The tone of last week's newsletter was a bit darker than I was aiming for. Roberto shared some valuable snippets in response, good things to keep in mind.
I went to _another_ conference thing (it's been busy, this Fall) yesterday, the Gilbert Club. The Gilbert Club happens the Saturday after AGU's Fall Meeting, the largest earth science meeting in the world. It's a one-day shoestring operation and only vague agenda to give people a day to talk about geomorphology, which doesn't, perhaps, get as much attention as we'd like in the monster conference.
I've found geomorphology lovely because it picks up on so many things I'm interested in. It's a field where various ideas can blend; synthesized understandings of geomorphic processes are a collection of geologic precedent, anthropogenic effects, and then a load of nuanced surface processes (that deal with hydrology, biology, and basic physics). Some of it can be approached through an analytical math lens (bringing back my love for partial differential equations), and some of it is purely observational.
On Friday, I finished applying to a fellowship that would fund a PhD at Berkeley. The project is essentially "applied geomorphology"—I'm interested in using understandings of landscape-shaping processes to inform management and engineering work. The application was to get an understanding of sediment movement around the mouth of the Tijuana River Estuary; when the estuary gets plugged, the interior marsh water level rises and contaminants collect, driving local flood risk and killing fish. I would help nail down what the main causes of this sediment build-up are, and how we could minimize it happening.
This is the work that most excites me right now, if you can't already tell: the engineering, design, and science work that links human activity to processes that would be going on without us.
A lot of what you might call this "applied geomorphology" has come out of the habitat restoration world, which has its strongest history in river restoration. This term, "restoration" came out of work done in the 80s when some of the benefits of natural systems became clear to the people who had previously paved or channelized rivers. Rivers began to get "daylighted" as we removed their bounding channels, and reconnected them to their floodplains. Rivers are amazing examples of self-organization, so in many instances, allowing the river to connect to its habitat—its sediment, local aquifers, debris, and ecosystems—is enough for it to return to functionality.
But this language begs the question: return to what? An outdated ideal in restoration work (in America, at least) is to restore the river to what it might have looked like before European colonization. This idea brings with it The Pristine Myth and all its failures. Thankfully, increasingly, river "restoration" is about restoring process—allowing the processes that shape the system morphology and ecology to thrive. And sometimes this takes continued maintenance!
Process-based restoration is, to me, a perfect example of applied geomorphology. Getting pervious pavers for your fucking driveway is an instance of applied geomorphology. The thing to focus on is allowing flows of energy in the landscape to connect in beneficial ways (whether upland erosion bringing sediment to catchments or rain going into aquifers). The view of geomorphology that celebrates energy flows gets into exciting territory, a very information-theoretic view of the world. My friend DV introduced me to Bejan's Constructal Law, which I think applies to landscape processes across the board.
There are ramifications everywhere. One of the most interesting, to me, lies in flood-control infrastructure. Arid California has done a lot of channelizing work, to deal with the rare but disastrous high-rain event. This is why the LA River is encased in concrete. I've already talked about how we can't "undo" Los Angeles, but I think that, with some geomorphologists, policy-makers, and engineers in the right room, we can build ideas about how to restore process while maintaining flood control benefits too. Some of those ideas, before they enter a gleaming room in downtown LA, might come from a pizza-fueled illegitimate conference with a bunch of nerds who like sediment.
Reconnecting,
Lukas
I went to _another_ conference thing (it's been busy, this Fall) yesterday, the Gilbert Club. The Gilbert Club happens the Saturday after AGU's Fall Meeting, the largest earth science meeting in the world. It's a one-day shoestring operation and only vague agenda to give people a day to talk about geomorphology, which doesn't, perhaps, get as much attention as we'd like in the monster conference.
I've found geomorphology lovely because it picks up on so many things I'm interested in. It's a field where various ideas can blend; synthesized understandings of geomorphic processes are a collection of geologic precedent, anthropogenic effects, and then a load of nuanced surface processes (that deal with hydrology, biology, and basic physics). Some of it can be approached through an analytical math lens (bringing back my love for partial differential equations), and some of it is purely observational.
On Friday, I finished applying to a fellowship that would fund a PhD at Berkeley. The project is essentially "applied geomorphology"—I'm interested in using understandings of landscape-shaping processes to inform management and engineering work. The application was to get an understanding of sediment movement around the mouth of the Tijuana River Estuary; when the estuary gets plugged, the interior marsh water level rises and contaminants collect, driving local flood risk and killing fish. I would help nail down what the main causes of this sediment build-up are, and how we could minimize it happening.
This is the work that most excites me right now, if you can't already tell: the engineering, design, and science work that links human activity to processes that would be going on without us.
A lot of what you might call this "applied geomorphology" has come out of the habitat restoration world, which has its strongest history in river restoration. This term, "restoration" came out of work done in the 80s when some of the benefits of natural systems became clear to the people who had previously paved or channelized rivers. Rivers began to get "daylighted" as we removed their bounding channels, and reconnected them to their floodplains. Rivers are amazing examples of self-organization, so in many instances, allowing the river to connect to its habitat—its sediment, local aquifers, debris, and ecosystems—is enough for it to return to functionality.
But this language begs the question: return to what? An outdated ideal in restoration work (in America, at least) is to restore the river to what it might have looked like before European colonization. This idea brings with it The Pristine Myth and all its failures. Thankfully, increasingly, river "restoration" is about restoring process—allowing the processes that shape the system morphology and ecology to thrive. And sometimes this takes continued maintenance!
Process-based restoration is, to me, a perfect example of applied geomorphology. Getting pervious pavers for your fucking driveway is an instance of applied geomorphology. The thing to focus on is allowing flows of energy in the landscape to connect in beneficial ways (whether upland erosion bringing sediment to catchments or rain going into aquifers). The view of geomorphology that celebrates energy flows gets into exciting territory, a very information-theoretic view of the world. My friend DV introduced me to Bejan's Constructal Law, which I think applies to landscape processes across the board.
There are ramifications everywhere. One of the most interesting, to me, lies in flood-control infrastructure. Arid California has done a lot of channelizing work, to deal with the rare but disastrous high-rain event. This is why the LA River is encased in concrete. I've already talked about how we can't "undo" Los Angeles, but I think that, with some geomorphologists, policy-makers, and engineers in the right room, we can build ideas about how to restore process while maintaining flood control benefits too. Some of those ideas, before they enter a gleaming room in downtown LA, might come from a pizza-fueled illegitimate conference with a bunch of nerds who like sediment.
Reconnecting,
Lukas