Climate Change on The Great Plains: An Introduction

Authors

Francis W. Kaye, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

1991

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 11:2 (Spring 1991). Copyright © 1991 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

In April of 1990 the Center for Great Plains Studies held its thirteenth annual symposium, entitled "Looking Back from the Twenty-First Century: Impacts of Climate Change on the Great Plains." Scholars from a number of fields, especially climatologists and geologists but also social scientists and literary critics, presented papers dealing with past evidence of climatic conditions and climate change, with present evidence of global warming and predictions about its consequences, and with human responses to weather and to climate change. In addition the symposium featured readings by poets and prose writers dealing with climate, weather, and perceptions of the Plains, and an art exhibition entitled "Of the Sky," a dramatic collection of skyscapes reflecting the daily changes of weather. The program committee, chaired by geographer Kenneth Dewey, combined both scientific and artistic perceptions to suggest ways of understanding what climate changes may come to the Great Plains and what they will mean for the land and its inhabitants.