Hydrology Quotes

What we contemplate here is more than ecological restoration; it is the restoration of relationship between plants and people. Scientists have made a dent in understanding how to put ecosystems back together, but our experiments focus on soil pH and hydrology—matter, to the exclusion of spirit. We might look to the Thanksgiving Address for guidance on weaving the two. We are dreaming of a time when the land might give thanks for the people.

The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies. "Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth." "Right, like geologists." "Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle..." "So, it's like oceanography or hydrology." "And the atmosphere." "Meteorology, climatology..." "It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet." "How is that different from ecology or environmental science?" "Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--" "Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci." "Some geographers specialize in different world regions." "Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department." "They're not." (Long pause.) "So, uh, what is it that do study then?

Like any stage of the hydrologic process, we have our own peculiarities, our organs making us nothing more than water pools or springs of bizarre shape, filled with pulsing tubes and chambers.

Beavers, the animal that doubles as an ecosystem, are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon populations, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year. If that all sounds hyperbolic to you, well, I’m going to spend this book trying to change your mind.

And I feel certain there must be a second set of laws, inscrutable but real, that governs exactly how much a particular individual can give to and receive from another. Some hydrology of human generosity. Because there are these gifts we can make to one another freely, reflexively, with no sting of loss; and there are gifts we fight to relinquish, beg to get.

Over human timescales, however, our disruption of geography will haunt us. Soil lost to erosion, coastal areas claimed by the sea, and mountaintops sacrificed on the altar of capitalism won't be restored in our lifetime. And these alterations will set in motion a cascade of side effects--hydrologic, biological, social, economic, and political--that will define the human agenda for centuries.

Orwell declares, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” which makes direct observations and firsthand encounters in the material and sensory world likewise acts of resistance or at least reinforcements of the self who can resist. To spend time frequently with these direct experiences is clarifying, a way of stepping out of the whirlpools of words and the confusion they can whip up. In an age of lies and illusions, the garden is one way to ground yourself in the realm of the processes of growth and the passage of time, the rules of physics, meteorology, hydrology, and biology, and the realms of the senses.

A tree can lift and transpire vast amounts of water. A single tree in the Amazon rain forest lifts hundreds of liters of water every day. The rain forest behaves like a green ocean, transpiring water that rains upward, as though gravity were reversed. These transpired mists then flow across the continent in great rivers of vapor. The water condenses, falls as rain, and is pulled back up again through the trees. It rises and falls on its westward migration an average of six times before finally hitting the physical barrier of the Andes mountains and flowing back across the continent as the mightiest river on Earth. Similarly, Indonesia, with 114 million hectares (280 million acres) of tropical forest (it is the second most forested country in the world after Brazil) is a vital part of the Asian hydrologic cycle. Around the world, forests constantly replenish Earth’s supply of fresh water and play a key role in weather and climate.

The world remained ignorant of the accident at Chernobyl until the morning of Monday April 28th (it’s April 28th 2014 as I’m writing this, strangely enough), when a sensor detected elevated radiation levels on engineer Cliff Robinson as he arrived for work at Sweden’s Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, over 1,000 kilometers away. “My first thought was that a war had broken out and that somebody had blown up a nuclear bomb,” says Robinson. “It was a frightening experience, and of course we could not rule out that something had happened at Forsmark.”186 After a partial evacuation of the plant’s 600 staff, those that remained urgently tried to locate the source of what they assumed was a leak somewhere on site. It became apparent from isotopes present in the air that the source was not a nuclear bomb, as was feared, but a reactor. The Swedish Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology analysed the trajectory of the radioactive particles in the atmosphere, which indicated that they were emanating from the southeast: The Soviet Union. Sweden’s Ambassador in Moscow telephoned the Soviet State Committee for the Use of Atomic Energy to ask what was happening, but was told they had no information for him. Further inquiries were made to other Ministries, but again the Soviet government claimed they had heard nothing about any accident. By the evening, monitoring stations in Finland and Norway had also detected the high radiation contents in the air.187

Get used to it. The weather may feel like science fiction, but the science underlying it is very real and mundane. It takes only a small increase in global average temperatures to have a big effect on weather, because what drives the winds and their circulation patterns on the surface of the earth are differences in temperature. So when you start to change the average surface temperature of the earth, you change the wind patterns—and then before you know it, you change the monsoons. When the earth gets warmer, you also change rates of evaporation—which is a key reason we will get more intense rainstorms in some places and hotter dry spells and longer droughts in others. How can we have both wetter and drier extremes at the same time? As we get rising global average temperatures and the earth gets warmer, it will trigger more evaporation from the soil. So regions that are already naturally dry will tend to get drier. At the same time, higher rates of evaporation, because of global warming, will put more water vapor into the atmosphere, and so areas that are either near large bodies of water or in places where atmospheric dynamics already favor higher rates of precipitation will tend to get wetter. We know one thing about the hydrologic cycle: What moisture goes up must come down, and where more moisture goes up, more will come down. Total global precipitation will probably increase, and the amount that will come down in any one storm is expected to increase as well—which will increase flooding and gully washers. That’s why this rather gentle term “global warming” doesn’t capture the disruptive potential of what lies ahead. “The popular term ‘global warming’ is a misnomer,” says John Holdren. “It implies something uniform, gradual, mainly about temperature, and quite possibly benign. What is happening to global climate is none of those. It is uneven geographically. It is rapid compared to ordinary historic rates of climatic change, as well as rapid compared to the adjustment times of ecosystems and human society. It is affecting a wide array of critically important climatic phenomena besides temperature, including precipitation, humidity, soil moisture, atmospheric circulation patterns, storms, snow and ice cover, and ocean currents and upwellings. And its effects on human well-being are and undoubtedly will remain far more negative than positive. A more accurate, albeit more cumbersome, label than ‘global warming’ is ‘global climatic disruption.’ 

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants. It is medicine for the earth.

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants.

This would be good country,” a tourist says to me, “if only you had some water.” He’s from Cleveland, Ohio. “If we had water here,” I reply, “this country would not be what it is. It would be like Ohio, wet and humid and hydrological, and all covered with cabbage farms and golf courses. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. You see what I mean?” “If you had more water more people could live here.” “Yes sire. And where then would people go when they wanted to see something besides people?” “I see what you mean. Still, I wouldn’t want to live here. So dry and desolate. Nice for pictures but my God I’m glad I don’t have to live here.” I’m glad too, sir. We’re in perfect agreement. You wouldn’t want to live here, I wouldn’t want to live in Cleveland. We’re both satisfied with the arrangement as it is. Why change it?” “Agreed” We shake hands and the tourist from Ohio goes away pleased, as I am pleased, each of us thinking he has taught the other something new.

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Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants. It is medicine for the earth.

Climbing a mountain, climbing this mountain, means following a river against the flow through the valley, then a stream up on the mountain’s flank, past waterfalls, and, eventually, to this little spring. It means walking against the hydrological cycle, against the order of things, to the source of life. To youth. To birth.

Forests support wildlife, including economically desired species like salmon. They help a lot with hydrology, preventing floods and keeping our water supply clean. And then there's that huge, overarching service trees perform: they pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it via photosynthesis...Excess oxygen is released into the air.

Who scouts through wilderness and cold And finds the stone that turns to gold, The gems of Nature's wealth untold-- The Engineer. Who gets five paltry plunks per day To give the thing he finds away To some one else who makes it pay-- The Engineer. Who's heart is always in the game, When trouble comes it's just the same, But when it comes, who gets the blame? The Engineer. - Robert Elmer Horton (Water Power and Water Supply Preliminaries, 1913, Michigan Engineer)

hydrological warfare.

In an era where detailed maps and especially aerial surveillance were scarce, the government carefully maintained redundant map sources far from the capital: The Army built a map depository in Omaha, Nebraska, the Navy maintained a hydrologic chart depository in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Air Force maintained an aeronautical chart library in St. Louis, Missouri. Such

books is my friend

The sun’s energy moves water among these various reservoirs to form what’s termed “the hydrological cycle.” The largest and most dynamic part of this cycle is the flow of water from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere (85 percent of this flow comes from evaporation of the ocean, the other 15 percent from the land, much of it transpired by plants). That water remains aloft for an average of ten days before condensing and falling back to the surface as rain or snow (77 percent falling on the ocean and 23 percent on the land).

And I feel certain there must be a second set of laws, inscrutable but real, that governs exactly how much a particular individual can give to and receive from another. Some hydrology of human generosity. Because there are these gifts we can make to one another freely, reflexively, with no sting of loss; and there are gifts we fight to relinquish, beg to get.

It must be borne in mind, however, that, despite their destructive potential, floods are a natural part of both the hydrologic and the ecological systems of the West. Floodwaters carry nutrients and organic material that are deposited onto the surrounding floodplains, producing fertile soils. These soils have made California one of the most important agricultural centers in the world, generating $30 billion per year. More than half of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables consumed in the United States are grown on some 87,500 farms in California’s Central Valley. Nevertheless, residents in California and other regions of the American West continue to face risks from catastrophic flooding as they place themselves directly in the path of floodwaters, building their homes on floodplains that will inevitably be washed away in the next extreme wet year. To this day, cities sprawl onto the floodplains, housing developments pop up in the deltas, and homes are built on the edges of cliffs and canyons where landslides occur. Clearly, as Steinbeck indicated, society has collectively “lost its memory” of the earth’s climatic past.

There is more heat stored in the first 10 feet of the ocean than in the entire atmosphere. It drives the hydrologic cycle, harbours 80% of all living organisms, absorbs 30% of the carbon dioxide we produce, generates over 50% of the oxygen in the atmosphere, and accounts for over 95% of the habitable space on the planet.

We must not forget that humans also have relationships with the landscapes around them. Fully functional residential landscapes must meet the physical, cultural, and aesthetic needs of humans while generating ecosystem services required by diverse other species. We may use ferns even though they contribute little to local food webs because they provide cover for wildlife, are beautiful, are durable ground covers, help replenish atmospheric oxygen, aid in hydrologic recharge, and can be the vegetational backbone of soil ecosystems. We may use splashes of colorful plants even if they are not indigenous to our region because they are beautiful and they will draw us into our gardens to experience the life around us. And we will not skimp on the core group of plants that support most of the biodiversity vital to ecosystem function.