Borderland Narratives

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
Ohio Valley ◽  
Southwestern United States ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Spanish Regions ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
United States Mexico ◽  
Borderland Narratives

This collection of original essays extends the concept of boderlands—as both a process and place—to geographic places and topics not usually considered in this realm. This includes African slavery, missionaries, the Ohio Valley, and other non-Spanish regions. Positioning these regions and topics as comparable to other early North American crossroads and meeting places highlights how the mingling of people and cultures shaped North America’s history before 1850. Equally important, it helps illuminate scholars’s growing focus on the process of borderland formation across a variety of North American regions. Collectively, the essays in this volume reveal how the field is currently unfolding and urge scholars to abandon the geographic determinism of the first definition. The southwestern United States-Mexico border remains an ideal locale to employ the concept as a metaphor and as an intellectual tool, but this volume reveals the merits of employing borderlands to create more nuanced narratives of the intersection of people and ideas in the Ohio Valley and elsewhere in early North America.

North American species of Diamphidaxona (Acari: Hydrachnida: Hygrobatidae)

Zootaxa ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 1279 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN M. SMITH ◽  
DAVID R. COOK
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Species ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
North American Species ◽  
Southwestern United States ◽  
Species Groups

Members of the genus Diamphidaxona Cook, 1963 are found from southeastern Canada to Argentina, with greatest diversity of species and species groups in the southwestern United States and Mexico. In this paper the three species of Diamphidaxona previously known from North America, D. pallida Cook, D. dolichosoma Cook and D. imamurai Cook, are redescribed. Eleven new species, including D. arizonica sp. nov., D. brevitarsa sp. nov., D. californica sp. nov., D. cavecreekensis sp. nov., D. chihuahua sp. nov., D. chiricahua sp. nov., D. cramerae sp. nov., D. neomexicana sp. nov., D. parvacetabula sp. nov., D. platysoma sp. nov. and D. sabinalensis sp. nov., are also described. North American species are allocated to two subgenera, the nominate subgenus and Diamphidaxonella subgen. nov., for which diagnoses are provided. New distributional data and a key for all North American species are presented.

Distinguishing Pronounced Droughts in the Southwestern United States: Seasonality and Effects of Warmer Temperatures

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (22) ◽  
pp. 5918-5932 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy L. Weiss ◽  
Christopher L. Castro ◽  
Jonathan T. Overpeck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North American ◽  
North American Monsoon ◽  
Southwestern United States ◽  
Atmospheric Humidity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Monsoon Area ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Time Of Year ◽  
Moisture Conditions

Abstract Higher temperatures increase the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere and can lead to greater atmospheric demand for evapotranspiration, especially during warmer seasons of the year. Increases in precipitation or atmospheric humidity ameliorate this enhanced demand, whereas decreases exacerbate it. In the southwestern United States (Southwest), this means the greatest changes in evapotranspirational demand resulting from higher temperatures could occur during the hot–dry foresummer and hot–wet monsoon. Here seasonal differences in surface climate observations are examined to determine how temperature and moisture conditions affected evapotranspirational demand during the pronounced Southwest droughts of the 1950s and 2000s, the latter likely influenced by warmer temperatures now attributed mostly to the buildup of greenhouse gases. In the hot–dry foresummer during the 2000s drought, much of the Southwest experienced significantly warmer temperatures that largely drove greater evapotranspirational demand. Lower atmospheric humidity at this time of year over parts of the region also allowed evapotranspirational demand to increase. Significantly warmer temperatures in the hot–wet monsoon during the more recent drought also primarily drove greater evapotranspirational demand, but only for parts of the region outside of the core North American monsoon area. Had atmospheric humidity during the more recent drought been as low as during the 1950s drought in the core North American monsoon area at this time of year, greater evapotranspirational demand during the 2000s drought could have been more spatially extensive. With projections of future climate indicating continued warming in the region, evapotranspirational demand during the hot–dry and hot–wet seasons possibly will be more severe in future droughts and result in more extreme conditions in the Southwest, a disproportionate amount negatively impacting society.

Intraseasonal Teleconnection between North American and Western North Pacific Monsoons with 20-Day Time Scale

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 2664-2679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianan Jiang ◽  
Ngar-Cheung Lau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North American ◽  
North Pacific ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Western North Pacific ◽  
Wave Train ◽  
Eastern Pacific ◽  
Southwestern United States ◽  
Low Level ◽  
The North

Abstract Based on a recently released, high-resolution reanalysis dataset for the North American region, the intraseasonal variability (ISV; with a time scale of about 20 days) of the North American monsoon (NAM) is examined. The rainfall signals associated with this phenomenon first emerge near the Gulf of Mexico and eastern Pacific at about 20°N. They subsequently migrate to the southwestern United States along the slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental. The rainfall quickly dissipates upon arrival at the desert region of Arizona and New Mexico (AZNM). The enhanced rainfall over AZNM is accompanied by strong southeasterly low-level flow along the Gulf of California. This pattern bears strong resemblance to the circulation related to “gulf surge” events, as documented by many studies. The southeasterly flow is associated with an anomalous low vortex over the subtropical eastern Pacific Ocean off California, and a midlatitude anticyclone over the central United States in the lower troposphere. This flow pattern is in broad agreement with that favoring the “wet surges” over the southwestern United States. It is further demonstrated that the aforementioned low-level circulations associated with ISV of the NAM are part of a prominent trans-Pacific wave train extending from the western North Pacific (WNP) to the Eastern Pacific/North America along a “great circle” path. The circulation anomalies along the axis of this wave train exhibit a barotropic vertical structure over most regions outside of the WNP, and a baroclinic structure over the WNP, thus suggesting the important role of convective activities over the WNP in sustaining this wave train. This inference is further substantiated by an analysis of the pattern of wave-activity–flux vectors. Variations in the WNP convection are correlated with the ISV of the monsoons in both North American and East Asian (EA)/WNP sectors. These relationships lead to notable teleconnections between NAM and the EA/WNP monsoon on 20-day time scales.

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