From: "Andrew J. Miller" <miller@umbc.edu>

Newsgroups: umbc.course.geog110h

Subject: Assignment #11

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 01:07:16 -0400

Assignment #11

Interim discussion Friday, May 2

Final discussion Friday, May 9

As there are many topics remaining to be covered and only a relatively short time left in the semester, this next assignment gives you considerable latitude to focus on a topic that interests you. The range of topics is indicated below, together with some links to sites that may be useful. You are also welcome to perform a search on your own.

Select a topic or question pertaining to one of the areas below; investigate the question using some combination of your own research and the links available in this message or in the class bookmark list. Write up a synthesis, including links to relevant images or data, and discuss how the topic under investigation relates to material in the relevant chapter of the textbook.

For example, if you choose to look at floods, landslides, or debris flows, investigate a case study of a particular event (some examples are listed; you can also find your own). Relate the impacts to the factors responsible for causing the event (e.g. earthquake, storm, etc.) and, if possible, to their spatial distribution, and comment on anything unusual or noteworthy about this particular event. Describe the pattern you see and explain why it looks the way it does.

This also could be combined with an investigation of a particular problem in an environmentally sensitive area. Examples could include the shrinking Aral Sea in central Asia; the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer in the high plains of the midwestern U.S.; the declining water levels in Mono Lake, California, and the resulting impact on rare and endangered species; the poisoning of the Kesterson Reservoir and of other areas in the Central Valley of California by increasing concentrations of selenium in irrigation return flow; the channelization of the Kissimmee River in south Florida and the subsequent project by the Army Corps of Engineers intended to restore the natural ecosystem; the decline of the Everglades in response to human alterations in the natural flow system and in water quality; deforestation and its impacts in (you pick the location); flood hazards and flood management on the Yangtze (or other rivers) in China.

Another option would be to select a particular river or river system and investigate its characteristics, including the size, shape, and underlying geology of the watershed, the pattern of flow observed over time, the physical characteristics of the channel system, and the effects of human activities on flow patterns or channel morphology. An atypical, but fascinating and well-documented example is the Colorado River in Grand Canyon (some links are listed below). Other examples might include (in no particular order; these are names that just came to mind) the Platte River, the Altamaha, the Savannah River, the Eel River or Redwood Creek in the Pacific northwest, the Huang Ho, the Rio Grande, the Amazon River, the Ob and the Yenisei in Russia, the Irrawaddy, the Indus, the Ganges-Brahmaputra, the Yukon, etc. I haven't researched all of these and I don't know what information may be available on the web.

If you are interested in glaciers and ice ages, you might try to look up some information on the history of climate, particularly during the Pleistocene. What kind of surrogate information is used to reconstruct climatic history, and what does it tell us? Or you might look for information about glacial landforms and/or evidence of the history of glaciation in a particular area. A particularly fascinating example that combines glaciation with flooding is the story of the catastrophic release of water from a large glaci al meltwater lake (Lake Missoula) that led to the creation of the channeled scabland in Washington state. Please note also that there are sites with lots of satellite images from diverse corners of the world. A good repository, for example, is at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. If you are studying a particular region, try to find an image that shows it clearly enough for display in class and inclusion in your assignment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

For web pages pertaining to biogeography, ecosystems research, and ecology, look at the list of bookmark links from the class homepage and scroll down to the "Biogeography and ecology" heading. Some of the items listed there are also included below, together with assorted other sites on ecosystems and environmental problems affecting ecosystem health.

--------------------

The geologist's lifetime field list

http://www.uc.edu/~ACOMBTY/geologylist.html

World Heritage List (many of the places in the world worth visiting) http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~salmon/world.heritage.html

--------------------

Radar images of ecology and agriculture

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sircxsar/ecologyagriculture.html

Biodiversity and long-term ecological research:

LTER (U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research Network)

http://lternet.edu/

Biodiversity in Ecosystems (World Resources Institute)

http://www.wri.org/wri/biodiv/ecosys.html

Biodiversity: An Overview

http://www.wcmc.org.uk/infoserv/biogen/biogen.html

Biodiversity web sites

http://www.biologie.uni-freiburg.de/data/zoology/riede/taxalinks. html Botany and Field biology Sites

http://www.euronet.nl/users/mbleeker/urlists/boturl-1.html

--------------------

Marshes and wetlands:

EPA's Wetlands Division

http://www.epa.gov/OWOW/OWOW/wetlands/

University of Maryland College Park Coastal Marsh Project

http://www.geog.umd.edu/wetlands/Marsh.html

--------------------

Chesapeake Bay:

See the set of links attached to the home page for Geography 318: http://research.umbc.edu/~miller/geog318.html

---------------

One of the most threatened ecosystems in the U.S. is the Florida Everglades, which is impacted by human activities throughout South Florida. Try a search of the web looking for information on the Everglades or the Kissimmee River, and look for web pages managed by the South Florida Water Management District. The following sites also provide some relevant information:

U.S. Geological Survey: South Florida Ecosystems Homepage

http://sflwww.er.usgs.gov/

South Florida Ecosystems: Changes Through Time

http://sflwww.er.usgs.gov/HTML/SFLA/HTML/Ecosystem/Deb.html Central and Southern Florida (C&SF) Project Comprehensive Review Study http://www.saj.usace.army.mil/restudy/index.html

-----------------

Coral reefs:

The Great Barrier Reef

http://www.erin.gov.au/portfolio/dest/wha/gbr.html

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~salmon/wh-gbreef.html

The Coral Health and Monitoring Program

http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/

-----------------

Virtual Hawaii Home Page

http://hawaii.ivv.nasa.gov:80/space/hawaii/index.html

-----------------

Tropical forests:

Humid Tropical Forest Inventory Project

http://pathfinder-www.sr.unh.edu/pathfinder/index.html

Rain forests

http://www.euronet.nl/users/mbleeker/urlists/boturl-2.html#rainfo The Tropical Rainforest in Suriname

http://www.euronet.nl/users/mbleeker/suri_eng.html

------------------

Research on global change

The Global Change Master Directory

http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/

HAPEX-Sahel: the Hydrology-Atmosphere Pilot Experiment in the Sahel, 1990-1992

http://www.orstom.fr/hapex/htdocs/whatis.htm

Selection of Useful WWW sites related to global change research http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/eos/EOSBM.html

International Geosphere-Biosphere Program:

Biospheric Aspects of the Hydrological Cycle

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~bahc/

LBA, the Large Scale Biosphere - Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~bahc/lba.www

The BOREAS Project (Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study)

http://boreas.gsfc.nasa.gov/BOREAS/BOREAS_Home.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Some information on soils, soil-water relationships, soils and biology, weathering:

Soil-water relationships

http://gnv.ifas.ufl.edu/~fairsweb/text/ss/19828.html

Biodiversity, soil and ecologically sustainable development http://kaos.erin.gov.au/portfolio/esd/biodiv/articles/soil.html

Ancient land and young soils

http://cres.anu.edu.au/bulletin/ollier.html

Ayers Rock, Australia

http://www.world.net/Travel/Australia/NT_info/NTTC/ayers.html http://ebweb.tuwien.ac.at/ortner/images/nt16.jpg

National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory

http://soils.ecn.purdue.edu:20002/

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Miscellaneous but interesting:

NASA JSC Digital Image Collection

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/

NASA JPL Imaging Radar Home Page

http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

Videos and animations from JPL

http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/video.html

Applications of Earth Observation information

http://www.ceo.org/demo.html

Chicxulub Impact Crater Provides Clues to Earth's History (also not for assignment, but also a good story)

http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/sharpton.html

Albuquerque's Environmental Story

http://www.cabq.gov/aes/s1index.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Some information on landslides and debris flows:

National Landslide Information Center

http://gldage.cr.usgs.gov/html_files/nlicsun.html

History of landslides and Debris Flows at Mount Rainier

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Rainier/OFR93-111.html

1995 PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF THE FIRE-RELATED

DEBRIS FLOWS ON STORM KING MOUNTAIN, GLENWOOD SPRINGS, COLORADO http://gldage.cr.usgs.gov/html_files/ofr95-508/skrep.html

Debris-Flow Flume at H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Projects/MassMovement/flume.html LANDSLIDE EROSION RATE ESTIMATES IN THE EASTERN CORDILLERA, BOLIVIA http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/eos/research/landslide.html

Monitoring Bolivian landslides

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/eos/research/gs.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Some information on floods:

1997 Floods on Red River in North Dakota

http://srv1dndbmk.cr.usgs.gov/public/rrflood/rrflood.html

The Upper Mississippi Basin and the great Mississippi flood of 1993 http://edcwww2.cr.usgs.gov/./sast-home.html

The Great Flood of Summer 1993: Mississippi River Discharge Studied http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/walker.html

Corps of Engineers 1993 Flood Data

http://www.wes.army.mil/EL/flood/fl93home.html

Landsat Imagery of the 1993 Mississippi River Flood

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/rs/tm/flood/

Photographs of the 1993 floods in Missouri

http://www.wildstar.net/~tornado/rogersky.htm#Missouri Floods

NASA Flood Management Home Page

http://iquest.com/~sentar/NASA/Flood_Management.html

PALEOFLOOD INFORMATION WILL HELP IN ANALYSIS OF EXTREME

FLOODS WORLDWIDE

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ogp/papers/hirsch.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Water resources and hydrology information:

Hydrology primer from U.S. Geological Survey

http://wwwdmorll.er.usgs.gov/~bjsmith/outreach/hydrology.primer.h tml U.S. Geological Survey - Water Resources of the U.S.

http://h2o.usgs.gov/

Hydrology and hydrulics branch/current river conditions - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, North Pacific Division, Seattle District http://www.nps.usace.army.mil/hh/http/docs/hhbranch.htm

Water-Level Changes in the High Plains Aquifer,

Predevelopment to 1994

http://h2o.usgs.gov/public/wid/FS_215-95/FS_215-95.html

Hydrology links

http://srv2dcolka.cr.usgs.gov/nawqa/splt/LINKS.html/

THE SOUTH PLATTE NAWQA ONLINE DATA REPORT

http://srv2dcolka.cr.usgs.gov/nawqa/splt/

Research at the USDA Agricultural Research Service Hydrology Laboratory http://hydrolab.arsusda.gov/Hydrology.html

A series of papers reviewing recent advances in hydrology

http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/contents.html#hydrology

National water policy: Shifts continue

http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/moreau01/moreau01.html

Water-Level Changes in the High Plains Aquifer, Predevelopment to 1994 http://h2o.usgs.gov/public/wid/FS_215-95/FS_215-95.html

Colorado water (with some general background info on hydrology and water resources)

http://www.cnr.colostate.edu/CWK/contents.htm

Watershed management in Vancouver

http://www.gvrd.bc.ca/water/bro/watman.html

Calculation of evapotranspiration rates (Penman calculator) http://jei.umd.edu/jei/penman.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Rivers (add more):

Radar images of rivers from JPL

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sircxsar/rivers.html

Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah - Entrenched meanders http://www.mines.utah.edu/~wmgg/Geology/UtahGIFS/Goosenecks.html The RiverTools Home Page

http://cires.colorado.edu/people/peckham.scott/RT.html

Colorado River/Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon National Park Home Page (see features on controlled flooding) http://www.kaibab.org/gc/gc_homef.htm

The River That Flows Uphill

http://weber.u.washington.edu/~wcalvin/bk3ch1.html

Studies of Colorado River Sandbars (Beaches) in Grand Canyon at Northern Arizona University

http://vishnu.glg.nau.edu/gces/sbar.html

Controlled Flooding of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon: the Rationale and Data-Collection Planned

http://h2o.usgs.gov/public/wid/FS_089-96/FS_089-96.html

The Unofficial Guide to the Colorado River in The Grand Canyon http://river.ihs.gov/

LINKS TO OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION RELATED TO THE

COLORADO PLATEAU, GRAND CANYON, AND COLORADO RIVER

http://phantom.uc.usbr.gov/links.html

Estimating discharge in braided rivers from Space using synthetic aperture radar

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/eos/research/discharge.html

Lakes:

Lake Baikal

http://www.icc.ru/fed/baikal.html

Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia

http://ripley.ece.uiuc.edu/~vfridman/baikal.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Karst topography:

The Virtual Cave

http://www.goodearth.com/virtcave.html

Tower karst in China

http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/~oliver/guilin.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Case studies of environmental problems (add other examples): U.S. Geological Survey Environmental Studies

http://www.usgs.gov/environment/index.html

Aral Sea Weblinks

http://earthview.sdsu.edu/trees/aralsea.html

The Aral Sea Area Desertification Change-Detection Study

http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/geology/facilities/carre/carre_study. html

Modeling the Radionuclide Transport by the Ob and Yenisei Rivers (radionuclides courtesy of the Chernobyl accident)

http://www.msl.pnl.gov:2080/projects/a-mpb.htm

Arctic Nuclear Waste Assessment Program (ANWAP)

http://www.msl.pnl.gov:2080/projects/a-onr.htm

Observations and Modeling of Transport and Dilution of

Radioactive Waste and Dissolved Pollutants in the Kara Sea http://www.nrsc.no:8001/NIERSC/PROJECTS/r_a_waste.html

------------------------------------------------

Glaciers, climate change and climatic history:

The Quaternary Page

http://www.geog.ualberta.ca/kholden/quat.htm

Radar images of snow, ice, and glaciers (from JPL)

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sircxsar/snowice.html

Paleoclimatology and climate system dynamics

http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/overpe00/overpe00.html

Variability in the earth climate system: Decadal and longer timescales http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/schime01/schime01.html

Climate change: does it matter?

http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/firor00/firor00.html

Images of North America between 18,0000 years ago and the present http://www.soton.ac.uk/~tjms/namerica.html

Wind-Borne Dust Holds Clues to Early Climate

http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/banerjee.html

Deciphering Mysteries of Past Climate From Antarctic Ice Cores http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/vostok.html

Reconstructing Past Global Change in Western North America http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/anders.html

Ice Sheets Play Important Role in Climate Change

http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/clark.html

Global Change Researchers Assess Projections of Climate Change http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/barron.html

Measuring a moving glacier

http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/sauber.html

ICEFLOW: Alpine Glacier Dynamics

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/eos/iceflow/iceflow.html

Canada - Permafrost

http://ellesmere.ccm.emr.ca/wwwnais/select/pfrost/english/html/epfrost.html

THE VATNAJOKULL ERUPTION AND JOKULHLAUP OF

SEPTEMBER - NOVEMBER, 1996: MAIN PHOTOGRAPHIC SITES

http://www.geog.ualberta.ca/als/icepics/iceindex.htm#Vatna

General Geology of Southeastern Washington (location of channeled scabland) http://www.whitman.edu/Departments/Geology/LocalGeo.html

The Cordilleran Ice Sheet in Washington, Idaho, and Montana http://www.isri.unlv.edu/~john/rummage/demo/1319.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Coastal and marine processes:

Coastal and Nearshore Erosion

http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/docs/erosion.html

Sea-level curves

http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/sealevel.html

Historical Bathymetric Changes Near the Entrance to Grays Harbor, Washington

http://www.msl.pnl.gov:2080/projects/a-grays.htm

WIND-DRIVEN VARIABILITY OF THEAMAZON RIVER PLUME ON THE

CONTINENTAL SHELF DURING THE PEAK OUTFLOW SEASON

http://www.msl.pnl.gov:2080/projects/a-amazon.htm

Numerical Modeling of the Nearshore Dispersal of the Amazon Outflow http://www.msl.pnl.gov:2080/projects/a-near.htm

Long-Term Fate of Waste in an Urban Coastal Ocean: Calculations of DDE Concentration in Effluent-Affected Sediments off the Palos Verdes Peninsula http://www.msl.pnl.gov:2080/projects/a-palosv.htm

Measurements and Modeling of Suspended-Sediment Transport on the Northern California Continental Shelf

http://www.msl.pnl.gov:2080/projects/a-chris.htm