Large stratovolcanoes in the Cascade Range have high equilibrium-line altitudes that support glaciers whose Holocene and latest Pleistocene advances are amenable to dating. Glacier advances produced datable stratigraphic sequences in lateral moraines, which complement dating of end moraines. New mapping of glacial deposits on Mount Rainier using LIDAR and field observations supports a single latest Pleistocene or early Holocene advance. Rainier R tephra overlies deposits from this advance and could be as old as >11.6 ka; the advance could be of Younger Dryas age. Radiocarbon ages on wood interbedded between tills in the lateral moraines of Nisqually, Carbon, and Emmons glaciers and the South Tahoma glacier forefield suggest glacier advances between 200 and 550 CE, correlative with the First Millennium Advance in western Canada, and during the Little Ice Age (LIA) beginning as early as 1300 CE.

These results resolve previous contradictory interpretations of Mount Rainier's glacial history and indicate that the original proposal of a single pre-Neoglacial cirque advance is correct, in contrast to a later interpretation of two advances of pre- and post-Younger Dryas age, respectively. Meanwhile, the occurrence of the pre-LIA Burroughs Mountain Advance, interpreted in previous work as occurring 3–2.5 ka, is questionable based on inherently ambiguous interpretations of tephra distribution.

Some lateral moraines contain a rich record of Holocene glacial expansion. Previous workers have used such evidence to document glacial fluctuations in western Canada, Alaska, and the U.S. Pacific Northwest, but similar studies in Patagonia are uncommon. Here we report on the late Holocene behavior of Stoppani Glacier, a 75 km2 glacier sourced in the Cordillera Darwin, southernmost Patagonia. Based on radiocarbon-dated wood and organic material contained in the glacier's northeast lateral moraine, we infer that Stoppani Glacier advanced shortly before 3.8–3.6, at 3.2–2.8, 2.3–2.1, and 0.3–0.2, and possibly sometime before 1.4–1.3 and 0.8–0.7 cal ka BP. These advances culminated at 0.3–0.2 cal ka BP, when the glacier constructed a prominent end moraine, marking its greatest extent of the past 4000 years. Although the timing of several of the advances overlap with the age range of glacial expansion recognized elsewhere in Patagonia, some do not. Asynchronous behavior observed in the glacial record may arise from the type of evidence (e.g., lateral stratigraphy vs. end moraine) used to document glacial fluctuations or variations in climate or glacial response times. A significant difference between the Stoppani record and some other Patagonian records is that the former indicates general expansion of ice over the last 4000 years, whereas the latter indicate a net decrease in extent over that period.

The Little Ice Age was the most extensive Neoglacial glacier advance in the Canadian Rockies. Evidence of earlier, less-extensive Neoglacial glacier advances is based on wood recovered from several glacier forefields. Wood flushed out of Athabasca Glacier (7550-8230 yr B.P., three dates) and Dome Glacier (6120-6380 yr B.P., two dates) indicates that forests occurred upvalley of present glacier termini during the Hypsithermal. Detrital logs from Peyto (14 dates), Saskatchewan (3 dates), Robson (3 dates), and Yoho (1 date) Glaciers, plus in situ slumps at Peyto and Robson Glaciers, have yielded 14 C dates between 2490 and 3300 yr B.P. (12 dates between 2800 and 2990). This wood is derived from sources at or upvalley from present glacier termini and represents forests overridden by glaciers between ca. 3100 and 2500 yr B.P. (Treeline was higher than present immediately prior to this advance.) This advance, which did not extend beyond the Little Ice Age maximum position, is designated the Peyto Advance and correlated with the Tiedemann Advance in western British Columbia. Earliest Little Ice Age advances at Peyto and Robson Glaciers are dated ca. 800-600 yr B.P. at positions ca. 500 m upvalley from Little Ice Age limits.

Most studies of alpine glacial history have concentrated on terminal moraines, but such moraines provide dates only for maximum extents of glaciers. Some lateral moraines have the potential for providing more complete glacial histories, because deposition by distal-flank accretion may result in sequences of stacked tills. Interpretation is aided by (1) the approximation that any continuous surface within the moraine parallel to the moraine's distal flank is isochronous, (2) inset gulley-fill deposits, which provide information on ice-margin history, and (3) incorporated organic material which can be radiocarbon dated. Lateral moraine stratigraphy of Bugaboo Glacier in southeastern British Columbia suggests that the glacier was fairly close to its maximum Neoglacial extent about 2500 14C yr B.P. A slow general expansion punctuated by at least one minor retreat continued from that time and culminated probably in the last century.

Lichen distribution and growth were examined at several sites in the Canadian Rockies between Mt. Robson and Banff townsite to determine the feasibility of lichenometry on calcareous deposits. The only lichen common enough to be of use is Xanthoria elegans, a bright orange lichen with round or elliptical thalli. It is not an ideal species for lichenometry because (a) it grows fairly quickly and has a range of only a few centuries, (b) growth is influenced by the presence of animal dung, (c) parts of some thalli weather away before maximum size is attained, (d) thalli may thicken as well as grow laterally with age, (e) the species is succeeded by other species relatively quickly in heavily forested environments, and (f) the species is not abundant on some deposits due to sometimes-unexplained environmental influences. However, when used with caution the species is still useful for dating purposes.

A growth curve for Xanthoria elegans was developed using moraines dated dendro-chronologically and man-made structures. After an ecesis interval of one or two decades the lichen grows at a rate of 0.68 mm/yr for several decades, then slows down to a rate of 0.22 mm/yr.

Field study of the bergschrund of a small avalanche-cone glacier at the base of Mt Chephren, in Banff National Park, has been carried out as part of a general exploratory study of glacier-head crevasses in the Canadian Rockies. The bergschrund consists of a wide, shallow, partly bedrock-floored gap, underneath which extends a nearly vertical Randkluft, and a small, offset, subsidiary crevasse (or crevasses). The following observations regarding the behavior of the bergschrund and ice adjacent to it are of particular interest: (1) topography of the subglacial bedrock is a control on the location of the main bergschrund and subsidiary crevasses, (2) the main bergschrund and subsidiary crevasse(s) are connected by subglacial gaps between bedrock and ice; the gaps are part of the “bergschrund system”, (3) snow/ice immediately down-glacier of the bergschrund system moves nearly vertically downward in response to rotational flow of the glacier, allowing the bergschrund components to keep the same location and size from year to year, (4) an independent accumulation, flow, and ablation system exists in the snow/ice up-glacier of the bergschrund system. (5) most of the void space in the bergschrund system is maintained through the winter, although the wide, shallow part of the main bergschrund fills up with snow, (6) some mass transfer of snow/ice occurs across the bergschrund system, (7) displacement across the bergschrund due to flow of the main glacier body results in significantly more snow being deposited each winter down-glacier of the bergschrund than up-glacier of it.

The popular technique of estimating ages of deposits from sizes of lichens continues despite valid criticism, and without agreement on range of utility, treatment of error, and methods of measurement, sampling, and data handling. A major source of error is the assumption that the largest lichen(s) colonized soon after deposition and will survive indefinitely. Recent studies on lichen mortality suggest that this assumption is untenable. Meanwhile, the use of “growth curves” constructed from independently dated substrates is problematic for many reasons, but this has not prevented the publication of baseless claims of accuracy and ages that are extrapolated well beyond data. Experiments indicate that numeric lichenometric ages are not reliable, and in general do not advance the cause of Quaternary science. There are a few studies suggesting reliability, and indeed there may be cases where lichens and growth curves actually provide realistic numerical ages. But it cannot be foretold which lichen assemblages will provide good ages and which bad ages. The logical conclusion is that no assumption of good ages can be made, and that it is folly to assign numerical ages to a deposit on the basis of lichen sizes.

Range livestock is important to the economy of the state of Texas. Over 4.2 billion lbs. of beef were produced in Texas with a value of over $1.2 billion in 1971, which was the greatest for any of the 50 states. Sheep and lamb production in Texas for 1971 exceeded 200 million lbs. and was valued at $43.4 million which was the highest of all 50 states. Cash receipts from cattle, calves, sheep, and lambs marketed in Texas in 1971 were estimated at $1.6 billion.

Texas' production of range livestock is limited by the availability of rangeland. In 1967, over 53 percent of the land area in Texas was classified as rangeland. Undesirable woody plants which compete with favorable grasses for moisture and sunlight have infested 82 percent of the grasslands in the state.

Roll-call data have become a staple of contemporary scholarship on legislative behavior. Recent methodological innovations in the analysis of roll-call data have produced a number of important theoretical insights, such as understanding the structure of congressional decisionmaking and the role of parties and ideology in Congress. Many of the methodological innovations and theoretical questions sparked by congressional scholarship have been difficult to test at the state level because of the lack of comprehensive data on various forms of state legislative behavior, including roll-call voting. The Representation in America's Legislatures project rectifies that problem through collection of comprehensive state legislative roll-call votes across all 99 state legislative chambers for the 1999–2000 and 2003–04 legislative sessions. In this article, we describe the data available through this project as well as our data acquisition procedures, including Stata and Perl programming and OCR of paper documents, with suggestions about how to use these methods to collect a wide range of state-level data.