What is a River?

Matt Price

Created: 2018-09-28 Fri 09:55

“Water is the Driver of Nature” – Da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life, 1508(ish)

Da Vinci, 1508 (ish), THoughts on Art and Life
Part of a broader investigation of water.
“ [57] The body of the earth, like the body of animals, is intersected with ramifying veins, which are all united and cusntructed for the nourishment and life of the earth and of its creatures… [59] Water is that which is given to supply vital moisture to this arid earth; and the cause which propels it through its ramifications against the natural course of weighty matter is the same which stirs the humours in every kind of animal body. [60] water, the vital moisture of the earthly machine, moves by reason of its natural heat.
[61] Rivers, with their ruinous seem to me the most potent of all causes of terrestrial losses, and not fire, as some have maintained; because the violence of fire is exhausted where there is nothing forthcoming to feed it. The flowing of water, which is maintained by sloping valleys, ends and dies at the lowest depth of the valley; but fire is caused by fuel….what voice or words shall I find to express the disastrous ravages, the incredible upheavals, the insatiable rapacity, caused by the headstrong rivers? What can I say? Certainly I do not feel myself equal to such a deonstration, yet by experience I will try to relate the process of ruin of the rivers which destroy their banks and against which no mortal bastion can prevail.

Earth as a Body

The body of the earth, like the body of animals, is intersected with ramifying veins, which are all united and constructed for the nourishment and life of the earth and of its creatures…

Devastation of Rivers

Rivers, with their ruinous seem to me the most potent of all causes of terrestrial losses, and not fire, as some have maintained; because the violence of fire is exhausted where there is nothing forthcoming to feed it… What voice or words shall I find to express the disastrous ravages, the incredible upheavals, the insatiable rapacity, caused by the headstrong rivers? What can I say?

What is a River?

Ontological Instability

Land or Water?

Land or Water?

Rivers and Thingness

through the same river flow other and yet other waters.

Rivers as “Natureculture”

Hydrologic Cycle

Fluvial Dynamics

River Features

Rapids

Channel Initiation

Erosion, Transport, and Deposition

Erosion

Transport

Transport

Deposition

River Hierarchies

(Amazon River Basic, courtesy NASA

River Temporalities

Intermittent rivers

How Rivers Move

Meanders

Oxbows

Braided Rivers

River Ecologies

8). In a nested hierarchy, large-scale processes (e.g., climate and plate tectonics) define higher levels of organization (e.g., river morphology and species pools), but these higher levels contain lower levels of organization (e.g., biotic communities and substrate particle size) that are governed by smaller scale processes (e.g., species interactions and flow characteristics). The appropriate scale for analysis in riv- erine studies must be determined by the question that is being asked and by the important temporal and spa- tial scales of the organisms and environmental variables involved

What is a River?

Matt Price

Earth as a Body

Devastation of Rivers

What is a River?

Ontological Instability

Land or Water?

Land or Water?

Rivers and Thingness

Rivers as “Natureculture”

Hydrologic Cycle

Fluvial Dynamics

River Features

Rapids

Channel Initiation

Erosion, Transport, and Deposition

Erosion

Transport

Transport

Deposition

River Hierarchies

River Temporalities

Intermittent rivers

How Rivers Move

Meanders

Oxbows

Braided Rivers

River Ecologies

Human impacts