Joanne Richardson

The Yellow River Breaches its Course, ca. 1160.

IntroductionOctober 26, 2017

Guest Editors’ Introduction to Issue Eight

The essays and exhibits showcased here emerge from a Summer Institute that we co-hosted in collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Study in July 2016. Titled “Grasping Water: Rivers and Human Systems in China, Africa, and North America,”…

Map of New France. Vincenzo Coronelli, Partie occidentale du Canada ou de la Nouvelle France... Paris, 1688. (Bell Library 1688 mCo)

Primary SourcesOctober 25, 2017

Reflections of “New” Geographies: A Brief Glimpse at Pre-Modern Cartography

By Marguerite Ragnow I watched my father build a cedar strip canoe when I was five years old. I remember pieces of wood bent and…

The PulseOctober 19, 2017

Everyone Knew Houston’s Reservoirs Would Flood — Except for the People Who Bought Homes Inside Them

By Neena Satija, The Texas Tribune and Reveal, Kiah Collier, The Texas Tribune, and Al Shaw, ProPublica

Detailed exploration of some of the complexities the Houston region faces as it imagines, and builds, “life after Harvey”

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune

Civil Engineering Geography Planning / Policy Policy United States

Sections of the St. Louis River, seen here near in Cloquet, Minn., are among those on the state's latest impaired waters draft list.

The PulseOctober 12, 2017

Minnesota has 2,669 troubled bodies of water, draft list says

By Kirsti Marohn

Minnesota, which prides itself as the “land of sky-blue waters” and “land of 10,000 lakes,” has determined that a substantial number of those waters are seriously polluted. Ongoing monitoring reveals that a few surface water bodies are improving, but much work remains to meet state goals.

MPR

Minnesota Planning / Policy Policy Science

A shot of a pond in Bethesda, Wisconsin in 1868.

The PulseJuly 26, 2017

The Clash Over Water in Waukesha, Wisconsin

By Erin Blakemore

Water geeks know that Waukesha, WI has been trying to obtain water from Lake Michigan, against the prohibition in the Great Lakes Compact preventing distribution of water beyond the watershed. This breezy environmental history says that water has been at the center of Waukesha’s history since the beginning.

JSTOR Daily

Environmental History Research United States

Close up of a tree branch that seems to still be growing.

The PulseJuly 26, 2017

Hope and Environmental History: An Introduction

By Tina Adcock

Many environmental historians, and environmental humanists more broadly, seem captivated by a declension narrative, a story of how humans have steadily (inevitably?) made “natural” conditions worse. Does scholarship have to trend this way?

Niche

Environmental History North America Research

An overflowing river's water reaches up to the road on a bridge.

The PulseJuly 26, 2017

An Island In Louisiana’s Bayou Is Vanishing, And Its Residents Are Fleeing To Higher Ground

By Peter O'Dowd

At the Isle de Jean Charles, residents are seeing rising seas taking over their houses. The people can move, but what about the stories and attachments to place that made the place “home”?

WBUR

Engagement Environmental Justice United States

1895 aerial view of Taylor Avenue, Fort Snelling's Officers Row. Digital image Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Primary SourcesJuly 20, 2017

Fort Snelling as I Knew It

When he was nine, my brother Steven enlisted the rest of the kids in our isolated neighborhood to help him build earthworks in the empty field behind our house. Not a fort—we already lived in one of those—but a replica of Little Round Top, a crucial site on the Gettysburg battlefield.

Engagement History Minnesota

Iron sculpture by Native American artist Colleen Cutschall commemorates the Native Americans (Crow tribe) who died fighting for their homelands in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. The monument is located at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

In ReviewJuly 20, 2017

National Parks: Can “America’s Best Idea” Adjust to the Twenty-first Century?

National Parks are often referred to as “America’s best idea.” Recent scholarship and well-publicized difficulties within the agency have shown that, perhaps inevitably, the National Park Service and the extensive system that it manages, has taken on important characteristics of the society of which it is a part, for better or worse.

Engagement Public Programs United States

Pike Island at Fort Snelling State Park in Minnesota, looking west. The Mississippi River is on the right, the Minnesota River is on the left. Photographer Brett Whaley.

IntroductionJuly 19, 2017

Introduction to Issue Seven

Almost everyone has some experience with open space and with “heritage,” perhaps through visiting historic sites, or through family trips to that place “where Grandma always used to go as a girl.” Water, of course, is intimately connected to all of our most cherished open spaces and heritage places, whether the connection is evident in the landscape or not.