Category: history

A Place for the Senses, Part 2 – Soundscapes

Jason Kingart, creeks, cultural, explorations, history, infrastructure, language, maps, rivers, soundscape, streams1 Comment on A Place for the Senses, Part 2 – Soundscapes

A few months back, I posted part one of this dual post on sensory ways of interpreting spaces and art with a focus on the amazing work around Smellscapes. Part two, as advertised, will shift gears a bit, to think about Soundscapes, and how audio can be used to illuminate places, tell stories, and engage the senses in new ways.  And there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in this space, and this will barely scratch the surface of what people are doing, but I am focused mostly on that which is relevant to the agenda of hidden hydrology, or in ways that are not directly relevant, could inspire some new methods of intervention and interpretation.

The idea of sound is expressed in a number of interesting ways, and more importance is placed on soundscapes in design, or the larger urban sphere, and the impacts of things like noise and how it impacts humans and other species.  Or conversely, it may just be confronting the dilemma posed by White Noise, in their article about innovative sound artists “The Trouble With Sound Is That It’s Invisible.”  New ways of thinking about these topics more holistically show up under terms like Acoustic Ecology, or Sonic Ecology, which thinks about it from a broader way of thinking.  From the abstract of a introductory paper on Soundscape Ecology , the idea for the authors is that:

“The study of sound in landscapes is based on an understanding of how sound, from various sources—biological, geophysical and anthropogenic—can be used to understand coupled natural-human dynamics across different spatial and temporal scales.”

A great resource on the topic I’ve found is The Acoustic City, which is a book/CD and website focused “on sound and the city…  The book comprises five thematic sections: urban soundscapes with an emphasis on the distinctiveness of the urban acoustic realm; acoustic flânerie and the recording of sonic environments; sound cultures arising from specific associations between music, place, and sound; acoustic ecologies including relationships between architecture, sound, and urban design; and the politics of noise extending to different instances of anxiety or conflict over sound. This innovative essay collection will be of interest to a wide range of disciplines including architecture, cultural studies, geography, musicology, and urban sociology.”  

INTERACTIVE SOUNDSCAPES/WALKS

There’s a number of leaders in the field, but I will lead off with one of the rock-stars of this sub-genre that is doing inspired work around water is Leah Barclay, who seems to be everywhere doing amazing work.  From her bio: “Leah Barclay is an Australian sound artist, composer and researcher working at the intersection of art, science and technology. She specialises in acoustic ecology, environmental field recording and emerging fields of biology exploring environmental patterns and changes through sound. Over the last decade her work has focused on the conservation of rivers, reefs and rainforests through interdisciplinary creative projects that inspire communities to listen.”   One such installation is called Hydrology, which is a collection of sounds “…recorded using hydrophones (underwater microphones) in freshwater and marine ecosystems across the planet.” and River Listening, which is “an interdisciplinary collaboration designed to explore the creative possibilities of aquatic bioacoustics and the potential for new approaches in the conservation of global river systems.”   Her work is also available at this interesting site 100 Ways to Listen, from Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, which has a ton of great soundscape info, focusing on “exploring the art and science of sound and documenting a decade of innovative music-making.”

The idea of interactive sound around water has a few specific precedents worth focusing on hidden hydrology directly.  A project I mentioned a few years back is relevant, SCAPE’s work in Lexington, Kentucky. which featured that of a series of listening stations and a self-guided ‘Water Walk‘ for their project around Town Branch Commons, to tell the story giving users:  a broad understanding of the biophysical area around the Town Branch, reveals the invisible waters that run beneath the city, and demonstrates some of the impacts each resident of Lexington can have on the river and its water quality. By sharing how water systems and people are interrelated—both locally and globally—the Town Branch Water Walk makes stormwater quality relevant, linking it with the history, culture, and ecology of the city.”

Another project that really embodies the potential of this is a School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) project from professor Linda Keane and artist Eric Leonardson called  RiverWorks, which is described as “…an interactive transient sound mapping and community engagement series of classes that reimagines and visualizes the sustainable world above and beneath the surface of the Chicago River. Challenging engagement with water, water habitats, water conservation and water quality, students activate new connections and thinking about the Chicago River as a healthy, working and recreational ecology. Inspired by John Cages’ 1978 Dip in the Lake series of acoustical experiences throughout Chicago, the course captures sounds of water, water use and misuse in the city.” 

Students explore and create art, around walking, sensing, and as a project called River Listening, which is exciting as an “interdisciplinary collaboration examines creative possibilities for marine bioacoustics and the potential for new approaches to the conservation of urban global river systems…  students fabricate hydrophones for listening for wildlife diversity below the river’s surface. Connecting invisible riverine life with urban water infrastructure, River Listening activates familiar places with unfamiliar information creating immersive spaces. Students experience interactive listening labs and document field recordings in preparation for sound maps, spontaneous performances, and installations that creatively use everyday technologies.”

An article in Open Rivers Journal from 2017 by Christopher Caskey provides a fascinating context for this work.  “Listening to a River: How Sound Emerges in River Histories” which posits that environmental historians could use sound more to develop inquiry into environments.  Drawing from Peter Coates article “The Strange Stillness of the Past: Toward an Environmental History of Sound and Noise”, in which Coates “argues both for “knowing nature through sound” and “picking up nature’s voices” in his case for analyzing sound in environmental history”, the article focuses this idea on rivers, ending with this important conclusion:

“Rivers are particularly auditory places. They make their own sounds and they have played important roles in influencing aural culture. Whether as a storytelling device, as part of an analysis, or even as an inclusion for the sake of posterity, the sounds of a river, both past and present, are worth documenting as part of the historical record.”

SOUND MAPS

An interesting strategy is to provide maps of sounds, which tie the auditory with the spatial, as mentioned in this abstract “growing research initiatives that take up soundmapping as a way of inquiring into pressing spatial, geo-political and cultural issues primarily in cities and also in the endangered wilds.”  This happens in a few ways, but can include modern soundscapes, where there are no shortage of maps and sites documenting the sounds of places, including global maps, such as this one from Cities and Memory, or Locus Sonus and to cities as diverse as Charlottesville, Virginia, Florence, Italy, Shanghai, China, and  Montreal, Canada (below)

Each map comes with its own agenda, which ranges from nature sounds, biodiversity, urbanization, transit, social spaces, art or even places of quiet.  The key, is that these maps have to have some agenda or viewpoint and have some innovative delivery method, otherwise, they will be boring, as pointed out in this great opinion piece on the subject, “Sound Maps in the 21st Century: Where Do We Go From Here?”

The idea of mapping historical sounds does have a viewpoint, as it allows ways of connecting to the past, and appreciating the changing nature of urban environments.  One of my favorites is The Roaring Twenties, which gives an extensive spatial overview of NY City by coupling noise complaints and newsreels with places and sounds – giving a hint of a place, more focused on the man-made than natural sounds, but the section ‘Harbor & River’ connects a bit with the hydrology, along with some info on Sewer/Water Construction.

Another extensive example is the London Sound Survey, which is a really ambitious project (more here).  There’s interesting maps of a range of topics both contemporary and historical, including the hydrological, focusing on both exportation of the Thames Estuary, and a  map of London’s waterways “An auditory tribute to Harry Beck’s Underground map, the skeleton which has long lent shape to the city in the minds of Londoners. Here sounds were collected from along London’s canals and lesser rivers.”   

MUSIC

A number of interesting projects focus on music, which can be used to creatively engage with the environment.  Re:Sound is an experimental music series which explores the relationship between forgotten spaces, sound abstraction and the natural environment.

The ClimateMusic Project is another sort of endeavor with a larger mission to “…enable the creation and staging of science-guided music and visual experiences to inspire people to engage actively on the issue of climate change.  As an analogy for climate, music is familiar, accessible, and—for most people—much easier to relate to than articles or lectures. We created The ClimateMusic Project to harness this universal language to tell the urgent story of climate change to broad and diverse audiences in a way that resonates, educates, and motivates.”

The use of apps is an interesting option as well, melding GPS and music to orchestrate unique experiences that change and evolve as one moves through space.  One I’ve always been excited about is by Bluebrain from 2011 and their installation“‘Central Park (Listen to the Light)’ … a site-specific work of music that responds to the listeners location within the stretch of green of the same name in New York City…  work by tracking a users location via the iPhones built-in GPS capabilities. Hundreds of zones within the landscape are tagged and alter the sound based on where the listener is located in proximity to them. Zones overlap and interact in dynamic ways that, while far from random, will yield a unique experience with each listen. The proprietary design that is the engine behind the app stays hidden from view as the melodies, rhythms, instrumentation and pace of the music vary based on the listeners’ chosen path…. The app is the work itself. A musical ‘Chose-Your-Own-Adventure’ that does not progress in a linear fashion but rather allows the listener to explore the terrain and experience music in way that has never been possible before now. “Read more about this in a NY Times article ‘Central Park, The Soundtrack‘ from when it was released as well, and check out a short video here.

Phantom Islands is an interesting work that exists in the peripheral vision of Hidden Hydrology.  Developed by experimental musician Andrew Pekler, which was part of an oddly intriguing show called Fourth Worlds, Imaginary Ethnography in Musical and Sound Experimentation.   From the site: “Phantom Islands are artifacts of the age of maritime discovery and colonial expansion. During centuries of ocean exploration these islands were sighted, charted, described and even explored – but their existence has never been ultimately verified. Poised somewhere between cartographical fact and maritime fiction, they haunted seafarers’ maps for hundreds of years, inspiring legends, fantasies, and counterfactual histories. Phantom Islands – A Sonic Atlas interprets and presents these imaginations in the form of an interactive map which charts the sounds of a number of historical phantom islands.”   

A screenshot of it is below of one of the ‘entries’, but you really have to go experience it, let loose and have fun.

And, closing the loop on the musical side, there’s a fun Billboard article ‘10 Songs About Rivers‘ which, I feel, focused a bit much on the contemporary and missed some classics, but fun to think about. The BBC has plenty of interesting music, such as the session on Playing the Skyline, in which “musicians look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.”  And if we’re getting fully into the influence of environmental on music, a series of works by composer Tobias Picker inspired by Old and Lost Rivers, and even a Lost Rivers Opera from the Czech Republic, which i had a link to in the past but is now no longer working (anyone help there?)

So much more to explore, but this at least provides a primer on sound, and I’m excited to see more about how people are using this media to explore and expand our awareness, specifically focused on hydrology.  Any ideas in that realm, please feel free to comment.

HEADER:  Franz Max Osswald, contact print of sound photographs in architectural models, from Osswald’s applied acoustics laboratory at ETH Zurich, 1930–33 – taken from “A Visual Imprint of Moving Air – Methods, Modles, and Media in Architectural Sound Photography, ca. 1930 – Sabine von Fischer

A First Map of Portland?

Jason Kingcity, creeks, general, history, maps, oregon, places, portland, rivers3 Comments on A First Map of Portland?

There’s a plethora of early maps of Portland, many of which I’ve recently included and cataloged here for reference.  One of those maps I’d never seen before recently, oddly, is this sketch-map made by William Clark (yes, he of Lewis & Clark expedition fame) from April 3, 1806, featuring a sketch of the Multnomah River, “given by several different Tribes of Indians near its entrance into the Columbia.”  The original link comes from this Oregon Encyclopedia article on the Wapato (Wappato) Valley Indians, found whilst researching native settlements in Portland, notably those around the important confluence of the Willamette and Columbia but getting a feel for pre-settlement use of waterways. The map is found in Volume Four of the Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806, which constitutes the return trip of the Corps of Discovery from Fort Clatsop on the Oregon Coast back towards the east.  The entry and fold-out map includes a remarkable amount of information including natural and hydrological features, as well as references to many of the tribes as alluded to in the title.

It’s amazing to see the detail of the map and density of information, in what I assume was field drawn, probably in a canoe, fending off bears while simultaneously collecting plant samples.  I jest, but I’m constantly amazed at the ability of early explorers to represent places quickly and with much    For me, at least, it was much easier to conceptualize graphically if you rotate the map so north is facing up, so the subsequent enlargements flip this over.  This enlarged view shows the key features at the confluence, perhaps not drawn to scale, but remarkably accurate, including to the east, both the Washougal River (noted as Teal) and the Sandy River (noted as the Quick Sand). There are also notes on the various encampments on river banks, such as the Nechacolee and Nechacokee around Blue Lake in Portland on the south bank, Shoto up around modern day Vancouver Lake to the north and many more smaller encampments of the local Multnomah and Kathlamet tribes. To the west, around Wappato Island (modern day Sauvie Island) which was home to Multnomah, Clannahqueh, Cathlahcommahtup and others on Sauvie Island on the Columbia River, and around the other side of the island, known as the Multnomah Channel. See this additional post from the Oregon Encyclopedia for Lewis & Clark’s estimate of the Portland Basin Chinookian Village tribal populations here as well for more detail.

The same zone taken from a Google Earth image shows the general location of and features. The fidelity of the geography is a bit off (it’s a sketch map) but it’s all there.

Further south, the geography is a bit more sparse, but does include the upriver span of the Willamette (called here the ‘Multnomah River’) and it’s connection to the Clackamas River (heading east) including encampments of Clackamas along that river, and perhaps mis-estimating a bit how far away Mt. Jefferson actually was (see below)… and ‘The Falls’ which denotes Willamette Falls, which was an important settlements along this important confluence,  and Charcowah, and Cushhooks near the Falls….

The same view of current day area, again with a bit of misalignment of the rivers, which probably comes from the map being adapted from a drawing done by a local tribal elder, but the general features there.

The text supplements the map somewhat, with stories of meeting a group of Shah-ha-la Nation and showing them the Multnomah:

“we readily prevailed on them to give us a sketch of this river which they drew on a Mat with a coal, it appeared that this river which they call Mult-nó-mah discharged itself behind the Island we call the image canoe island, as we had left this island to the south in decending & assending the river we had never seen it.  they informed us that it was a large river and runs a considerable distance to the south between the Mountains.”

Clark takes a party to explore, and encounters huts from various tribes, along with harvesting of wappato and roots via canoes along the rivers, and found the hidden entrance to the Willamette (which he refers to as the Multnomah River, along with the tribes on Wappato Island and noted the depth of the.  He mentions that he “…can plainly see Mt. Jefferson” which may allude to it’s proximity on the one map.  As he continued to explore he mentions being “satisfyed of the size and magnitude of this great river which must water that vast tract of Country between the western range of mountains and those on the sea coast and as far S. as the Waters of Callifonia…” which if not totally true, does allude to the size of the Willamette drainage in at least draining a fair portion of NW Oregon.  He continues by visiting a long house, and learns the constant refrain of deaths from small pox and starvation. He asks for a map of the area and the people from one of the elders.  “I provailed on an old man to draw me a sketch of the Multnomar River and give me the names of the nations resideing on it which he readiliy done, and gave me the names of 4 nations who reside on this river two of them very noumerous. The first is Clark-a-mus nation reside on a small river… the 2.d is the Cush-hooks who reside on the NE side below the falls.”

They note the entrance to the Multnomah river being “142 miles up the Columbia river” from the Pacific, include the sketched map, and then are off, up-river, continuing eastward.

An excerpt of the journal, the specific passage of which is available via this Oregon Encyclopedia post here as well.

Underground Energy for London

Jason Kingcity, climate, creeks, energy, history, infrastructure, london, research, rivers, streams1 Comment on Underground Energy for London

A recent story picked up by multiple sources focused on the potential for hidden hydrological systems to provide heat and cut carbon emissions through tapping into underground lost rivers.  The crux of the argument is that heat pumps could extract heat from these now piped subterranean waterways, and this heat could be used for buildings and other uses, offering an alternative power option for London.  The Guardian offered the potential for heat to “cut capital’s emissions”, and the Times and The Londonist echoed this, focusing on Buckingham Palace as a visible example for the potential for heating buildings.   Mother Nature Network and Earth.com a took a slightly different slant, focusing on helping curb carbon emissions, similar to the coverage from the Daily Mail about using heat from underground rivers to “tackle climate change”.

The specifics come from a group called 10:10 Climate Action, and a recent report highlights ‘Heat seeking in London’s lost rivers’, and looking at the variety of now-buried rivers as a source of power:

“But what if we could use them to power our city once again? Through the magic of heat pumps, London’s lost rivers could provide low cost, low carbon heating and cooling to the buildings above. They could help us solve the big challenge of decarbonising heat.  There’s huge potential for London’s lost rivers to provide clean, efficient and reliable heating for the city – tackling climate change and air pollution. And of course the same technology can be used in other underground waterways like sewers in towns and cities across the country.”

 

y for heat pumps to transfer heat from one place (the subterranean pipes) to another, specifically buildings or other areas via refrigerant, where it is compressed to form heat at the top of the loop, and then expanded to cool down and capture more of the heat.  A primer on heat pumps, as well as a video showing how heat pumps work also helps explain the concept, along with this diagram.

This is already happening in some areas, including Borders College in Scotland, tapping into local wastewater, and the State Ministry Building in Stuttgart, Germany, which is tapping into flow from the Nesenbach, a buried river.  A map extracted from the report (image below) shows a number of the potential sites in London, including The Effra, Stamford Brook, The Tyburn, and the Fleet, all of which have potential sites for the use of these technologies.  Specific places include Buckingham Palace (mentioned in a few of the articles above), which would tap the Tyburn, Hammersmith Town Hall which flows above Stamford Brook, and other buildings like schools and site elements like heated swimming pools, which is currently being done in Paris.  [click to enlarge map below]

A video from 10:10 explains this in a bit more detail, showing an example of a London pub sits atop a lost river and uses this heat pump technology and for it’s heating and cooling.

There’s questions on the cost-benefit, and each of these systems would require some infrastructure to be viable, however it’s pretty exciting to consider the potential of these systems to contribute to energy savings and reduction of carbon emissions, giving back some of their benefits to the city, even while still being buried underground.  I’m sure we’ll hear more about this process in cities around the globe, all of which could utilize similar techniques, as we search for expanded tools to battle climate change and rising energy costs.

HEADER: Image of the now subterranean mouth of the Fleet, via The Guardian

Below the Surface

Jason Kingamsterdam, archaeology, art, canals, city, explorations, geology, history, maps, riversLeave a Comment on Below the Surface

A simple yet evocative project, Below the Surface is a catalog of objects found when a canal was drained in Amsterdam, creating a longitudinal timeline spanning from modern day to prehistory.  From the site:  “Urban histories can be told in a thousand ways. The archaeological research project of the North/South metro line lends the River Amstel a voice in the historical portrayal of Amsterdam. The Amstel was once the vital artery, the central axis, of the city. Along the banks of the Amstel, at its mouth in the IJ, a small trading port originated about 800 years ago. At Damrak and Rokin in the city centre, archaeologists had a chance to physically access the riverbed, thanks to the excavations for the massive infrastructure project of the North/South metro line between 2003 and 2012.”

The immensity of artifacts found in this hidden hydrology is amazing, and offer a rare chance to look below the surface (as opposed to underwater explorations, which has a range of limitations).  As mentioned:

“Rivers in cities are unlikely archaeological sites. It is not often that a riverbed, let alone one in the middle of a city, is pumped dry and can be systematically examined. The excavations in the Amstel yielded a deluge of finds, some 700,000 in all: a vast array of objects, some broken, some whole, all jumbled together.

The historical context spans a modern timeline going back many centuries, and the evolution of the site were important and provide context for what was found.  For the Rokin site, seen below, the area: “…served as an inland harbour for boats transporting goods and people from the hinterland. Both banks were densely developed with housing, workshops, shops and institutions, among which the Nieuwezijds Chapel (1347). The local urban fabric was constantly changing as major spatial interventions were implemented.”  

The site gives a detailed overview of the project and the archaeological challenges and opportunities, which include two sites, the Rokin and the Amstel. “For purposes of research, there were two intertwining strands: the city and the landscape. These revolved around the origin and history of Amsterdam. Finds from the river, consisting of (the remains of) ceramic, bone or metal man-made objects (artefacts), afford an insight into the material culture of the city. Ultimately, archaeological remains reflect the everyday activities of humans, in this case, of the inhabitants of Amsterdam and its visitors. As such, they are invaluable in the reconstruction of the historical picture of Amsterdam. The value of material remains as sources of urban history lies largely in their connection with the topographical structure of the city. Hence, the vital importance of the link between the deposits and their spatial origin in urban archaeology.”

The concept of streambed archaeology is well documented also, including the process of retrieval is aided somewhat by their submersion, as mentioned: “Another factor that makes streambed sites unique is their tendency to remain intact on account of the inaccessibility of the sunken objects. Once they had fallen in the water it was not easy to get them out. “  There are specific water focused objects, as well as giving clues to what was adjacent to the waterways: “Quite apart from the physical aspect of archaeological material sinking down in water, underwater depositions differ from deposits on land in the diverse origin and generally mixed nature of the finds. They are primarily associated with shipping activities and vary from items that have fallen overboard to complete shipwrecks and parts of ships. Archaeological remains can also be connected with activities ashore. As such, they can often be linked to objects associated with a building or structure, workshop or installation along the bank.”

The visuals of what has been found is provided in a grid, following chronological order, in order to sort from modern to ancient.  The recognizable debris from the modern era, such as credit cards in the 2000s, jewelry and china from the 1650s, pottery from the 1450s, and even fossiles and shells from early prehistory (listed as -119000).  A temporal snapshot of evolution, and an indication that, among their many urban uses, urban water bodies are a repository for our shared archaeological history.

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Beyond this, each individual object is cataloged individually, such as this pocket knife.

There’s also a print version, called Stuff, which is available:

The cultural relevance of this detailed exploration hints at an expansive role of waterways in the urban context as containers for memories and, perhaps a time capsule for objects that can trace our lineage over millennia.

HEADER:   Excavation site at Ferdinand Bolstraat station, the cross-section shows the top of the Pleistocene (10,000 B.C.)

Ice Age: New York

Jason Kingarchaeology, city, geology, history, landscape, new york, places4 Comments on Ice Age: New York

The New York Times did a recent story on How the Ice Age Shaped New York with a tagline “Long ago, the region lay under an ice sheet thousands of feet thick. It terminated abruptly in what are now the boroughs, leaving the city with a unique landscape.”  This resonated with me and reminded me of posts about Minnesota’s Lake Agassiz, as well as the Waterlines presentation last year by Dr. Stan Chernicoff on Seattle’s own geological history and how the ice age covered the city with a deep layer of ice ground away over time and as it melted 10-20,000 years ago, influenced and left many traces on cities.

New York City experienced similar issues, with a two-mile thick ice layer forming over two million years back, covering the area region encompassing much of the city and all of Manhattan, with the terminal moraine reaching the zone bisecting parts of Staten Island and Long Island, until warming and retreat 18,000 years ago.

The story of many areas is the same, the depth and weight of ice shifting bedrock, and creating waterways, kettle ponds and lakes, as well as retreat leaving glacial erratics and other rubble strewn through the zones.  However it’s more distinct in New York City, as pointed out in the article:  “While the line of glacial debris across the northern United States is often poorly delineated, the hilly ridge around New York City tends to be quite prominent. Its maximum height is roughly 200 feet, about that of a tall apartment building.”

The ridges and hills determined where people settled, as they avoided these areas and found flatter ground, and I remember the specific outcrops left in place in Central Park as features, but perhaps also to avoid having to blast or remove them. (see header image above)  The article mentions that many place names are derived from this rises, appended with Hills, Heights, and Slope and also its usage in local building materials.  The proximity of the terminal moraine to New York City is unique, but that glacial history has been forgotten over time.  As mentioned:

“Despite the ridge’s prominence and early allure for scientists, it turned out to be no rival for skyscrapers and urban distractions. The moraine that shaped the city was all but forgotten. “Clearly, it’s not on the radar,” said David E. Seidemann, a professor of geology at Brooklyn College. “The educational system here doesn’t emphasize earth science. And there’s so much else to do. I’ll go to a Yankees game over geology any day.”

But the hidden remnants paint a fascinating picture, capture by geologist and environmental educator from the American Museum of Natural History, Sidney Horenstein, who also does tours of these phenomena.  He found documents showing that geologists working in the 1800s found in terms of the variation of hill to flatland geology: “Ridges, mountains and even flatlands are typically rooted in rocky strata, such as the bedrock that underlies Manhattan and makes it ideal for erecting skyscrapers. But early investigators found the hilly ridges to be composed of clay, silt, sand, pebbles, cobbles and boulders, all jumbled up together.”

The walk through reports (such as the fascinating Natural History of New York published in 1842) established a chronology of more focused work on things like history of glacial floods, and fills in gaps on geological processes, even showing the emergence of terms to describe processes, like ‘Ice Age’ which was starting to be more widely used in the 1880s.

A 1902 USGS large-format map provided some spatial information as well

The maps used colors to show variations of geology amidst the emerging city grid, and identified the terminal ridge. As the article points out:

“At first, the city used the stony ridge for woodlots and rain catchments. Slowly, the uses expanded to reservoirs, recreational areas and, in time, neighborhoods in which buildings and houses were built on strong footings and foundations for stability.  Today, despite the wide development of the ridge’s lower slopes, a Google Earth view of New York City — a composite of images from April, June and September — shows the glacial relic as an intermittent band of green.”

A larger image of one of the maps  from the folio is seen below, via NYC99 gives an indication of the rich data available – click to enlarge (image source from Texas A&M Library).

Similar to the Missoula Floods that broke through a massive ice dam and carved out the Columbia River basin, New York also had a flood termed ‘biblical’, as glacial retreat happened around 13,000 years ago, where a “... towering wave of destruction crashed down through the Hudson gorge and proceeded to smash the southern end of the local moraine to smithereens.”

It’s interesting to draw parallels between how the glacial impacts are similar on the east and west coasts, but also how they differ due to variations of geology and topography.  The hidden history isn’t just hydrology, but a combination of physical and biological processes working in tandem, over millennia. We’ve done much to erase and obscure, but traces remain, indications of these long and large processes are tucked away under our feet, waiting to attract our gaze.

“…millions of people live on or near the glacial ridge. In all, it runs for roughly 30 miles beneath New York City. Invisibly, it links three boroughs, offering mute testimony to the power of vanished ice.”

 

HEADER:  Umpire Rock in Central Park – this and all other images, unless noted, via NY Times  

Flowing South to Portland

Jason Kingcity, creeks, explorations, general, history, maps, oregon, outreach, places, portland, projects, seattle, washingtonLeave a Comment on Flowing South to Portland

Some news on the project front, which partially explains the slow output on this end lately in terms of hidden hydrology updates:  I’m moving from Seattle back to Portland.  As regular readers know, the project origins are firmly rooted in Portland, including plenty of documentation and expansion of ideas around Tanner Springs Creek (seen below), and maybe I will finally track down one of those elusive ‘I Kayaked Tanner Creek‘ t-shirts of legend.  Anyway, happy to announce this news, and Portland folks, let me know if you’re interested in some exploring in coming months.

There’s also a plethora of other areas to explore, and also to compare and contrast the unique dichotomy of Portland as a river city and Seattle as more of a ocean & lake city, and what that means/meant for development.  On that note, one item I’ve not announced is some of the work figuring out the best format for a Hidden Hydrology Atlas that will span both Seattle and Portland – so stay tuned for more of this as technology and funding aligns.  For now you can see the early version of the online example of interactive maps I’m testing out using a combination of Mapbox and my GIS database of information.  Early days, but the potential is there, and it will expand into something more comprehensive and multi-media.

While I did get to explore a number of Seattle hidden streams, there’s so much more to do and lots to document for Ravenna, Yesler, and Green Lake, and hopefully coming back up to do more investigations.  In the interim, one of my explorations I documented here in Seattle from last summer, Licton Springs, was the departure point for an essay I wrote recently for The Nature of Cities that was just published this week. Read ‘Map and Explore: Hidden Hydrology’ for some thoughts on exploring our places and connecting with our culture, geography and ecology.

So, stay tuned as projects, posts, and explorations will all pick up over the summer months.  And as always, thanks for reading.  See you all in Portland soon.

-Jason

Atlas for the End of the World

Jason Kingcase study, history, landscape, maps, parks, photography, places, precedents, researchLeave a Comment on Atlas for the End of the World

The Atlas for the End of the World is a great model for a compendium of research and mapping on a focused topic, which has relevance to my endeavor here at Hidden Hydrology.  While the content, scale and goals are different, the structure of information in the format of the ‘atlas’ and the combination of mapping, data, and critical inquiry through essay all resonate as a great precedent.

The project was conceived by Richard Weller from The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), with collaborators Claire Hoch and Chieh Huang.  A summary of the project, launching in 2017, comes from the site:

“Coming almost 450 years after the world’s first Atlas, this Atlas for the End of the World audits the status of land use and urbanization in the most critically endangered bioregions on Earth. It does so, firstly, by measuring the quantity of protected area across the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots in comparison to United Nation’s 2020 targets; and secondly, by identifying where future urban growth in these territories is on a collision course with endangered species.  By bringing urbanization and conservation together in the same study, the essays, maps, data, and artwork in this Atlas lay essential groundwork for the future planning and design of hotspot cities and regions as interdependent ecological and economic systems.”

Some background on the project is found in both Précis which provides a roadmap to the site, as well as an essay “Atlas for the End?” which alludes to the first modern atlas of Ortelius, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Epitome of the Theater of the World) and the dawn of a new, albeit already populated, world, ready for exploration and exploitation.  As mentioned: “In 1570, when Ortelius published his atlas, the European imagination could literally run wild with whatever might be ‘out there’. Now, a mere 450 years later, that vast, mysterious world of diverse peoples and species is completely colonized and irreversibly altered by the material and conceptual forces of modernity. Whereas Ortelius marked out modernity’s territorial beginnings, this atlas—by focusing on the remaining habitat in the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots —rakes over its remains.”

The extensive essay lays a formidable foundation for the research, touching on the impacts of the past 450 years and the loss of biodiversity through urbanization, and the identification of hotspots, as well as how cities play a huge role.  As quoted:

“Although it is not yet well monitored, it is increasingly appreciated that the metabolism of the contemporary city, no matter how divorced it might feel, is interconnected with the sources and sinks of the broader landscape. It follows then that environmental stewardship is as much a matter of urban design as it is landscape ecology. As Herbert Giradet insists, it is in cities “that human destiny will be played out and where the future of the biosphere will be determined. There will be no sustainable world without sustainable cities”.7“

The themes touch on the foundations of the shift towards the Anthropocene, and our changing ideas about nature, stewardship, and it’s relationship to the profession of landscape architecture, touching on McHarg’s environmental ethics of the 1960s and also discussing the work of biologist Daniel Janzen and work on restoration of biodiversity using a metaphor of the garden.  “Janzen’s ‘garden’ is not an idyllic scene constructed for contemplation, nor does it trade in images of pristine wilderness. Wildland “gardenification” as he refers to it, is just damn hard work. As Janzen explains, it involves “fencing, planting, fertilizing, tilling and weeding … bioremediation, reforestation, afforestation, fire control, proscribed burning, crowd control, biological control, reintroduction, mitigation and much more.”36 Janzen’s garden is a continual work in progress.”

The ideas continue in discussions on the role of protected and connected ecosystems, and metrics, in this case, using the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).  From the text: “The overarching framework for the project of protecting and reconstructing a biodiverse global landscape is provided by the United Nations Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. The key mechanisms of this plan are brokered and administered through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), one of the three ‘Rio Conventions’ emerging from the UN Conference on Environment and Development (the ‘Earth Summit’) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The primary objective of the CBD is that “[by] 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”.   To this end, the focus on hotspots provides a locus for where these values intersect globally, as represented with ideas of protection (and lack there of) and the ability to access massive quantities of data collected through remote sensing and being able to map it using available technologies (while cautioning against the objectivity of mapping as a practice).

A concluding essay “Atlas for the Beginning” talks about the shift to our new reality of the Anthropocene.  A globe view shows “What’s left: the world’s protected areas as of 2015” which illustrates a bleak view of the fragility of the worlds ecosystems.  The takeaway is a research agenda that includes more data and analysis, as well as developing methods of action, including a  “…longer term research agenda is to establish a knowledge sharing network of demonstration design projects across the hotspots which bring landscape architects, environmental planners, conservationists, economists and local communities together to focus on areas of conflict between biodiversity and development. These SEED (systemic, ecological and economic design) projects will show how landscape connectivity can be achieved and how urban growth can be directed in ways that support all forms of life.”

The use of data visualizations, or datascapes, allows for unique comprehensibility of issues, as seen above. “The datascapes show that if the global population were to live (in material terms) as contemporary Americans do, there would be a major discrepancy between levels of consumption and what the earth, according to today’s technologies, can reasonably provide.” One such visual on Carbon Forest (below) shows the theoretical sequestration potential and equivalent size of forest to accommodate current populations, or, in actual numbers, “The 216 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted by a hypothetical global population of 10 billion such Americans would require 9.9 trillion trees to sequester its emissions. 2

“

The series of world maps are both beautiful and informative, spanning a range of topics both physical and social… a wide array of topics.

Each comes with a short blurb and reference.  The map on Ecoregions is described as: “The World Wildlife Federation defines an ecoregion as “relatively large units of land or water containing a distinct assemblage of natural communities sharing a large majority of species, dynamics, and environmental conditions” 1. An ecoregion is a biome broken down even further. There are 867 ecoregions comprising the world’s terrestrial and marine ecology. Nearly half of the world’s terrestrial ecoregions (391) are within the hotspots.”

 

Another interesting subsection is a feature Flora & Fauna, with “the photography of Singaporean artist Zhao Renhui, Director of the Institute for Critical Zoologists, from his 2013 artwork Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World 1. The guide presents a catalogue of curious creatures and life-forms that have evolved in often unexpected ways to cope with the stresses and pressures of a changed world.”  The species are both amazing and somewhat disturbing, such as the bionic AquaAdvantage salmon (below), “…a genetically modified salmon that can grow to its adult size in 16 to 18 months instead of three years. The AquaAdvantage salmon has been modified by an addition of a growth hormone regulating gene from a Pacific Chinook salmon and a promoter gene from an ocean pout.”

Read more on the project via this post on the ASLA Blog, as well as a relevant article by Weller from the innaugural issue of LA+ Journal, entitled ‘World Park‘

All images and text: © 2017 Richard J. Weller, Claire Hoch, and Chieh Huang, Atlas for the End of the World, http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com 

HEADER:   Hotspot Cities: cities of 300,000 or more people projected to sprawl into remnant habitat in the world’s biological hotspots

Sennett & the Cult of Bazalgette

Jason Kingcity, creeks, history, infrastructure, london, rivers, streamsLeave a Comment on Sennett & the Cult of Bazalgette

Today I picked up a copy of Richard Sennett’s new book ‘Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City’. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2018).   From the website: “Building and Dwelling is the definitive statement on cities by the renowned public intellectual Richard Sennett. In this sweeping work, he traces the anguished relation between how cities are built and how people live in them, from ancient Athens to twenty-first-century Shanghai. He shows how Paris, Barcelona, and New York City assumed their modern forms; rethinks the reputations of Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, and others; and takes us on a tour of emblematic contemporary locations, from the backstreets of Medellín, Colombia, to the Google headquarters in Manhattan. Through it all, he laments that the “closed city”—segregated, regimented, and controlled—has spread from the global North to the exploding urban agglomerations of the global South. As an alternative, he argues for the “open city,” where citizens actively hash out their differences and planners experiment with urban forms that make it easier for residents to cope. Rich with arguments that speak directly to our moment—a time when more humans live in urban spaces than ever before—Building and Dwelling draws on Sennett’s deep learning and intimate engagement with city life to form a bold and original vision for the future of cities.”

While the book aims to hit on a much broader range of topics that we typically cover, the first part resonated on the Hidden Hydrology front with some interesting analysis of the work of that prominent figure in the history, that of Joseph Bazalgette.  For a bit of a primer to the unfamiliar, check out this good post about Bazalgette as “Scientist of the Day” and also behold his amazing mustache below.

Sennett discusses this in Chapter 2, which looks at the evolution of cities in the mid-19th Century, which was a turning point for urbanization that was leading to overcrowding, pollution, and disease, many issues of which had been somewhat unprecedented in modern cities.  As he mentions, “Plague had always been a danger in cities — the Black Death wiped out a third of Europe in the late Middle Ages. As early modern cities became bigger and denser — and so more shit-and-urine filled — they became fertile gardens to feed rats and rat-borne disease.” (21)

Sennett mentions that the first actors in combating this trend were not doctors, but engineers.  Working to improve the quality of urban life, he mentions the ideas around paving of streets as a way to encourage cleaner urban areas, as well as the development of the pissoir  a simple yet seemingly necessary advance in urban sanitation.   The effect of these improvements were functional, but as Sennett points out, the ripple into more livable cities was a unique cross benefit.  As quoted:

“… a knock-on effect of removing shit and urine from the street was that it made the outdoors more usable as social space; the huge outdoor cafe fronting a boulevard was the sanitary engineer’s gift urban civilization.” (23)

The idea that engineering was the major driver for public health in the 19th century, and that it had the residual impact of creating better cities, was often “accidential and unintentional” as Sennett mentions, but often it did come with a direct purpose.  This action-oriented and experimental approach was best embodied by Joseph Bazalgette, and his engineers, working incrementally and often experimentally, invented technologies through trial-and-error:

“The engineers working for Joseph Bazalgette, for instance, when building London’s sewers in the 1850s to 1860s, invented such technology as solid-waste screens in the course of fitting sections of piping together, experimenting with several different filter designs, rather than knowing right away which size to use.  Bazalgette was what to do overall: the realm of the sewer — the realm of Les Miserables — had to be made into a network of pipes mirroring the streets above.”  (24)

The concept of experimentation was an interesting point, as he “often built sewers with pipes larger in diameter than seemed to be needed, saying that planning could not predict future needs,” (24) and as Sennett contends, “One of the truly admirable aspects of Bazalgette’s character is that he exuded Victorian confidence without claiming that he knew exactly what he was doing, believing only that he would get it right in the end.  This is more largely true of civil engineers in the city at the time; their technical knowledge was open-ended.” (25)

The simplified version of the Bazalgette plan shows the series of cross connected interceptors that are all funnelling pollution away from the Thames.

The other element brought up, which deserves more thinking is the “…experimental process required the engineer-urbanist to develop new visual tools,” and that “the messy compound forms along a dense, disordered street requires a different means of representation” (24).

Classical techniques such as plan and section worked to build the infrastructure, as seen above, however they failed to work to communicate concepts as “the infrastructures the engineers were building below ground were invisible” (25).

An image I did find that hints at these new techniques, via the Linda Hall Library, shows the use of cutaway section-perspective to outline the multiple layers of surface and subsurface systems working in tandem.

While I don’t purely think that Bazalgette was motivated by anything beyond doing the right thing, I think the idea of ‘what was the right thing?’ is perhaps the bigger question.  The fact that this ‘modernization’ is often times purely reflected as only a positive move, rubs me the wrong way, as it discounts all the other impacts.  Maybe there was a lack of understanding or lack of imagination at the time, and that burying urban rivers, creeks and streams was the only means available to solve the issues of pestilence, smells, and disease.

The implications, in London, but also world-wide, as these approaches were copies and applied often elsewhere around the globe, had such massive ecological consequences on the hydrology of cities that is, without hyperbole, impossible to reverse. A river or creek sacrificed into a pipe is not the same as a more holistic plan understood and valued the myriad benefits of urban streams and saved these waterways while protecting public health. Sennett’s take that the engineers, as mentioned in the photo caption “Joseph Bazalgette, the finest engineering of the modern city…” (Fig. 1) were saviors and their focus on public health saved many lives is indisputable.  But the cult of this benefit misleads about the cost, and it would be great to counterpoint this message with the worldwide implications of what he and many future engineers wrought on the urban ecology everywhere.

 

HEADER:  London Sewer Plan Map from 1882 – via Wikipedia 

Draining Seattle Small Lakes

Jason Kingcity, creeks, history, infrastructure, lakes, maps, parks, seattle, streams, watersheds13 Comments on Draining Seattle Small Lakes

An email from a reader of the site posed a few interesting questions about the two small lakes in the northern sections of Seattle, specifically discussing the current and historical outflows of these lakes.  I’ve discussed the small lakes in brief here, related maps of their bathymetry and tangentially in the context of Licton Springs. However, this was a good instigation to to focus on some more specifics of these urban water bodies.  I will refrain from my tendency to write another way-too-long post (of which this will inevitably turn into) and parcel this out in a few shorter ones, the first focusing on drainage questions (of which these are all connected) and then individual posts on Haller Lake, Bitter Lake, and Green Lake, as they are important parts of the hydrological history of Seattle.

To understand the overall configuration of water in Seattle, I did find this document by Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) titled ‘City of Seattle State of the Waters 2007‘. The first volume covers Seattle Watercourses, (which we will probably return to in the future), and in particular for our purposes here we look to Volume II: Seattle Small Lakes’  (both links above go to the PDFs – as I couldn’t find a page with a direct link) and it sounds like a great resource in need of an update.

For some general contents, a bit on lakes in general and their outfalls, from Vol. II, p.3:  “Lakes receive inflow from their surrounding watersheds through rivers, watercourses, overland and subsurface flow, and — in developed areas — from drainage pipes. Water typically exists a lake through a watercourse or river, although the outflows of most lakes in Seattle have been channeled into constructed drainage systems.”

HISTORIC DRAINAGE

In general, all three lakes are formed from Vashon glaciation, and as I mentioned previously, per geologist Stan Chernicoff, both Bitter and Haller lakes would be considered true kettle lakes, and Green Lake a hybrid, although still formed by glaciation.  The 1850s map locates the three Lakes, all of which are in the north portion of Seattle, but doesn’t offer too much in terms of drainage direction, aside from implying proximity between Thornton Creek drainage for Haller Lake, and Bitter Lake likely draining west due to proximity, neither show a visible outfall creek.

Green Lake it’s more obvious, with multiple inflows, including Licton Springs Creek, and the very distinct outflow that drains through Ravenna Creek southeast into Union Bay.

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The 1894 USGS map offers us the aid of topography, along with a bit more more comprehensive creek coverage. Bitter Lake hints at the possibility of outfalls either direction, heading to the northwest down to ravines that skirt The Highlands and the Seattle Golf Club and outlet near Spring Beach, and also draining southeast towards a seasonal drainage. Haller Lake (titled Welsh Lake on the map) also has no visible outfall as well, but adjacent creeks that are part of Thornton Creek drainage nearby, and a wetland area to the south make me infer that these  would be like to be the natural drainage course of the lake.

Green Lake’s hydrology is a lot simpler to discern, with the similar inputs and outputs via the Ravenna outlet to the wetland zones near University Village and outlets into Union Bay.

TWO ALTERNATIVE THEORIES ON HISTORICAL DRAINAGE

One part I’ve always been a bit skeptical about in the USGS map is the location and extent of the drainage from Thornton Creek that looks to curve way west and intercept any south flow from the Bitter and Haller Lakes and direct it to the east to the larger Thornton Creek Basin.  Licton Springs Creek also flows south, and is in reality much further north than shown on maps, and the interface between the two basins if filled with springs and wetlands, so it’s likely there could have been some disconnect between what was there flowing south, and what was mapped flowing east.  However,  Alternative 1 uses the basis of the map as the correct flowline, so shows both Bitter Lake and Haller Lake draining towards a seasonal creek and wetland that exists in the South Branch of Thornton Creek, and a smaller drainage picking up Licton Springs Creek draining into Green Lake.  This mapped, overlaid on the 1894 map, shows an option for the lakes draining east, into Lake Washington. Dashed lines, for reference, are really basic watershed delineations, and the arrows show flow from lakes.

My gut is that both lakes flowed into Green Lake, via Licton Springs Creek, and then continued out to Ravenna.  Alternative 2 looks at a version of this where there is more of a distinct ridgeline separation between the Thornton Creek Basin and the drainage that flows north south, and that the survey misinterpreted the flowline that heads towards the east due to the aforementioned springs and wetlands.  The fact that the Licton Springs Creek is much further north than mapped, makes me posit that the upper lakes drained to this transfer point, and that instead of falling east, the flows kept going south into Green Lake, via the Licton Springs. Overlaid on the modern topography gives a bit of context to this configuration.

Both of these options are plausible, and the current outflows of the lakes (seen below) support this, with Bitter Lake draining to the Southeast and Haller Lake draining West.  This at least gives us the indication that these both flowed to the low north/south valley (where current Highway 99/Aurora Avenue runs), however, where they go after is still a bit of a mystery. My follow-up plan is to look at some Lidar or a DEM to provide a much clearer picture of the flowlines and ridgelines, which we can assume, much like the current topo, is mostly similar to its predevelopment configurations (i.e. places in Seattle where we didn’t move hills).  This will go beyond this back of the napkin approach above and see if that higher degree of detail unlocks any new info.

CURRENT DRAINAGE
While it’s hard to determine the exact nature of pre-development drainage on these lakes, we can infer much from these historic documents and topography.  The current system is more clear, although not visibly inherent due to the modernization and piping of drainage through large intercepter sewers – in this case the Densmore Avenue Drainage System, which runs north/south around the low flowline at Aurora Avenue (Highway 99).

The first hint of the split of drainage is in the State of the Waters, where both Bitter Lake and Haller Lake fall outside of their adjacent drainages going west to Piper’s Creek and east to Thornton Creek.  Figure 1 from the report shows a narrow band that is bisected by this linear north south zone, with both creeks located inside the boundary.

A search for the nature of this basin configuration is somewhat frustrating, mostly as it seems to be specifically not related to a creek so isn’t referenced as a watershed in the same way.  The SPU site on Urban Watersheds breaks down the city into four distinct areas of drainage, including the Puget Sound, Lake Washington, and the Duwamish River, as well as this uniquely land-locked zone we’re focused on, known as the Ship Canal/Lake Union basin

This is subdivided into some smaller sub-basins,including the Ship Canal Basin, the South Lake Union, and our zone, the North Lake Union Basin, which stretches up to the northern lakes, in that same narrow band, encompassing their drainages, then around Green Lake, and south to the interface with Lake Union.

The specific acrobatics that the Densmore Basin does to get down to Lake Union is hinted at but there’s not a lot of great maps, in particular the last section which .  This excerpt from the Seattle Comprehensive Plan Update Draft EIS from May 4, 2015 shows the ‘capacity constrained’ condition. but does highlight the basin and it’s

I dug a bit more and found another mystifyingly badly interfaced GIS portal, this time Drainage Basins layer from City of Seattle, embedded below.  Again, need to download the data and have a bit more freedom to sort it out in order to display it in a better way, but you get the idea from this map (especially if you zoom in on the areas below Green Lake, and can see the basin outline snaking in a thin, gerrymandered strip beside I-5.

 

The lakes themselves fit within the infrastructure systems, as seen below.  The City of Seattle Water and Sewer Map , which I thought would be helpful but really isn’t because you have to zoom way in to show pipes and so lose context, so it  doesn’t clearly articulate the drainage system elements enough to isolate (i included a few screenshots), so probably need to get some GIS files to draw these and separate mains, branches, etc. to isolate systems, but the narratives are pretty clear in explaining the outfall scenarios.

Haller Lake, which is around 15 acres of drainage, and has a maximum depth of 36 feet, get’s inputs from adjacent residential drainage areas (280 acre drainage), now drains via the Densmore system, as mentioned in State of the Waters, Vol II, the lake “…discharges through an outlet control structure on the western side of the lake, eventually draining to Lake Union via the Densmore storm drain system.”

Bitter Lake, measures 18.4 acres with a max depth of 31 feet, draining a smaller area (159 acre drainage). This lake is also being drained into the Densmore system, from the State of the Waters, Vol II, page 25: “At its southeastern end, Bitter Lake drains through a piped outlet that runs through a series of small ditches and culverts before entering the Densmore storm drain system on Aurora Avenue North.  The Densmore system is equipped with a low-flow bypass, which conveys runoff directly to Lake Union. Under high-flow conditions, runoff passes through Green Lake before discharging to Lake Union.”

Green Lake, has a surface area of 259 acres, and a shallow depth, maxing out at around 30 feet, drains a basin of 1875 acres of surrounding area, as well as getting inputs from the Densmore system, as mentioned above.  Alas, it now no longer drains into Ravenna Creek, but is diverted, per the State of the Waters, Vol II, and“now discharges to Lake Union through a single outlet located near Meridian Avenue North.  In the past, Green Lake also discharged to the combined sewer system via a number of outlets around the lake. However, these outlets were recently blocked and now are used by Seattle Parks and Recreation only during rainstorms of long duration when the Meridian Avenue North outlet is not adequate to maintain water levels in Green lake.”

 

HEADER: Haller Lake from above – via Windemere

 

 

Watershed as Political Boundary

Jason Kinghistory, infrastructure, maps, places, rivers, streams, watersheds5 Comments on Watershed as Political Boundary

A recent announcement that the Department of Interior is planning a massive reorganization has received a bunch of attention.  While Secretary Zinke has done a number of dubious things in his short time at Interior, this one at least, having some origins based on the concepts of John Wesley Powell, initially made me pause to consider if it may have merit.  If you can stomach watching Zinke talk for over five minutes, the video from DOI explaining the move is here. Or you can read this, where I first read about the concept, via an article Outside Magazine:  “Ryan Zinke’s Watershed Plan Is 140 Years Too Late”  To summarize the background:

“The latest object of the interior secretary’s affection is John Wesley Powell. A Civil War veteran who lost his right arm at the Battle of Shiloh, Powell is best known as a geologist and geographer who led expeditions in the American Southwest, including the first documented float down Grand Canyon. Those travels inspired Powell, in an 1878 report, to recommend the West be settled in a fashion that would organize the desiccated territory by watershed. Doing so, he argued, would make for a more collaborative and ecologically sound way of managing resources, especially in a region where the most precious resource is water. “

This basin map, seen below from an old NPR story about “The Vision of John Wesley Powell“, shows the “Map of the Arid Region of the United States showing drainage districts, 1890-91”, which is the impetus mentioned by Zinke, and explained per the article: “In 1878, Powell published his Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, which laid out a concrete strategy for settling the West without fighting over scarce water. Powell wanted to stall the waves of homesteaders moving across the plains and mountains. Instead, he wanted to plan settlement based in part on the cooperative model practiced in Utah by Mormon settlers, who tapped mountain snowmelt and the streams, lakes and rivers it created with irrigation ditches leading to crops. Powell wanted to organize settlements around water and watersheds, which would force water users to conserve the scarce resource, because overuse or pollution would hurt everyone in the watershed. Powell believed this arrangement would also make communities better prepared to deal with attempts to usurp their water.”

While some see it as pure politics, and view it with skepticism, others acknowledge some merit. Per Outside: ““Intellectually, the idea of organizing more in terms of the landscape in the West—that works,” says John Freemuth, executive director of the Cecil D. Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University. “But the devil is in the details. The damage that could be done to relationships and how agencies do business, that doesn’t look like it’s been well thought out yet.”  There is mention of the complications of the current water system, where far away water is transported hundreds of miles to other locations, which perhaps makes basin boundaries obsolete, and is antithetical, in essence to Powell’s original notions, (thus the ‘too late’ tagline). As mentioned. ““For Powell, the water would not be taken out of the watershed or out of the basin and transferred across mountains…hundreds of miles away to allow urban growth to take place,” Donald Worster, a Powell biographer, told NPR in 2003. “So L.A., if it existed at all, would have been a much, much smaller entity. Salt Lake City would be smaller. Phoenix would probably not even exist.”

The Washington Post also weighed in, mentioning on January 10th the “Interior plans to move thousands of workers in the biggest reorganization in its history”, and some of the implications of “the largest reorganization in the department’s 168-year history, moving to shift tens of thousands of workers to new locations and change the way the federal government manages more than 500 million acres of land and water across the country.”  In short, the “…proposal would divide the United States into 13 regions and centralize authority for different parts of Interior within those boundaries. The regions would be defined by watersheds and geographic basins, rather than individual states and the current boundaries that now guide Interior’s operations”.

Skeptics are probably right to wonder if this is an effective change, but some of the criticism of it being hard to do, moving offices, costs, issues like splitting states into two zones sort of miss the point, if the goal is a broad basin-specific planning mechanism.  The concept that there’s a political agenda is obvious, and some of the talk of this being a covert way of downsizing government and eroding the mission are valid.  Other criticisms, such as removal of Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, as mentioned in the article are more troubling.  As quoted: “This proposal is concerning because it appears to eliminate the Navajo Regional Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” said  Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). “A change of this magnitude should only come after extensive, meaningful government-to-government consultation with the affected tribes.  On its face, this looks more like a dismantling than a reorganization.”

Environmental groups as well echo the idea that it may seem ok on the surface, but is at it’s root political.  As quoted: ““A regional approach to managing Interior might indeed make sense, but the jury is out on this reorganization,” Sharon Buccino, senior director for lands at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an email. “Virtually everything Secretary Zinke has done to date has been to advance fossil fuel interests — above the stewardship of our public lands, preservation of wildlife and protection of clean air and water.””

It’s dubious whether this would happen, but there’s some intriguing notions it brings up, perhaps in a less divisive political climate, as to where this could actually be beneficial.  The Washington Post article linked to the overlay of current bureau configurations and the proposed idea of ‘Common Regions’, as mentioned.  The patchwork of overlaid jurisdictional boundaries would obviously be a change, but fundamentally there’s some wisdom (perhaps Powell’s wisdom) at work in thinking about this

Whether it goes anywhere is dubious, as it’s an interesting idea wrapped up in massive government reorganization that brings with it so much baggage as to sink it before it starts. As Outside concludes, “Perhaps it’s best to think of Zinke’s watershed-based West as a thought experiment.”   Or possibly, it’s a question of being too soon, and that a more thought-out approach could possibly be implemented over the course of the next decade to address concerns but keep it from just being that unrealized concept.

BEYOND POLITICS

I’ve long been a proponent of the concept of transforming political boundaries more in line with hydrological ones, as the idea of connecting choices made with the impacts to watersheds, first presenting the concept in a presentation at the 2006 National ASLA Conference.  The genesis of the idea is the that these basins and watersheds are nested systems, with larger units encompassing many smaller elements, and in turn being encompassed by larger systems. The idea of neighborsheds (i.e. neighborhood watersheds) involve a small scale redrawing our local boundaries using subwatersheds instead of arbitrary street or orthagonal boundaries that we currently employ.  This provides an opportunity to reimagine our local places in alignment with nature, and also helps residents understand their place at a scale that is knowable.  The connection to local flows provides a context, and the nesting systems allow one to link thier actions to the larger whole.

There are some obvious organizational structures in place that adopt this nested, such as the idea of USGS Hydrologic Units (HU) that organize elements like the Watershed Boundaries used in the National Hydrography Database.  The map below shows the largest resolution, the regional scale, of which there are 21 in the United States, know by a system of codes, or HUCs.

Some info via a really good page on Wikipedia on Hydrological Codes, this scales down from the original 21 regional HUs, to 222 subregions, 370 basins, 2,200 subbasins, 22,000 watersheds and around 160,000 subwatersheds.   The range in scale is also interesting, with a Region averaging a size of approximately 177,560 square miles, a typical basin spanning 10,000 square miles, down to 220 square mile watersheds and 40 square mile subwatersheds.  The Pacific Northwest is HU-17 expands to grab most of the Columbia River basin flowing west from the Rocky Mountains (which also reaches far up into Canada but is not shown on this map).

This breakdown the the nested scales provides a nice summary of that breakdown.

 

The Water Resource Inventory Area (WRIA) structure in Washington is an extension of this idea as well, with the ability to delineate a watershed focus on conservation. An image of WRIA boundaries overlaid with county lines in Washington State is instructive as to the difference between political lines drawn.

These denote the smallest HU scale of subwatershed, which as we discussed are around 40 square miles each, which is still rather large, but at least somewhat more comprehensible than larger basins. The WRIAs for the Puget Sound show the very organic structure of basin-focused districts (which is also the final scale of the Hydrological Unit map showing Subwatersheds), with the only hard-line in this case being the Canadian border to the north.

An zoomed into the smaller scale around Seattle, the two districts include WRIA 8, the Lake Washington and the Cedar River Basin, which encompasses much of the City, and the WRIA 9, the Duwamish-Green River Basin which drains the south segment of the city.  While it may complicate things as a current city and a county boundaries and require some intergovernmental agreements from many parties, the ability to isolate hydrological areas makes planning for these watersheds in terms of impacts to ecosystems much easier.  In some sense these could be a reimagined county structure by these subwatersheds, which isn’t actually a bad idea, if only as a though experiment.


The nesting could continue infinitely and get down unit you get to the smallest drainage, which could encompass a few blocks in the city.  More on this to comes as I continue to expand on the neighborshed concept. While the politicized proposal from Interior seems doomed to failure, there is some merit to these types of proposals that transcend politics and assess the concept of watershed specific boundaries in terms of thinking outside the box, and inside the basin.

HEADER:  Image of Powell’s Arid Lands Map – via Outside Magazine