Midwest Aerial Geomorph

Over this last Thanksgiving I had the chance to fly back home to Minnesota. Something I really like to do is look at the landscapes through the airplane window (when I get a window seat). Although the midwest doesn't have much topography to look at, there is plenty of geomorphology to keep a geoscience-educated person entertained, along with some meteorology and infrastructure. I happened to have my camera onhand, something I'll try and remember to do more.

Shot of Springfield-Branson National Airport (KSGF) after takeoff

A limestone quarry outside of Springfield. Makes you realize how much limestone there is in this state!

Just making sure the wing is still attached. Yep!

Looks to be some kind of weather front, clear on one side, cloudy on the other.

Again, the weather front. I like this shot because it was difficult to see the land on the clear side due to scattering, so it looked blue, making this shot look like we're flying over the edge of Antarctica, a flight I would love to take someday.

Begin the fluvial geomorphology! A stream with some good meander-bends. Most geologic events take places over millions of years, so sometimes it's a nice break to think about meandering streams which are very dynamic (geologically speaking)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meander
You also don't realize how close clouds are to the ground sometimes until you see them from above.

Excellent example of a dendritic pattern stream in the light-colored farm square. It looks so sharp and clean probably due to the farmer plowing and planting right up to the stream bank, removing any kind of riparian zone. Although this maximizes growing land for the farmer this leads to more soil and fertilizers getting washed into the stream, a major problem in the midwest contributing to the Golf Dead Zone.

Saw these wind farms and knew I wasn't in Missouri aymore - Wind farms are common in Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois, but are slow to start up in Missouri (I've heard some fairly negative political radio ads about wind farms here) http://www.bls.gov/green/wind_energy/map_1_revise.png

Lake Thunderbird in Illinois, a neat little water body I saw which turns out to be a reservoir. http://lakethunderbird.us/ You can also really see where the smaller tributary valleys are where the dark heavy vegetation has been left untouched within the plowed lighter colored cropland.

I used to live next to the Mississippi River in my undergrad days, so part of me will always have a thing for large rivers and small river towns. This turned out to be the town of Hennepin, Illinois.

A larger river town. You can definitely see the industrial district along the river. I also liked the little airport just outside of town. I wonder how long until the city envelopes it? This is the cities of Peru and La Salle, Illinois

The cities of Peru and La Salle, Illinois, as above, but with the winding river in view. I wonder why the city doesn't develop into that meander point?

Sorry for the strange angle of the shot, but I wanted to get as much of this in view as possible to see all the little sandbar islands along the river. Getting into the heavily urbanized regions of Illinois.

A shot for the physicists. I saw this and didn't believe what I was looking at at first, but yes, that is Fermilab outside of Chicago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermilab

Canoe explain that? Geology research on the water

Lately I’ve been helping a fellow graduate student with his research of studying spatial variation of sediment buildup in an impounded stream. This involves getting in a canoe…

… and paddling up and down the stream, sticking a depth stick and a spike-tipped sediment probe into the water to map the topography of the river bottom and measure sediment thicknesses. My role in this whole business is to run the Trimble GPS, a handy little device that not only collects GPS data points but also allows you to store extra data along with each point (in this case, the water depth and sediment depth data).

This is really only my first full summer in Missouri since moving here from Minnesota, and there are a couple things I could say about the Ozarks in the summer compared to Minnesota. First, it is hot outside.

The last few weeks it’s been sunny and hot every single day. Half of the days in July were above 95 degrees, and I think about 7 of the days were above 100. I’m used to hot days in Minnesota but it’s usually one or two days where it gets hot and everybody notices it, but here it is continuous. Touche’, Missouri, your summers are brutal. I’ve concluded that there are only two weather settings here in the summer; constant death heat or massive tornado.

Second, more positively, there are no mosquitoes here. Growing up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes I just assumed they were an accepted nuisance for every summer day. This largely has to do with all of the bodies of water in this part of Missouri mostly being of the flowing nature. Also, thanks to the karst bedrock, water doesn’t pond on the surface for very long. While being here I have done plenty of work outside in the summer and I have yet to see a single mosquito or get a single mosquito bite. I won’t even get into the giant spiders I’ve seen, though. Or the snakes. Every time we had to paddle underneath up next to a low hanging tree I expected something to drop on me and take my blood.

An interesting note I think we’ve both seen during surveying is the correlation between thick sediment deposits and lily pads. There was a side tributary we paddled up that was full of the things and at times it took minutes to get the sediment probe out of the ground after making it through nearly 2 meters of sediment. I wonder, then, are the lilies only growing where the sediment is thick, or are the lilies trapping sediment and causing a buildup where they are present? Luckily, it isn’t my task to figure that “chicken or the egg” scenario out. I am interested to find out.

Despite it all I love fieldwork, and one of the reasons I stick to geology. It’s not so bad in Missouri as long as you drink plenty of water and have a sweet field hat. Oh, and some aviators.