Sustainable Prairie

Tallgrass prairie once blanketed approximately 170 million acres of North America, from Texas up into Canada and from Kentucky west into Kansas. Only about 4 percent of this once vast sea of grass remains, making tallgrass prairie the most altered ecosystem on the continent in terms of acres lost

The Tallgrass Prairie at Fort Riley

Fort Riley – or Camp Center as it was originally named due to its proximity to the geographic center of the US – was first surveyed in 1852 to serve as a military post to protect traders moving along the Oregon-California and Santa Fe trails

Chisolm Trail Sprawl

Introduction: The Kansas portion of the Chisholm Trail, located just west of the Flint Hills, ran roughly 140 miles from Caldwell, at the Kansas-Oklahoma line, to Abilene. During the peak of the Chisholm Trail, from 1867 to 1871, at least two million head of cattle were driven from Texas to Abilene. Millions of hooves over the short life of the trail surely took a toll on the prairie; however, the influx of settlers eager to plow it to raise crops had a far greater and more permanent impact

Free-Flowing Water, Restrained

Introduction: I suspect few think of the Flint Hills—an upland landscape with modest rainfall and occasional droughts—as an important area for free-flowing water. Surprisingly, though, it is

How Big Does A Prairie Need To Be?

The Nature Conservancy ecologist Chris Helzer asked how big a prairie needs to be in order to maintain ecological functions or, on the flip side, how much habitat fragmentation—breaking up of landscapes into smaller, unconnected, and dissimilar patches—undermines a prairie

Defining the Flint Hills

The Flint Hills may be the best-loved natural area in Kansas. As the largest intact tallgrass prairie remaining in all of North America, it is also the state’s most ecologically significant landscape. The Flint Hills stretch north to south across east-central Kansas, and even extend on down into Oklahoma (where they are called the Osage Hills). The region’s width is relatively uniform, averaging perhaps 50 miles but reaching 75 miles at the widest

Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations.

Health systems rely on commercial prediction algorithms to identify and help patients with complex health needs. We show that a widely used algorithm, typical of this industry-wide approach and affecting millions of patients, exhibits significant racial bias: At a given risk score, Black patients are considerably sicker than White patients, as evidenced by signs of uncontrolled illnesses. Remedying this disparity would increase the percentage of Black patients receiving additional help from 17.7 to 46.5%. The bias arises because the algorithm predicts health care costs rather than illness, but unequal access to care means that we spend less money caring for Black patients than for White patients. Thus, despite health care cost appearing to be an effective proxy for health by some measures of predictive accuracy, large racial biases arise. We suggest that the choice of convenient, seemingly effective proxies for ground truth can be an important source of algorithmic bias in many contexts

An Introduction to the Flint Hills and the Tallgrass Prairie

It was Zebulon Montgomery Pike who first coined the name Flint Hills when exploring the region in 1806. In his journal, September 12th, he described the following near the headwaters of the Verdigris River in southeastern Chase County: “Commenced our march at seven o’clock. Passed very ruff flint hills. My feet blistered and very sore.” He went on to say that from one view he could see buffalo, elk, deer, cabrie [pronghorn], and panthers

Development by Design: Mitigating Wind Development's Impacts on Wildlife in Kansas

Wind energy, if improperly sited, can impact wildlife through direct mortality and habitat loss and fragmentation, in contrast to its environmental benefits in the areas of greenhouse gas, air quality, and water quality. Fortunately, risks to wildlife from wind energy may be alleviated through proper siting and mitigation offsets. Here we identify areas in Kansas where wind development is incompatible with conservation, areas where wind development may proceed but with compensatory mitigation for impacts, and areas where development could proceed without the need for compensatory mitigation. We demonstrate that approximately 10.3 million ha in Kansas (48 percent of the state) has the potential to provide 478 GW of installed capacity while still meeting conservation goals. Of this total, approximately 2.7 million ha would require no compensatory mitigation and could produce up to 125 GW of installed capacity. This is 1,648 percent higher than the level of wind development needed in Kansas by 2030 if the United States is to get 20 percent of its electricity from wind. Projects that avoid and offset impacts consistent with this analysis could be awarded “Green Certification.” Certification may help to expand and sustain the wind industry by facilitating the completion of individual projects sited to avoid sensitive areas and protecting the industry's reputation as an ecologically friendly source of electricity

Costing Human Rights and Community Support Interventions as a Part of Universal Access to HIV Treatment and Care in a Southern African Setting

Expanding access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) has both individual health benefits and potential to decrease HIV incidence. Ensuring access to HIV services is a significant human rights issue and successful programmes require adequate human rights protections and community support. However, the cost of specific human rights and community support interventions for equitable, sustainable and non-discriminatory access to ART are not well described. Human rights and community support interventions were identified using the literature and through consultations with experts. Specific costs were then determined for these health sector interventions. Population and epidemic data were provided through the Statistics South Africa 2009 national mid-year estimates. Costs of scale up of HIV prevention and treatment were taken from recently published estimates. Interventions addressed access to services, minimising stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV, confidentiality, informed consent and counselling quality. Integrated HIV programme interventions included training for counsellors, ‘Know Your Rights’ information desks, outreach campaigns for most at risk populations, and adherence support. Complementary measures included post-service interviews, human rights abuse monitoring, transportation costs, legal assistance, and funding for human rights and community support organisations. Other essential non-health sector interventions were identified but not included in the costing framework. The annual costs for the human rights and community support interventions are United States (US) $63.8 million (US$1.22 per capita), representing 1.5% of total health sector HIV programme costs. Respect for human rights and community engagement can be understood both as an obligation of expanded ART programmes and as a critically important factor in their success. Basic rights-based and community support interventions constitute only a small percentage of overall programmes costs. ART programs should consider measuring the cost and impact of human rights and community support interventions as key aspects of successful programme expansion