N America from space

alice's picture

I watched the latest BBC documentary with David Attenborough recently and was really impressed by the pictures from space of the North American continent.

Here's one of the photos:

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alice's picture

What struck me is the distinct way in which the major bioregions across the continent stand out in the pictures. There's the eastern seaboard, the great lakes, then in this frame all the rivers which drain into the Mississippi are highlighted:

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alice's picture

They shows the two streams of air running alongside the Rockies, warm air from the south meeting the cold air from the north, making the tornado country across the Great Plains:
[edited to attach a photo that shows more clearly the two weather systems meeting]

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alice's picture

And then you can see the Rockies, and the desert country to the South West of that, with the narrow green edge of the Pacific north west coast.

Maybe you all get this kind of stuff in your school geography lessons, but I thought it was such a beautiful way of showing why there are such disctinct bioregions across North America which is where I know most of you reading this forum are based. I thought it was worth posting in this subforum so people can talk about how their growing season is affected by where they are in the continent and hence what bioregion.

Maybe it's the time of year when these images were made, but you can see where the rain goes. East of the Mississippi is so green and lush. The further west you go, the less rainfall. It's pastoral ranching country and not rain-fed agriculture. And then the desert.

My dad grew up in North Dakota and he always said the Dakotas should have been divided into East and West Dakota as opposed to North and South Dakota. There is a rain line dividing the states down the middle. East of the line, you can farm with what falls from the sky (most of the time). West of the line, it gets chancier and chancier.

However, the state-makers wanted two states and the way the population was located (everyone lived in East Dakota and very few lived in West Dakota) meant lines on maps got drawn. These lines had nothing to do with what actually happened on the ground or how the residents would make a living.

Strongtowns. org (https://www.strongtowns.org/) is a website that discusses all kinds of people/city/cars issues. Stories about lines on map, drawn by some planner far, far away , make regular appearances.

Teresa from Hershey

alice's picture

Do you think that reform of those unhelpful lines on maps will start to emerge as towns and counties start really grappling with the long descent? I remember hearing that New Zealand went through a process guided by Maori elders where they redrew county lines to follow watersheds. So sensible.

Justin Patrick Moore's picture

That would be nice. I think the more people talking about their bioregion -having an actual connection to the Land... will be a part of the process. Thanks for these pictures. Very cool.

alice's picture

Found this image of the UK and Eire on a uk.gov website to add, maybe should change thread title, image belongs to Met Office and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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alice's picture

I happen to have an image of the watersheds in England, Wales and Scotland so adding it here as it's vaguely relevant. By Robert Szucs, from his atlas.

Glad you like, JPM.

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ClareBroommaker's picture

This made me think of something my son did when he was ten and homeschooled. He found a series of books, Rivers of America, which, to quote Wikipedia "is a landmark series of books on American rivers, for the most part written by literary figures rather than historians. The series spanned three publishers and thirty-seven years." The series began in 1937 and each book concentrates on a single river. Besides great writing, they also had great artwork, especially the woodblock print dust jackets. These books were my son's first concentrated look at American history and I thought he lucked onto a good idea. People always must live where there is water, and that water becomes a link to the world farther away.

In connection with the rivers there was much to learn about social and cultural history, geography, biology, bits of other languages, commerce, agriculture, the effects of far away wars, native peoples, boating, steam power, the loss of American forests, mined products, the needs of farm animals, seasonal weather, the effect of floods and drought, the importance of salt, the importance of family and workmates to survival, political history, even poetry. Studying the rivers seemed like such a natural way to learn both a broad and a very specific history.

About the same time that my son began reading these books, he and his father started fishing and traveling the Mississippi, so his book learning was made all the more real. A number of these old books were found on ebay, inexpensively at the time (library discards), but the prices on soon began to rise above what we could afford. Yet, some of people I'd bought from earliest were so tickled to hear of a kid that was so enamored of rivers that they sent him, gratis, other river related books when they came across one. A prize was a bibliography of books on early exploration of midwestern rivers, mostly primary sources.

Anyway, I just want to say that studying history (especially) through rivers is a great way to learn history. You know, I live on the Mississippi and so many people around here probably rarely give a thought to the river even though the city would not be here were the river not here. I think that has a lot to do with the fossil fuel privileges of our lifetime, don't you?

alice's picture

Yes, so much. Your comment 'people always must live where there is water' is right on it. And great that people passed along the resources for your son's interest. The water in the taps here is fueled by the electrical grid to drive pumps etc.

Same with the ignorance about where food comes from. 'The supermarket'? Well only when you assume that the industrial system is the same thing as life itself. I love the process of gradually working out other ways to get our food -- straight from the farmer as much as possible.

Am I right in thinking that many of the cities in the dry West of the USA are drawing on fossil water from deep aquifers which are obviously going to deplete in time, does anyone here know? I think I had heard that. I wonder what the projections are about how long those aquifers will provide at current depletion rates. I would think the geologists would have projections.

Hi Alice,

Yes, many of the great aquifers in the US are being mined for fossil water for industrial agriculture. It depends very much on the aquifer itself and which part as to whether or not the aquifer is being recharged by rainfall fast enough to replenish what is being removed. Google Ogallala aquifer depletion rates for more information.
On a side note, much of India pumps water out of their aquifers and those aquifers (again, location is everything) are being drained empty. The Saudis tried the same thing; growing wheat in the desert. That idea didn't last long.

In the end, most of us will go back to agriculture that is entirely dependent on what falls locally from the sky and what can be locally stored in giant cisterns.

Teresa from Hershey

ClareBroommaker's picture

Yes, it is called the Ogallala aquifer. It is a huge but dwindling underground reserve of silty water. It is drawn upon not just for domestic needs but irrigation. In this photo, the green circular patches are watered by long arms of overhead pipe that rotate from the center and rain down water. Center pivot irrigation enables the growing of wheat, corn, soy, alfalfa (you guys might call it Lucerne?), potatoes, and more. See the unwatered areas surrounding the circles? They are dry. I don't know how long the Ogallala is predicted to hold out, but it certainly is a much studied problem. I know there are some GWs who live in the high plains who would tell us the projections.

Here's a website from the state of Nebraska that gives some info (It is the one from which I borrowed the photo) https://nebraskaeducationonlocation.org/natural-attractions/ogallala-aqu...

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