Response of Turtle Creek to Settlement 1836-1973
Abstract
Man's impact on the environment has been observed
and analyzed to a great extent in recent years. The response
of a landscape, vegetal community, or stream to inputs of
settlement, cultivation, urbanization, or industrialization
is varied and depends for the most part on first, the type
of land use input, and second, the type of region being
acted upon -- defined essentially by climatic and physiographic
parameters. River systems and streams are particularly
sensitive to land use changes and in addition, tend to be
unique in their response, under a certain combination of
climatic and physiographic conditions. For example, under
similar precipitation and temperature regimes, a difference
in physiography between two drainage basins, such as one
flowing on bedrock topography and the other on young glacial
drift, will instigate unique channel geometries, flow
characteristics, and stream patterns in each basin. Thus it
is hypothesized that a change in land use imposed on two
basins with varying physiographies will result in two
different river responses. This study will investigate
the effects of land use changes stemming from man's initial
settlement in an uncultivated glacial drift drainage basin
and contrast them with the results of a similar impact on a
bedrock environment basin.
Subject
Turtle Creek
Permanent Link
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/35930Type
Thesis
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