Rivers of the Anthropocene (2024)

River basin trajectories: societies, …, 2009

Experimental Agriculture, 2010

Dam removal in the United States has continued to increase in pace and scope, transitioning from a dam-safety engineering practice to an integral component of many large-scale river restoration programmes. At the same time, knowledge around dam removals remains fragmented by disciplinary silos and a lack of knowledge transfer between communities of practice around dam removal and academia. Here we argue that dam removal science, as a study of large restoration-oriented infrastructure interventions, requires the construction of an interdisciplinary framework to integrate knowledge relevant to decision-making on dam removal. Drawing upon infrastructure studies, relational theories of coproduction of knowledge and social life, and advances within restoration ecology and dam removal science, we present a preliminary framework of dams as systems with irreducibly interrelated political, financial, environmental, social, and technological dimensions (PFESTS). With this framework we analyse three dam removals occurring over a similar time period and within the same narrow geographic region (the Mid-Columbia Region in WA and OR, USA) to demonstrate how each PFESTS dimension contributed to the decision to remove the dam, how it affected the process of removing the dam, and how those dimensions continue to operate post removal in each watershed. We conclude with a discussion of a joint research and practice agenda emerging out of the PFESTS framing.

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2018

Anthropocene, 2013

Geoforum

This article deals with the production of water science and its practical use in water management in France between 1960 and 2000, first at national scale, and then focusing on the Rhône and the Seine river basins. It uses the hydrosocial cycle concept to account for the way in which the course of water and that of human affairs were intertwined. It provides examples of co-production of water science and social order in specific places where scientists contributed to redefining what water was and how it should be managed – a practice which had longstanding effects on those waterscapes. It shows how categorisation played an important role in this process. Moreover, it argues that waterscapes also shaped science, and not just exclusively the other way round, because waterscapes offered research opportunities that differed according to disciplines.

Scroope 23, The Cambridge Journal of Architecture, 2014

Gaia. Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 2015

In June 1955, zoologist Marston Bates summarized a major interdisciplinary conference at Princeton University entitled Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. 70 participants from all continents had been invited to draw from their collective expertise to outline a better understanding of the human place in the natural world. “The sciences and the humanities form a false dichotomy,” Bates declared, “because science is one of the humanities. (…) If science itself is to survive, it looks as though we shall have to find some way of ‘humanizing’ it” (Bates 1956). Having spent many years in Colombia researching links between mosquito ecology, yellow fever and malaria, Bates knew the crucial importance of combining various pursuits of knowledge. 60 years later, the new field of environmental humanities (EH) is answering Bates’ plea to incorporate science within the humanities, while aiming to “humanize” it by combining insights from many different fields (Nye et al. 2013, Forêt et al. 2014). Environmental knowledge comes in many forms, with ecological, geological, and climatological understandings being forged alongside those that are historical, political, philosophical, ethical, literary, and artistic. The purpose of EH is to devise and implement an inclusive, ethical, sustainable, and equitable relationship with our planet (Forêt et al. 2014). Our goal in this paper is to show how the humanities can offer fundamental, applied, and immediate solutions to environmental problems.We begin by describing the state of EH in Switzerland, then suggest ways to strengthen this metadiscipline, before outlining four projects that illustrate the potential of the field. To conclude, we highlight the importance of integrated knowledge, while clarifying the scope of environmental problems.

Routledge eBooks, 2017

A B S T R A C T In Europe and North America the prevailing model of " natural " lowland streams is incised-meandering channels with silt-clay floodplains, and this is the typical template for stream restoration. Using both published and new unpublished geological and historical data from Europe we critically review this model, show how it is inappropriate for the European context, and examine the implications for carbon sequestration and Riverine Ecosystem Services (RES) including river rewilding. This paper brings together for the first time, all the pertinent strands of evidence we now have on the long-term trajectories of floodplain system from sediment-based dating to sedaDNA. Floodplain chronostratigraphy shows that early Holocene streams were predominantly multi-channel (anabranching) systems, often choked with vegetation and relatively rarely single-channel actively meandering systems. Floodplains were either non-existent or limited to adjacent organic-filled palaeochannels, spring/valley mires and flushes. This applied to many, if not most, small to medium rivers but also major sections of the larger rivers such as the Thames, Seine, Rhône, Lower Rhine, Vistula and Danube. As shown by radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating during the mid-late Holocene c. 4–2 ka BP, overbank silt-clay deposition transformed European floodplains, covering former wetlands and silting-up secondary channels. This was followed by direct intervention in the Medieval period incorporating weir and mill-based systems – part of a deep engagement with rivers and floodplains which is even reflected in river and floodplain settlement place names. The final transformation was the " industrialisation of channels " through hard-engineering – part of the Anthropocene great acceleration. The primary causative factor in transforming pristine floodplains was accelerated soil erosion caused by deforestation and arable farming, but with effective sediment delivery also reflecting climatic fluctuations. Later floodplain modifications built on these transformed floodplain topographies. So, unlike North America where channel-floodplain transformation was rapid, the transformation of European streams occurred over a much longer time-period with considerable spatial diversity regarding timing and kind of modification. This has had implications for the evolution of RES including reduced carbon sequestration over the past millennia. Due to the multi-faceted combination of catchment controls, ecological change and cultural legacy, it is impractical, if not impossible, to identify an originally natural condition and thus restore European rivers to their pre-transformation state (naturalisation). Nevertheless, attempts to restore to historical (pre-industrial) states allowing for natural floodplain processes can have both ecological and carbon offset benefits, as well as additional abiotic benefits such as flood attenuation and water quality improvements. This includes rewilding using beaver reintroduction which has overall positive benefits on river corridor ecology. New developments, particularly biomolecular methods offer the potential of unifying modern ecological monitoring with the reconstruction of past ecosystems and their trajectories. The sustainable restoration of rivers and floodplains designed to maximise desirable RES and natural capital must be predicated on the awareness that Anthropocene rivers are still largely imprisoned in the banks of their history and this T requires acceptance of an increased complexity for the achievement and maintenance of desirable restoration goals.

Geographical Journal, 2022

With the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report all but confirming the previous Panel's predictions about the current global socioeconomic trajectory of humanity, it is without doubt that the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2006) is upon us all. 1 The global human capacity to alter geological processes that has given the name to the current epoch is now making the impact of such transformation bare. Unprecedented fires in North America, Australia and the Amazon rainforest, extreme weather events, increased floods, coastal erosion, all these are becoming increasingly common, as are their effects on global socioeconomic and political systems. Damages visited upon Nature have been rendered largely invisible, at least at law, for decades. However, Rachel Carson's publication of Silent Spring in 1962 presaged the question that while '[m]an [sic], however much he may like to pretend the contrary, is part of nature … [c]an he escape a pollution that is now so thoroughly distributed throughout the world?' (p. 188). Notwithstanding the birth of the environmental movement that followed in the 1960s, and Christopher Stone's provocative question as to whether 'trees should have standing' (1972), damages to Nature have remained on

As we find ourselves in a geological epoch of our own making, it becomes necessary to reconsider the temporal scale of ethnographic enquiry; the effect of human behaviour is shown as a mark in deep time. Focusing on the East Anglian fenland, UK, this article considers the importance of thinking about long-term environmental change for the understanding of human life. First, the article explores the way in which human geological agency has transformed the landscape. It then goes on to argue that while the scale of such changes can only be understood against the backdrop of geological time, social life in the region nevertheless demonstrates 'temporal lock-in', which is defined in the article as an increasing fixation with the landscape of a single point in history. The consequence of such temporal lock-in is that long-term environmental variability becomes, literally, unthinkable; yet surface-level certainties of the present are called into question when the timescale of deep history is brought into view.

The Kings Review, 2017

The Broads are frequently imagined as a landscape of timeless, wild beauty; with mist-drenched fens, wide marshland skies, and tranquil waterways, seemingly far from the rigours of the modern world. They are an inspiration to the British conservation movement-" a breathing space for the cure of souls " — in the words of naturalist Ted Ellis, who lived in the heart of the Broads and knew the area well. But the Broads are a landscape woven on the loom of history, and the Anthropocene could represent the historical moment of its unravelling. Threatened for decades by a combination of development, over-exploitation, and pollution; rising sea levels now eclipse all these other risks. Within a few hundred years, much of this low-lying country will be drowned beneath the waves.

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 2018

Global perspectives on the complexities of environmental change impacts associated with past and present human activity are needed for the food and water security challenges of the twenty-first century. This is especially true for rivers, for which the onset and persistence of a range in human activities, altering their function and form, have been temporally and spatially variable. Ancient civilisations, states and empires extended geographically to cover sub-continental areas where their river modifying activities became linked to regional Earth system stresses arising from climate and land use change. We present a new interpretative framework for characterising and classifying human impact on river systems, emphasising that this has taken place over decadal to millennial time periods on a sub-continental scale. This 16-element classification and documentation of different human transformations, including land management, urbanisation, industry and engineering activities, is used ...

1. During recent decades, the ecological corridor has become a popular concept among ecologists, politicians and nature conservationists. However, it has been criticized from a scientific point of view. In this paper we question why this concept has been accepted so readily in policy and practice.2. We present a conceptual framework to analyse the rise of the concept, especially in the Netherlands. We have studied the Dutch literature from the period 1980-2005, including the main ecological journal Landschap (Landscape), policy documents and reports from the leading Dutch policy-oriented ecology research centre.3. Many actors, including politicians, stakeholders and scientists, were involved in the development of the ecological corridor and the related National Ecological Network on the national and regional level. The involvement of these actors changed the character of the concept into the multifunctional ‘robust corridor’.4. The ecological corridor was probably so influential because its vague and flexible character facilitated the coming together of various stakeholders and scientists. It also functions as a metaphor, applicable to well-known entities such as construction and transport. Finally, scientists from the policy-oriented research centre were able to link the concept to fundamental science, policy and practice. In some stages of the policy-defining process, however, conflicts arose between the proponents of scientific soundness and those of social robustness that reduced the role of scientists.5. Synthesis and applications. To make ecological concepts both scientifically sound and socially robust, several changes must take place in current interactions between ecology and society. Firstly, during concept development it requires the existence of extensive, largely interactive peer groups with clearly defined relationships between scientists and non-scientists. Secondly, the concepts should be flexible and relatable to relevant knowledge, insights, values and practices. Thirdly, several feedback loops between science and non-science should be set up during the various stages of concept development and implementation.