.
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    Grand Portage National Monument/Minnesota: Final General Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement
    (2003) National Park Service, Department of the Interior
    This is a planning document presenting four development alternatives to enhancing visitor experience at the Grand Portage National Monument. The alternatives range from doing nothing, to different degrees of reconstructed historic buildings and major interpretive programs, to a hybrid model. A brief history and background of the site is provided. The report summarizes potential environmental impacts to land and water resources for each alternative option.
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    Long Range Interpretive Plan: Grand Portage National Monument, 2005
    (2005) National Park Service, Department of the Interior
    This report summarizes the Park mission and goals and primary interpretive themes. It provides detail on visitor experiences, visitor experience goals, and existing conditions assessment, information about the Park website, and on-site visitor services and information. It lists interpretive programs, informal programs, facilities and wayside exhibits. A number of private and public partnerships are listed, as well as community events, curatorial and library services, and disability information. There are numerous recommendations to make the Park more amenable to visitors as a tourist destination. The report does not generally focus on water resources except for the introductory and background information at the beginning of the report. Key passages are extracted and reproduced below. Summary: "The Grand Portage or Gitchi Onigaming (Great Carrying Place) is an 8.4-mile trail on the northwestern periphery of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River drainage in the middle of North America. It connected the lakeshore with Pigeon River, an embarkation point for Native peoples, explorers, and voyageurs heading west and a gathering point for furs going east. The portage was the most direct route from the Great Lakes into the Canadian interior. Several falls and cataracts blocked human travelers’ use of the Pigeon River so that a portage was needed, hence the name “Grand Portage.” French and later British traders entered the Great Lakes-Northwest trade by traveling west from Montreal. Having learned to use birch bark canoes, they moved into the mid-continent along an established inland network of Indian canoe routes. Building on entrenched Indian exchange practices and catering to Indian preferences, traders bartered imported European goods and commodities for Indian furs, provisions, and services. This ultimately led to an intercultural exchange of languages, ideas, technologies, diseases, and genes. It also promoted commercial, political, and marital alliances. PLAN “When the North West Company and the XY Company moved their operations north to Kaministikwia (later Fort William, Ontario) at the beginning of the 19th century, Grand Portage became remote to the main channels of trade and communication and less important to the outside world. The boundary between Canada and the United States between Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods was not firmly established until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. Under the terms of that treaty, the Grand Portage clearly became United States property; however, the use of the trail was to remain free and open to citizens of both the United States and Great Britain. The historic portage represents the essential resources of Grand Portage National Monument, which is bordered on the north and south by the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, on the east by Lake Superior, and on the west by the Pigeon River and Canada. It lies within both the Grand Portage Indian Reservation and the unincorporated community of Grand Portage. The community is the homeplace and tribal government center of the Grand Portage Band of Minnesota Chippewa (Ojibwe)."