Like the Snake River I posted last week, today I’ve got another example of a river happily braiding through a wide valley (this time probably glacial, not structural) only to meet an obstacle in the form of topography. I’m looking at the Lamar River on the northeast entrance road to …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous The geo-image bonanza of this month’s Accretionary Wedge gives me a good reason to make good on a promise I made a few months ago. I promised to write about what can happen on the flanks of Pacific Northwest volcanoes when a warm, heavy rainfall hits …
The last few months have been busy, busy, busy for the members of this research group, and now, with the semester over, our hard work is starting to pay off. Brock Freyer has accepted a job with Three Parameters Plus, an environmental consulting firm based out of Anchorage, Alaska. He’ll …
About two months ago, I noted with great sadness the passing of a legendary figure in fluvial geomorphology, M. Gordon “Reds” Wolman, long-time professor at The Johns Hopkins University and inspiration to hundreds, if not thousands, of geomorphologists, hydrologists, and environmental scientists around the world. In the past two months, …
The Chippewa River drains the glaciated terrains of north-central Wisconsin including major outwash plains from the margins of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The sand carried by the Chippewa is a major sediment source for the Upper Mississippi River for tens of miles downstream. The Chippewa forms a beautiful delta into …
The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull (which means Island Mountain Glacier in Icelandic) started out in March as a relatively quiet and tourist-friendly Hawaiian style eruption. That petered out and then a few days later, the magma reemerged subglacially, producing the spectacular ash-producing phreato-magmatic eruption that has transfixed the world and stranded …
I spent a summer in college staring at maps and aerial photographs of the Rio Grande delta in Texas and Mexico. Maybe now I can get some use out of it. I was working with J.D. Stanley at the Smithsonian’s NMNH and he pointed me to the apparently high sinuosity …
Hunting for a Where on Google Earth location a while ago I ran across this wonderful tidally-influenced delta on the northwest coast of Madagascar. It is the mouth of the Betsiboka River and just north of the river mouth is the second largest port in Madagascar. What struck me about …
More than one billion people (1 in 6) do not have access to adequate clean fresh water – which is defined as just 20 to 50 liters per day. (In contrast, the average American can use in excess of 400 liters per day indoors.) More than 2.5 billion people do …
I’m delighted to be hosting Dr. Chris Rowan of the University of Edinburgh. Chris’s specialty is paleomagnetic applied to both neotectonic and paleoclimatic problems, and he’s worked in some fabulously exotic locations. Chris is also the lead blogger at Highly Allochthonous, where I occasionally contribute posts as well. Dr. Rowan …