Kinkaid area: An inventory of the region's resources

The scene from a fishing boat in Kinkaid Lake???the sandstone bluffs, the patches of piney forest, even the muskie lures in the tackle box???puts visitors in mind of Wisconsin or Minnesota. The lake however is set in southern Illinois, just west of Murphysboro. In the early 1970s the earthen Crisenberry Dam was thrown up across Kinkaid Creek on this spot. The stopped-up creek swelled to 2,350 acres of water with 73 miles of shoreline that became the jewel of this part of Illinois??? Egypt. The sandstone bluffs through which Kinkaid Creek winds on its way to the Big Muddy River form a forested rampart overlooking the Mississippi River. Part of the lake???s charm is the scenic contrast it offers to the more familiar Illinois landscape to the north and east. There, the valleys of Beaucoup Creek and its tributary creeks are wide and flat, covered in farmland rather than forest. A much longer stream (81 miles) than Kinkaid Creek, Beaucoup Creek runs from its origins in Washington County southward through Perry County to its junction with the Big Muddy in Jackson County, just east of Murphysboro. The watersheds of Kinkaid and Beaucoup creeks together cover approximately 629 square miles that mostly lie in Perry, Jackson, and Washington counties. The area is southern Illinois in miniature, with forested hills (some of which are part of the Shawnee National Forest) in the Kinkaid watershed and strip-mine lakes interspersed with farm fields in the Beaucoup watershed.published or submitted for publicatio

The Chicago River/Lake Shore : an inventory of the region's resources

The fact that the landscape drained by the Chicago River is home to a great city is obvious to even the most distracted tourist. Less obvious is the fact that nature survives, even thrives, amidst the Midwest???s greatest city. Few places in Illinois offer the variety of habitats, and thus of living things, that are found in and around Chicago. In the mid-1970s, experts combed Illinois to compile a catalog of significant living communities and other natural features. To the surprise of many, they found that Lake and Cook counties contain by far the richest concentration of such treasures in all of Illinois.published or submitted for publicatio

The Sugar-Pecatonica Rivers basin : an inventory of the region's resources

Beginning in 1838, officials in the then-territory of Wisconsin asserted that the watershed of the Pecatonica River and the Sugar River, its main tributary, and the rest of Illinois??? northernmost 14 counties belonged to the Badger State. The land had in effect been stolen by Illinois, Wisconsin argued, when Illinois inaccurately set its state boundaries in 1818. The legal dispute was resolved in 1848 when Wisconsin officially surrendered its claims to northern Illinois. Ecologically, however, the region remains a creature of Wisconsin. The rivers rise in that state before curving south and east into Illinois, where the two streams, now conjoined, meet the Rock River at Rockton. What happens upstream in Wisconsin has more effect on the rivers (especially the Sugar) than what happens in Illinois. And the climate of the watershed, which lies more than 400 miles north of Cairo, Illinois, is as different from that town???s as Kentucky???s is from Wisconsin???s. This part of Illinois also differs from central and southern counties in terms of its human culture. It was settled not by Kentuckians and Carolinians, as happened to the south, but by Scandinavians, Yankees, and German settlers from Pennsylvania. These were people undeterred by winter. The newcomers also had a different attitude toward the land than that of the slash-and-burn farmers who settled the southern Illinois frontier a generation earlier. Back home they had learned how to farm thinly soiled, hilly country like this without wasting it. Today the verdant pastures dotted with dairy cows (and towns dotted with cheese makers) still give the area a marked Wisconsin flavor.published or submitted for publicatio

The Illinois Big Rivers : an inventory of the region's resources

Northwest of the town of Grafton, just past Graham Hollow on the Great River Road, 26 miles and about a century from downtown St. Louis, the Brussels ferry shuttles drivers and their cars across the Illinois River to and from the "rugged kingdom of Calhoun" County. Though the peninsular county is virtually surrounded by waters of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, only one state highway bridge connects it to the rest of Illinois, and anyone wishing to enter it at other points must float across. For years Calhoun County's ferries were taken as symptoms of the region's backwardness. Today they are symbols of its unspoiledness, proof that this part of Illinois has been exempted from the modernity that more and more visitors now come here to escape. To rural residents an essential service, the ferry at Grafton is advertised to visiting urbanites as a "fun" attraction, a country carnival ride. The Brussels ferry at once symbolizes the rural past and suburbanized future of Illinois' Big Rivers region. As used here, "Big Rivers" describes parts of five counties of west central Illinois near where the lower Illinois River enters the Mississippi. Centered in Jersey, Madison, Greene, Calhoun and MacoLlpin counties, the Big Rivers region covers some 1,770 square miles. It includes parts of the basins of three large streams-the middle Mississippi, the lower Illinois, and Macoupin Creek-and takes in one of Illinois' 30 "resource rich areas" identified by state scientists and other experts as being especially endowed with biologic resources. Much of the region is broad prairie, growing on the Central Till Plain that dominates the middle U.S. The floodplains of the two big rivers constitute a second distinct ecological realm. Along the lower Illinois River a bit of the Ozarks plateau intrudes in the form of rugged rocky hills and limestone bluffs formed from lime muds deposited at the bottom of ancient seas 320-500 million years ago, when Illinois basked on the equator. The Dividing Ridge, the massive hump of rock that separates the converging Illinois and the Mississippi, makes up southern Pike County and most of Calhoun County.published or submitted for publicatio

The Kaskaskia River Basin : an inventory of the region's resources

The Kaskaskia is the second longest river in inland Illinois. Measured by almost any standard -- ecological, recreational, economical -- it is the crucial natural resource for a great swathe of mid-Illinois. The river is not, however, a dominating physical presence. Through much of its length it travels in disguise. For more than 30 miles it masquerades as two massive lakes -- two of the three biggest in inland Illinois. Its lowermost 36 miles, upstream from where it empties into the Mississippi, has been remodeled as a barge canal. Along much of the rest of its course the Kaskaskia's presence is masked by some of the most extensive bottomland forests left in the state. The watershed of the Kaskaskia River takes in all or parts of 22 counties, from Champaign County in east-central Illinois to south-central Randolph County -more than 5,700 square miles or 10.2% of the land surface of the state. It is large enough that climatic differences from one end to another are fairly marked. Average annual precipitation is about one inch higher in the southern parts of the watershed than in the northern parts, and some plants found in the south -- species such as overcup oak, sugarberry, and swamp holly -- are not found in the north. The 9% of this area that is considered to be especially rich in ecological resources amounts to nearly 325,000 acres, most of which are found in and along the Kaskaskia itself. The region was one of the first to be settled in Illinois, and thus among the first to be altered. The vegetation was a familiar Illinois mix of prairie and forest, but the proportions of each varied within the region. Grasslands dominated in the northern one-third of the watershed. The southern two-thirds of the region is more rugged and thus more wooded, as ravines offered trees shelter from both prairie fires and drought. An estimated 60% of the surface in this part of the watershed was forested (counting open woods in the form of savanna) when settlement began. The Kaskaskia watershed still has lots of trees, although most of this is new growth on once-cleared land. Forest makes up about 13 % of today's ground cover, most of it crowded into stream bottoms and on hillsides in its more rugged southern two-thirds. Within the nearly 136,000 acres of bottomland forest is Illinois' largest block of contiguous forest, a 7,000-acre tract of floodplain forest and post oak flatwoods that, in places, is two miles wide.published or submitted for publicatio

La Moine River Basin : An Inventory of the Region's Resources

published or submitted for publicatio

Mission Possible: Do School Mission Statements Work?

Does ethical content in organizational mission statements make a difference? Research regarding the effectiveness and results of mission statements is mixed. Krohe ( 1995 , Across the board, 32, 17–21) concluded that much of the good results do not come from the mission statements themselves but from the strategic re-education that happens in producing one. We attempted to discover whether universities that explicitly state their ethical orientation and vision in their mission statements had students with higher perceived character trait importance and activities that reinforce character than universities that did not. While the faculty and administration may receive benefits from mission statement development through strategic re-education as Krohe suggested, do the statements influence the students at the university who may have had no role in its creation? Using a sample of senior business students at 16 universities we found that students at universities with ethical statements in their mission statements had significantly higher perceived character trait importance and character reinforcement than those at universities whose missions lacked ethical statements. This research suggests that schools that explicitly stated ethical content in theirâ\x90£mission statements do influence student ethical orientation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007Mission statements, values development, Maccoby,