Rivers, Estuaries, & Deltas
On (and Below) the Waterfront
The expansion of the New York metropolitan area’s harbor over the decades has led to big but hidden changes in tidal flows that have environmental impacts.
Read MoreUp in the Sky!
Nope, it’s not a bird or a plane. It’s a drone on a scientific mission to restore a river long…
Read MoreEarth’s Riverine Bloodstream
Like blood in our arteries in our body, water in rivers carry chemical signals that can tell us a lot about how the entire Earth system operates.
Read MoreOf The River and Time
The Fraser River in western Canada is flowing with tiny time capsules. Inside them is a fascinating history of Earth’s…
Read MoreA River Runs Through It
The geochemical journey of carbon from the atmosphere to the river.
Read MoreRiver Quest
Max Holmes and Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink spend a lot of time upriver—one day bundled in a parka on the icy banks…
Read MoreClimate Change Spurred Fall of Ancient Culture
The Harappans may be the most advanced ancient civilization that most Westerners have never heard of. They flourished in the…
Read MoreShifting Tactics in Shifting Shoals
The best-laid plans of scientists often go awry when they actually get into the field. “That’s when designing an experiment…
Read MoreNoah’s Not-so-big Flood
A long time ago, whether your time frame is biblical or geological, the Black Sea was a large freshwater Black…
Read MoreFollowing Whales Up a Creek
Michael Moore is accustomed to working solo (or nearly so) in remote places, but this was a very public endeavor.…
Read MoreChanging the Course of Rivers and History
Punjab means “five rivers.” The region in northern Pakistan is named for the great rivers that branch through the landscape,…
Read MoreAt the River’s End
In science, some of the most confounding and interesting questions come from the borderlands, where one physical world collides with…
Read MoreThe Once and Future Danube River Delta
?The Danube River Delta is like the Everglades,? said Liviu Giosan, who grew up near the Romanian wetlands. The triangle-shaped, sediment-rich region at the mouth of the Danube River is also rich with human history. A traditional maritime culture persists on the delta, and the United Nations has declared the region a World Heritage site. The Danube Delta is also a great place for a geologist to study how the coast stretches, contracts, and undulates with time?and human interference.
Read MoreThe Great Flood of New York
An ice dam forming a large Ice Age lake collapsed 13,350 years ago, sending a flood down the Hudson River Valley and causing dramatic climate changes.
Read MoreWhere the Rivers Meet the Sea
Estuaries are the borderlands between salt and freshwater environments, and they are incredibly diverse both biologically and physically. The diversity and the high energy of the ecosystem make estuaries remarkably resilient.
The Grass is Greener in the Coastal Ocean
Stretching from inland rivers and bays to the edge of the continental shelf, the coastal ocean accounts for about 10 percent of the ocean’s surface area. Yet this relatively small sliver of ocean contains about half of all the microscopic plants adrift in our seas.