David Rice Atchison, Southern Spokesman: 1844-1855

Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison represented one of the most radical southern factions in Congress. He accomplished his greatest feat in 1854 by securing passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. When he returned home to face re-election, he lost in Missouri\u27s General Assembly. This work examined the electoral returns of Missouri General Assembly elections in 1848, 1850, and 1854 in an effort to determine Atchison\u27s power base, how this power base changed in his critical re-election, and how certain critical issues damaged his candidacy. It examined the circumstances and internal strife occuring within the Missouri Democratic Party. Missourians rejected fanaticism on both sides, the North and South. Their desire to avoid the slavery issue sealed the fate of David Rice Atchison\u27s political career

Influence of UAS Flight Altitude and Speed on Aboveground Biomass Prediction

The management of low-density savannah and woodland forests for carbon storage presents a mechanism to offset the expense of ecologically informed forest management strategies. However, existing carbon monitoring systems draw on vast amounts of either field observations or aerial light detection and ranging (LiDAR) collections, making them financially prohibitive in low productivity systems where forest management focuses on promoting resilience to disturbance and multiple uses. This study evaluates how UAS altitude and flight speed influence area-based aboveground forest biomass model predictions. The imagery was acquired across a range of UAS altitudes and flight speeds that influence the efficiency of data collection. Data were processed using common structures from motion photogrammetry algorithms and then modeled using Random Forest. These results are compared to LiDAR observations collected from fixed-wing manned aircraft and modeled using the same routine. Results show a strong positive relationship between flight altitude and plot-based aboveground biomass modeling accuracy. UAS predictions increasingly outperformed (2–24% increased variance explained) commercial airborne LiDAR strategies as acquisition altitude increased from 80–120 m. The reduced cost of UAS data collection and processing and improved biomass modeling accuracy over airborne LiDAR approaches could make carbon monitoring viable in low productivity forest systems