Download or read book The Atchafalaya River Basin written by Bryan P. Piazza and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive, one-volume reference, Nature Conservancy scientist Bryan P. Piazza poses five key questions: —What is the Atchafalaya River Basin? —Why is it important? —How have its hydrology and natural habitats been managed? —What is its current state? —How do we ensure its survival? For more than five centuries, the Atchafalaya River Basin has captured the flow of the Mississippi River, becoming its main distributary as it reaches the Gulf of Mexico in south Louisiana. This dynamic environment, comprising almost a million acres of the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley and Mississippi River Deltaic Plain, is perhaps best known for its expansive swamp environments dominated by baldcypress, water tupelo, and alligators. But the Atchafalaya River Basin contains a wide range of habitats and one of the highest levels of biodiversity on the North American continent. Piazza has compiled and synthesized the body of scientific knowledge for the Atchafalaya River Basin, documenting the ecological state of the basin and providing a baseline of understanding. His research provides a crucial resource for future planning. He evaluates some common themes that have emerged from the research and identifies important scientific questions that remain unexplored.
Download or read book The Control of Nature written by John McPhee and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 1942 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Cataloging Policy and Support Office and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 1924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 1460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Atchafalaya Houseboat written by Gwen Roland and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2006-04-24 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1970s, two idealistic young people—Gwen Carpenter Roland and Calvin Voisin—decided to leave civilization and re-create the vanished simple life of their great-grandparents in the heart of Louisiana's million-acre Atchafalaya River Basin Swamp. Armed with a box of crayons and a book called How to Build Your Home in the Woods, they drew up plans to recycle a slave-built structure into a houseboat. Without power tools or building experience they constructed a floating dwelling complete with a brick fireplace. Towed deep into the sleepy waters of Bloody Bayou, it was their home for eight years. This is the tale of the not-so-simple life they made together—days spent fishing, trading, making wine, growing food, and growing up—told by Gwen with grace, economy, and eloquence. Not long after they took up swamp living, Gwen and Calvin met a young photographer named C. C. Lockwood, who shared their "back to the earth" values. His photographs of the couple going about their daily routine were published in National Geographic magazine, bringing them unexpected fame. More than a quarter of a century later, after Gwen and Calvin had long since parted, one of Lockwood's photos of them appeared in a National Geographic collector's edition entitled 100 Best Pictures Unpublished—and kindled the interest of a new generation. With quiet wisdom, Gwen recounts her eight-year voyage of discovery—about swamp life, wildlife, and herself. A keen observer of both the natural world and the ways of human beings, she transports readers to an unfamiliar and exotic place.
Download or read book Flood Control in the Mississippi Valley written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Flood Control and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Engineering News record written by and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 1390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Energy and Water Development Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2000 written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Energy and water development appropriations for 1981 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 990 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Publications of the Geological Survey written by and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Publications of the U S Geological Survey 1971 1981 written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Floods in Louisiana written by Geological Survey (U.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1952 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Annual Report of the Secretary of War written by United States. War Department and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Report of the Chief of Engineers written by United States. Army. Corps of Engineers and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Annual Reports of the War Department written by United States. War Dept and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War for the Year written by United States. Army. Corps of Engineers and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
