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Freshwater wetlands and water bodies

Malcolm Ausden

in Habitat Management for Conservation: A Handbook of Techniques

This chapter discusses the management of open bodies of water and wetlands on seasonally or permanently waterlogged soil. It concentrates on freshwater habitats, but briefly discusses management of ... More

This chapter discusses the management of open bodies of water and wetlands on seasonally or permanently waterlogged soil. It concentrates on freshwater habitats, but briefly discusses management of brackish habitats, such as coastal grazing marshes, where they form a continuum with freshwater ones. Topics covered include principles of manipulating water levels, water quality, methods of improving the value of deep water bodies (>1 m) and large, shallow (less than about 1 m) for wildlife; temporary pools, permanent ponds and water-filled ditches, rivers, swamps and fens, bogs, wet scrub, wet woodland, wet grasslands.Less

The physical environment

D. Dudley Williams

in The Biology of Temporary Waters

This chapter first considers the underlying hydrological processes that result in the formation of temporary water bodies. The components of subsurface water are defined, and the origins of pond ... More

This chapter first considers the underlying hydrological processes that result in the formation of temporary water bodies. The components of subsurface water are defined, and the origins of pond basins and stream channels are discussed. Estimates of the densities of these habitats in the landscape are given. The fundamental property of habitat persistence is related to the key factors of climate and seasonality.Less

The Frog Pond: Making Sense of Work and Money

Robert Wuthnow

in Small-Town America: Finding Community, Shaping the Future

This chapter examines the ways in which residents of small towns make sense of their own lives, and especially with respect to work and money. People in small towns know it is unlikely that they will ... More

This chapter examines the ways in which residents of small towns make sense of their own lives, and especially with respect to work and money. People in small towns know it is unlikely that they will ever become rich living there. Job opportunities, for one, are limited. Many lines of work that might be interesting are simply unavailable. This is particularly true for people seeking employment in the professions or managerial occupations. Nevertheless, the scale of one's community can have a decided effect on the scope of one's aspirations. The influence can be understood as a frog-pond effect. The chapter suggests that small communities create a frog-pond identity that residents draw on to formulate narratives about why they chose to live in a small town, how that choice has limited or enriched their career opportunities, and whether they feel regret or are satisfied. It also considers the impact of agriculture on the lives of small-town residents.Less

Agriculture after the Black Death

Thirsk Joan

in Alternative Agriculture: A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day

This chapter discusses the efforts of farmers to save agriculture after the Black Death. The first solution to the crisis in agriculture was to ... More

This chapter discusses the efforts of farmers to save agriculture after the Black Death. The first solution to the crisis in agriculture was to put former arable land down to grass. With this, dairy goods began to gain attention. Moreover, when landowners found themselves with idle grassland, the idea of the rabbit warren, deer parks, pigeons, and fish ponds became ideal solutions.Less

Fishing

Joe B. Hall, Marianne Walker, and Rick Bozich

in Coach Hall: My Life On and Off the Court

Tells about Joe B,’s love of fishing and his favorite fishing spots as a child. When he has to look after his baby sister Laura Jane, he takes her fishing with him.

Property Rights, Water Resources, and Technology: The Missing Ecological Link

Dik Roth and Linden Vincent

in Controlling the Water: Matching Technology and Institutions in Irrigation Management in India and Nepal

This chapter examines access to water in a paddy-growing tract in Palakkad district, Kerala, India. Traditionally an area served by small tanks and ponds, access to irrigation has been changed by new ... More

This chapter examines access to water in a paddy-growing tract in Palakkad district, Kerala, India. Traditionally an area served by small tanks and ponds, access to irrigation has been changed by new public canal systems and expansion of lift irrigation. It describes how the existing property rights regime, by disregarding the basic ecological properties of water and the integrated nature of land and water use, creates conditions of unequal access and unsustainable use. Tanks and tube wells play a pivotal role here. The chapter argues that the ecological characteristics of land and water resources should be an inherent component of the formulation of property rights. It also argues that the use of energized water lifting technologies be subject to ecological considerations that prioritize sustainable consumption of scarce water supplies. This is imperative not only for the integrated management of land and water, but also for an equitable water distribution.Less

February: About Beavers

Ellen Wohl

in Saving the Dammed: Why We Need Beaver-Modified Ecosystems

February: when I first notice the days begin to stretch out after the tight curl of December and January. February: the month for creating new beavers. Somewhere ... More

February: when I first notice the days begin to stretch out after the tight curl of December and January. February: the month for creating new beavers. Somewhere sheltered from the cold light of sun reflecting off snow, in a bank den or a lodge, perhaps even in the water, the beavers are mating. The North St. Vrain beaver meadow is good habitat, and the adult pair will create another litter of two to four kits, allowing the current kits to become yearlings, and pushing the current yearlings out of the colony to find new homes and their own mates. I enter the meadow from the northern side on a mild day when a steady breeze seems to keep pace with the scattered clouds moving overhead. Just as I start to descend the slope into the meadow, I flush a moose resting beneath a big spruce. I am close enough to see the coarse, thick fur along the moose’s spine bristle with alarm and to note the scars where the animal dropped its antlers after the autumn rut. The alarm is only momentary. The moose ambles down the slope and into the meadow, steadily browsing willow stems as it moves. The stems have a hue of burnt yellow, and each bud is clearly visible, although not yet swollen. The past few days have been mild, and patches of bare ground show along the south-facing slopes and under the big conifers that border the beaver meadow. In the meadow itself the snow remains sufficiently deep to keep navigation easier by filling the pitfalls of the meadow—the winding canals, one beaver wide, and the steep-sided holes that the beavers dig to create air exchange near their dens. The snow bears abundant witness to the activity of the meadow. The widely spaced leaps of snowshoe hare tracks create diagonals between the creek and the conifer forests adjacent to the meadow. The single, precise line left by a fox has melted in the warmth of midday and refrozen into ice casts. Less

April: Six Degrees of Connectivity

Ellen Wohl

in Saving the Dammed: Why We Need Beaver-Modified Ecosystems

By late April, the snow is gone from the beaver meadow. The promises of March are starting to be fulfilled: insects are on the wing, some of the willows have furry ... More

By late April, the snow is gone from the beaver meadow. The promises of March are starting to be fulfilled: insects are on the wing, some of the willows have furry catkins along their branches, and fish jump from the quiet waters of the beaver ponds. I can no longer easily get around the beaver meadows on foot unless I wear chest waders. The sound of the beaver meadow in March was primarily wind. By April, the sound is primarily moving water. The water gurgles, shushes, and whispers. In another month it will roar with the melting snows. Another three miles up the creek valley and 1,500 feet higher, one of my long-term study sites still lies under 6 feet of snow, but in the meadow I see only one patch of tenacious snow-ice in the deep shade beneath a spruce along the northern edge of the meadow. I know that snow will still fall here during late spring storms, but it will melt quickly. March felt on the cusp, as if it could as easily tip toward winter or spring. Late April is definitely spring headed toward summer. The beaver meadow remains a riverscape more brown and tan than green. The willows are still leafless, although some of the branch tips are turning pale yellow-green and others seem to be taking on a more vivid orange hue. I can see the leaf buds starting to swell. The grass has just begun to grow in dark green tips steadily forcing their way through the thick mat of last year’s dead stems. Clusters of new leaves on low-growing wintergreen are the only other sign of green outside of the channels. Some of the smaller side channels are thick with emerald green algae undulating slowly in the current. A stonefly lands on my hand. Its slender, dark gray body seems surprisingly delicate for a creature that has hatched into the vagaries of April air, with its potential for blasting winds and sudden snow squalls. Less

“Money Causes Trouble”

Ellen Oxfeld

in Drink Water, but Remember the Source: Moral Discourse in a Chinese Village

This chapter looks at the meanings of wealth and the expectations surrounding wealth in Moonshadow Pond. The divergent discourses about wealth and class circulate in the village. A person might ... More

This chapter looks at the meanings of wealth and the expectations surrounding wealth in Moonshadow Pond. The divergent discourses about wealth and class circulate in the village. A person might emphasize class commonalities among villagers in one particular context, while in another context draw attention to wealth differences within the same group. People make both implicit and explicit moral judgments about the inequalities in contemporary society, as well as about the obligations of particular individuals with respect to their specific roles. At the end of the chapter, it asks if there are any unifying expectations beneath the many voices villagers use to talk about disparities in wealth in the reform era. The chapter concludes with a story that circulated around the village in 1996 (the story of Jintao's ring). It is illustrative of moral discourse in the village with respect to its presentation of the obligations in morality of wealth.Less

. The Riverine and Lacustrine Communities

Robert W. Hastings

in The Lakes of Pontchartrain: Their History and Environments

This chapter describes freshwater tributaries and freshwater lakes and ponds in the Pontchartrain basin. The major freshwater tributaries to the Lake Pontchartrain system include the Blind River, the ... More

This chapter describes freshwater tributaries and freshwater lakes and ponds in the Pontchartrain basin. The major freshwater tributaries to the Lake Pontchartrain system include the Blind River, the Amite River, and the Tickfaw River, which flow into Lake Maurepas, and the Tangipahoa River, the Tchefuncte River, Bayou Lacombe, and Bayou Bonfouca, as well as several smaller bayous (Chinchuba, Castine, and Cane) that flow into Lake Pontchartrain. There are no natural upland lakes, with lacustrine habitat, in the Pontchartrain basin, but several streams and rivers have been dammed to create artificial lakes. Borrow pit ponds have also been created along some major highways and along rivers such as the Amite and Tangipahoa where extensive gravel mining has occurred.Less

October: Of Beavers and Humans

Ellen Wohl

in Saving the Dammed: Why We Need Beaver-Modified Ecosystems

By mid-October, the first snow has fallen on the beaver meadow. There is no sign of snow when I visit a few days later, but the air feels chill in the shadows and a ... More

By mid-October, the first snow has fallen on the beaver meadow. There is no sign of snow when I visit a few days later, but the air feels chill in the shadows and a cool breeze leavens the sunshine’s warmth. Mostly, the beaver meadow seems a golden place. Many of the willow, aspen, and birch leaves have already fallen, but enough remain to create a glowing ménage of yellow, gold, palest orange, and tan. Each leaf refracts and filters the light so that it comes from every direction rather than only from above. Aspens on the north-facing valley slope stand bare and pale gray. Those on the south facing slope form bursts of gold among the dark green conifers. The beaver meadow remains lively with activity. Dance flies move upward and downward in a column of air backlit by sunshine, their delicate bodies shimmering in the low-angle light. A little black stonefly lands on the back of my hand. I resist the urge, bred by summer mosquitoes, to reflexively slap it away. As I cross smaller side channels, brook trout dart away from the warm shallows where they have been resting. The narrow band of white on each dorsal fin flashes as the fish moves swiftly toward deeper water. When one small trout gets momentarily stuck between two exposed cobbles, I cup its slender, wriggling body between my hands and help it along. Windrows of fallen leaves form swirling patterns on the water surface and streambed. Filamentous algae grow in thick green strands along the side channels, where lower water exposes wide bands of mud along the channel edges. The mud bands record the comings and goings along the channel: precise imprints of raccoon feet and deer hooves and blurrier outlines left by moose. Moose beds mat down the tall grasses scattered among the willow thickets. As usual, the beavers themselves elude me, but I see fresh mud and neatly peeled white branches with gnawed ends on some of the dams. Lower water in the beaver pond exposes an entrance hole in the side of the lodge. Less

December: Saving the Dammed

Ellen Wohl

in Saving the Dammed: Why We Need Beaver-Modified Ecosystems

At the nadir of the year, this is how morning comes to the beaver meadow. Just as the sun rises above the eastern horizon, a flush of pale rose lights the snow newly ... More

At the nadir of the year, this is how morning comes to the beaver meadow. Just as the sun rises above the eastern horizon, a flush of pale rose lights the snow newly fallen on the highest peaks. The beaver meadow remains in shadow, silent but for the creek flowing quietly between its rims of ice. The air temperature is well below freezing and frost whitens the pine needles like a dark-haired person starting to go gray. Wisps and sheets of snow flag off the summits in the steady wind. Over the course of a few minutes, the summit snow warms from pale rose to faint orange and then a rich, warm gold that also lights the rock outcrops at lower elevations. The wind reaches the beaver meadow before the sunlight, coming in abrupt blasts that shake loose the little tufts of snow remaining on the pine boughs. The wind sends the snow crystals slaloming across the ice on the creek with a dry, skittering sound like that of blowing sand. Before long, the meadow is submerged in a continual rushing sound created by wind gusting through the pines up slope, along the valley walls. The lateral moraine to the south keeps the beaver meadow in shadow until 9:30 a.m. Nothing is so slow as waiting for the warmth of sunlight on a cold winter morning. When the sunlight does reach the meadow, it brings out the colors of water, ice, grasses, and willows. Flowing portions of the creek change from gray to orange brown. The snow reflects the light in a painfully intense glare broken by the deep, long shadows that everything casts. With the sunlight comes a steady wind that blasts the crystalline snow onto my face like grit. Not much snow has fallen yet, but North St. Vrain Creek is completely frozen in places and covered with snow. The ice records the movements of water, freezing the pulses and turbulence in ice ripples and ledges, motionless swirls and bands. It seems a miracle that any water still flows in this gray and white world of ice and snow. Less

Learning from Walden

Joshua Kotin

in Utopias of One

This chapter concerns the pedagogy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854). When Thoreau moved to Walden Pond on July 4, 1845, his goal was to maximize his independence. America, from his perspective, ... More

This chapter concerns the pedagogy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854). When Thoreau moved to Walden Pond on July 4, 1845, his goal was to maximize his independence. America, from his perspective, had failed. To maximize his independence, Thoreau radically reduced the size of his world. He minimized his social and financial obligations, and chose to live in an artificially circumscribed environment. He also developed a practice of writing and rewriting that refined his perception of his environment. Writing became an instrument of attentiveness and suppression—a way to improve his vision and restrict its range. At Walden and in Walden there was little or no conflict between receptivity and sovereignty. Thoreau could be open to his surroundings and in control—vulnerable and secure. This was the beginning of Thoreau's utopia of one: a world small enough to be received in its entirety.Less

Nature and the Nuclear Southwest: Peggy Pond Church and J. Robert Oppenheimer

Sarah Daw

in Writing Nature in Cold War American Literature

Chapter Two takes as its subject the New Mexican poet Peggy Pond Church. Although Church is not a canonically recognised writer, this chapter reveals that her poetry and prose writings contain ... More

Chapter Two takes as its subject the New Mexican poet Peggy Pond Church. Although Church is not a canonically recognised writer, this chapter reveals that her poetry and prose writings contain innovative depictions of an infinite, ecological Nature that is even capable of containing the new nuclear threat. Church’s biography places her at the centre of the story of the nuclear Southwest; her family was evicted from her father’s Ranch School when the US government repossessed their land to make way for the Manhattan Project in 1942. The main body of this chapter reads Church’s poetry alongside an exploration of her interest in Pueblo Native American thought, revealing the degree to which Church drew on the Pueblo worldview in forming the ecological vision of the human relationship to Nature that defines her writing. The final section of the chapter explores the relationship between Church’s writings and those of her neighbour and correspondent, the atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, exposing the synergies between both writers’ contemporaneous depictions of ecology.Less

Yellowstone Tour

Robert B. Smith and Lee J. Siegel

in Windows into the Earth: The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

This tour of Yellowstone National Park and the Hebgen Lake earthquake area begins at Yellowstone’s south entrance, just north of Grand Teton National Park. Those ... More

This tour of Yellowstone National Park and the Hebgen Lake earthquake area begins at Yellowstone’s south entrance, just north of Grand Teton National Park. Those entering Yellowstone from other directions may start this tour at any stop that is convenient. For that reason, we have not shown cumulative mileage for this trip from start to finish. Instead, we provide cumulative mileage only from one stop to the next, and for points of interest between them. (Figure 9.1. See also Figure 1.4 for a view of the region’s topography.) Two long days or three less hectic days are required for this 251-mile tour. For those with limited time, some time-saving options are included, such as skipping West Yellowstone, Montana, and the Hebgen Lake earthquake area (Stops 7—12) or omitting Mammoth Hot Springs and other stops on the northern end of the park (Stops 14—16). If you want to spend only two days in Yellowstone and its environs, start early the first day (136 miles) and continue to Stop 12, West Yellowstone, Montana, where overnight accommodations are available. During the second day, visit Stops 13—20 (115 miles). If you wish to divide this chapter’s tour into three days, begin at Stop 1 and proceed through Stop 7, also West Yellowstone (79 miles). Spend the night there. Tour the Hebgen Lake area, Stops 8—11, the second day and return to West Yellowstone, Stop 12, the second night (57 miles). Cover Stops 13—20 the third day (115 miles). The tour ends inside Yellowstone, so you may want to spend the night in the area if you have a long drive home. The driving tour of Yellowstone is passable only from late spring to fall, when park roads are open. West Yellowstone, Montana, and the Hebgen Lake area, Stops 7—12, are accessible year-round, although winter snow covers most geological features. Vehicle odometers vary, sometimes significantly, so mileages should be taken as approximate. Some visitors may choose to drive part or all of these tours in a direction opposite to the one we use. Less