On Saturday, April 25th, the class went on a field trip to different locations around the Blacksburg-Christiansburg area to view different land formations typical of the Virginia area. We visited a total of eight sites to include the Kentland Farms, VT airport, Blacksburg Golf Course, and several road side areas. The weather conditions that day were cloudy with intermittent showers making the ground very wet and reducing visibility across large landscapes for the majority of the day. This paper will serve a summary of each stop made and will tie all of the observations together into big picture concepts for the New River basin. The first stop visited was on Kentland Farm and we were looking at the low terrace of the New River. The land here is smooth and flat mainly due to human farming but the soil is also the newest of all the terrace levels dating back to the Pleistocene era around tens of thousands of years …show more content…
Here, at the Blacksburg golf course, we discussed the entire regional structure, river piracy and the overall New River geomorphology (Figure 7). We discussed the Copper Ridge formation and how Blacksburg is so low because of how easily the soil weathers. Since sandstone doesn’t weather as easily, it remains and forms the surrounding ridges. For example, Price Mountain is sticking up due the erosion of the surrounding land and also due to a thrust fault which can be seen coming up from the South East on a map. As for stream piracy, or stream capturing, this occurs when a stream erodes close enough to another stream that the wall breaks and both rivers flow into the same watershed, effectively “stealing” the water that previously went to a different watershed. In this case, the gradient between here and Roanoke is steeper than here and Whitethorn meaning there will be faster erosion and a bigger opportunity for stream
During the years between 1840 and 1890, the land west of the Mississippi River experienced a wild and sporadic growth. The natural environment contributed greatly to this growth spurt and helped shape the development of the trans-Mississippi west. The natural environment dictated and facilitated the development of the west by way of determining who settled where, how the people survived, why people wanted to settle, and whether they were successful or not.
Floridians lives on top of a limestone foundation that was once upon a time was a shallow coral sea and is now riddled with caves. In the film Water’s Journey: Hidden Rivers of Florida there were divers tracking the path of water through underground caves, specifically Florida’s aquifers. They were navigating through the complicated system of undergrounds rivers from where water disappears underground to where it resurfaces in the springs of Florida.
Sedimentary rock from the older Silurian Period is further from the river banks (Geological map of Victoria, 1973). Mudstone, inter-bedded shale and greywacke depositions indicate the Maribyrnong River may have previously taken a different shape, and younger sediments have replaced the older sediments in more recent geological periods.
Author and historian, Carol Sheriff, completed the award winning book The Artificial River, which chronicles the construction of the Erie Canal from 1817 to 1862, in 1996. In this book, Sheriff writes in a manner that makes the events, changes, and feelings surrounding the Erie Canal’s construction accessible to the general public. Terms she uses within the work are fully explained, and much of her content is first hand information gathered from ordinary people who lived near the Canal. This book covers a range of issues including reform, religious and workers’ rights, the environment, and the market revolution. Sheriff’s primary aim in this piece is to illustrate how the construction of the Erie Canal affected the peoples’ views on these issues.
At the dawn of the Twentieth century, cities, like Dayton, had factories being erected almost every day. The Industrialism period brought many people to cities looking for jobs. As cities became crowded and people overworked, a movement began to spend more time outside enjoying nature and all it has to offer. This created an opportunity that Charles W. Shaeffer saw, and jumped on (Dalton 11). He gave way for the idea of a club for those to spend time together, outdoors, to be involved with one another and to bring the community together as one. In the age of industrialism, in this city of 1000 factories, Dayton Canoe Club helped spark a new found love of outdoors for those in the city, and continues to do so today, 100 years later.
Everyone has different points of views, feelings, reactions, and etcetera. People handle things in different ways. I read the story “Field Trip” by Tim O’brien. The story has emotions, but yet it’s still very settle.
Through this study one can determine not only what exactly happened, but also how the land was before such changes
During the 1600’s the New England and Chesapeake regions were beginning to settle and colonize. While both came from English origin and had dreams of wealth and freedom, differences began to form just as they settled and by the 1700s the two regions will have evolved into two distinct societies. Because of the exposure to different circumstances both regions developed issues that were unique from one another and caused them to construct their societies differently. Therefore, the differences socially, politically and economically in the two regions caused the divergence.
Hess, D., McKnight, T. L., & Tasa, D. (2011). McKnight's physical geography (Custom ed. for California State University, Northridge ; 2nd Calif. ed.). New York: Learning Solutions.
Rising from the Plains by John McPhee is about an influential geologist, John David Love, interpreting the geologic history of Wyoming. The surface area of Wyoming has been subjected to many geological formations from the rise of the Rocky Mountains through the Laramide Orogeny in late Cretaceous time to the deep structural basin known as the Jackson Hole with rock dating back to the Precambrian period. Throughout each time period of the Earth’s history, the surface of Wyoming has experienced significant changes that have affected the physical landscape, as well as living organisms, even to this day. In this story John David Love shares his knowledge of the geologic history of Wyoming with John McPhee as they travel across Wyoming taking in the vastness that the landscape of Wyoming presents.
In conclusion these various factors explain the theory that Kaibab Plateau is actually much older than the Colorado River and that the lake overflow theory best explains the multiple processes that contributed to this natural features current landscape. Lake Bidahochi would have flooded from time to time and combined with the lowest elevation on the Kaibab Plateau, the incision would have started. Considering major rivers have the capability to erode materials such as basaltic bedrock, going through the Kaibab Plateau would have proven possible. With circular scarps retreating from the plateau, the meandering of both rivers are explained and the presence of Colorado River limestone in a sequence of ancient basins today prove the river was younger than the uplift that took place in this region.
The sharp differences in elevation between the Badwater Basin and the surrounding mountains that include the highest point in the continental US (Mt. Whitney at 14,494 feet) stand as a representation of the regions violent tectonic past. The mountains themselves are considered fault block mountain ranges meaning that they were formed when blocks of rocks were squeezed through the Earth's crust along parallel faults or were loosened from the crust when it separated at a fault. In the valley, both of these methods not only were the cause of the current mountains formation less than four million years ago, but also are causing the mountains to be uplifted while the valley floor drops even further. This phenomenon is one of the reasons why the lowest and highest points in the continental...
Beaver, Patricia. Rural Community in the Appalachian South. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1981.
The current size, inherent values, and economic status of the United States owes greatly to the paramount figures and events that took place during the Early National Period of the country. However, while there is no doubt that such events- and the figures behind them- were of great importance and have molded the country into the pristine product that it is today, the various construction projects of that time have gone largely unnoticed. Canals, being one of the most prominent advances in transportation, are prime examples of forgotten catalysts of the American nation. The construction of canals- particularly the Erie Canal- during the 19th century played a key role in the geographic, economic, and cultural development of the country by
of the book. Eds. James H. Pickering and Jeffery D. Hoeper. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1027-28. Mullen, Edward J. & Co.