{"content":[{"text":"INTRODUCTION","bbox":{"left":0.392164,"top":0.371436,"width":0.18848799999999993,"height":0.022121999999999975}},{"text":"Most Americans possess an image ofthe Great Plains derived, Isuspect, \n from a high-speed window. The interstate highways, those great passing- \n through routes, provide constricted views; I-80, for example, trapped in the \n Platte River Valleyacross much ofNebraska, leads one to think ofthe Plains \n as flat. The image from 30,OOO-plus feet is no less informative, to the \n untrained observer, of the web of life below; even the giant circles of the \n center pivots bespeak large empty spaces. Neither viewing platform is \n sufficient to reveal the intricacies ofthe Plains, letalone the concernsofthose \n who live here. When Frank Popper and Deborah Popper published their \n analysis showing a large number ofdistressed counties in the Great Plains, it \n was probablya conditioned evocationofsuch superficial images that enabled \n them to suggest a policy of planned depopulation and return to a \"Buffalo \n Commons.\" \n The debate that the Poppers' publications have provoked has a most \n curious form, bringing the rational into uneasy conjunction with the emo- \n tional. The Poppers' work was based on dispassionate quantitative analyses, \n but the lack of a documented scientific report allowed visceral responses to \n dominate. Definitions of terms, justifications ofmeasures and methods, and \n evaluation of results typical of scientific discourse have been lacking or \n submerged. The first three papers in this issueattempt to bringsome rational \n framework back into the discussion. The papers are based on presentations \n in a special session at the 1991 annual meeting of the Great Plains-Rocky \n Mountain Division of the Association of American Geographers. The \n authors, all Plains-based, surely have a bias opposite that of the New Jersey- \n based Poppers. It is not this opposition of bias but the attempt to apply","bbox":{"left":0.170353,"top":0.40886,"width":0.633888,"height":0.45161300000000004}},{"text":"163","bbox":{"left":0.473963,"top":0.870526,"width":0.02954000000000001,"height":0.01889799999999997}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}