Studies of episodic shoreline accretion of the Columbia River Littoral Cell (CRLC) have been ongoing since 1964. In this study, the sediment volumes in the late Holocene barriers and beach plains are compiled and formatted in GIS compatible databases for the four sub-cells of the CRLC. Initial evaluation involved the creation of a geodatabase of 160 dated retreat scarp positions, that were identified on across-shore GPR and borehole profiles. Ten primary timelines were identified throughout the CRLC (0-4700 ybp) and those were used to develop polygon cells. Elevation, distance measurements, and position information were all linked to the polygon through a centroid location within the geodatabase. Once the geodatabase was completed, data was imported into MSAccessTM to create a relational database that would allow for examination of the littoral cell in its entirety or of the individual sub-cells. Within the database, sediment volumes, ages, accretion rates, sediment thicknesses, and timeline relationships were calculated and recorded. Using the database, the accretion history of the Columbia River Littoral Cell was evaluated and this examination illustrated the complexity of the system. Northern littoral transport was shown to be an important factor in the development of the littoral cell as a whole. Total sediment volume in the littoral cell was calculated to be 1.74 x 109 m3, with a mean accretion rate of 1.90 x 104 m3/yr, which is significantly less than some previous studies. This is due to a more detailed analysis of the beach and foredune facies themselves. This is likely the result of the higher precision of beach and foredune surface information using LiDAR. The database shows that the developmental history of the CRLC is dependent on temporal and spatial constraints that can be coupled with reverse modeling to predict shoreline erosion trends from impounded river sediments and potential global sea level rise. The North Beaches and Grayland Plains sub-cells have the greatest potential for future erosion; followed by the Clatsop Plains sub-cell.

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

The Army Corps of Engineers promised in 1939 that it would provide six fishing sites totaling 400 acres for Indian fishermen to replace 40 sites that would be flooded by the pool behind Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. The agreement with the Warm Springs, Yakima and Umatilla tribes and Columbia River Indians also included construction of living quarters, boat launches, drying sheds and sanitary facilities. Only five sites were ever acquired and drying sheds and sanitary facilities were built on only two. This paper traces the delays through war, congressional appropriations, negotiations over sites, law suits, construction of new dams, disagreements between federal agencies and the tribes and between tribes, and slow moving federal agency processes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground in late 1995 on the first of 31 sites totaling 3 3 5 acres that will finally fulfill the commitment to the tribes in 2002. The tracing is done in the early years almost entirely through government correspondence and documents. In later years, the major sources are newspaper articles and government documents, including court files. The paper does not find a single cause for the extraordinary delay in fulfilling promises. Rather, it concludes that a number of events, attitudes and people had a part in creating delays at different times during the six decades. World War II caused the first major delay. Later causes included disagreements about locations, lack of appropriations, disputes over what facilities were to be included and slow government procedures.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, new methods of preservation allowed Tay salmon to be sold on the London market for the entire fishing season. Such was the size and buoyancy of this market that it absorbed the entire produce of the Tay fisheries, though catches were at that time increasing due to the introduction of stake nets in the Firth. However, these beneficial developments created tensions among the participants in the fisheries. Stake nets took fish which would have ascended to the river, reducing the catches of river tacksmen and the rentals of river proprietors. An increasing number of tacksmen meant that management of the fisheries ceased, as formerly, to be in the hands of a single company and gave rise to more competitive exploitation of the existing salmon stock. A particular result of these developments was that all participants in the fisheries developed an abiding preoccupation with the threat of over-fishing. This was 'further enhanced by the introduction of stake nets on the coast after they were banned from the estuary, development of a series of stake net substitutes in the estuary, more efficient conventional methods of fishing at more stations, and a revival of poaching from mid-century onwards. The court case which led to stake nets being removed from the estuary formalised the animosity between the various proprietorial groups. Their subsequent adoption of entrenched positions eventually led to the tripartition of the Tay fisheries into estuarial, river and upper river factions. Successive inquiries and two Acts of Parliament failed to reconcile the enmities which were sustained by strongly held beliefs in property rights and the need to defend rental incomes. The impasse was ultimately resolved by a single company which, by doubling rental payments, was able to take all netting stations into its own hands and thus revive unified control of the Tay salmon fisheries.

Using the techniques of microhistory, this thesis explores questions of construction of identity, and the relationship of narrative to identity. The thesis follows the lives of several residents of the St. Lawrence valley as they learn about the residents of New York and New England through business, marriage, adoption and trade in furs. Using case studies of seventeenth-century native and European individuals, as well as information from folklore, parish registers, letters and legal documents, movement in the border region between settled colonies is examined. A nominal index describes the origins of, and provides capsule biographies for, 694 residents of New France whose roots were neither in France nor in the native communities. An examination of these cases allows a comparison between personal choice and social constraint in a colonial context.

This thesis investigates the geography in and of Victorian scientific practice by examining the Zambesi Expedition (1858-1864), which was led by the Scottish explorer David Livingstone. A team of assistants accompanied Livingstone: Dr. John Kirk, Dr. Charles Meller, Thomas Baines, Richard Thornton and Charles Livingstone. The official purposes of this expedition, funded by the British Foreign Office, were to catalogue the natural resources of the regions adjacent to the Zambezi River in order to identify new sources of raw materials for British industry and to introduce commercial markets to supplant the slave trade. The scientific results of the Zambesi Expedition have never been catalogued. Only limited attention has been paid to the ways in which science was made in the field and how it returned to Britain In order to address these issues, a survey was made of relevant scientific literature to identify published analyses of the data and specimen collections produced by the Expedition’s staff. Extant specimen collections were located and examined along with archival records and correspondence. The combined manuscript and material evidence reveals that scientific concerns were an important justification for the Expedition. Fieldwork practices are examined in depth and an ideology of technology, expressed in different ways, is shown to have structured the encounters between the British and the locals. The Expedition’s members based their assumed superiority upon technological skill, especially their abilities to understand the environment and to command power—in terms of steam navigation, instrumental authority and the naming of natural productions. Power differentials were apparent in the field when the information possessed by local informants was required for the success of the scientific goals of the expedition. Credibility in the field became a tenuous quality negotiated between local informants, explorers and the metropolitan scientific community. The expedition’s members, as interpreters, were required to navigate the social and physical spaces of the field and the metropolis in order to produce and present credible knowledge. The thesis examines for the first time elements of the reception of the expedition by considering the publication of its scientific results. Critics’ voices are used to uncover those attitudes of the time that judged explorers—and this expedition—according to their prior experiences, social connections and field skills. The work of the Expedition, then, was performed in different spaces and at different scales; operating within and between the field and metropolis and actively linking local practices to global networks. These multivalent practices enabled and circumscribed a British construction of African nature.

No description available.

In 1879 Congress created the Mississippi River Commission (MRC) to develop and coordinate federal flood control policy for the Lower Mississippi River. Through 1927, that Commission clung stubbornly to a "levees-only" policy that was based on the mistaken belief that levees alone could be effective in controlling the flood waters of the Mississippi River. When the levees failed--and they occasionally did--the MRC responded by raising and strengthening the system but refused to adopt a more comprehensive program, one which would include outlets and reservoirs. Finally, a disastrous flood in 1927 forced the abandonment of levees-only and the adoption of a comprehensive plan for the Lower Mississippi River. Predictably, the MRC faced heavy criticism following the failure of its highly-touted levee system in 1927. While certainly the Commission was culpable, there was plenty of fault to go around and a plethora of mitigating circumstances. Developing a plan for achieving adequate flood control along the lower Mississippi River constituted what was probably the most difficult and complex engineering problem ever undertaken by the U. S. Government. Additionally, there were innumerable political and financial constraints that worked to shape MRC policy. This study will endeavor to tell the story of the MRC from its earliest origins through the landmark 1928 Flood Control Act, and, in the process, give evidence to the reality that the Commission did not function independently. As an organization, it relied upon outside forces for its membership, for its jurisdiction, and for the appropriations necessary to carry out its policies. Significantly, these forces were politically driven and did not always, or even often, share the MRC's priorities for the Lower Mississippi River. Even so, the MRC accomplished a great deal in its efforts to protect the Valley from moderate floods, to improve the navigability of the Mississippi River, and to expand significantly the body of knowledge available on the "Father of Waters."

No description available.