The Corn Latitudes

As I note elsewhere on this site, I did a lot of work under contract for State of Illinois agencies. Of these associations, the most profitable in every way was the time I spent with the staff of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (as it now is) and its predecessor agencies. It afforded me an advanced education in energy and the environment and the policies pertinent to each. It also gave me a chance to work with a lot of bright people.

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To provide focus for an important and innovative environmental project called the Critical Trends Assessment Program, IDNR developed and published an Inventory of Ecologically Resource-Rich Areas in Illinois and conducted regional assessments for areas in which a public-private partnership is formed. The experts involved—staff of IDNR’s Division of Energy and Environmental Assessment, Office of Realty and Environmental Planning, the Illinois State Museum, the Illinois Waste Management and Research Center, and the state’s surveys of natural history, geology, and water—then assembled an assessment of each area.

I was hired to write a summary of the findings plus separate versions of those assessments meant to appeal to interested lay readers. The list below includes only the summary, "Waves of Change," and the fourteen region reports  I authored. Alas, the versions that appear here are mere shadows of their original selves. I had to omit their many useful tables of data and maps and their gorgeous photos.

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For more about the CTAP project, see "CTAP reports" under Publications.