Monday, January 21, 2008

Modeling river flow

(Not directly rock pile related)
Reader Bruce A. write in with this link and comment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/science/18rivers.html?ref=science


Researchers failed to realize how modified the landscape had been in the past - an astonishing number of dams seem to have been unappreciated.

3 comments :

Tim MacSweeney said...

Funny how "the past" starts in about 1700 in the article. There is an old undershot mill a quarter mile downstream from what I believe to be a fish weir and so far every one of three professional archeologists I've shown the weir always says it probably had to do with the mill. I've looked at many an old map to arrive at some of my ideas of how streams flowed before 1700, often further defined in situ by stonerows - and mounds and effigies and connections to other stonerows etc.

Geophile said...

I agree. There is reason to think that stream flow had been altered in some places before the arrival of Europeans in eastern North America.

JimP said...

Reminds me of this funny story from out here in AZ. The government has undertaken a massive canal project. They spent lots of bucks on studies by engineering firms to calculate the optimum locations for the canals. After years of investigation, the digging finally began -- and what did they find? A network of ancient canals in the very locations where they were digging. Apparently ancient Hohokam engineers knew what it took our modern engineers years and many taxpayer dollars to figure out.