scholarly journals How to Make a Weed: The Saga of the Slender False Brome Invasion in the North American West and Lessons for the Future

BioScience ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (7) ◽  
pp. 496-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell B Cruzan
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
American West ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Plant Introduction ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Brachypodium Sylvaticum ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Herbarium Collections

Abstract Historical herbarium collections and genetic analyses indicate that slender false brome (Brachypodium sylvaticum) was first introduced in test gardens in Oregon in the early 1900 s as part of the USDA’s plant introduction program. A small number of naturalized populations were established, but it was not until several decades later that this alien species became an aggressive invader. The Oregon invasive strains of false brome were generated as a consequence of mating among genetically divergent lineages. The resulting hybrid populations contained high levels of genetic variation that fueled the evolution of specific adaptations to the Pacific Northwest climate and ultimately generated genetically superior lineages. Although the false brome invasion has caused significant ecological and economic harm and is expected to continue spreading across western North America, understanding the circumstances that have promoted its success may provide valuable lessons for the management of native plants under pressure from global climate change.

“An Outlet to the Western Sea”: Puget Sound, Terraqueous Mobility, and Northern Pacific Railroad’s Pursuit of Trade with Asia, 1864–1892

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-458
Author(s):  
Sean Fraga
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
American West ◽  
Puget Sound ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Aqueous Environments ◽  
Physical Infrastructure ◽  
The Pacific Ocean ◽  
Northern Pacific

Abstract The Northern Pacific Railroad saw Puget Sound harbors as environments uniquely suited to connect the North American interior with the Pacific Ocean and enable U.S. trade with East Asia. But in building the physical infrastructure to link transcontinental trains with transpacific ships, Northern Pacific significantly altered Commencement Bay’s shoreline and displaced Puyallups from their traditional territory. The articles uses a terraqueous perspective, emphasizing movement between terrestrial and aqueous environments, to demonstrate how U.S. pursuit of transpacific trade shaped the North American West.

Bound for California: Chilean Contract Laborers and "Patrones" in the California Gold Rush, 1848-1852

2008 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Sisson
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
American West ◽  
Gold Rush ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Early Years ◽  
North American West ◽  
Pacific World ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Contract Laborers

Hired Chilean laborers who ventured to California during the early years of the gold rush rarely appear in the historical record. However, notarized contracts signed in the cities of Valparaíso and Santiago between 1848 and 1852 illuminate how hired laborers, mostly illiterate peons, actively shaped companies and expeditions bound for California. By reading these for evidence of what the Latin Americanist Arnold Bauer has identified as a "system" of "give and take, choice and accommodation,"¹ we can better understand how even the most marginalized workers made the transnational spaces of the North American West and the Pacific world comprehensible within their own schemas and patterns. This paper proposes that hired laborers were central to the organization of Chileans' emigration patterns in the California gold rush; that their relations were far more complex than the "free" or "unfree" binary representations supposed; that they actively mapped the relations of production they expected to deploy in California's physical and social spaces; and that by turning to alternative archival sources, U.S.-based historians can better link the histories of the Pacific world to those of the North American West.

scholarly journals The evolving response of mesopelagic fishes to declining midwater oxygen concentrations in the southern and central California Current

2018 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 626-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Anthony Koslow ◽  
Pete Davison ◽  
Erica Ferrer ◽  
S Patricia A Jiménez Rosenberg ◽  
Gerardo Aceves-Medina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Baja California ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
California Current ◽  
Deep Ocean ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Oxygen Minimum Zones ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Oxygen Concentrations

Abstract Declining oxygen concentrations in the deep ocean, particularly in areas with pronounced oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), are a growing global concern related to global climate change. Its potential impacts on marine life remain poorly understood. A previous study suggested that the abundance of a diverse suite of mesopelagic fishes off southern California was closely linked to trends in midwater oxygen concentration. This study expands the spatial and temporal scale of that analysis to examine how mesopelagic fishes are responding to declining oxygen levels in the California Current (CC) off central, southern, and Baja California. Several warm-water mesopelagic species, apparently adapted to the shallower, more intense OMZ off Baja California, are shown to be increasing despite declining midwater oxygen concentrations and becoming increasingly dominant, initially off Baja California and subsequently in the CC region to the north. Their increased abundance is associated with warming near-surface ocean temperature, the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal oscillation and Multivariate El Niño-Southern Oscillation Index, and the increased flux of Pacific Equatorial Water into the southern CC.

scholarly journals The Concept of Place in the American West

Linguaculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Irina Chirica
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
American West ◽  
Rocky Mountain ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
The West ◽  
John Ford ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Louisiana Purchase ◽  
Cultural Concept

This paper surveys the most significant ways in which the American West has been viewed as a place and region. Starting with Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase of 1803, we follow the expansion of the West as a region throughout American history. Jefferson worked out a plan which involved the creation of territories which later became states, following a certain procedure. Inside the larger West, there are many Wests: the prairie states of the Midwest (also called the “Bread Basket” of America), the Rocky Mountain states, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and California. We analyze the myths and images associated with the west in American culture, and the influence of Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay dedicated to “the Frontier”. We discuss the New Historicism approach and the way in which it criticizes Tuner. Then we discuss the reflection of the West in the visual arts (the major landscape painters and in the work of the western movie director John Ford). We bring arguments to support the idea that the West is a construct of human experience and a cultural concept, more than a “place”.

Scots in the North American West, 1790-1917

2002 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 1514
Author(s):  
J. M. Bumsted ◽  
Ferenc Morton Szasz
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
American West ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North

scholarly journals Changes in Winter Atmospheric Rivers along the North American West Coast in CMIP5 Climate Models

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Warner ◽  
Clifford F. Mass ◽  
Eric P. Salathé
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapor ◽  
North American ◽  
West Coast ◽  
American West ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Water Vapor Transport ◽  
The West ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
Extreme Precipitation Events

Abstract Most extreme precipitation events that occur along the North American west coast are associated with winter atmospheric river (AR) events. Global climate models have sufficient resolution to simulate synoptic features associated with AR events, such as high values of vertically integrated water vapor transport (IVT) approaching the coast. From phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), 10 simulations are used to identify changes in ARs impacting the west coast of North America between historical (1970–99) and end-of-century (2070–99) runs, using representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5. The most extreme ARs are identified in both time periods by the 99th percentile of IVT days along a north–south transect offshore of the coast. Integrated water vapor (IWV) and IVT are predicted to increase, while lower-tropospheric winds change little. Winter mean precipitation along the west coast increases by 11%–18% [from 4% to 6% (°C)−1], while precipitation on extreme IVT days increases by 15%–39% [from 5% to 19% (°C)−1]. The frequency of IVT days above the historical 99th percentile threshold increases as much as 290% by the end of this century.

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