Battle of Vincennes
.. and they did it without Environmental Impact Reports and lawsuits. wow.
Absolutely fascinating. If this hypothesis is confirmed, it revolutionizes our whole picture of the American landscape.
Native Americans would set massive forest fires to clear trees and undergrowth allowing the sunlight to stimulate new plant grow which increased the food supply to the animals that they hunted thus increasing the animal population.
Granola eating tree huggers won’t allow controlled burns or clear cutting to do the same and they claim it is because they are helping to protect the animals.
Sheesh.
Is that sorta like a chocolate city?
Old maps of Iowa show a huge lake covering the upper third of the state. It was actually more of a swamp or giant pothole than a lake. The first settlers there did the only smart thing and built drainage ditches and canals. Good thing the wetland weenies are only concerned about saving wetlands on more modern maps.
Great report. A number of researchers have been noting that current erosion seems to be largely due to sediment already stored in or along streambeds. One tracking device has been the fallout from the early atmospheric bomb tests (I think it’s cesium but I forget). Low cesium content means old sediment, and that’s most of what’s being seen in streams (at least around here), and more measures instituted on farm fields won’t change it. Very interesting stuff.
dam settlers!
btt
Does that mean we’ll be forced by the PC Police to give America back to the mosquitoes, typhoid fever etal?
Battle of Vincennes
Good thing they “got-r-done” when they did. Before the eco-tyrants and the epa.
Within the township are several creeks and runs, all of which are somewhat flood-prone and eroded. Historically, there were both mills and limekilns in this area. I can certainly believe it was swampier once than it is now. (We still have the mosquitoes . . . )
The new study suggests that rather than rivers being confined to single, winding channels before 20th century industrialisation, they were collections of many small channels spreading across broad wetlands before European settlers dammed them in.
That could be true in some areas, but it is a widely sweeping generalization. The Hudson, East River, James and York Rivers were absolutely rivers, not swamps. They were used for exploration and commerce from the first days. The earliest maps, paintings and drawing clearly show rivers. The same can be said for most rivers I am familiar with. Naturalists often moved out ahead of settlers - drawing and painting what they saw.
I have no doubt that streams were damned, and many swamps were drained. Swamps were a source of mosquitoes and the land under the water was fertile.