Download or read book Rivers of North America written by Michael D. Delong and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2023-04-20 with total page 1109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rivers of North America, Second Edition features new updates on rivers included in the first edition, as well as brand new information on additional rivers. This new edition expands the knowledge base, providing readers with a broader comparative approach to understand both the common and distinct attributes of river networks. The first edition addressed the three primary disciplines of river science: hydrology, geomorphology, and ecology. This new edition expands upon the interactive nature of these disciplines, showing how they define the organization of a riverine landscape and its processes. An essential resource for river scientists working in ecology, hydrology, and geomorphology. - Provides a single source of information on North America's major rivers - Features authoritative information on more than 200 rivers from regional specialists - Includes full-color photographs and topographical maps to illustrate the beauty, major features, and uniqueness of each river system - Offers one-page summaries help readers quickly find key statistics and make comparisons among rivers

Download or read book Rivers by Design written by Karen M. O'Neill and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2006-05-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has one of the largest and costliest flood control systems in the world, even though only a small proportion of its land lies in floodplains. Rivers by Design traces the emergence of the mammoth U.S. flood management system, which is overseen by the federal government but implemented in conjunction with state governments and local contractors and levee districts. Karen M. O’Neill analyzes the social origins of the flood control program, showing how the system initially developed as a response to the demands of farmers and the business elite in outlying territories. The configuration of the current system continues to reflect decisions made in the nineteenth century and early twentieth. It favors economic development at the expense of environmental concerns. O’Neill focuses on the creation of flood control programs along the lower Mississippi River and the Sacramento River, the first two rivers to receive federal flood control aid. She describes how, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, planters, shippers, and merchants from both regions campaigned for federal assistance with flood control efforts. She explains how the federal government was slowly and reluctantly drawn into water management to the extent that, over time, nearly every river in the United States was reengineered. Her narrative culminates in the passage of the national Flood Control Act of 1936, which empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build projects for all navigable rivers in conjunction with local authorities, effectively ending nationwide, comprehensive planning for the protection of water resources.

Download or read book A World of Rivers written by Ellen Wohl and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from being the serene, natural streams of yore, modern rivers have been diverted, dammed, dumped in, and dried up, all in efforts to harness their power for human needs. But these rivers have also undergone environmental change. The old adage says you can’t step in the same river twice, and Ellen Wohl would agree—natural and synthetic change are so rapid on the world’s great waterways that rivers are transforming and disappearing right before our eyes. A World of Rivers explores the confluence of human and environmental change on ten of the great rivers of the world. Ranging from the Murray-Darling in Australia and the Yellow River in China to Central Europe’s Danube and the United States’ Mississippi, the book journeys down the most important rivers in all corners of the globe. Wohl shows us how pollution, such as in the Ganges and in the Ob of Siberia, has affected biodiversity in the water. But rivers are also resilient, and Wohl stresses the importance of conservation and restoration to help reverse the effects of human carelessness and hubris. What all these diverse rivers share is a critical role in shaping surrounding landscapes and biological communities, and Wohl’s book ultimately makes a strong case for the need to steward positive change in the world’s great rivers.

Download or read book River Republic written by Daniel McCool and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel McCool chronicles the surging grassroots movement to bring America's rivers back to life and ensure they remain pristine for future generations. This book confirms the surprising news that America's rivers are indeed returning to a healthier, free-flowing condition. Through passion and dedication, ordinary people are reclaiming the American landscape, forming a nation-wide "river republic" of concerned citizens from all backgrounds and sectors of society. McCool profiles the individuals he calls "instigators," who initiated the fight for these waterways and have succeeded in the near-impossible task of challenging and changing the status quo. He ties the history, culture, and fate of America to its rivers and presents their restoration as a microcosm mirroring American beliefs, livelihoods, and an increasing awareness of our shared environmental fate.

Download or read book For the Love of Rivers written by Kurt D. Fausch and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In For the Love of Rivers, stream ecologist Kurt Fausch draws readers across the reflective surface of streams to view and ponder what is beneath, and how they work. While celebrating their beauty and mystery, he uses his many years of experience as a field biologist to explain the underlying science connecting these aquatic ecosystems to their streamside forests and the organisms found there--including humans. More than a book about stream ecology, For the Love of Rivers is a celebration of the interconnectedness of life. It is an authoritative and accessible look at the science of rivers and streams, but it also ponders the larger questions of why rivers are important to humans, why it is in our nature to want to be near them, and what we can do now to ensure the future of these essential ecosystems.

Download or read book River of Contrasts written by Margie Crisp and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writer and artist Margie Crisp has traveled the length of Texas’ Colorado River, which rises in Dawson County, south of Lubbock, and flows 860 miles southeast across the state to its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico at Matagorda Bay. Echoing the truth of Heraclitus’s ancient dictum, the river’s character changes dramatically from its dusty headwaters on the High Plains to its meandering presence on the coastal prairie. The Colorado is the longest river with both its source and its mouth in Texas, and its water, from beginning to end, provides for the state’s agricultural, municipal, and recreational needs. As Crisp notes, the Colorado River is perhaps most frequently associated with its middle reaches in the Hill Country, where it has been dammed to create the six reservoirs known as the Highland Lakes. Following Crisp as she explores the river, sometimes with her fisherman husband, readers meet the river’s denizens—animal, plant, and human—and learn something about the natural history, the politics, and those who influence the fate of the river and the water it carries. Those who live intimately with the natural landscape inevitably formulate emotional responses to their surroundings, and the people living on or near the Colorado River are no exception. Crisp’s own loving tribute to the river and its inhabitants is enhanced by the exquisite art she has created for this book. Her photographs and maps round out the useful and beautiful accompaniments to this thoughtful portrait of one of Texas’ most beloved rivers. Former first lady Laura Bush unveils this year's Texas Book Festival poster designed by artist Margie Crisp, author of River of Contrasts: The Texas Colorado. The poster features cliff swallows flying over the Colorado River. Photo by Grant Miller To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.

Download or read book The River the Plain and the State written by Ling Zhang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the human-engineered flooding of China's Yellow River, and how it affected the state, environment, and inhabitants of the region.

Download or read book Rivers written by Michael Farris Smith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx, “a wonderfully cinematic story” (The Washington Post) set in the post-Katrina South after violent storms have decimated the region. It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn’t rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land. The Gulf Coast has been brought to its knees. Years of catastrophic hurricanes have so punished and depleted the region that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules—including Cohen, whose wife and unborn child were killed during an evacuation attempt. He buried them on family land and never left. But after he is ambushed and his home is ransacked, Cohen is forced to flee. On the road north, he is captured by Aggie, a fanatical, snake-handling preacher who has a colony of captives and dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region. Now Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s prisoners across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that poses the greatest threat of all. Eerily prophetic in its depiction of a Southern landscape ravaged by extreme weather, Rivers is a masterful tale of survival and redemption in a world where the next devastating storm is never far behind.“This is the kind of book that lifts you up with its mesmerizing language then pulls you under like a riptide” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

Download or read book The Nueces River written by Margie Crisp and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First appearing on early Spanish maps as the Río Escondido, or hidden river, and later named Río de las Nueces after the abundant pecan trees along its banks, the Nueces today is a stream of seeming contradictions: a river that runs above and below ground; a geographic reminder of a history both noble and egregious; and a spring-fed stream transformed into a salty, steep-sided channel. From its fresh, clear headwaters on the Edwards Plateau, Margie Crisp and William B. Montgomery follow the river through the mesquite and prickly pear of the South Texas Plains, to the river’s end in Nueces and Corpus Christi Bays on the Gulf of Mexico. With vivid prose and paintings, they record their travels as they explore the length of the river on foot, kayak, and fishing boat, ultimately weaving a vivid portrait of today’s Nueces. Capturing the river’s subtle beauty, abundant wildlife, diverse culture, and unique history of exploration, conflict, and settlement, they reveal the untold story of this enigmatic river with passion, humor, and reverence. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.

Download or read book Rivers Lost Rivers Regained written by Martin Knoll and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many cities across the globe are rediscovering their rivers. After decades or even centuries of environmental decline and cultural neglect, waterfronts have been vamped up and become focal points of urban life again; hidden and covered streams have been daylighted while restoration projects have returned urban rivers in many places to a supposedly more natural state. This volume traces the complex and winding history of how cities have appropriated, lost, and regained their rivers. But rather than telling a linear story of progress, the chapters of this book highlight the ambivalence of these developments. The four sections in Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discuss how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and how more recent strategies work to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting. At the nexus between environmental, urban, and water histories, Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained points out how the urban-river relationship can serve as a prime vantage point to analyze fundamental issues of modern environmental attitudes and practices.

Download or read book The Meaning of Rivers written by T. S. McMillin and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the continental United States, rivers serve to connect state to state, interior with exterior, the past to the present, but they also divide places and peoples from one another. These connections and divisions have given rise to a diverse body of literature that explores American nature, ranging from travel accounts of seventeenth-century Puritan colonists to magazine articles by twenty-first-century enthusiasts of extreme sports. Using pivotal American writings to determine both what literature can tell us about rivers and, conversely, how rivers help us think about the nature of literature, The Meaning of Rivers introduces readers to the rich world of flowing water and some of the different ways in which American writers have used rivers to understand the world through which these waters flow. Embracing a hybrid, essayistic form—part literary theory, part cultural history, and part fieldwork—The Meaning of Rivers connects the humanities to other disciplines and scholarly work to the land. Whether developing a theory of palindromes or reading works of American literature as varied as Henry David Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and James Dickey’s Deliverance, McMillin urges readers toward a transcendental retracing of their own interpretive encounters. The nature of texts and the nature of “nature” require diverse and versatile interpretation; interpretation requires not only depth and concentration but also imaginative thinking, broad-mindedness, and engaged connection-making. By taking us upstream as well as down, McMillin draws attention to the potential of rivers for improving our sense of place and time.

Download or read book Wild and Scenic Rivers written by Tim Palmer and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rivers of America flow from mountains, forests, and grasslands with astonishing beauty, essential to all life. Many of the best of these streams have been safeguarded under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968--America's premier program for the protection of our finest natural waterways. Wild and Scenic Rivers celebrates this creative conservation initiative with 160 stunning photographs and a lively history involving citizen activists, scientists, dedicated public officials, and enlightened political leaders. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, award-winning author and photographer Tim Palmer illuminates the values of this irreplaceable system of free-flowing streams, probes its problems, and addresses its future. With a depth of experience dating almost to the inception of the wild and scenic rivers program, Palmer has captured the splendor and essence of our most extraordinary rivers with his camera, and he has told their remarkable story as no one else could do.

Download or read book The San Marcos written by Jim Kimmel and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The San Marcos springs have flowed for around ten million years. In this ode to the river they form, Jim Kimmel brings us a picture of a watercourse brimming with life, past and present. Native, non-native, prehistoric, and modern-day plants, animals, and people have inhabited the river and its banks. Kimmel touches on them all with the affectionate and knowledgeable voice of one whose own life has been closely linked to the San Marcos. As readers journey with Kimmel from the river's headwater springs to its junction with the Guadalupe River, The San Marcos: A River's Story will capture the imagination and provide valuable information about the river and its crucial role in the ecological health of Texas. Original photographs by Jerry Touchstone Kimmel add a sense of the beauty and complexity of the river.

Download or read book Rivers in History written by Christof Mauch and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2008-07-27 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, rivers have run a wide course through human temporal and spiritual experience. They have demarcated mythological worlds, framed the cradle of Western civilization, and served as physical and psychological boundaries among nations. Rivers have become a crux of transportation, industry, and commerce. They have been loved as nurturing providers, nationalist symbols, and the source of romantic lore but also loathed as sites of conflict and natural disaster.Rivers in History presents one of the first comparative histories of rivers on the continents of Europe and North America in the modern age. The contributors examine the impact of rivers on humans and, conversely, the impact of humans on rivers. They view this dynamic relationship through political, cultural, industrial, social, and ecological perspectives in national and transnational settings. As integral sources of food and water, local and international transportation, recreation, and aesthetic beauty, rivers have dictated where cities have risen, and in times of flooding, drought, and war, where they've fallen. Modern Western civilizations have sought to control rivers by channeling them for irrigation, raising and lowering them in canal systems, and damming them for power generation. Contributors analyze the regional, national, and international politicization of rivers, the use and treatment of waterways in urban versus rural environments, and the increasing role of international commissions in ecological and commercial legislation for the protection of river resources. Case studies include the Seine in Paris, the Mississippi, the Volga, the Rhine, and the rivers of Pittsburgh. Rivers in History is a broad environmental history of waterways that makes a major contribution to the study, preservation, and continued sustainability of rivers as vital lifelines of Western culture.

Download or read book Rivers of the Anthropocene written by Jason M. Kelly and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This exciting volume presents the work and research of the Rivers of the Anthropocene Network, an international collaborative group of scientists, social scientists, humanists, artists, policy makers, and community organizers working to produce innovative transdisciplinary research on global freshwater systems. In an attempt to bridge disciplinary divides, the essays in this volume address the challenge in studying the intersection of biophysical and human sociocultural systems in the age of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch of humans' own making. Featuring contributions from authors in a rich diversity of disciplines—from toxicology to archaeology to philosophy—this book is an excellent resource for students and scholars studying both freshwater systems and the Anthropocene.

Download or read book Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aldo Leopold, father of the "land ethic," once said, "The time has come for science to busy itself with the earth itself. The first step is to reconstruct a sample of what we had to begin with." The concept he expressedâ€"restorationâ€"is defined in this comprehensive new volume that examines the prospects for repairing the damage society has done to the nation's aquatic resources: lakes, rivers and streams, and wetlands. Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems outlines a national strategy for aquatic restoration, with practical recommendations, and features case studies of aquatic restoration activities around the country. The committee examines: Key concepts and techniques used in restoration. Common factors in successful restoration efforts. Threats to the health of the nation's aquatic ecosystems. Approaches to evaluation before, during, and after a restoration project. The emerging specialties of restoration and landscape ecology.

Download or read book Multiple Stressors in River Ecosystems written by Sergi Sabater and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2018-08-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multiple Stressors in River Ecosystems: Status, Impacts and Prospects for the Future provides a comprehensive and current overview on the topic as written by leading river scientists who discuss the relevance of co-occurring stressors for river ecosystems. River ecosystems are subject to multiple stressors that threaten their ecological status and the ecosystem services they provide. This book updates the reader's knowledge on the response and management of river ecosystems to multi-stress situations occurring under global change. Detailing the risk for biodiversity and functioning in a case-study approach, it provides insight into methodological issues, also including the socioeconomic implications. - Presents a case study approach and geographic description on the relevance of multiple stressors on river ecosystems in different biomes - Gives a uniquely integrated perspective on different stressors, including their interactions and joint effects, as opposed to the traditional one-by-one approach - Compiles state-of-the-art methods and technologies in monitoring, modeling and analyzing river ecosystems under multiple stress conditions