Each group should choose one of the following topics to research for Project 2. The topic headings are based on the topics for each section of your syllabus.

 

Human Origins and Population Growth

1. Summarize recent (1990s) scientific accounts of fossil evidence about the origins of hominids: Where? When? How old? Life history? Implications for evolutionary history?

2. How did food procurement by early humans alter the landscape?
3. When did humans arrive in the Americas? Summarize the latest research on prehistoric humans in the New World.
4. Is there a problem with Martin’s wave theory of human dispersal in the Americas?
5. Megafauna hunting in the Old World and the New World.
6. Research the notion of "inexperienced prey" which Martin relies on in his theory of Pleistocene overkill.
7. Pandemics and climate change – alternative theories of megafauna extinction.
8. Transition to agriculture – How? Why? When?
9. You can’t get there from here – Human dispersal across the Earth and land bridges.
10. Agriculture as the worst mistake in history – assess Diamond’s argument and most recent writings.

 

Domestication of Plants and Animals

1. Plants and polyploidy: issues of gigantism
2. Animals and religion – from cave bears to sacred cows: Did people domesticate for religious reasons?
3. Dogs and domestication: When and where and why?
4. Vavilov and domesticated plant origins
5. Dump heaps, Sauer, and the origin of agriculture
6. New domesticates in from the wild – buffalo, oryx, eland, etc.
7. Seeds of struggle – current accounts of the geopolitics of genetic resources
8. Rare breeds and heirloom seeds
9. The Green Revolution: 20^th Century improvements to cultivate plants
10. The problem of exotics

 

Fire and Agriculture

1. Fire suppression in National Parks
2. Aborigines and dreamtime – fire in Australia
3. Fire on the Mountain: The role of fire in forest ecology
4. The ecology of tropical swidden agriculture
5. For Peat’s sake – the cultural significance of peat – fuel, mulch, and the occasional corpse
6. Fire and Prairies: temperate grasslands
7. Controlled burns in Texas land management
8. Indigenous peoples and fire
9. Fires in Michigan: Aux Sable Watershed
10. Cedars, birds, and fire in the Hill Country

 

The Plow in the Agricultural Landscape

1. Pre-Roman agriculture in England
2. Romans, grain, and land clearance in England
3. Jethro Tull and the development of agricultural mechanization
4. George Perkins Marsh and the Mediterranean basin: environmental history of landscape change
5. Enclosure – social and ecological impacts in the British Isles
6. Early American farming – the myth of the Yeoman Farmer
7. Wendell Berry – poetry, the family farm and local self-sufficiency.
8. Plantation agriculture in the South
9. Homesteads and the American West
10. Agribusiness and the depopulation of rural America

 

Irrigation Agriculture

1. Rice in Texas
2. Let’s all live in Lubbock: High Plains irrigation – "mining" the Ogallala Aquifer
3. Super rice and the Green Revolution
4. Rio Grande Valley agriculture and water
5. Hydrilla and the nutria in Texas
6. Wittfogel and hydraulic civilization
7. Water Buffaloes vs. machines in SE Asia
8. Wet terrace agriculture around the world
9. Hydroponics vs. soil
10. Fish farming

 

Water Control and Intensification Reclamation

1. Dams in Africa
2. The Zuider Zee and reclamation
3. Dutch engineers and water control around the world
4. Schistosomiasis and WHO
5. Zebra mussels and the Great Lakes
6. Mississippi floods and the Army Corps of Engineers
7. The Highland Lakes: the Colorado River from flood to faucet
8. Ramsar sites in the Americas
9. The Aral Sea
10. Drought and the American Southwest

 

Pesticides and the Agricultural Landscape

1. Pesticide residues in your salad?
2. Colorado River pesticide spill – Austin 1961
3. The return of the Brown Pelican
4. The geopolitics of exporting DDT
5. Targets and nontargets – the effects of pesticides
6. Rabbit control in Australia
7. Lady bugs as killers – predator insects as biological controls
8. Med Flies in California
9. Shakespeare's birds in North America
10. Organic farming and the 21^st Century

 

Urban Origins and the Industrial City

1. Lost cities of the Maya
2. Dark satanic mills – literary images of the Industrial Revolution
3. Coal and Appalachia – the Industrial Revolution in America
4. Railroads of India
5. Washington D.C. – Planning the Nation’s Capitol
6. Sewage and Cities – origins of urban wastewater systems
7. Canal transportation systems in American history
8. Urban horses
9. Travel time and transport – the effect of speed and time compression
10. The cultural landscape of Austin – origins and development

 

Megalopolis and New Towns

1. The commute: I-35 and sprawl.
2. Edge Cities and strip malls
3. Metropolis: dark cities in comic books
4. Cyberspace and virtual communities
5. Alexander and Pattern Language – a timeless way of building
6. Sun City
7. The Woodlands, Texas
8. Urban Wildlife – Nature in Cities
9. Urbanization and the Effects of Population Growth in Texas
10. The Population Bomb and rural-to-urban migration