What is a River? A Basin?

  There is something intriguing about rivers. These ribbons of water that snake through mountains and plains, tumbling headlong into the sea. If they have a purpose, it is only to act as a drain.Yet they do so much along the way. Given time they carve canyons. Too much rain in the highlands and the river swells and floods the lowlands. They generate enough energy to power cities. The are arteries of ecosystems. They are the heart of civilization.

  Where would we be without rivers? Look at the world today. Every major city is on a river. New York? The Hudson. London? The Thames. Paris? The Seine.Cairo? The Nile. The Cradle of Civilization was the meeting place of two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Large populations rely on a river. Not only are they a source of fresh drinking water and fish for food, they are a vast transportation network. This is important for two reasons, one is trade. Using the power of the river you can easily send and receive your goods. One of the features that turned London into the powerhouse it is today is that the Thames experiences two tides a day. The waters of the sea rush inland, making it easy for ships to reach the city. Then the same waters rush back out again, carrying those same ships out for/with fresh supplies. All done quickly and efficiently, with the effect of nearly doubling trade capacity. Just as important as trade is communication. Before there was the internet, or phones, or other telecommunication systems, rivers were the communication network of choice. With rivers, rulers could more effectively command a larger area. The land and people could be brought to order. These factors together would help free people from constant farming and walking. With free time people could devote more of themselves to developing art and science.

  Today, we use dams to hold back the river. This allows for even larger cities than a free flowing river. You have stored more water for drinking. You generate electricity to power it's businesses. You prevent flooding of the lowlands, thus producing more land that it is safe to build upon.

  It took a long time, it seems, for cities to realize that they often poisoned their own waters. Because the river acts as a drain, people treat it as a sewer. The first toilets and sinks would drain into rivers, where the waters would take the waste away to be forgotten about. But a city can produce more waste than a river can disgorge. It's still a lesson many cities are learning today.

  The river's basin is the area of land that the river acts as a drain for. Whenever there is precipitation, some of that water is absorbed by the earth into underground aquifers and some is consumed by plants and animals. The rest rolls along the surface, rain drop by rain drop collecting into larger and larger bodies. Glaciers and snow melt to swell rivers in the summer. Springs in the clefts of mountains release underground streams. These and other tributaries gather together into the river body that seeks it's path to the sea.

  So, the map I am creating is one of viewing where the water goes. If a rain drop falls in such-and-such location and is not absorbed by the earth, plants, or animals. If it joins a stream that joins a river. Will that river be the Columbia or one of it's tributaries?

  Next time I shall talk a little about the Columbia and the reasons I chose this river.

Happy hunting,
Brett

Intro, or I Love Geography.

So, I've long considered starting a blog. But I often find that if I have the time to make a blog I'm not doing anything worth talking about. On the other hand, participating in fun activities becomes a substitute for finding something interesting to say. However, some blogs are project based. Here is something cool, crazy, creative, etc that someone is working on and they want to share their experiences with everyone.

This blog will be of the later sort. I have a project that I have been working on for some time and only now thought I would share with everyone. I find it terribly interesting, but for some (most?) it will seem terribly boring. Tedious even. Utterly without reward. Perhaps I am starting this blog to find that special niche audience that may find interest in my little project.

Speaking of which, what is this project I am working on? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm mapping the entire Columbia River basin. Huh? Still have questions? Well, let me elucidate. The story begins in my freshman year at college. Actually, I could say it goes even further back to middle school. So let's take a quick detour. This will explain a little about me, why I've taken on this project, and what else makes me a Geek.

I first became introduced to the epic fantasy genre of books the same way most of us are, through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. While I, too, love much of the book because of it's character's, plots, dilemmas, and so forth, I also loved the world itself. With its mountains, rivers, villages, kingdoms all clearly named and labeled on a friendly map. I'm not sure if my love sprung from this, but I definitely recognized it here. But it wasn't just Middle Earth that had maps that fascinated me. Our home copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica had plenty of maps of the US, Germany, China, Somalia, et al. I love looking through Atlases and spinning a globe. And it's physical maps that I love specifically. Political maps, with their solid colors just defining these arbitrary lines we call borders doesn't thrill me at all. It's seeing all those mountains with their passes. Rivers that begin in glaciers and find their way to the sea. It's seeing how a large city is situated among the features of the landscape. How human civilization has been shaped by the land and how the land has been shaped by civilization.

Now, back to college. That is where I was introduced to Keyhole. For those of you unfamiliar with this program, it stitched together satellite images of the world. You could punch in some latitude and longitude and instantly see what it looked like from space. Great for looking at the roof of your house (is that Frisbee really still up there?) or seeing how things have changed in your old neighborhood.

Not to get into a history lesson, but Keyhole was later bought by Google and turned into Google Earth. My.favorite.program.ever. Now I can fully explore any place on Earth. And with the advancements that have been made to Google Earth over the past decade or so, I find it still more fascinating and more difficult to turn off.

I don't remember the precise catalyst, but I conceived the notion of mapping the entire basin of the Columbia River in Google Earth. I started the project some time ago, so this blog will be a mix of what I find of interest as I progress through the wild country of the Pacific Northwest. But I will also delve back into territory I have already covered to get you up to speed. At this point I have finished the entire state of Oregon, but that is still a fraction of the entire work.

Next time, I will explain less about me and more about geography and the Columbia River Basin itself.

Happy hunting,
Brett