404 Matching Results

Results open in a new window/tab.

Military Personnel: Active Duty Compensation and Its Tax Treatment (open access)

Military Personnel: Active Duty Compensation and Its Tax Treatment

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense's (DOD) total military compensation package for active duty members consists of both cash and noncash benefits. Since the late 1990s, Congress and the DOD have increased military cash compensation by increasing basic pay and allowances for housing, among other things. Military members also receive tax breaks, which are a part of their cash compensation. Moreover, active duty personnel are offered substantial noncash benefits, such as retirement, health care, commissaries, and childcare. In some cases, these noncash benefits exceed those available to private-sector personnel. DOD relies heavily on noncash benefits because it views benefits as critical to morale, retention, and the quality of life for service members and their families. To better understand the military compensation system, Congress asked us to provide the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Committee on Finance with information on active duty military compensation and its tax treatment. In January 2004, we briefed Congressional staff on our preliminary observations. Because our work identified that the combat zone tax exclusion could impact some service members, Congress asked us to focus our work on military cash compensation and to do …
Date: May 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Federal Assistance: Temporary State Fiscal Relief (open access)

Federal Assistance: Temporary State Fiscal Relief

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As part of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the federal government provided $10 billion in temporary fiscal relief payments to states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. commonwealths and territories (herein referred to as states). Generally, use of these funds is unrestricted in nature; the act authorizes funds to be used to "provide essential government services" and to "cover the costs... of complying with any federal intergovernmental mandate." These funds were intended to provide antirecession fiscal stimulus to the national economy and to help close state budget shortfalls due to the recession that began in March 2001. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), in February 36 states reported facing budget shortfalls with a cumulative budget gap of about $25.7 billion. This report responds to the February 13, 2004, request by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget to provide information to help Congress assess the use of the temporary state fiscal relief payments. Specifically, we are reporting (1) what is known about the potential impacts of unrestricted fiscal relief on the fiscal behavior of states, (2) how …
Date: May 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
VHA Purchase Cards: Internal Controls Over the Purchase Card Program Need Improvement (open access)

VHA Purchase Cards: Internal Controls Over the Purchase Card Program Need Improvement

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General (OIG) has identified significant vulnerabilities in Veterans Affairs' (VA) use of government purchase cards. In its April 26, 2004 report, the OIG reported instances of fraudulent activity totaling $435,900, and numerous improper and questionable uses of the purchase cards totaling $1.1 million. Given that VHA comprised at least 90 percent of VA's dollar and transaction volume for fiscal year 2002, GAO was asked to determine whether existing controls at VHA were designed to provide reasonable assurance that in the future, improper purchases would be prevented or detected in the normal course of business, purchase card and convenience check expenditures were made in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and purchases were made for a reasonable cost and a valid government need."
Date: June 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Opportunities for Congressional Oversight and Improved Use of Taxpayer Funds: Budgetary Implications of Selected GAO Work (open access)

Opportunities for Congressional Oversight and Improved Use of Taxpayer Funds: Budgetary Implications of Selected GAO Work

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report contains in a single document the budgetary implications of selected program reforms discussed in past GAO work but not yet implemented or enacted. Since 1994, we have prepared annual reports similar to this product, in order to continue to assist congressional committees in identifying approaches to reduce federal spending or increase revenues. This year's report contains over 100 examples of budget options organized by budget function. Where possible, budgetary savings estimates provided by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) or the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) are presented."
Date: May 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Alaska Native Allotments: Conflicts with Utility Rights-of-way Have Not Been Resolved through Existing Remedies (open access)

Alaska Native Allotments: Conflicts with Utility Rights-of-way Have Not Been Resolved through Existing Remedies

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1906, the Alaska Native Allotment Act authorized the Secretary of the Interior to allot individual Alaska Natives (Native) a homestead of up to 160 acres. The validity of some of Copper Valley Electric Association's (Copper Valley) rights-of-way within Alaska Native allotments is the subject of ongoing dispute; in some cases the allottees assert that Copper Valley's electric lines trespass on their land. The Department of the Interior's (Interior) Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) are responsible for granting rights-of-way and handling disputes between allotees and holders of rights-of-way. GAO determined (1) the number of conflicts between Native allotments and Copper Valley rights-of-way and the factors that contributed to these conflicts, (2) the extent to which existing remedies have been used to resolve these conflicts, and (3) what legislative alternatives, if any, could be considered to resolve these conflicts."
Date: September 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Human Capital: Additional Collaboration Between OPM and Agencies Is Key to Improved Federal Hiring (open access)

Human Capital: Additional Collaboration Between OPM and Agencies Is Key to Improved Federal Hiring

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Improving the federal hiring process is critical given the increasing number of new hires expected in the next few years. Congress asked GAO to report on the (1) status of recent efforts to help improve the federal hiring process and (2) extent to which federal agencies are using two new hiring flexibilities--category rating and direct-hire authority. Category rating permits an agency to select any job candidate placed in a best-qualified category. Direct-hire authority allows an agency to appoint individuals to positions without adherence to certain competitive examination requirements when there is a severe shortage of qualified candidates or a critical hiring need."
Date: June 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
American Community Survey: Key Unresolved Issues (open access)

American Community Survey: Key Unresolved Issues

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Congress asked GAO to review operational and programmatic aspects of the Census Bureau's ACS that will affect the reliability of small geographic area data. The ACS will be a mail survey of about 3 million households annually, whose results will be cumulated over 5 years to produce estimates that will replace information previously provided by the Decennial Census long form. In addition, annual data will be published for geographic areas with 65,000+ populations and as 3-year averages for areas with populations of 20,000 to 65,000. Annual data will be published beginning in 2006 with data for 2005. The 5-year averages for 2008-12 will provide data for small geographic areas."
Date: October 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Embassy Management: Actions Are Needed to Increase Efficiency and Improve Delivery of Administrative Support Services (open access)

Embassy Management: Actions Are Needed to Increase Efficiency and Improve Delivery of Administrative Support Services

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Costs for overseas posts' administrative support services have risen nearly 30 percent since fiscal year 2001, reaching about $1 billion in 2003. These costs are distributed among 50 agencies through the International Cooperative Administrative Support Services (ICASS) system, which was designed to reduce costs and provide quality services in a simple, transparent, and equitable manner. Since ICASS was implemented in 1998, its performance has not been systematically reviewed. GAO was asked to examine (1) whether ICASS has led to efficient delivery of administrative services and (2) whether ICASS is an effective mechanism for providing quality services."
Date: September 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Future Years Defense Program: Actions Needed to Improve Transparency of DOD's Projected Resource Needs (open access)

Future Years Defense Program: Actions Needed to Improve Transparency of DOD's Projected Resource Needs

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress needs the best available data about DOD's resource tradeoffs between the dual priorities of transformation and fighting the global war on terrorism. To help shape its priorities, in 2001 DOD developed a capabilities-based approach focused on how future adversaries might fight, and a risk management framework to ensure that current defense needs are balanced against future requirements. Because the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) is DOD's centralized report providing DOD and Congress data on current and planned resource allocations, GAO assessed the extent to which the FYDP provides Congress visibility over (1) projected defense spending and (2) implementation of DOD's capabilities-based defense strategy and risk management framework."
Date: May 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Computer-Based Patient Records: VA and DOD Efforts to Exchange Health Data Could Benefit from Improved Planning and Project Management (open access)

Computer-Based Patient Records: VA and DOD Efforts to Exchange Health Data Could Benefit from Improved Planning and Project Management

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "A critical element of the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) information technology program is its continuing work with the Department of Defense (DOD) to achieve the ability to exchange patient health care information and create electronic medical records for use by veterans, active-duty military personnel, and their health care providers."
Date: June 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Energy Markets: Mergers and Many Other Factors Affect U.S. Gasoline Markets (open access)

Energy Markets: Mergers and Many Other Factors Affect U.S. Gasoline Markets

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Gasoline is subject to dramatic price swings. A multitude of factors cause volatility in U.S. gasoline markets, including world crude oil costs, limited refining capacity, and low inventories relative to demand. Since the 1990s, another factor affecting U.S. gasoline markets has been a wave of mergers in the petroleum industry, several of them between large oil companies that had previously competed with each other. For example, in 1999, Exxon, the largest U.S. oil company, merged with Mobil, the second largest. This testimony is based primarily on Energy Markets: Effects of Mergers and Market Concentration in the U.S. Petroleum Industry (GAO-04-96, May 17, 2004). This report examined mergers in the U.S. petroleum industry from the 1990s through 2000, the changes in market concentration (the distribution of market shares among competing firms) and other factors affecting competition in the U.S. petroleum industry, how U.S. gasoline marketing has changed since the 1990s, and how mergers and market concentration in the U.S. petroleum industry have affected U.S. gasoline prices at the wholesale level. To address these issues, GAO purchased and analyzed a large body of data and developed state-of-the art econometric models …
Date: July 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Coast Guard: Key Management and Budget Challenges for Fiscal Year 2005 and Beyond (open access)

Coast Guard: Key Management and Budget Challenges for Fiscal Year 2005 and Beyond

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As the lead federal agency for maritime homeland security within the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard is facing extraordinary, heightened responsibilities to protect America's ports, waterways, and waterside facilities from terrorist attacks. At the same time, the Coast Guard remains responsible for many other programs important to the nation's interests, such as conducting search and rescue and protecting important fishing grounds. Its expanded responsibilities come at a time when budget resources are increasingly constrained, making prioritization among competing agencies and programs an even more critical factor in congressional decision-making. This testimony specifically addresses (1) the most recent trends in both resource usage and performance results for the Coast Guard's homeland security and non-homeland security programs; (2) challenges the agency faces as it proceeds with its Deepwater acquisition program to replace or modernize its key legacy cutters and aircraft; and (3) an overview of the President's fiscal year 2005 budget request for the Coast Guard, focusing on several areas of particular congressional interest."
Date: April 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Watershed Management: Better Coordination of Data Collection Efforts Needed to Support Key Decisions (open access)

Watershed Management: Better Coordination of Data Collection Efforts Needed to Support Key Decisions

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Reliable and complete data are needed to assess watersheds--areas that drain into a common body of water--and allocate limited cleanup resources. Historically, water officials have expressed concern about a lack of water data. At the same time, numerous organizations collect a variety of water data. To address a number of issues concerning the water data that various organization collect, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, asked GAO to determine (1) the key entities that collect water data, the types of data they collect, how they store the data, and how entities can access the data; and (2) the extent that water quality and water quantity data collection efforts are coordinated."
Date: June 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
United Nations: Observations on the Oil for Food Program (open access)

United Nations: Observations on the Oil for Food Program

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Oil for Food program was established by the United Nations and Iraq in 1996 to address concerns about the humanitarian situation after international sanctions were imposed in 1990. The program allowed the Iraqi government to use the proceeds of its oil sales to pay for food, medicine, and infrastructure maintenance. The program appears to have helped the Iraqi people. From 1996 through 2001, the average daily food intake increased from 1,300 to 2,300 calories. From 1997-2002, Iraq sold more than $67 billion of oil through the program and issued $38 billion in letters of credit to purchase commodities. GAO (1) reports on its estimates of the revenue diverted from the program, (2) provides preliminary observations on the program's administration, (3) describes some challenges in its transfer to the CPA, and (4) discusses the challenges Iraq faces as it assumes program responsibility."
Date: April 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Department of Defense: Long-standing Problems Continue to Impede Financial and Business Management Transformation (open access)

Department of Defense: Long-standing Problems Continue to Impede Financial and Business Management Transformation

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO has previously reported on the Department of Defense's (DOD) financial management and business related problems and key elements necessary for successful reform. Although the underlying conditions remain fundamentally unchanged, DOD continues to be confronted with pervasive problems related to its systems, processes (including internal controls), and people (human capital). These problems impede DOD's ability to operate its numerous business operations in an efficient and effective manner. Congress asked GAO to provide its views on (1) the impact that long-standing financial management and related business process weaknesses continue to have on DOD, (2) the underlying causes of DOD business transformation challenges, and (3) DOD's business transformation efforts. The GAO report released today highlights the challenges and impediments facing the department as it continues to transform its financial and business management operations. In addition, GAO reiterates the key elements to successful reform: (1) an integrated business management transformation strategy, (2) sustained leadership and resource control, (3) clear lines of responsibility and accountability, (4) results-oriented performance, (5) appropriate incentives and consequences, (6) an enterprise architecture to guide reform efforts, and (7) effective monitoring and oversight."
Date: July 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Food Safety: USDA and FDA Need to Better Ensure Prompt and Complete Recalls of Potentially Unsafe Food (open access)

Food Safety: USDA and FDA Need to Better Ensure Prompt and Complete Recalls of Potentially Unsafe Food

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Two large food recalls completed in 2003 were associated with 8 deaths and nearly 100 serious illnesses in at least 16 states. Manufacturers voluntarily recall potentially unsafe food by notifying their customers to return or destroy it. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), for meat, poultry, and egg products, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for other food, have programs to monitor voluntary food recalls, verify that companies contact their customers, and maintain recall data. GAO (1) examined the recall programs and procedures USDA and FDA use to protect consumers from unsafe foods and (2) compared their food recall authority with the authority of agencies to recall other consumer products."
Date: October 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
District of Columbia: FY 2003 Performance Report Shows Continued Improvements (open access)

District of Columbia: FY 2003 Performance Report Shows Continued Improvements

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This is the fifth consecutive year that we have reviewed the District of Columbia's performance accountability report as mandated by the Federal Payment Reauthorization Act of 1994. The act requires the Mayor of the District of Columbia to submit to the Congress a performance accountability plan containing a statement of measurable and objective performance goals for the coming fiscal year for all significant activities of the District government. After the end of the fiscal year, the District is to submit a performance accountability report on the extent to which the District achieved these goals. This requirement for the District government is similar to the requirements for executive branch federal agencies under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). GAO's report focuses on the continued progress the District has made in performance reporting. Specifically, the objectives of this report were to (1) examine the extent to which the performance accountability report is in compliance with statutory requirements, and (2) summarize some of the District's other significant performance management initiatives and identify additional opportunities for improvement."
Date: July 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Medicare: Past Experience Can Guide Future Competitive Bidding for Medical Equipment and Supplies (open access)

Medicare: Past Experience Can Guide Future Competitive Bidding for Medical Equipment and Supplies

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) requires the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to conduct large-scale competitive bidding for durable medical equipment, supplies, off-the-shelf orthotics, and enteral nutrients and related equipment and supplies provided to beneficiaries. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 mandated that GAO study an earlier Medicare competitive bidding demonstration. To address this mandate, GAO assessed this past experience in relation to four issues that CMS might consider as it implements large-scale competitive bidding: (1) items for competitive bidding, (2) how to streamline implementation, (3) ways to collect information on specific items provided to beneficiaries, and (4) steps to ensure quality items and services."
Date: September 7, 2004
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Biobased Products: Improved USDA Management Would Help Agencies Comply with Farm Bill Purchasing Requirements (open access)

Biobased Products: Improved USDA Management Would Help Agencies Comply with Farm Bill Purchasing Requirements

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government spends more than $230 billion annually for products and services to conduct its operations. Through its purchasing decisions, it has the opportunity to affirm its policies and goals, including those related to purchases of biobased products, as set out in the 2002 farm bill. A biobased product is a commercial or industrial product, other than food or feed that is composed of, in whole or part, biological products, renewable domestic agricultural materials, or forestry materials. GAO examined (1) actions the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other agencies have taken to carry out farm bill requirements for purchasing biobased products, (2) additional actions that may be needed to implement the requirements, and (3) views of stakeholders on the need for and costs of testing biobased products. GAO interviewed officials from USDA, major procuring agencies, testing entities, interested associations, and 15 manufacturers of biobased products."
Date: April 7, 2004
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Reinforcement of Aluminum Castings with Dissimilar Metals (open access)

Reinforcement of Aluminum Castings with Dissimilar Metals

The project ''Reinforcement of Aluminum Casting with Dissimilar Metal'' was a Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Cummins Inc. This project, technologies have been developed to reinforce aluminum castings with steel insert. Defect-free bond between the steel insert and the aluminum casting has been consistently obtained. The push-out experiment indicated that the bond strength is higher than that of the Al-Fin method. Two patents have been granted to the project team that is comprised of Cummins Inc. and ORNL. This report contains four sections: the coating of the steel pins, the cast-in method, microstructure characterization, and the bond strength. The section of the coating of the steel pins contains coating material selection, electro-plating technique for plating Cu and Ni on steel, and diffusion bonding of the coatings to the steel. The section of cast-in method deals with factors that affecting the quality of the metallurgical bond between the coated steel and the aluminum castings. The results of microstructure characteristics of the bonding are presented in the microstructure characterization section. A push-out experiment and the results obtained using this method is described in the section of bond strength/mechanical property.
Date: January 7, 2004
Creator: Han, Q
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Prediction of External Corrosion for Steel Cylinders--2004 Report (open access)

Prediction of External Corrosion for Steel Cylinders--2004 Report

Depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF{sub 6}) is stored in over 60,000 steel cylinders at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) in Paducah, Kentucky, and at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) in Portsmouth, Ohio. The cylinders range in age from 4 to 53 years. Although when new the cylinders had wall thicknesses specified to within manufacturing tolerances, over the years corrosion has reduced their actual wall thicknesses. The UF{sub 6} Cylinder Project is managed by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to safely maintain the UF{sub 6} and the cylinders containing it. This report documents activities that address UF{sub 6} Cylinder Project requirements and actions involving forecasting cylinder wall thicknesses. These requirements are delineated in the System Requirements Document (LMES 1997a), and the actions needed to fulfill them are specified in the System Engineering Management Plan (LMES 1997b). The report documents cylinder wall thickness projections based on models fit to ultrasonic thickness (UT) measurement data. UT data is collected at various locations on randomly sampled cylinders. For each cylinder sampled, the minimum UT measurement approximates the actual minimum thickness of the cylinder. Projections of numbers of cylinders expected to …
Date: July 7, 2004
Creator: Schmoyer, RLS
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Classification of non-coding RNA using graph representations ofsecondary structure (open access)

Classification of non-coding RNA using graph representations ofsecondary structure

Some genes produce transcripts that function directly in regulatory, catalytic, or structural roles in the cell. These non-coding RNAs are prevalent in all living organisms, and methods that aid the understanding of their functional roles are essential. RNA secondary structure, the pattern of base-pairing, contains the critical information for determining the three dimensional structure and function of the molecule. In this work we examine whether the basic geometric and topological properties of secondary structure are sufficient to distinguish between RNA families in a learning framework. First, we develop a labeled dual graph representation of RNA secondary structure by adding biologically meaningful labels to the dual graphs proposed by Gan et al [1]. Next, we define a similarity measure directly on the labeled dual graphs using the recently developed marginalized kernels [2]. Using this similarity measure, we were able to train Support Vector Machine classifiers to distinguish RNAs of known families from random RNAs with similar statistics. For 22 of the 25 families tested, the classifier achieved better than 70% accuracy, with much higher accuracy rates for some families. Training a set of classifiers to automatically assign family labels to RNAs using a one vs. all multi-class scheme also yielded encouraging …
Date: June 7, 2004
Creator: Karklin, Yan; Meraz, Richard F. & Holbrook, Stephen R.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Measures of microstructure to improve estimates and bounds on elastic constants and transport coefficients in heterogeneous media (open access)

Measures of microstructure to improve estimates and bounds on elastic constants and transport coefficients in heterogeneous media

The most commonly discussed measures of microstructure in composite materials are the spatial correlation functions, which in a porous medium measure either the grain-to-grain correlations, or the pore-to-pore correlations in space. Improved bounds based on this information such as the Beran-Molyneux bounds for bulk modulus and the Beran bounds for conductivity are well-known. It is first shown here how to make direct use of this information to provide estimates that always lie between these upper and lower bounds for any microstructure whenever the microgeometry parameters are known. Then comparisons are made between these estimates, the bounds, and two new types of estimates. One new estimate for elastic constants makes use of the Peselnick-Meister bounds (based on Hashin-Shtrikman methods) for random polycrystals of laminates to generate self-consistent values that always lie between the bounds. A second new type of estimate for conductivity assumes that measurements of formation factors (of which there are at least two distinct types in porous media, associated respectively with pores and grains) are available, and computes new bounds based on this information. The paper compares and contrasts these various methods in order to clarify just what microstructural information and how precisely that information needs to be known …
Date: October 7, 2004
Creator: Berger, E. L.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Archaeofaunal insights on pinniped-human interactions in the northeastern Pacific (open access)

Archaeofaunal insights on pinniped-human interactions in the northeastern Pacific

Human exploitation of pinnipeds has considerable antiquity but shows increasing impacts on population numbers in the Holocene. Pinnipeds are a rich source of fat as well as protein. A few well-documented cases of regional extirpation of seals and sea lions by non-industrial peoples exist. The northeastern Pacific region, from southern California to Alaska, has yielded archaeological evidence for distributions and abundances of eared seals that differs markedly from historically documented biogeography. This is especially true of the northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus), among the most common pinnipeds in many archaeological sites from the Santa Barbara Channel area through to Kodiak Islands. This chapter reviews contemporary eared seal biogeography, evidence for the earlier timing and extent, of occurrence of northern fur seals along the northeastern Pacific coast, zooarchaeological and isotopic evidence for their foraging and probable maintenance of rookeries in lower latitudes, and for their disappearance from the southernmost part of their ancient distribution well before European contact. It also reviews ongoing debates over the behavioral ecology of ancient fur seals and over humans role in contributing to their disappearance.
Date: February 7, 2004
Creator: Gifford-Gonzales, D; Newsome, S; Koch, P; Guilderson, T; Snodgrass, J & Burton, R
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library