Hello, I'm using General Land Office surveys from the 1800s to reconstruct watershed history, but I've also found a rich resource in the narrative descriptions found in the surveyor's notes for the section lines and townships. Does anyone have experience using the GLO surveyors' (or other) narrative descriptions or hand-drawn maps (as opposed to the section line or monument vegetation documentation, which I am already taking advantage of) to reconstruct watershed history? Thank you in advance!
For analog experiences in Bolivia you can have:
http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/magazines/global/resilience-faces/yapuchiris
http://cambioclimatico-bolivia.org/archivos/20120323235933_0.pdf
http://www.campesinoacampesino.com/biblioteca/Portal_OL_Sistematizacion_Yapuchiris.pdf
Fopr experiences on "Participative SIG", you can have this pdf, and find an e-mail from the author at the end of the document (very interesting):
http://www.aguasustentable.org/documentos/file/simposio/rafael%20paredes.pdf
Also the university of La Paz (Universidad Mayor de San Andres UMSA, Agronomics faculty) and th Climate Change Program have experiences on "Information interchanges with peasants, about bioindicators behavior for the local agrometheorological pronostic generation.
Finaly, whrite to Jaime Argollo PhD. He's an Past Climate Changes expert and I know that he has more information on quotation of ancient books and recuperation of traditional knowledges por rebuilding hydrological data. He's e-mail is:
Best Regards,
Hugo C. Boero
Hello Seth,
I have never used narrative watershed descriptions but I have photocopies of a few had-drawn maps of the Obra River valley (western Poland) originating from the 18th Century. The materials were more like pictures than maps, with no maintained distances. But they delivered useful information about how the river pattern may have looked like in the vicinity of a given town or village. The cartographic materials helped a lot in planning field surveys. Field recconnaisance confirmed the presence of remains of former channels preserved in the modern land surface in places where a multi-channel (anastomosing) planform was marked in the historical maps.
So the maps helped much reconstructing the watershed history, regarding anthropogenic changes. In some places the middle Obra anastomosing system was replaced at once by straight artificial canals, in the beginning of the 19th century, however, in certain areas the change was gradual – a complete transformation into artificial “water highways” took place at the end of the century, almost 100 years later. Similar gradual changes, referred to a spatial extent of lakes in the middle Obra valley – these notions are also based on the analyses of editions of historical maps from the 19th century. The 19th century maps are more exact in realtion to the earlier cartogaphic materials, they were made on the basis of triangulation surveys carried out by the staff of the Prussian army.
The historical cartographic materials were an important source of information that gave rise to a conclusion that a multi-channel (anastomosing) was active in the middle Obra valley before intensive hydro technical works. Canalization was the fate of many other similar, multi-channel systems in Europe.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Kind regards,
Marcin
Marcin, Thank you very much for your interesting and informative answer! In our case, the hand-drawn maps are cartographically inaccurate as you describe for the Obra, yet also reveal some interesting features, such as the previous existence of marshes and lakes that are now drained for agriculture. I am interested to learn more about the use of historical maps for planning restoration in the Obra, do you have any publications, reports, or presentations from this work?
By the way, I looked at pictures of the Obra River and it looks very nice, similar to some streams in Czech Republic I visited, specificly the Luznica.
My dissertation was on a literary interpretation of the historical/biological history of the North Umpqua River in Central Oregon. You can find my dissertation online under my old name Lisa M. Lynch. Union Institute and University 2005.
Lisa, I found the title and abstract of your dissertation... it looks fascinating. I'm having trouble finding a full-text or pdf online, can you please send me the link? Thanks!
Seth - sure. I can send you what is called the contextual essay that contains my methodology and the content of my research. The novel itself is very interesting and has had some good reviews by readers. I'm still working on finding an agent and publisher but am getting closer to that this fall. It might take me awhile to find the file - should I send it to you through ResearchGate or email?
In Spain there are aerial photographs of all the country made in 1956 ("the American Flight"). We use them usually as a reference to analyze the river evolution in the last 60 years.
I could not find my copy of a document prepared by Stanley W. Trimble concerning SC Piedmont, 1974 entitled Man-Induced Soil Erosion of the Southern Piedmont 1700-1970. Soil Conservation Society of America, Akeny, Iowa. USA 180 pp.. If you can get a copy, you will find a great example on how he used many references to the past, many footnotes, etc. Truly an amazing effort to seek. Stanley Trimble was a professor also at USC - California, and has since moved back to Tennessee in retirement. He has a reprint revision of his old work for sale, and it may have taken out some of the detail I don't think you will find any problem in finding the revision or reprint on Amazon. Stanley wrote several publications on Coon Creek, sedimentation studies, and I think it was in Mississippi. I hope you can get or at least read portions of the original copy, and his attention to history and detail, but his update may be just as good, I don't know.
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