North America III: West of the Rockies

Horse Nations ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Coniferous Forest ◽  
Wild Plants ◽  
Columbia Plateau ◽  
Pacific Northwest Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Eastern Washington

This chapter looks at three more regions of North America: the Columbia Plateau and adjacent areas of the Pacific Northwest Coast; the Great Basin; and California. It also focuses on three main themes: the development of new identities as many groups adapted aspects of the lifestyle and customs of those on the Plains and more coherent tribal entities emerged; raiding for captives; and raiding for horses. A fourth topic, which casts these into relief, is why some groups rejected the horse, or chose to adopt it very late in their history. The Great Basin was the first of the three areas to receive the horse. It is an arid region of desert, salt lakes, and mountains where rainfall is unpredictable and low, but increases eastward (Plate 15). Except for the Colorado along its southern edge and the headwaters in the rockies of streams draining towards the Missouri, none of its rivers reach the sea. Fremont farmers had once made a living across Utah, but by the 1600s cultivation was restricted to a few groups in the south and west. Elsewhere, the Basin’s inhabitants depended entirely on hunting and gathering, though strategies like burning enhanced the productivity of wild plants and game. Very broadly, two subsistence patterns were followed: one emphasized fish and waterfowl around wetlands, the other a more mobile, broadly based foraging economy in deserts and mountains in which pine nuts (piñons), grass seeds, rabbits, and larger game were important. Except for the Washoe near Lake Tahoe in eastern California, all the region’s historic inhabitants spoke Numic languages. Major groups included Utes in the southeast, Shoshones in the north and centre, and Paiutes in the west and southwest. To the north of the Great Basin lies the Plateau, centred on the Columbia River and its tributaries, which collectively send their waters into the Pacific Ocean (Plate 16). Coniferous forest covers its northern and eastern parts (including several ranges running parallel to but west of the Rockies), but the drier, hilly country of Oregon and eastern Washington is more steppe-like, with sagebrush common and trees more localized.

North American rainfall patterns during past warm states: A proxy network-model comparison for the Last Interglacial and the mid-Holocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron de Wet ◽  
Jessica Oster ◽  
Daniel Ibarra ◽  
Bryce Belanger
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
North American ◽  
Last Interglacial ◽  
The North ◽  
Driving Mechanisms ◽  
Statistical Measures ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Rainfall Patterns

<p>The Last Interglacial (LIG) period (~129,000–116,000 years BP) and the mid-Holocene (MH) (~6,000 years BP) are the two most recent intervals with temperatures comparable to low emissions scenarios for the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. During the LIG and the MH differences in the seasonal and latitudinal distribution of insolation led to enhanced northern hemisphere high-latitude warmth relative to the pre-industrial, despite similar greenhouse gas concentrations, marking these intervals as potentially useful analogs for future change in regions like North America. Further, the inclusion of both LIG (127 ka) and MH (6 ka) experiments in the CMIP6-PMIP4 effort provides an opportunity to better understand the regional hydroclimate responses to radiative forcing during these two intervals. The dense coverage of paleoclimate proxy records for North America during the MH (N=260 sites) reveals a pattern of relative aridity in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada and wetness in the southern Great Basin and Mexico. However, the seasonality and driving mechanisms of rainfall patterns across the continent remain poorly understood. Our understanding of terrestrial hydroclimate in North America during the LIG is more limited (N=39 sites), largely because the LIG is beyond the range of radiocarbon dating.</p><p>Here we present spatial comparisons between output from 14 PMIP4 global circulation models and LIG and MH networks of moisture-sensitive proxies compiled for the North American continent. We utilize two statistical measures of agreement – weighted Cohen’s Kappa and Gwet’s AC2 – to assess the degree of categorical agreement between moisture patterns produced by the models and the proxy networks for each time-slice. PMIP4 models produce variable precipitation anomalies relative to the pre-industrial for both the LIG and MH experiments, often disagreeing on both the sign and magnitude of precipitation changes across much of North America. The models showing the best agreement with the proxy network are similar but not identical for the two measures, with Gwet’s AC2 values tending to be larger than Cohen’s Kappa values for all models. This pattern is enhanced for the much larger MH proxy network and is likely related to the fact that Gwet’s AC2 is a more predictable statistic in the presence of high agreement. Overall agreement is lower for the mid-Holocene than for the LIG, reflecting smaller MH rainfall anomalies in the models. The models with the highest agreement scores during the LIG produce aridity in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest and wetness in Alaska, the Yukon, the Great Basin, and parts of the Mid-West and Eastern US, although spatial coverage of the proxies in these latter two regions is poor. The models with the highest agreement score for the mid-Holocene tend to produce aridity across Canada and the northern US with dry conditions extending down the US Pacific coast and increased wetness in the American Southeast and across the North American Monsoon region. Our analyses help elucidate the driving mechanisms of rainfall patterns during past warm states and can inform which models may be the most useful for predictions of near-future hydroclimate change across North America.</p>

Hunter-gatherer tobacco smoking: earliest evidence from the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 1397-1407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Tushingham ◽  
Dominique Ardura ◽  
Jelmer W. Eerkens ◽  
Mine Palazoglu ◽  
Sevini Shahbaz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Tobacco Smoking ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Pacific Northwest Coast ◽  
The Pacific

scholarly journals The Radiocarbon Record of the Western Stemmed Tradition on the Southern Columbia Plateau of Western North America

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Brown ◽  
Daniel M. Gilmour ◽  
Paul S. Solimano ◽  
Kenneth M. Ames
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Younger Dryas ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Columbia Plateau ◽  
Temporal Overlap ◽  
Western Stemmed Tradition

The late Pleistocene–early Holocene archaeological record of the interior Pacific Northwest is dominated by what has been regionally referred to as the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). While various efforts have attempted to clarify the chronology of this tradition, these have largely focused on data from the Great Basin and have been disproportionately preoccupied with establishing the beginning of the tradition due to its temporal overlap with Clovis materials. Specifically focusing on the Columbia Plateau, we apply a series of Bayesian chronological models to create concise estimates of the most likely beginning, end, and span of the WST. We then further explore its chronology by modeling its temporal span under various parameters and criteria so as to better identify places in the chronology that need further work and those that are robust regardless of data iteration. Our analysis revealed four major findings: (1) WST conservatively dates between 13,000 and 11,000 cal BP, likely extending to ~13,500 cal BP; (2) the most problematic period for WST is its termination; (3) the WST is incredibly long-lived compared to roughly contemporary Paleoindian traditions; and (4) the WST was seemingly unaffected by the onset of the Younger Dryas.

Eriosomatine aphids (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Eriosomatinae) associated with moss and roots of conifer and willow in forests of the Pacific Northwest of North America

2012 ◽  
Vol 144 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.S. Pike ◽  
G. Graf ◽  
R.G. Foottit ◽  
H.E.L. Maw ◽  
C. von Dohlen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
North American ◽  
Deoxyribonucleic Acid ◽  
Sequence Matching ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
First Time

AbstractApterous adult morphs of eriosomatine aphids associated with moss (Bryophyta) and/or roots of conifer (Pinaceae) or willow (Salix Linnaeus (Salicaceae)) in forests of the North American Pacific Northwest including Alaska are described, illustrated, and keyed. In total, seven species (Clydesmithia canadensis Danielsson, Melaphis rhois (Fitch) (moss only feeder), Pachypappa rosettei (Maxson), Pachypappa sacculi (Gillette), Prociphilus americanus (Walker) (fir root only feeder), Prociphilus xylostei (De Geer), and Thecabius populimonilis (Riley)) are characterised from their secondary host habitats. Secondary host forms of C. canadensis and T. populimonilis are described for the first time. The morphotypes from the secondary hosts were confirmed through deoxyribonucleic acid sequence matching with those from the primary hosts.

REVISION OF NORTH AMERICAN AGABUS LEACH (COLEOPTERA: DYTISCIDAE): LUTOSUS-, OBSOLETUS-, AND FUSCIPENNIS-GROUPS

1994 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.J. Larson
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
North American ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Sierra Nevada Mountains ◽  
Wide Range

AbstractSpecies of Agabus of the lutosus-, obsoletus-, and fuscipennis-groups, as defined by Larson (1989), are revised. Members of the lutosus- and obsoletus-groups are restricted to the Cordilleran and Great Plains regions of temperate western North America. Within this region, the species of each group are largely parapatric. Three species are assigned to the lutosus-group: A. lutosus LeConte along the Pacific Coast; A. griseipennis LeConte in the Great Basin, Rocky Mountain, and Great Plains regions; and A. rumppi Leech in the southern deserts. Agabus lutosus and A. griseipennis hybridize in the Pacific Northwest; A. lutosus mimus Leech is synonymized with A. lutosus. The obsoletus-group contains five species: A. obsoletus LeConte, A. morosus LeConte, and A. ancillus Fall along the Pacific Coast and the Sierra Nevada Mountains; A. hoppingi Leech in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; and A. obliteratus LeConte, containing two subspecies, A. o. obliteratus and A. o. nectris Leech, new status, with a wide range including the Great Plains and Cordillera but not reaching the Pacific Coast. The four species of the fuscipennis-group, A. ajax Fall, A. coxalis Sharp, A. fuscipennis (Paykull), and A. infuscatus Aubé, are boreal and all except A. ajax are Holarctic. Agabus coxalis is restricted to northwestern North America, the other three species are transcontinental.For each species the following information is provided: synonymy, description, and illustrations of taxonomically important characters; notes on relationships, variation, distribution, and ecology; and a map of North American collection localities. Group diagnoses and keys to the species of each group are presented. A correction to the key to species groups of North American Agabus (Larson 1989) is made with the addition of a couplet to include the obsoletus-group. Lectotypes are designated for A. discolor LeConte and A. obliteratus LeConte.

THE INSECT FAUNA OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA: PRESENT PATTERNS AND AFFINITIES AND THEIR ORIGINS

1988 ◽  
Vol 120 (S144) ◽  
pp. 125-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Kavanaugh
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Rocky Mountain ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Insect Fauna ◽  
Pacific Northwest Coast ◽  
Northern Areas ◽  
The Pacific

AbstractThe insect fauna of the Pacific Northwest Coast is diverse and rich in endemic forms. Nine different elements are recognized in the fauna, including (1) restricted coastal, (2) coast-centred, (3) Great Basin, (4) Rocky Mountain, (5) trans-American, (6) Holarctic, (7) trans-Beringian, (8) Alaskan, and (9) introduced elements. Elements (6), (7), and (8) are generally restricted to the northwestern portion of the coast; and representation of Rocky Mountain elements (4) increases in three major steps from south to north along the coast—at the Puget Lowland/Fraser River valley, the Prince Rupert area, and the Kenai Peninsula, respectively. Patterns of vicariance among sister taxa in the carabid beetle genus Nebria demonstrate relationships which, together with analyses of other faunal elements, show that the fauna of glaciated portions of the Coastal region has greatest affinity with faunas of southern coastal areas, less affinity with those of southern interior areas, and least affinity with faunas of northern areas. Areas of local endemism within the region include the Aleutian Archipelago, the southeastern Alaskan Panhandle, the Queen Charlotte Archipelago, the Olympic Peninsula/Vancouver Island, the northern Cascade Range, the Klamath Mountains system, and the Sierra Nevada. The extant coastal insect fauna has evolved from a widespread northern Tertiary fauna, elements of which were isolated in several separate refugia during Pleistocene glaciations. The northern two-thirds of the region has been recolonized in postglacial time from both coastal and interior refugia south of the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets. Local endemism in the region reflects survival and differentiation of a few forms in small coastal refugia; but survivors from these refugia, as well as those from the Yukon/Beringian refugium, have generally been unable to extend their ranges to other parts of the Coastal region following deglaciation.

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