Joanne Richardson

The muddy deserted streets of flood ravaged Princeville, North Carolina stand in silent testimony to the destruction wrought by the Tar River. Princeville, NC 9/28/99.

FeatureApril 21, 2016

Princeville and the Environmental Landscape of Race

Traveling east on Interstate 64 from the capital city of Raleigh, North Carolina you will see a sign for a town called Princeville. Like so many small towns and cities in the South, Princeville has a rich, contested, complicated, and all too forgotten history.

Patrick wading in a lake circa 1963. Image courtesy Patrick Hamilton.

FeatureApril 21, 2016

Future River—The Mississippi in Light of a Lifetime Immersion in Water

I love water. Always have, always will. I delight in skimming across it in my kayak and dropping down into it with mask, fins, and snorkel. I was born in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and credit my early years amidst the lakes and streams of west-central Minnesota with imbuing me with a fascination of water that has endured my whole life.

Engagement Geosciences United States

Flooding in New Orleans. NASA image courtesy Lawrence Ong, EO-1 Mission Science Office, NASA GSFC.

FeatureApril 21, 2016

Disturbing the Mississippi: The Language of Science, Engineering, and River Restoration

Around the world, from the U.K. to India, governments and NGOs are formulating plans and raising funds to restore river and floodplain habitat. Much of this restoration work is undertaken in the interest of minimizing or rolling back the effects of disturbances, such as hurricanes, erosion, and urban development, and shoring up resilience, a river’s natural ability to resist disturbances. However, the words used to explain river systems have come to explain what threatens them, and to explain what river restoration must therefore accomplish. Words shape deeds.

Environmental Justice Research United States

People walking between sites at Oheyawahi/Pilot Knob . Photo by Michael Murray; courtesy of the Minnesota Humanities Center.

Teaching and PracticeApril 21, 2016

Toward a Pedagogy of Place: the Bdote Field Trip and Absent Narratives in the Classroom

At the Minnesota Humanities Center, we have long sought to empower educators to create lessons that recognize and amplify absent narratives, the stories that have been systematically marginalized or left out in classrooms and curricula for generations.

Engagement Indigenous Perspectives Minnesota

Tributaries of the Chester River by J. Albert Bowden II.

Primary SourcesApril 21, 2016

Global Water Data: We’ll Show You the World, Sort Of

There are regular calls for more global water data. And there are also many, many global water data sets out there, so many that we’re practically swimming in water data. What’s the disconnect?

Geosciences International Science

Confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Using satellite imagery, we can compare the amount of sediment coming into the Mississippi River from the Minnesota River (the lower river). Satellite Image Courtesy of DigitalGlobe Foundation.

GeographiesApril 21, 2016

Maps, Geographies, and the Mississippi

U-Spatial provides support for spatial research. We make maps. And help colleagues at the University of Minnesota discover and analyze geospatial data. We collaborate with people in public health, nursing, business, history, anthropology, education, design, engineering, natural resources, and even dentistry.

Engagement Geography

View north into Minneapolis up the Mississippi River gorge. Image from the Metropolitan Design Center Image Bank. Copyright Regents of the University of Minnesota, All rights reserved. Used with permission.

PerspectivesApril 21, 2016

Climate Change and Rivers

Open Rivers contacted Paul Huttner, Chief Meteorologist for Minnesota Public Radio. Huttner writes the Updraft blog and hosts MPR’s weekly Climate Cast. We wanted to learn more about the impact climate change is having on rivers and communities and how discussions about environmental issues and water are changing.

Engagement Geosciences International

View of the Mississippi River from the Science Museum of Minnesota by J. Pellgen.

PerspectivesApril 21, 2016

The National Park Service’s Mississippi River Forum: Meals with Great Minds

Imagine sharing conversation, learning, and ideas with politicians, researchers studying bald eagles and river otters, people who make your water drinkable and those who clean your used water (who are different people, at least for now…), and those thinking about and establishing policies and practices to help protect the Mississippi.

Minnesota Planning / Policy Policy

A map of the parts of America claimed by France under the names of Louisiana in 1720 by Herman Moll.

In ReviewApril 21, 2016

Southern Waters

The South as we have come to know it takes its shape from water-based decisions: New Orleans itself was founded because of its strategic location along three bodies of water—the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River to its south, and Lake Pontchartrain to the north.

Geography Research United States

An aerial shot of a winding river on a foggy day.

The PulseApril 18, 2016

What is long-term thinking?

By Jenny Seifert

This piece from the UW-Madison Water Sustainability and Climate Project offers several tenets of “long term thinking,” an intentional inquiry into what sorts of futures are possible in a watershed over a period of several decades or more.

Yahara in situ

Biological Sciences Education Mississippi River Basin