Outside lecture opportunity: Mountain Top Removal

Next week there will be an outside lecture opportunity on mountain top removal- a form of coal mining that has dramatic implications for water resources. Regardless of whether or not water is even mentioned, the subject matter is highly relevant to our class and I encourage every one to check it out. Below is a description from Campus Notices.

Thursday February 4, 2010 6:00 PM

Lexington, Ky. environmental activist Dave Cooper will present
his "Mountaintop Removal Road Show" on campus Thurs., Feb. 4. Cooper
will discuss the community and environmental implications of
mountaintop removal, explain what it is like to live near a mine
site, and answer questions about the issue. This beautiful and
thought-provoking multimedia show will be held in Reid Hall 111 at 6
p.m.

Background on Mountain Top Removal: In Virginia, West Virginia and
eastern Kentucky, coal companies blast as much as 600 feet off the
top of the mountains, then dump the rock and debris into mountain
streams. Over 300,000 acres of the most beautiful and productive
hardwood forests in America have been turned into barren grasslands.
Mountaintop removal mining increases flooding, contaminates drinking
water supplies, cracks foundations of nearby homes, and showers
towns with dust and noise from blasting.

For more information visit http://www.mountainroadshow.com/

This presentation, hosted by the Shepherd Poverty Program and
Environmental Studies Program, is open to the public.

Summary for Friday January 29th

Today, we started with a look at Major US cities that are not situated near large bodies of water. of the top ten, three could be considered extraordinarily dry (San Antonio, Dallas, and Phoenix) with Phoenix and its usually dry Salt River the largest. Other major (top 30) US cities with tiny rivers (500 cfs average in January) include: Austin, Fort Worth, El Paso, Denver, and Las Vegas.

We then discussed the calculation of recurrence interval for a given location (our homework for the weekend) and how this recurrence interval is used to better understand the likelihood of rare events (such as large floods). On thing that I forgot to mention in lecture was a quote from our reading The force of nature By Jacob Geiger

"As the name suggests, 100-year storms should happen once each century. But Rockbridge County has seen four of those storms, and the flooding that results from them, in the last seven decades."

The idea expressed here is that a the size of a 100-year event is somehow stamped in concrete for a particular river or section of river and will remain constant for time and all eternity. As we amass more data and develop a better understanding of the complexities of particular natural systems, we need to recognize that our perceptions must change to accommodate the facts. Thus, if you have, say four 100-year events in 70 years- particularly for an area that has only been systematically measuring these things for about 70 years, you need to change your definition of a 100-year event.

Flood plain maps are an important application of recurrence interval and topographic information. FEMA is the US government agency that is in charge of creating and distributing 100- and 500-year events. You can find a flood plain map for much of the US by here. We looked at flood plains maps for Lex and BV and discussed the differences between the two.

Calculating recurrence interval and making flood plain maps are both examples of passive mitigation- that is, reducing the impacts of disasters through studying and understanding the natural and human systems involved. Active mitigation, as the name would imply, involves actually doing something about the hazard. We discussed the creation of infrastructure (levees, floodwalls (such as the one in BV), flood protection dams such as the Goshen Dam and the Surrey Dam)and (re)positioning infrastructure and the different responses of three local communities (Lex, BV, and Glasgow) to active flood mitigation. In the contexts of flood mitigation, we also briefly discussed why people choose to inhabit floodplains (because floodplains are awesome- aside from the flooding part) the role of zoning laws and insurance in controlling these choices. If you are interested in reading more about flood insurance, there is more than any reasonable person would want to know here. Finally, we briefly touched on evacuation.

On Monday, we will discuss the Johnstown flood of 1989. For lecture on Monday, Please read:

Research at the Source of a Pennsylvania Flood by Henry Fountain- a brief introduction to an audio interview with Carrie Davis Todd. The audio can be accessed along the left margin of the page. The portion that is relevant to the flood is from 13:14 to go to 7:49 to go. You do not have to listen of the rest of the audio presentation.

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.

Do not forget that there is a homework assignment due on Monday. I will be available in our classroom 8:00 pm Sunday evening to meet with anyone who is having or anticipates having difficulties completing the assignment.

Summary for Wednesday January 27th

Today, we began to discuss floods and flooding. Flooding is an important facet of water resources because we (as a species) choose to distribute ourselves near sources of water (for domestic, agricultural, and industrial water, transportation, hydro power) and, as a result of this proximity to water , floods become a problem. We will spend the next few lectures discussing flooding in general, locally, and surrounding the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Flooding occurs when a river's "normal' channel is exceeded by some significant amount due to and increase in discharge.
Flooding occurs due to

acute rain
chronic rain
sudden snow melt
dam creation or destruction
more than one of the above

Flooding severity is a function of:

the amount of precipitation
the rate of precipitation
c. the catchment area (size of basin or watershed)
d. slope of ground within catchment area
e. factors that affect runoff vs. infiltration

Floods can be divided into regional and flash- you should be able to differentiate between the two.

For lecture on Friday, Please read:

The portion of Virginia Floods By Barbara McNaught Watson that talks about the 1969 flooding related to Hurricane Camille

The force of nature By Jacob Geiger (W&L '09)

Also, make sure that you send me an e-mail with the largest US settlement that is not located near some large body of water. Subject: no river: City Name

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.

Homework Assignment 3: Calculating Recurrence Interval

On Monday, we briefly discussed the flooding event that was going on during class and I said that is was a pretty big event. For this homework assignment, we are going figure out just how big it was by calculating the recurrence interval of the event. During news reports about floods, you will often hear of a flood being described as a 10-year flood or a 100-year flood. The time period being mentioned in these news reports (10 years, et cetera) is the recurrence interval of the flood being covered. The recurrence interval of a flood is the calculated probability that a flood of a given magnitude will occur at a certain interval. It is an estimate of the average time between past occurrences of random events; so, a 100-year flood (an event with a recurrence interval of 100 years) should occur on an average of once every 100 years.

The equation for calculating recurrence interval (R) is:

You will calculate the R for the flooding event that occurred on Monday using the dataset available at the USGS website and the spreadsheet and graphing program excel. If you are not particularly “computer savvy,” do not worry, I have provided detailed instructions and you are always welcome to ask me questions.

The assignment has been posted on Sakai (on the tests and quizzes page) and will be due before class on Monday, February 1st.

Summary for Monday January 25th

Since we met this morning under a flood warning for Lexington and Rockbridge County, we started our discussion with a look at the hydrograph for the the Maury River. We then began our discussion of the recent earthquake in Haiti in the context of water resources. This discussion touched on:

a. the state of water resources in Haiti before the quake
b. the quake itself and earthquakes in general
c. earthquake hazards
d. water resources during the crisis

A. While the Haitian earthquake disaster certainly placed a great deal of stress on the water infrastructure of Haiti, the reason that there is such an imminent need for water as part of the rescue and recovery efforts is that the pre-earthquake water resource infrastructure is some of the worst in the world. We looked at a number of factors that boil down to money and trees (and since the deforestation that has left the island with 2% of its original forest cover is largely due to the countries economic problems you could really say that there water issues come down to money). You should be able to describe how the lack of tress affects both the quantity of groundwater available and the quality of the surface water available. You should also be able to discuss the role of money in determining access to ground vs surface water and access to public services (water and sewer). By many reports, Haitians have the lowest per capita domestic water use in the world- much lower than the 50 liters/cap/day than is though by many water experts to be the minimum for proper health, sanitation, and prosperity. Water coverage in Haiti is 54% with 57% of urban, 14% of rural and 30% of the total population having access to sanitation facilities (numbers from the PAHO).

B. Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 04:53:10 PM a 7.0 magnitude quake's epicenter hit just 10 miles west of Porte-au-Prince and its 2 million inhabitants. The major quake sent 33 aftershocks ranging in magnitude from 4.2 to 5.9. 7.0 is a big but not huge earthquake. The magnitude of an earthquake is a measurement of the amount of energy that is released and is a function of the size of the fault that slipped (length times depth), the displacement (how far it slipped), and the shear modulus (how much force is required to shear them) of the rocks along the fault. The amount of ground shaking that occurs is a function of the magnitude of the quake, the proximity to the focus, and the composition of the substrate (the sedimentary rocks under Porte-au-Prince magnify shaking more than igneous or metamorphic rocks but not as much as unlithified sediments). A good description of the Haiti Region Earthquake here.

C. Haiti's government estimates the quake killed 200,000 people (also reported by the European Commission), 250,000 people were injured, and 2 million are homeless (in a nation of 9 million). From a hazards standpoint, this was one of the deadliest earthquakes in human history. The severity of the earthquake hazard is a function of:

ground shaking (see B above)
construction methods
time of day
government preparedness and emergency infrastructure
public education and individual preparedness
population density

You should be able to discuss how important each of these factors was in determining how deadly the Haiti Region earthquake was.

D. Finally, we discussed the effects that the earthquake had on the water resources in Haiti (damages to infrastructure and 2 million homeless with limited sanitation facilities) and why the need to supply water to the area affected by the quake is so great. Appropriate responses recommended by the op-eds that we read by Solomon and Gleick included: desalination systems (small-scale units brought in via airplane until large-scale units on US military vessels could be brought in), trucking in water from the DR, using large soda bottling plants in the DR to bottle water for Haiti, bringing in bottled water from overseas, and immediate repair (and, hopefully improvement) of municipal water infrastructure.

We are going to switch gears and talk about floods in lecture tomorrow. Applied Principles of Hydrology has very little to say about flooding! Read pages 200 to the top of 203 for class on Wednesday.

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.

Summary for Friday January 22nd

Today, we discussed water law in the USA. Water rights laws in the eastern USA are based around the "riparian doctrine" in which the water rights are legally connected to land ownership. In the inter mountain west, the "doctrine of prior appropriation" aka the "Colorado" doctrine. Following this lecture, you should be able to differentiate between riparian and prior appropriation water law (and describe the differences) and be able to discuss where each is practiced (not every single state but the general areas)- see below.


Our introduction to US water law allowed us to better understand the legality of rainwater harvesting in certain US states. We looked specifically at UT and CO where collection is either illegal (UT) or was illegal (CO) and now is only illegal for most people. The basis for outlawing the harvesting of rainwater is that, under the doctrine of prior appropriation, the owner of the land (and collector of the rainwater) is generally not the owner of the water that falls on that land (as the land and water rights are owned separately). UT and CO both choose to interpret these laws to prohibit (or severely restrict) rainwater harvesting while states such as NM and AZ (also prior appropriation states) have many communities that encourage rainwater harvesting. You should be able to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of rainwater harvesting systems, how these disadvantages can be addressed, where rainwater harvesting is most effective, the basic design of a rainwater capture system (at varying levels of complexity), and the use of financial intensives (such as LEED certification, tax breaks) and disincentives (such as differential stormwater taxes) in promoting rainwater harvesting.

Additionally, you should be familiar with the following concepts: reasonable use principle, correlative rights principle, “first in time, first in right”, rainwater harvesting, cistern, LEED.

On Monday we will be discussing the recent earthquake in Haiti in the context of water resources, please read:

Frantic race against time to get clean water to Haiti quake survivors by Ed Pilkington and Peter Beaumont - an fairly general article in the Guardian (UK) about the situation

Water for Haiti: Now by Peter Gleick - an op-ed in the San Fransisco Chronicle by the President of the Pacific Institute

A Recovery Built on Water by Steven Solomon - an op-ed in the NY Times (Some articles in the NY Times require registration - registration is free and takes about five minutes)

You may also want to read Tectonics of the Haitian earthquake by Chris Rowan - which is probably the best short summary of the geology of the quake that I have found on the web.

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.

Don't forget the homework assignment that is due on Monday.

Homework Assignment 2

Last week in class, we discussed the source of our tap water here in Lexington. This week we introduced two different types of municipal sewer systems that remove liquid waste from our urban and suburban communities. Your assignment is to figure out the source of your tap water at "home" (as identified by you at the beginning of class) and the type of waste water treatment facility as well. You may investigate this using any resources you like. If you already know the answer, great (this will be a very easy assignment for you). If you want to ask your friends or parents, that is fine as well. If I was in your situation, for instance, this would be a very easy assignment for me. The water that I grew up drinking at home came from the private well located under the front lawn about 15 feet from my bedroom window and the septic system was in the backyard. If you grew up in LA, on the other hand, well, look into it and see if there is actually a way to determine if your water comes from the CO river, the Owens Valley, or the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Good luck with that!

The assignment has been posted on Sakai (on the tests and quizzes page) and will be due before class on Monday, January 25th.

Summary for Wednesday January 20th

Today, we discussed what happens when precipitation hits the ground- it can

infiltrate into the ground
runoff into some body of surface water
evaporate or
be captured directly (ei rainwater harvesting)

Most of our discussion focused on the factors that determine whether water will infiltrate or runoff - you should be able to explain how each of the following affects this balance:

rate of precipitation
hydraulic conductivity (a function of water saturation of the subsurface and permeability)
characteristics of the regolith (grain size, grain size distribution aka sorting, level of flocculation of clays)
presence of hydrophobic soils
slope
vegetation
water temperature (viscosity)

An extreme example runoff dominating over infiltration occurs in urban areas where the infiltration of rainfall is drastically reduced due to the prevalence of impermeable surfaces such as roads, buildings, and parking infrastructure. Burlington, VT has recently adopted a tax structure that addresses the burden that owners of large impermeable areas place on the local sewer facilities by charging businesses per area. We addressed why it is a good idea minimize urban runoff in any community and why it is especially important in municipalities with CSS systems. We also discussed how common these CSO are in the USA.

Following today's discussion, you should be able to define/explain the following concepts: porosity, connectivity, permeability, sorting (well sorted, poorly sorted), sand, silt, clay, viscosity, impermeable, CSS (combined sewage system), CSO (combined sewage overflow).

Material relevant to our lecture today can be found in the first half of chapter 5 of Applied Principles of Hydrology and in readings assigned here. Material on NYC's CSO situation can be found here.

For Friday, please read (and come ready to discuss and/or be quizzed on) the following:

The State of Rainwater Harvesting in the U.S. by Tammie Stark and Doug Pushard (pages 20-23)

Catching rain water is against the law By John Hollenhorst - about Utah's rainwater harvesting law

Who owns Colorado's rainwater? by Nicholas Riccardi - LA Times article written just before Colorado's law was changed

It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado by Kirk Johnson - NY Times article written just after Colorado's law was changed

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.

Google my maps for GEOL 150

I have started a google map (shown below) with some of the locations that we have discussed in in lecture. I will try to keep this map updated throughout the semester and will refer to it in the lecture summaries each time that I add a new location.

View GEOL 150 in a larger map

Summary for Monday January 18th

Precipitation being, of course, an integral part of naturally-delivered water resources, we spent today's lecture discussing why it rains where it rains. The three factors that we discussed were

1. latitude (mostly due to changes in temperature)
2. distance from a moisture source such as the ocean (given prevailing direction of the wind)
3. elevation (orographic effects dominated by changes in temperature)

Following this lecture, you should be able to describe why a specific spot on the globe gets lots of annual rainfall or not. You should also be able to discuss the reason(s) for seasonal variations in precipitation patterns and why this is important from a resource perspective. You should also know how to interpret information on a 100-year 24 hr precipitation map (or a 10-year 2 precipitation map, for that matter), be aware of temporal (historical) variation in precipitation, and be able to explain why the percent of precipitation received as snow is important from a resource perspective. Finally, you should have a basic understanding of cloud seeding in terms of its effectiveness, how it works, what conditions and materials are required, and any possible negative consequences. Material relevant to our lecture today can be found in chapter 4 of Applied Principles of Hydrology.

For Wednesday, please read (and come ready to discuss) the following:

Burlington Council Launches New Stormwater Management Program by Mike Ives - This is an article that appeared in the Vermont's alternative weekly (yes, Vermont only has one alternative weekly newspaper for the entire state) about a year ago about a new way that the city of Burlington is going to implement a differential sewer tax based on infiltration vs. runoff and how this affects the cities sewers.

There is also an excellent explanation brochure written by the Burlington Department of Public Works that explains the changes and the reason behind the changes. Read this as well.

Also, if you have not yet read it, read chapter 5 (Infiltration and Soil Moisture) in Applied Principles of hydrology.

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.

As of 1:30pm edt, Bottlemania is closed. Everyone who has not contacted me about a preference will be reading Blue Covenant.

Summary for Friday January 15th

Since only a small number of us were apparently aware of the origins of our local drinking/bathing/teeth brushing water, we began today's discussion with a look at the Maury Service Authority and the source of the water that it provides for the City of Lex and some of the more densely populated areas of Rockbridge County. We used Google Earth to look at the locations of the Water Treatment Facility and the WWTP that we rely upon daily.

We then switched over to a discussion of evaporation with a review of bonding in within (polar covalent) and between (hydrogen) water molecules and why this is important in determining some of the properties of water (specifically with respect to evaporation). We also discussed humidity measurements and the effect of temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind speed on the rate of evaporation before entering into a discussion of the "applications" of evaporation:

(a) minimizing evaporation
(b) using evaporation to reduce the volume of waste water
(c) evaporative cooling

Our discussion of these applications began with a look at the rates of evaporation from Lake Mead.

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

Please read chapter 5 of Manning for class on Monday.

Also, I have been made aware of three outside lecture opportunities that are relevant to this course.

Possible outside lectures opportunities

Here are three possible outside lectures that can be used for GEOL 150 this term.

Thursday February 18, 2010 7:00 PM
"Nothing New about NAFTA: North American Connections and Their Historical Lessons" Sterling Evans, University of Oklahoma (aka Ecology of US-Mexico Trade)
Northern Auditorium, Leyburn Library

Thursday March 4, 2010 7:00 PM
"Where are the Parks? Great Ideas, Cultural Contexts, and Conservation in Mexico" Emily Wakild, Wake Forest University (Dr. Emily Wakild of Wake Forest University will discuss conservation movements and national parks in the history of modern Mexico.)
Northern Auditorium, Leyburn Library

Thursday March 18 7:00 PM
"50 Years of Climate, Culture, and Landscape Change in the Mt. Everest Region" Alton Byers, The Mountain Institute
Northern Auditorium, Leyburn Library

There may be a fourth lecture opportunity but I need to look into it and make sure that the subject material is relevant to our class...

Thursday March 25, 2010 7:00 PM
"Peasants, Political Violence, and the Environment in Chile" Thomas Klubock, University of Virginia (aka Chile's Forests and Human Rights) Dr. Thomas Klubock of the University of Virginia will lecture about conflicts over forests and indigenous rights in Chile.
Northern Auditorium, Leyburn Library

I will post more information on these and other lectures as it becomes available to me.

Summary for Wednesday January 13th

...topics covered in today's lecture were focused on (a) the dam failure at Lake Merriweather and (b) the water cycle. Our discussion of lake Merriweather introduced the following important concepts (and by 'important' I mean 'stuff that ends up on quizzes and exams').

The role of the USGS
The role of the Army Corps of Engineers
The dual purpose of Goshen Dam/Lake Merriweather
Discharge (what is it and how is it calculated)
How to read a hydrograph
How to access real-time USGS hydrography information

Important things to remember from our introduction to the water cycle include:

The relative sizes of the various reservoirs on (and in) Earth
The driving forces behind the water cycle (solar energy and gravity)
The importance of continental runoff in the origins of life
The importance of oceanic/continental differential evaporation & precipitation in the water cycle and in sustaining life
The mechanisms of water cycling that occur at tectonic plate boundaries

Other things:

As of 2:40pm today, 24 of you have contacted me about your Bottlemania/Blue Covenant preference (16 for Bottlemania and 8 for Blue Covenant). This means that (a) everyone who has contacted me thus far will be reading the book of their choice and (b) the next 4 people to e-mail me with a request to read Bottlemania will be able to do so; the rest of y'all will be reading Blue Covenant.

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

Please read chapter 4 of Manning for class on Friday and come prepared to take a short quiz.

Summary for Monday January 11th

Today's lecture was your basic first day format of outlining the information available in the syllabus, and discussion of the topics that will be covered in the term ahead.

I suppose that the take home points from the day were as follows:

1. We use a lot of water- much of which is used on our behalf by the entities that create the things (food, clothing, paper, electricity) that we consume.

2. We are protected from realizing the vast complexities of the infrastructure that delivers our water and water-produced products because the system is designed to work in such a way as to shield us (when everything is working properly).

3. All of the water resource-related problems that we will discuss throughout the course of this term will fall into one of the three following categories:
a. too much water (flooding)
b. too little water (really more like water that is not exactly where you want it to be)
c. dirty water (water quality)

Please read chapters 1 and 3 of Manning by class on Wednesday.

Also, do not forget the homework assignment that is due tomorrow (Tuesday).

Dr. Dave's Argentina Talk- the real time

I misreported the time for Dr. Dave's talk on erosion vs. uplift in Argentina in class today. The talk will still be this Thursday (January 14th) but is will be during the E hour (12:20pm to 1:15pm) rather than beginning at 5:30pm. I apologize for the confusion. If you have not been to a talk in the Geology Department before, they are usually well short of an hour and include a proper meal.

Homework Assignment 1

For our first homework assignment, we will start off with something relatively easy. Please go to our Sakai page and go to "Tests & Quizzes" on the menu bar on the left side of the screen. Your assignment is to complete the assessment entitled "Student Questionnaire". It should be relatively easy and require only a few minutes of your time.

Reading Materials

Our primary text will be:

Applied Principles of Hydrology 3rd Edition by John C Manning

This book should be available in the W&L bookstore.

We will also be reading the following texts:

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition by Marc Reisner

Letting Swift River Go by Jane Yolen

In addition to the three books above, one half of the class will be reading:

Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water by Maude Barlow

and the other half of the class will be reading:

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It by Elizabeth Royte

Please read the additional reviews and summaries for Blue Covenant here and here (a preview is available in Google books here) and for Bottlemania here and here. Once you have decided which one you would like to read, send me an e-mail indicating your preference- If you have a strong preference either way, just be sure to be one of the first 18 people to e-mail me (lowp (at) wlu (dot) edu. Toward the end of the semester, you will be responsible for writing a summary and a critical book review of your selected book and your your half of the class will be responsible for teaching the other half of the class about your book (including lectures, homework, and a quiz).