Lawsuit over Memphis pumping of the Sparta Aquaifer.

Via Michael Campana's WaterWired, news of a billion dollar lawsuit by the State of Mississippi against the City of Memphis over pumping of the vast Sparta Aquifer.

This problem has been brewing for a long time. The aquifer is being mined for water, and drawdowns over the past century have caused depressions of nearly 100 feet in some areas. Growing up in southern Arkansas, I drank this water (its quality is excellent) for many years. A big problem is use for irrigation, something I've talked about here before. Note on the aerial here you can see much of the Grand Prairie in Eastern Arkansas has been greatly modified to get rid of surface water even as they pump (note circles from center pivot units) from the aquifer for irrigation of rice, soybeans, and cotton.

The USGS has group of studies going, USGS Mississippi Embayment Regional Aquifer Study (MERAS), index here. The illustration comes one of these publications from McKee and Clark, PDF here.

Climate change is here now, and we caused it.

Our rivers are in for some changes, and it's hard to see how a lot of flood return interval relationships, for example, won't go out the window soon, especially if we continue to ignore our effect on climate. And river restoration might mean adapting and anticipating this change, rather than returning streams to a prior state in another climate.

This week's EOS (subscription required) has noted the release of an alarming report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).

From a New York Times article on the report:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco called the new report "a game-changer."

"I think much of the foot-dragging in addressing climate change is reflective of the perception that climate change is way down the road in the future, and it only affects remote parts of the planet," she said. "This report demonstrates that climate change is happening now, in our own backyards, and it affects the things that people care about. The dialogue is changing."

From EOS:

These impacts include rising temperatures and sea level, increases in heavy downpours, changing growing seasons, more frequent and intense extreme weather including floods and droughts, and the continued rapid decline in Arctic sea ice. The report notes that “global average temperature has risen by about 1.5ºF since 1900. By 2100, it is projected to rise another 2–11.5ºF. Increases at the lower end of this range are more likely if global heat-trapping gas emissions are cut substantially. If emissions continue to rise at or near current rates, temperature increases are more likely to be near the upper end of
the range.”

Photo is of some flood prone property just down the road from my house.

Research at SUNY using our Emriver Em2 model.

Ted Endreny at SUNY's Environmental Science and Forestry program is one of our most enthusiatic Emriver Em2 users. He and grad student Bangshuai Han have done some very interesting work on meander cutoffs and groundwater interactions using an Emriver Em2 and some special accessories we custom-built for them. These include a photogrammetry fixture and groundwater injection and extraction equipment.

They've produced two wonderful posters, links here and here. The abstract is here. The work was presented at the AGU 2009 Joint Assembly.

We've known the Em2 models were capable of serious quantitative research, but few people have taken them to this level. Most scientists use them for demonstrations and less formal student exercises and student research projects.

We're thrilled to see this work, and look forward to more!

Citation for the presentation: Han, B. and T. Endreny, 2009. Asymmetrical Changes in Hydraulic Gradient Along Valley and River Transects During Meander Cutoff Evolution. Eos Trans. AGU, 90(22), Jt. Assem. Suppl., Abstract CG21A-04.

Ted (shown below with an Em2) and his colleagues have also used their Em2 for some amazing NSF-funded outreach programs. Links here and here.

High resolution aerials of the Mississippi River on Google maps.

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I've discovered that much of the lower Mississippi, at least along eastern Arkansas where I grew up, is covered by very high resolution aerials in Google maps. Here you see the Mississippi and Arkansas River confluence. Zoom in on the two barge tows near it and you can almost make out the deck hands. Wonderful stuff for exploring the beautiful meander and bar deposition patterns, effects of navigation structures, and vegetation patterns.

Huge floodplain restoration project in northern Louisiana

The New York Times ran a nice article this week on a groundbreaking floodplain restoration project in northern Lousiana. The US Fish and Wildlife and The Nature Conservancy are restoring a 25 square mile patch of floodplain along the Ouachita River.

The area was cleared and leveed in the 1960's. It's now owned by the USFWS and is part of the Upper Ouachita River Refuge. Plans are to breach the levee system and return it to the river. The NY Times article is comprehensive (as those in the Science section tend to be), and links to a TNC video.

The levee is huge--roughly 30 feet high and 120 feet wide at the base. I wish them luck and look forward to studies on how this reconnection works, because I think we'll be seeing a lot of it in the future, and rightly so.

The area is not far from Monticello, Arkansas, where I went to high school. I flew over this refuge in a light plane once, and remember well the huge green wildness of it. (It's always fun to hear outsiders try to pronounce the river's name. It's WASH-i-taw.)

Photo by Steve Haase (TNC) shows the restoration area at left.

Cameron Bencini joins LRRD.

Cameron Bencini had a great first day at LRRD as our new summer intern. Cameron just graduated from SIUC with a degree in civil engineering, and has been accepted in the graduate program there for the fall.

Today he was clearly drawn to the Emriver Em2 model, and immediately applied his knowledge of hydraulics to understand what he saw. Part of his job will be help us develop exercises for use in engineering classes.

We're excited about our new colleague and saw right away that having a new pair of eyes looking at our models, especially a pair connected to a brain full of fresh engineering knowledge, is a very good thing.

Welcome, Cameron.

Maple seed vortex visualization.

We're in the throes of NSF grant writing again, and I'm way behind on blogging, which is frustrating, because we have lots of cool things going on at LRRD.

Vimeo hosts this interesting visualization of a maple tree's single wing "helicopter" seed via Science News. Physorg.com has a nice write-up on this work by David Lentink and others, some of which was published in Science.

The researchers also used a scaled up artificial seed in mineral oil. We're working on these issues of similitude in fluid mechanics at LRRD, though we always scale down, and unfortunately there seems to be no good way to reduce viscosity, unless we fill our river models with dangerous hydrocarbons or use very hot water.

I've always loved to watch maple seeds fall in the spring, and if you've studied forestry you know they're called single wing samaras. Steven Vogel (emeritus at Duke now) writes eloquently (and with great humor) about biomechanical things like this in his books. His Life in Moving Fluids is one of my favorite science books.

And speaking of backyard science, see this video captured in a study of the spectacular dives of male hummingbirds. It's a great video, and I like the embedded data graphics at the end.