The Bill Williams River Map...Planet Valley, 1953-2005

My perpetual map of the Bill Williams River, AZ is squeaking toward a state of preliminarity. The story of the BWR is a fascinating one. It is a large, sediment laden river with a fantastically skewed flood regime (i.e. flood peaks that are orders of magnitude larger than average flows) that has been bottled up by a dam with a tiny peak-release capacity since 1968. Thus, its potentially huge, but short-lived flood peaks (spikes of 50 to 150+k cfs) have been degraded to long-lived, low discharge events (bricks with prolonged peaks of no more than 7k cfs) that have lots of time to impart change to the channel. Since the dam traps easily more than 95 percent of the river's load, lots of interesting things happen.

The mapping that I have been working on is an attempt to document the morphological change in the river corridor over the last 60 years or so with a nice set of orthorectified aerial images from each decade. Lots of cool things can be done with the images, mapping, and GIS. So far, I have only mapped each generation and 'cookie-cut' them into each subsequent generation to illustrate the evolving mosaic of alluvial deposits. This is made quite simple with the analysis\overlay\erase and data\general\merge functions in ArcGIS. A much more elaborate scheme using the analysis\overlay\symmetrical difference tool is also in the works. Instead of the straight cookie-cutter approach, the sym difference approach essentially piles each layer on the other and then cookie-cuts it, creating a sort of virtual stratigraphy that documents what features have changed to what features (or have remained the same) over the time series.

(download)

In any case, the series of images above provides some visual insight into how a dynamic fluvial system evolves and creates the complex mosaic of deposits and surfaces that you see at any given time. In this case, the final map is the net result of only 5 decades of activity. Ahh...surficial geology...so simple, right? Soon the maps will have legends, etc. Just wanted to show some real progress. The image below shows how individual surfaces from each generation remain out there today in an intricate array.

Streamflow 2.0 Redux: Wateralert

Back in January of this year, I enthusiastically lauded the USGS for some nice new 'Streamflow 2.0' functionality: http://geofroth.org/?p=465 At the end of that post, I reported on their StreaMail program which provided a venue for getting sms or email updates on flow conditions at your favorite gaging station. My bold and crass assertion was that it 'verged on cool' or something to that effect, but that it needed more flexibility. Well, that sentiment was clearly widely felt (and probably keenly anticipated by the originators), and the application has been followed-up on with an excellent one. Now, you can pick and choose your gages, a reporting interval, and a threshold discharge to trigger a notification. Super sweet. An RSS feed would also be good (maybe possible anyway?), but this is a huge and useful development.

The application is called Wateralert, and it is completely cool. Pick out your favorite gages and give it a run while the spring peak starts to develop...at least out West. Thanks to Joe Cook for reporting the new app to me!

Google Fusion Tables + Geochronologic Data = Useful

I recently promised a group of colleagues that I would be able to quickly generate a kml file of all compiled geochronological data for the Grand Canyon and Colorado Plateau region using just a spreadsheet. Luckily, several of them had compiled such a spreadsheet following a symposium on the river back in 2000 (check out the symposium volume at this LINK--you may have to look around a bit). Why did I make such a promise? Well, I have actually had some experience using Google's neato spreadsheet mapper in Google Docs. I used it while experimenting with 'Virtual Unit Descriptions' for some favorite areas, and recently reposted them at Fresh Geologic Froth. One limitation of the spreadsheet mapper...ok, two limitations...are: 1. It is a bit cumbersome to work with; and 2. There is a limit of 400 places. At the Google Outreach site they mention that if that limitation is a problem, check out Google Fusion Tables (a Google Labs product). When I first got there I was baffled by it, but soon figured out just how simple it is to use. You start with an adequately formatted spreadsheet, indicate which columns contain data you would like to report and which ones contain values that represent 'geolocational' data and, voila!, a freaking map appears! (Note: Must use WGS84 lat and long in decimal degrees for coordinate data).

From this step it takes one click to generate a kml file of the dataset, which was my ultimate goal. With that file (obviously) it is possible to evaluate the data in Google Earth or Google Maps. Click on a point and get a selected list of attributes to learn about the data. This is huge, right? Sure it is. Check it out:

Here it is in Google Maps showing the data that can be viewed at any point:

Please note that Google Fusion Tables have potential to perform much more complicated tasks and create some interesting data mashups, but this is what I needed and it was simple. I also found that it was possible to invoke fancier balloon templates to show your data, but stayed simple for this application. Even with these screenshots, I suspect you can see what a useful application this is for evaluating geochron data.

Currently, we are organizing a follow-up symposium and will be populating the dataset with 10 years of new stuff. Ideally, these types of datasets are open and accessible to geoscientists who continue to generate geochron data. We shouldn't wait a decade to add a decade's worth of data anymore, right? That would be downright nutty.

The mighty Bill Williams River...now in Gigapan form!

Where did I spend my spring break? In the field of course. One of the highlights was my successful collection of 100s of photographs of my favorite reach of the Bill Williams River using my Gigapan robot. The image below is composed of 798 individual photographs. It was a perfect day (though breezy) to grab a gigapan...nice temp, perfect light, etc. It also came on the heels of a recent dam release flow of ~3000 cfs and provides nice perspectives on what that flow did (or didn't) do to the channel as well as the status of the riparian vegetation. There is a huge amount of information in this image, and I have only started to create 'snapshots' of key areas. So far have focused mainly on vegetation on the older surfaces. The river has a very complicated recent geomorphologic an hydrologic history related to dam operations upstream that have greatly reduced peak discharges; greatly attenuated and protracted flood hydrographs; and virtually eliminated 'zero-flow' years. The presence of the dam has also enabled the releases of experimental hydrographs that have had notable and important impacts on the riparian corridor. I have a lot to say about the Bill Williams (as do several of my colleagues) and will probably trickle some more data and images out as I finally wrap-up my mapping there over the next month or so. Check it out: To really explore the image and create snapshots (please, dear colleagues) visit the Gigapan.org site: http://www.gigapan.org/media/gigapans/44974/

Owyhee gigapan...now with more context!

This gigapan image includes a view of the Owyhee canyon reach that includes the lava outcrop shown in my previous post. I figured that I better post it to establish better context for just how huge and precarious that particular outcrop is. There are even parts of other Owyhee gigapans that I have shot that are partly evident in this image. Anyone sense the potential of combining the gigapan and photosynth concepts into an interactive viewer...? If so, write the code and fill me in when you are done.

Gigapan image of intracanyon lava flows, Owyhee River, OR.

Thanks to Ian for reminding me that I can embed gigapans on the new version of my blog. Thought that I would start with this one because we just sent some separates (holocrystalline groundmass) to New Mexico Tech for irradiation prior to Ar-Ar analysis. The sample from here comes from the conspicuous gray wedge of lava that you can see slightly below center on the left edge of the image...zoom in and you can see the Paleomag team and their sample holes. The paleomag sample locations here and elsewhere along the Owyhee have been sampled by our team's paleomagician in the interest of both paleomag analysis and Ar-Ar dating. Handy! The basalt flows in this image are early Pleistocene intracanyon lavas that occupy a paleochannel of the Owyhee River, Oregon. The base of the lowest flow of the three main flows is a couple of hundred feet above the modern river. We already know that the flows have reversed polarity, but we are dying to know their radiometric age. If you find this type of image interesting, I have many more at Gigapan.org (http://www.gigapan.org/profiles/9168/). More importantly, however, go get yourself a gigapan robot. You will be pleased.

Pathological Geomorphology... hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Over the weekend I pondered setting up yet another blog (the disorder is called schizoblogophrenia) to be dedicated to images of extreme, bizarre, incredible, shocking, or otherwise intriguing landscapes and landforms of the Earth. This was brought on by searching Google Earth, Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Flash Earth for my contribution to a recent Where on (Google) Earth competition...I settled for something I already knew about, but found some amazing places in the process. The brief experience of seeking a weird site brought back lots of memories of scouring atlases and coveting every published compilation of satellite imagery of the Earth back when I was much younger. I concluded that a group blog would be a far better way to pursue this goal and have invited people to contribute. So far, some takers. It is a Posterous blog called Pathological Geomorphology. I chose the Posterous platform because it is really simple, clean, and easy to combine multiple collaborators. Let me know if you want to contribute. There are no expectations of post frequency, only some general guidelines laid out in the blog's first post: http://geopathology.posterous.com/what-and-why. It is also likely that I or another contributor will put out an occasional call for some thematic pathological imagery posts for the group to find (i.e., extreme alluvial channel patterns, awesome alluvial fans, baffling thermokarst, etc., you name it). A blog such as this has the potential to develop a useful catalog of images and related concepts for purposes of education, research, and constructive procrastination.

Video of the Verde River photo re-occupation

My long-term flood deposit study site on the Verde River (1992-2010) not only reveals my advancing age, but provides an interesting series of photo comparisons. I discussed this on the Fresh Geologic Froth blog previously: http://geofroth.posterous.com/18-years-of-flood-wrought-change-verde-river Here is a video of the site that brings it to life a bit more...even with high-tech, on-the-fly photo comparisons. Witty dialog as well. Enjoy...or not:

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lna5NTA_7vY

While you are at it, check out this (once banned and even kept from my prying eyes while I was doing dissertation research on the Verde) video taken by the USGS during a very large flood in February 1993. The gage is less than half a mile from the site in my video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bczAOaZoaHI&feature=related

This turns out to have been the second largest flood on record ( 124,000 cfs) for the Verde (aside from one larger, but quite uncertain historical flood in 1891), but since it occurred slightly more than a month after the largest flood on record in early January, 1993 (145,000 cfs)...you can ignore it in the annual flood series...hooray!...well maybe...boo! Anyway, the video was banned for a while because of the absurd risks taken by the USGS technicians. I am certain that they would dispute my characterization of their actions as absurd. I am glad that they got some real data from a huge flood since that almost never happens.

Archives

Filed under tips