almost daily river picture, #3

Second Order Drainage

West Branch of Fish Creek

Blossvale, New York

January 2009

almost daily river picture, day #2

Colorado River headwaters,

Rocky Mountain National Park

June 2009

googling earth: in literature

Now, it is not often that one may see a GoogleEarth image in literature. Although I swear I've seen a simple overview map in a published article before, I cannot think of in which journal it was in. Alas, it is not important.

I'm fishing for opinions here. I'm putting together some masterful (if I do say so myself) geomorphic maps for a Fluvail Geomorphology term paper tied into a chapter of my thesis - and the issue of GoogleEarth's place in literature comes to mind. I've been going back and forth between GE and ArcMap. GE helps me find things. Every shapefile I have has a kml/z twin. It runs clean and for the most part, looks just as nice.

Within this term paper, I needed an overview map. One which depicts a broad view of my study area, the Laurentide Ice Sheet margin at 18kya, and a single, clean background.

I tooled around a bit in ArcMap, but the computing power necessary for their terrain basemap and subsequent mediocre quality irritated me - as did conversion of some necessary ice margin shapefiles.

So I turned some layers off (well, all) in GoogleEarth, turned my ice margin on, and got this:

Crisp. Clean. There's colour. There's an ice margin. If you ask me, it looks good. Add a scale and a key and we're there. Now this is just for a class term paper. It will not be heading to Nature Geoscience or Geophysical Research Letters anytime soon (although, every paper is a Science paper, that is, until it is rejected.) I like this map and I intend to use it for this paper.

And therein lies the question: Should it work? Some will say no, some will say yes. Its a broad enough region as to know where it is, what it represents. However, academic is a fickle beast. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to get a negative comment on this as it may be construed as unprofessional, childish, lazy, etc.

Let me know your thoughts. Comments welcome.

almost daily river picture, #1

Location: Zoar Valley Multiple Use Area, near Gowanda, New York.

Cattaraugus Creek

Taken September 5, 2011.

Click to Zoomify.

another introduction

This may seem like more of an introduction than a regular post. And that's okay.

This blog, seemingky the third iteration of all of my previous geoscience-related ones, is different. Right, we've heard this one before. At least, for those of you who have stuck around.

My goal for this blog remains the same as all of the others: write. Let it out. I cannot possibly devote an entire academic career on top of an industrial one. So I will wander. And here is where I will provide you, my readers, however sparse or populous you may become.

This isn't for fame, for recognition. My career is not in fluvial systems, but my heart is. My heart, more discordant than my writing, more focused than my brain. Forgive my lapses in updates, trite to moderate to excessive post lengths and the rest of the shortcomings of this blog.

Also, I hate the word "blog." Sounds like I'm choking on something. A less-than-stellar academic career? Sure, that sounds about right.

This choking is about rivers. Water in general. Piles of sediment in slack water. Dogs swimming up a stream. Contaminants floating down the same. Rivers are something we all know. They're everywhere. Our lives, nature - they're all flows. Swift or stagnant.

We're all heading downstream in one way or another.

An introduction. All introductions.

It seems as though I've written too many blog introductions at this point.Thus,  this time, I will refrain. So here it is, a blog about rivers. Enjoy.