Lessons from the Dust Bowl: Human-Environment Education on the Great Plains

Abstract

This article documents regional demand for human-environment educational resources via assessment of public knowledge of the environmental crisis known as the Dust Bowl. The steadily eroding knowledge-base on the topic is discussed along with the desire for enhanced Dust Bowl educational resources. Regionally focused educational activities utilizing geospatial technologies, family interviews, and repeat photography were created to help redress shortcomings in human-environment understanding of the Great Plains at a local level.     

Bedding characteristics of Holocene sediments from salt lakes of the northern Great Plains, Western Canada

The northern Great Plains region of western Canada contains many saline and hypersaline lakes. These lakes exhibit great diversity in geochemical and sedimentological characteristics which results in a wide range of bedding features and lamination types. Because of the high brine salinities and supersaturation with respect to many carbonate and sulfate evaporitic minerals, chemical laminae and beds are the most common stratification types observed. Simple monomineralic carbonate or sulfate layers as well as beds composed of complex mixtures of aragonite, magnesite, hydromagnesite, mirabilite, gypsum, epsomite,and/or bloedite occur frequently in Holocene sequences from these saline lakes. In addition, biolaminae, including microbialite bedding and accretionary tufa and travertine deposits, are present. Due to the dominance of chemical sedimentary processes operating in these lakes, physical laminae are uncommon. Other observed bedding features and sedimentary structures consist of distinctive pedogenic-cryogenic dry zones, salt karst structures, and clastic dykes and diapirs. Although paleoenvironmental investigations of these well-bedded sequences have just recently begun, several basins provide examples of the nature of paleolimnological information that can be derived from the salt lakes of the northern Great Plains. The chemical and biological laminae preserved in the Holocene sequence of Waldsea Lake provide evidence for significant fluctuations in brine chemistry and chemocline depth in this meromictic basin. Freefight Lake, another hypersaline meromictic lake, contains a relatively thick sequence of rapidly deposited, deep-water salts underlain by finely laminated carbonates, sulfates, and microbial mat sediments. These very thin, undisturbed laminae, combined with exceedingly high rates of offshore evaporite mineral accumulation, provide an excellent opportunity for high resolution geochemical and hydrologic reconstructions in a part of the region distinguished by a paucity of other sources of paleoenvironmental information. Chappice Lake, a shallow, hypersaline brine pool, contains a wealth of paleoenvironmental information. Although the basin probably never experienced the deep-water conditions that earmark Waldsea and Freefight lakes, nonetheless, finely laminated and well-bedded sequences abound in the Holocene record of Chappice Lake. The endogenic magnesium and calcium carbonates and sulfates comprising these laminae can be used to interpret the history of brine chemistry fluctuations which may then help to understand past changes in the hydrologic budget and groundwater inflow.     

18世纪以来塔里木河干流河道变化及其与人类活动的关系

 塔里木河是南疆主要的经济生活水源,其河道变化会引起绿洲变化,从而导致人类活动发生变化。学者虽对历史时期的塔河变化有研究,但对18世纪以来的河道变化缺乏细致的研究,这一时期是人类活动对环境影响日益增多的时期。在野外考察基础上,借助历史文献、历史地图对塔河干流沙雅以上和以下段分别进行研究,结果显示,18世纪20年代,塔河干流分南河、北河; 18世纪50年代,南河与北河合为一条,沿北河位置行水; 至19世纪10年代,塔河干流南移,在南河(即大干河)位置行水; 以后至20世纪10年代,沙雅及其以上河段再次北移,沿北河位置行水,以下河段仍沿南河位置行水,称叶尔羌河或塔里木河。至迟在40年代中期,沙雅以下河段向北迁移,沿渭干河行水,形成现代塔里木河河道。20世纪以前河道变化主要受自然气候变化所导致的河水量变化及河流自身运行规律影响比较大,在河道淤积基础上,水量变化是河流改道的主要原因; 以后受人类农业生产的影响日益加大。