Readings and Articles
For this section, please:
-
Read all of Chapter 9 (Chapter 8 in 4th edition): Rivers and Flooding. Please pay special attention to:
- Case History of the Mississippi Floods of 1973 and 1993 (pp 311-313, 5th edition; or pp 252-254, 4th edition);
- A Closer Look: Magnitude and Frequency of Floods (pp 300-301, 5th edition; or pp 265-266, 4th edition) and understand how to read a hydrograph or stream gauge graph;
- drainage basins and floodplain formation;
- the purpose and impacts of levees;
- effects of land use changes on floods (Figure 9.8, 5th edition; or Figure 8.10, 4th edition); and
- the different types of floods, especially the difference between upstream and downstream floods.
-
Review Section 13.2 (5th edition ) or Section 12.2 (4th edition): Surface Water and Figure 13.3 (5th edition) or Figure 12.2 (4th edition): Hydrologic Cycle
-
Review Section 17.7 (5th edition) or Section 16.7 (4th eiditon): Engineering Properties of Soil, specifically, Hydraulic Conductivity
-
Review “Other Earth Components: Air, Ice, and Water” the section on Water.
Additional resources you may check out:
- Before the Flood. This article gives a history of the engineering changes we’ve made to rivers and streams over the past 100 years, how these changes have made flooding worse (because the changes were made on “bad science,” and the billions of dollars this has cost us as taxpayers and homeowners
- Water Resources of Indiana. This site includes live data on the water levels of all major streams in the state of Indiana.
- Friends of the White River. This non-profit group promotes river clean ups, education, and advocacy with local governments to reduce pollution.
- Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Learn more about what the State of Indiana is doing to protect our waters by exploring this website.
- USGS. Read the USGS report on the June 2008 floods that inundated much of Central Indiana just downstream of Indianapolis.
In case you are bored this weekend:
- Read The Control of Nature by John McPhee, Section 1 on the US Army Corps of Engineers constant and expensive (greater than 270 million taxpayer dollars) struggle to prevent the Mississippi River from changing its flow channel to the Atchafalaya River which would mean that the major volume of water of the Mississippi would no longer flow through New Orleans.
- Read Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. This great book highlights how the construction and mismanagement of rivers in the U.S. was (and likely still is) driven mostly by personal greed and political gain. The book also serves as a history into the dam construction of the western and central U.S. and a look into the reality of how the Army Corp of Engineers builds and manages dams. Available at bookstores and at the IUPUI library.
- Go to Johnstown, Pennsylvania and visit the Johnstown Flood National Memorial. The site highlights the worst flooding disaster, and one of the worst natural disasters in the U.S. Find out how a luxury resort run by the most elite Americans of the late 1800s led to the deaths of 2200 people and the destruction of a major city of the time.