Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous There’s nothing particularly deterministic about starting a new year on January 1st. Our wall calendars happen to do so because of the circumstances of history. For hydrologists in the northern hemisphere, January 1st is not a great time to declare one year dead and a new …
A nice British video explaining the connection between rivers and groundwater. I can’t get the embed to work, so you’ll have to click through to watch: http://www.groundwateruk.org/How-Rivers-Work-Role-of-Groundwater.aspx This is why I say I study rivers AND groundwater – if you want to understand how water moves through a watershed, you’ve got to …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous (for obvious reasons) Allochthonous may have some obscure usage related to rocks, but in ecology, allochthonous material is a major concept that underpins thinking about nutrient cycling and food web dynamics. In its most general definition, allochthonous material is something imported into an ecosystem from outside …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous Got flood fatigue yet? Too bad, because the wet weather and the high water keeps coming. Here is a quick round up of the notable flood-related news of the week. Mississippi River My post, ‘Levees and the illusion of flood control‘, has been nominated for the …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous One week ago today (28 May 2011), I had the chance to explore the lingering flooding along the Mississippi River and its tributary Big Muddy River in southern Illinois. The area was long past its crest; it is upriver of Cairo and the Birds Point Floodway. …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous I’ve got a shiny new Emriver Em2 river processes simulator (i.e., stream table), thanks to departmental equipment funds and enthusiastic colleagues. I’ve been on sabbatical this semester and away from campus, so I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but it is enticing …
14,000 years ago there was direct connection between what is now the Red River basin and the Minnesota River basin. Today, there’s a continental divide – with the Red flowing toward Hudson Bay and the Minnesota flowing toward the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico. But what a strange continental divide it is – for it runs through the former outlet of Lake Agassiz, in what is now known as the Traverse Gap. This divide is not so much a high point in the landscape, but a just-not-quite-as-low area.
These four papers all attempt to understand what controls the sediments that make up the streambed and floodplain and that get preserved in the geologic record. White et al. look at how riffle positions are governed by valley width variations, while Jerolmack and Brzinski find striking similarities in grain size transitions observed in rivers and dune fields. Hart et al. examine the relationship between glacial advances and downstream sediment deposition, while Sambrook Smith et al. investigate the sedimentological record of floods.
How do rivers erode bedrock streams, during big floods, and in the presence of groundwater? Laboratory and accidental experiments are providing some cool new insights.
How large reservoirs affect our measurements of global sea level rise…and how the world’s biggest river basins are going to respond to mid-century climate change