Geoff Cunfer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1034438 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Geoff Cunfer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Geoff |
| FAMILY NAME | Cunfer |
| SIGNATURE | CUNFER G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Saskatchewan |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1783-8099 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Soil Fertility Transitions in the Context of Industrialization, 1750–2000
Fertile soils are essential for human health and nutrition and formed the foundation of human economies for millennia. Soils deserve close attention from environmental and economic historians and sustainability scientists. Most soil history literature addresses failure: misuse of soil, uncontrolled erosion, and the resulting collapse of past civilizations. More important, however, and of urgent interest for our present and future prosperity, are …
Soil Fertility on an Agricultural Frontier
In contrast to most long-settled agricultural landscapes, the US Great Plains presents a rare example of well-documented agricultural colonization of new land. The Census of Agriculture provides detailed information about evolving grassland farm systems from the beginning of agricultural expansion and then at some two dozen time points between 1880 and the present. From early sod-busting, through drought and depression, and into late-twentieth-ce…
Introduction to Soils and Sustainability Special Issue
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The rise and fall of the cortijo system
Opening the black box of energy throughputs in farm systems
Adaptation on an Agricultural Frontier
Systematic evaluation of agricultural settlements on the Great Plains, employing census data and socio-ecological metabolism methods drawn from sustainability science and agro-ecology, reveals that farmers, driven by personal ambition and national incentives, not only changed their environment; they also adjusted to it in more ways than previously supposed. The "socio-ecological profiles" used in this analysis of the Great Plains are applicable t…
Historians' Reaction to the Documentary, The Dust Bowl
Historical documentaries have a wider audience and often a greater visceral impact than written histories. They frequently resonate deeply with viewers through the use of images, first-person narratives, and evocative filming. To wield such emotional power responsibly demands great attention to accuracy and nuance. In the fall of 2013 these four historians met at the Northern Great Plains History Conference to discuss Ken Burns's latest work on t…
The Southern Great Plains Wind Erosion Maps of 1936-1937
In 1936–1937 the US Soil Conservation Service conducted a reconnaissance survey of the Dust Bowl, the area of worst wind erosion on the southern Great Plains. Providing farm-level detail and covering twenty-six counties in five states—some twenty-seven million acres or forty-two thousand square miles—this survey represents our best record of land use and soil erosion at the peak of the 1930s crisis. The project generated well-designed and informa…
Sustaining Soil fertility
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of millions of Europeans migrated to the Americas. Many traded rural lives for industrial jobs in growing cities, while a significant number travelled west to make farms on the Great Plains. Using case studies from Austria and Kansas, this paper compares the socioecological structures of the agricultural communities immigrants left to those that they found and created on the other sid…
An Unremembered Diversity
The Green Revolution of the 1960s brought about a dramatic rise in global crop yields. But, as most observers acknowledge, this has come at a considerable cost to biodiversity. Plant breeding, synthetic fertilizers, and mechanization steadily narrowed the number of crop varieties commercially available to farmers and promoted fencerow-to-fencerow monocultures. Many historians trace the origins of this style of industrialized agriculture to the la…
From LTER to LTSER
Haberl, H., V. Winiwarter, K. Andersson, R. U. Ayres, C. Boone, A. Castillo, G. Cunfer, M. Fischer-Kowalski, W. R. Freudenburg, E. Furman, R. Kaufmann, F. Krausmann, E. Langthaler, H. Lotze-Campen, M. Mirtl, C. L. Redman, A. Reenberg, A. Wardell, B. Warr, and H. Zechmeister 2006. From LTER to LTSER: conceptualizing the socioeconomic dimension of long-term socioecological research. Ecology and Society 11(2): 13. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-01786-11…
Manure Matters on the Great Plains Frontier
American farmers followed a long-term sequence of clearing land, farming it for several decades, and then abandoning it in favor of new land elsewhere. For 300 years, farmers moved across the continent until they reached the Great Plains, and the end of the frontier, in the 1870s. Fertility and crop yields declined for fifty years by the 1930s, an agricultural crisis was looming. Only the adoption of synthetic fertilizer after World War II allowe…
From LTER to LTSER
Haberl, H., V. Winiwarter, K. Andersson, R. U. Ayres, C. Boone, A. Castillo, G. Cunfer, M. Fischer-Kowalski, W. R. Freudenburg, E. Furman, R. Kaufmann, F. Krausmann, E. Langthaler, H. Lotze-Campen, M. Mirtl, C. L. Redman, A. Reenberg, A. Wardell, B. Warr, and H. Zechmeister 2006. From LTER to LTSER: conceptualizing the socioeconomic dimension of long-term socioecological research. Ecology and Society 11(2): 13. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-01786-11…
Opening the black box of energy throughputs in farm systems
Manure Matters on the Great Plains Frontier
American farmers followed a long-term sequence of clearing land, farming it for several decades, and then abandoning it in favor of new land elsewhere. For 300 years, farmers moved across the continent until they reached the Great Plains, and the end of the frontier, in the 1870s. Fertility and crop yields declined for fifty years by the 1930s, an agricultural crisis was looming. Only the adoption of synthetic fertilizer after World War II allowe…
The rise and fall of the cortijo system
Sustaining Soil fertility
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of millions of Europeans migrated to the Americas. Many traded rural lives for industrial jobs in growing cities, while a significant number travelled west to make farms on the Great Plains. Using case studies from Austria and Kansas, this paper compares the socioecological structures of the agricultural communities immigrants left to those that they found and created on the other sid…
Adaptation on an Agricultural Frontier
Systematic evaluation of agricultural settlements on the Great Plains, employing census data and socio-ecological metabolism methods drawn from sustainability science and agro-ecology, reveals that farmers, driven by personal ambition and national incentives, not only changed their environment; they also adjusted to it in more ways than previously supposed. The "socio-ecological profiles" used in this analysis of the Great Plains are applicable t…
The Southern Great Plains Wind Erosion Maps of 1936-1937
In 1936–1937 the US Soil Conservation Service conducted a reconnaissance survey of the Dust Bowl, the area of worst wind erosion on the southern Great Plains. Providing farm-level detail and covering twenty-six counties in five states—some twenty-seven million acres or forty-two thousand square miles—this survey represents our best record of land use and soil erosion at the peak of the 1930s crisis. The project generated well-designed and informa…
Soil Fertility on an Agricultural Frontier
In contrast to most long-settled agricultural landscapes, the US Great Plains presents a rare example of well-documented agricultural colonization of new land. The Census of Agriculture provides detailed information about evolving grassland farm systems from the beginning of agricultural expansion and then at some two dozen time points between 1880 and the present. From early sod-busting, through drought and depression, and into late-twentieth-ce…
An Unremembered Diversity
The Green Revolution of the 1960s brought about a dramatic rise in global crop yields. But, as most observers acknowledge, this has come at a considerable cost to biodiversity. Plant breeding, synthetic fertilizers, and mechanization steadily narrowed the number of crop varieties commercially available to farmers and promoted fencerow-to-fencerow monocultures. Many historians trace the origins of this style of industrialized agriculture to the la…
Manure Matters on the Great Plains Frontier
American farmers followed a long-term sequence of clearing land, farming it for several decades, and then abandoning it in favor of new land elsewhere. For 300 years, farmers moved across the continent until they reached the Great Plains, and the end of the frontier, in the 1870s. Fertility and crop yields declined for fifty years by the 1930s, an agricultural crisis was looming. Only the adoption of synthetic fertilizer after World War II allowe…
From LTER to LTSER
Haberl, H., V. Winiwarter, K. Andersson, R. U. Ayres, C. Boone, A. Castillo, G. Cunfer, M. Fischer-Kowalski, W. R. Freudenburg, E. Furman, R. Kaufmann, F. Krausmann, E. Langthaler, H. Lotze-Campen, M. Mirtl, C. L. Redman, A. Reenberg, A. Wardell, B. Warr, and H. Zechmeister 2006. From LTER to LTSER: conceptualizing the socioeconomic dimension of long-term socioecological research. Ecology and Society 11(2): 13. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-01786-11…
Sustaining Soil fertility
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of millions of Europeans migrated to the Americas. Many traded rural lives for industrial jobs in growing cities, while a significant number travelled west to make farms on the Great Plains. Using case studies from Austria and Kansas, this paper compares the socioecological structures of the agricultural communities immigrants left to those that they found and created on the other sid…
An Unremembered Diversity
The Green Revolution of the 1960s brought about a dramatic rise in global crop yields. But, as most observers acknowledge, this has come at a considerable cost to biodiversity. Plant breeding, synthetic fertilizers, and mechanization steadily narrowed the number of crop varieties commercially available to farmers and promoted fencerow-to-fencerow monocultures. Many historians trace the origins of this style of industrialized agriculture to the la…
The Southern Great Plains Wind Erosion Maps of 1936-1937
In 1936–1937 the US Soil Conservation Service conducted a reconnaissance survey of the Dust Bowl, the area of worst wind erosion on the southern Great Plains. Providing farm-level detail and covering twenty-six counties in five states—some twenty-seven million acres or forty-two thousand square miles—this survey represents our best record of land use and soil erosion at the peak of the 1930s crisis. The project generated well-designed and informa…
Historians' Reaction to the Documentary, The Dust Bowl
Historical documentaries have a wider audience and often a greater visceral impact than written histories. They frequently resonate deeply with viewers through the use of images, first-person narratives, and evocative filming. To wield such emotional power responsibly demands great attention to accuracy and nuance. In the fall of 2013 these four historians met at the Northern Great Plains History Conference to discuss Ken Burns's latest work on t…
Opening the black box of energy throughputs in farm systems
Adaptation on an Agricultural Frontier
Systematic evaluation of agricultural settlements on the Great Plains, employing census data and socio-ecological metabolism methods drawn from sustainability science and agro-ecology, reveals that farmers, driven by personal ambition and national incentives, not only changed their environment; they also adjusted to it in more ways than previously supposed. The "socio-ecological profiles" used in this analysis of the Great Plains are applicable t…
The rise and fall of the cortijo system
Soil Fertility Transitions in the Context of Industrialization, 1750–2000
Fertile soils are essential for human health and nutrition and formed the foundation of human economies for millennia. Soils deserve close attention from environmental and economic historians and sustainability scientists. Most soil history literature addresses failure: misuse of soil, uncontrolled erosion, and the resulting collapse of past civilizations. More important, however, and of urgent interest for our present and future prosperity, are …
Soil Fertility on an Agricultural Frontier
In contrast to most long-settled agricultural landscapes, the US Great Plains presents a rare example of well-documented agricultural colonization of new land. The Census of Agriculture provides detailed information about evolving grassland farm systems from the beginning of agricultural expansion and then at some two dozen time points between 1880 and the present. From early sod-busting, through drought and depression, and into late-twentieth-ce…
Introduction to Soils and Sustainability Special Issue
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Geography (10 works) · Agriculture (7 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Ecology (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Environmental Science (6 works) · Agroforestry (5 works) · American Environmental and Regional History (5 works) · Biology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works)