Browsing by Subject "landscape"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Butterfly Gardening
    (Extension, 2020) Krischik, Vera
    Butterfly gardening retrofits landscapes with nectar and larval host plants for butterflies. Good butterfly habitat provides plants for all life stages: host plant leaves (for egg laying and caterpillar food), flower nectar (food for adult butterflies) and protected areas (to mate, feed, pupate, rest, overwinter and hide from predation). Development, commercial agriculture, pesticide use, and climate change is destroying natural wildlife habitat. Wherever possible, we need to encourage habitat restoration to maintain butterfly populations.
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    Minnesota’s Hardy Plums: The Story of a Fruit and its Ties to Rural and Urban Landscapes
    (Prospect Books, 2018) Tepe, Emily S.
    The state of Minnesota experiences some of the most prolonged periods of extreme cold in the continental United States. The famously frigid winters make Minnesota about the last place one would expect to find fruit trees, which is the reality settlers faced when they began arriving in the mid 1800s. The determination of a handful of fruit growers who vowed to change this fate helped establish the University of Minnesota fruit breeding programme in 1878. Since then, the programme has developed over 100 hardy fruit varieties, including apples, grapes, plums, cherries, apricots, pears, and berries. In this Upper Midwest state where early settlers lamented the lack of fresh fruit, commercial orchards are now abundant and home owners include fruit trees in their gardens. In recent years, the University of Minnesota fruit breeding programme has focused on apples and grapes, yet the programme’s early work on plums effectively changed the food landscape for people in northern regions. For almost 140 years, these plum varieties have played an important role in the story of cold climate fruit production: from early settlers seeking food to survive, to today’s consumers seeking a return to locally produced food.
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    Recognizing spatial and temporal relationships between Neolithic earthen monuments, Earth, and sky at Cranborne Chase, Southern Britain
    (2023-01) Burley, Paul D
    Cranborne Chase in southern England is a well-known area of Neolithic archaeology including numerous long barrows, the largest and longest cursus in Britain, and many other structures. This multi-disciplinary geoarchaeological research project reviews local and regional geologic and paleoenvironmental characteristics of Cranborne Chase and the adjoining South Hampshire Lowlands, with specific interest in the physiographic setting of Early- to Mid-Neolithic earthen long barrows and the Dorset Cursus. Locations, forms and architectural features of the earthen monuments are analyzed with regard to local and regional geologic, geomorphic, pedologic, topographic, paleoenvironmental, and astronomical conditions for the period of monument construction c. 3800 to 3200 BC. Cultural development in southern Britain c. the 4th millennium is reviewed in tandem with descriptions of natural physiographic and paleoenvironmental conditions that are unique to Cranborne Chase and the lowland. Historical and ethnographical information provides analogies with respect to prehistoric cultural astronomy. Spatial and temporal relationships are identified between elements of the landscape, skyscape, and monuments. Results of this study demonstrate that spatial and temporal relationships between the earthen structures and elements of the surrounding landscape, seascape, and skyscape are key to recognizing and understanding the symbolism and signification expressed by the monumental architecture. The cultural expresses spatial and temporal unification by alignment between Earth and sky, and the living and the dead. In that way, the cultural landscape is related to a Neolithic cosmology emphasizing certain elements of the observable landscape and skyscape, and belief in an astral afterlife.
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    Restorable Wetland Decision Support Data, 2014
    (2024-02-01) Johnson, Lucinda; Brady, Valerie; Erickson, Jeremy; Brown, Terry; Gernes, Mark; ljohnson@d.umn.edu; Johnson, Lucinda; Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI)
    The Minnesota Restorable Wetland Decision Support Data were developed in combination with the Minnesota Restorable Wetland Index to: predict likely locations of restorable wetlands; locate highly stressed areas most in need of water quality or habitat improvement; prioritize areas that already are or are most likely to result in high functioning, sustainable wetlands; identify areas that will provide the greatest benefits in the form of water quality and habitat. Data include: Minnesota Restorable Wetland Decision Support - Viability, Minnesota Restorable Wetland Decision Support - Water Quality Benefits, Minnesota Restorable Wetland Decision Support - Habitat Stress, Minnesota Restorable Wetland Decision Support - Habitat Benefits, Minnesota Restorable Wetland Decision Support - Nitrogen Stress, and Minnesota Restorable Wetland Decision Support - Phosphorus Stress. This data had previously been available within the Minnesota Restorable Wetland Prioritization Tool (2013-2024).
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    Spatio-temporal Ecology of Forest Birds
    (2015-05) Grinde, Alexis
    Maintaining avian diversity in forest ecosystems have been shown to afford many benefits for forest health and productivity. However, alterations to the historical disturbance regimes within hemiboreal forests have impacted bird communities, and the ability of landscapes to meet the ecological needs of breeding forest birds has become a growing concern. As changes in forest landscapes continue, landscape effects may become increasingly important drivers of population dynamics for forest bird species. This dissertation includes a combination of experimental, theoretical, and applied research to assess the influence of habitat, landscape, community composition, and life history traits on population dynamics of forest birds. This research aids in identifying mechanisms associated with species population dynamics which is critical for understanding long term population trends and factors that contribute to species persistence and maintenance of biodiversity.
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    The View from the Road: Tourist Routes and the Transformation of Scenic Vision in Western Norway
    (2012-05) Tvedten, Kristian
    This paper explores how Norway’s National Tourist Routes are emblematic of the ways in which scenic landscapes are appropriated and patterned on a historical model of visual distinction. By privileging scenic vision above other interactions, these travel routes profoundly shape our aesthetic responses to the landscape. The paper explores the many dimensions of the Norwegian landscape through readings of travel literature and visual art and the ways in which these cultural forms come have evolved and transformed scenic tourism in Western Norway.
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    Weeds and Wildflowers: Drawing, Landscape, and Abolition in New York, 1850–1870
    (2020-09) Stockmann, Colleen
    Examining the relationship between landscape, drawing, and antislavery reform in the U.S. during the nineteenth century, my dissertation offers an interpretive history of The Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art. Active in New York during the 1860s, this collective focused on the moral implications of drawing, notably by sketching plants. They deployed this practice in response to two contexts: the political landscape of Northern abolitionism, and an art world in which nature and nation were intimately entangled. Analyzing an underexamined chapter in which artists heralded new modes of affective, empathetic arts practice, deeply attentive at once to nature and social justice, my work on The Society revises our sense of landscape in American art and what counts as political imagery.