River Planet

Gibling Martin

Description

RRiver Planet introduces readers to the epic geological history of the worlds rivers, from the first drop of rain on the Earth to the modern environmental crisis.The river journey begins with the first evidence of flowing water four billion years ago and continues with enormous rivers on the first supercontinents, after which terrestrial vegetation engineered new river forms in the Devonian period. The dramatic breakup of Pangea some 200 million years ago led to our familiar modern rivers as continents drifted and collided, mountains rose, and plains tilted.Among many remarkable cases, the book explores the rapid carving of the Grand Canyon, the reversal of the Amazon, and the lost rivers of Antarctica. There are gigantic meltwater floods from the Ice Age, which may be linked to accounts of the Deluge, and river systems drowned by rising sea level as the ice melted. Early human civilizations sought to control rivers through agriculture and irrigation, leading in the nineteenth century to hydraulic mining, the rise of big dams, and the burial of rivers below cities such as London. Rivers are now endangered worldwide, and the book celebrates people who preserve rivers around the world, bringing hope to river ecosystems and communities.River Planet is designed to be accessible for a general audience ranging from advanced high-school students to mature readers. The book will also interest professional scientists and students of geology, geography, and environmental science.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques

Informations

• Publié par: Dunedin Academic Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780466583
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 13 Mo

Extrait

RIVER PLANET
RIVERS FROM DEEP TIME TO THE MODERN CRISIS
MARTIN GIBLING
CONTENTS
Sourced Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part 1: Rivers in Deep Time
1 Rivers and Geological Time
2 The First Drop of Rain on the Nascent Earth
3 How Plants Bent and Split Rivers
Part 2: Our Modern Rivers
4 Breaking Pangea: The Ancestral Rivers of Africa
5 Hot and Cold: The River Histories of Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica
6 Young and Restless: The Evolving Rivers of Asia
7 The Conflicted Rivers of Europe
8 The Reversing Rivers of South America
9 Canyons and Cataracts in North America
10 A Canadian Amazon
Part 3: How the Ice Age Changed Rivers
11 Frozen Out: Northern Rivers Sculpted by Ice
12 Megafloods and Noah’s Ark
13 Rivers Drowned by the Sea
Part 4: Humans and Rivers
14 From Stone Age Streams to River Civilizations
15 The Lost Saraswati River of the Indian Subcontinent
16 Confucian Engineers on the Yellow River of China
Part 5: Engineered Rivers
17 Dead and Wounded Rivers
18 Collapsing and Closing Dams
19 Between the Dams: An Elegy for the Saskatchewan River
20 Without Spoiling the Land: Rivers and Agriculture
21 London’s Buried Rivers
22 Restored Rivers
Epilogue
Glossary
Further Reading
Endnotes
Index
SOURCED ILLUSTRATIONS
The following illustrations are reproduced by permission:
Shutterstock: Figures 4.9 , 5.5 , 11.1 , 11.2 , 16.4 , 17.2 , 17.4 , 17.5 , 22.5 .
Figure 2.6 : Don and Margie Wightman.
Figure 3.9 : Smithsonian Institution.
Figure 9.10 : American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
Figure 13.1B : John Gosse.
Figure 14.12 : George W. Houston, 1968 photo, ‘The Mouth of the Cloaca Maxima (1)’, Creative Commons license CC BY 2.0.
Figure 18.3 : Shirley and Mark Atkinson.
Figure 20.1 Myrtle Shock.
The following illustrations have been adapted from published sources:
Cover photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Figure 1.2 : Ogg, J.G., Ogg, G.M. and Gradstein, F.M. (2016) A Concise Geologic Time Scale 2016 . Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Figure 1.4 : Bridgland, D.R. and Westaway, R. (2008) Climatically controlled river terrace staircases: a worldwide Quaternary phenomenon. Geomorphology 98 , 288–315.
Figure 1.6 : United States Geological Survey.
Figure 1.8 : Fisk, H.N. (1944) Geological investigation of the alluvial valley of the lower Mississippi River . Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission.
Figure 1.9 : United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Figure 1.12 : (1) DeCelles, P.G. and Cavazza, W. (1999) A comparison of fluvial megafans in the Cordilleran (Upper Cretaceous) and modern Himalayan foreland basin systems. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 111 , 1315–1334. (2) Weissmann, G.S., Hartley, A.J., Scuderi, L.A., Nichols, G.J., Owen, A., Wright, S., Felicia, A.L., Holland, F. and Anaya, F.M.L. (2015) Fluvial geomorphic elements in modern sedimentary basins and their potential preservation in the rock record: A review. Geomorphology 250 , 187–219.
Figure 1.14 : Seni, S.J. (1980) Sand-body geometry and depositional systems, Ogallala Formation . Austin: Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, Report of Investigations No. 105.
Figure 2.1 : Valley, J.W., Reinhard, D.A., Cavosie, A.J., Ushikubo, T., Lawrence, D.F., Larson, D.J., Kelly, T.F., Snoeyenbos, D. and Strickland, A. (2015) Nano- and micro-geochronology in Hadean and Archean zircons by Atom-Probe Tomography and SIMS. American Mineralogist 100 , 1355–1377. doi. org/10.2138/am-2014-5134 .
Figure 2.2 : Li, Z.X., Bogdanova, S.V., Collins, A.S., Davidson, A., De Waele, B., Ernst, R.E., Fitzsimons, I.C.W., Fuck, R.A., Gladkochub, D.P., Jacobs, J., Karlstrom, K.E., Lu, S., Natapov, L.M., Pease, V., Pisarevsky, S.A., Thrane, K. and Vernikovsky, V. (2008) Assembly, configuration, and break-up history of Rodinia: A synthesis. Precambrian Research 160 , 179–210.
Figure 2.4 : NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Figure 2.5 : NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Figure 3.7 : Ielpi, A., Gibling, M.R., Bashforth, A.R. and Dennar, C.I. (2015) Impact of vegetation on Early Pennsylvanian fluvial channels: insight from the Joggins Formation of Atlantic Canada. Journal of Sedimentary Research 85 , 999–1018.
Figure 4.2 : Seton, M., Müller, R.D., Zahirovic, S., Gaina, C., Torsvik, T., Shephard, G., Talsma, A., Gurnis, M., Turner, M., Maus, S. and Chandler, M. (2012) Global continental and ocean basin reconstructions since 200 Ma. Earth-Science Reviews 113 , 212–270.
Figure 4.6 : Goudie, A.S. (2005) The drainage of Africa since the Cretaceous. Geomorphology 67 , 437–456.
Figure 4.7 : Madof, A.S., Bertoni, C. and Lofi, J. (2019) Discovery of vast fluvial deposits provides evidence for drawdown during the late Miocene Messinian salinity crisis. Geology 47 , 171–174.
Figure 4.8 : Bonne, K.P.M. (2014) Reconstruction of the evolution of the Niger River and implications for sediment supply to the equatorial Atlantic margin of Africa during the Cretaceous and the Cenozoic. In R.A. Scott, H.R. Smyth, A.C. Morton and N. Richardson (eds) Sediment provenance studies in hydrocarbon exploration and production . Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 386 , 327–349.
Figure 4.10 : Williams, C. and Nield, T. (2007) Earth’s next supercontinent. New Scientist 196 , 36–40.
Figure 5.1 : Seton, M., Müller, R.D., Zahirovic, S., Gaina, C., Torsvik, T., Shephard, G., Talsma, A., Gurnis, M., Turner, M., Maus, S. and Chandler, M. (2012) Global continental and ocean basin reconstructions since 200 Ma. Earth-Science Reviews 113 , 212–270.
Figure 6.3 : Tapponnier, P., Zhiqin, Z., Roger, F., Meyer, B., Arnaud, N., Wittlinger, G. and Jingsui, Y. (2001) Oblique stepwise rise and growth of the Tibet Plateau. Science 294 , 1671–1677.
Figure 6.8 : United States Geological Survey.
Figure 6.9 : United States Geological Survey.
Figure 7.2 : Pascucci, V., Gibling, M.R. and Sandrelli, F. (2006) Valley formation and filling in response to Neogene magmatic doming of Elba Island, Tuscany, Italy. In R.W. Dalrymple, D.A. Leckie and R.W. Tillman (eds) Incised Valleys in Time and Space . Tulsa: SEPM Special Publication, 85 , 327–343.
Figure 7.4 : Kuhlemann, J. (2007) Paleogeographic and paleotopographic evolution of the Swiss and Eastern Alps since the Oligocene. Global and Planetary Change 58 , 224–236.
Figure 7.5 : Olariu, C., Krezsek, C. and Jipa, D.C. (2018) The Danube River inception: Evidence for a 4 Ma continental-scale river born from segmented ParaTethys basins. Terra Nova 30 , 63–71.
Figure 7.7 : Preusser, F. (2008) Characterization and evolution of the River Rhine system. Netherlands Journal of Geosciences 87 , 7–19.
Figure 7.9 : Hötzl, H. (1996) Origin of the Danube–Aach system. Environmental Geology 27 , 87–96.
Figure 7.10 : Pierik, H.J., Stouthamer, E. and Cohen, K.M. (2017) Natural levee evolution in the Rhine-Meuse delta, the Netherlands, during the first millennium CE. Geomorphology 295 , 215–234.
Figure 8.3 : Figueiredo, J., Hoorn, C., van der Ven, P. and Soares, E. (2009) Late Miocene onset of the Amazon River and the Amazon deep-sea fan: Evidence from the Foz do Amazonas Basin. Geology 37 , 619–622.
Figure 8.4 : United States Geological Survey.
Figure 8.5 : United States Geological Survey.
Figure 9.4 : Ranney, W. (2012) Carving Grand Canyon . Grand Canyon, Arizona: Grand Canyon Association.
Figure 9.6 : Blum, M. and Pecha, M. (2014) Mid-Cretaceous to Paleocene North American drainage reorganization from detrital zircons. Geology 42 , 607–610.
Figure 9.7 : Galloway, W.E., Whiteaker, T.L. and Ganey-Curry, P. (2011) History of Cenozoic North American drainage basin evolution, sediment yield, and accumulation in the Gulf of Mexico basin. Geosphere 7 , 938–973.
Figure 10.2 : McMillan, N.J. and Duk-Rodkin, A. (1995) The Bell River System: Tertiary drainage from the eastern Cordillera to the Labrador Sea . Geological Survey of Canada Open File 3058 , 495–496.
Figure 11.3 : Duk-Rodkin, A., Barendregt, R.W., White, J.M. and Singhroy, V.H. (2001) Geologic evolution of the Yukon River: implications for placer gold. Quaternary International 82 , 5–31.
Figure 11.5 : Winchell, N.H. (1878) The recession of the Falls of St. Anthony. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society , London 34 , 886–901.
Figure 12.3 : Waitt, R.B., Long, W.A. and Stanton, K.M. (2019) Erratics and other evidence of late Wisconsin Missoula outburst floods in lower Wenatchee and adjacent Columbia Valleys. Northwest Science 92 , 318–337.
Figure 12.5 : Lewis, C.F.M. and Teller, J.T. (2007) North American late-Quaternary meltwater and floods to the oceans: Evidence and impact – Introduction. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 246 , 1–7.
Figure 12.6 : Mangerud, J., Astakhov, V., Jakobsson, M. and Svendsen, J.I. (2001) Huge Ice-age lakes in Russia. Journal of Quaternary Science 16 , 773–777.
Figure 13.2 : Fortier, Y.O. and Morley, L.W. (1956) Geological unity of the Arctic Islands. Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Series 3 50 , 3–12. (2) Bornhold, B.D., Finlayson, N.M. and Monahan, D. (1976) Submerged drainage patterns in Barrow Strait, Canadian Arctic. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 13 , 305–311.
Figure 13.4 : Alqahtani, F.A., Jackson, C.A.-L., Johnson, H.D. and Som, M.R.B. (2017) Controls on the geometry and evolution of humid-tropical fluvial systems: Insights from 3D seismic geomorphological analysis of the Malay Basin, Sunda Shelf, Southeast Asia. Journal of Sedimentary Research 87 , 17–40.
Figure 13.6 : Gupta, S., Collier, J.S., Palmer-Felgate, A. and Potter, G. (2007) Catastrophic flooding origin of shelf valley systems in the English Channel. Nature 448 , 342–346.
Figure 13.7 : (1) Bridgland, D.R. (2003) The evolution of the River Medway, SE England, in the context of Quaternary palaeoclimate and the Palaeolithic occupation of NW Europe. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 114 , 23–48. (2) Gibbard, P.L. (2007) Europe cut adrift. Nature 448 , 259–260.
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