HR: 1340h
AN: H53D-0504    [Abstracts]
TI: Urbanization Impacts on River Landscapes in a Global Context
AU: * Chin, A
EM: chin@tamu.edu
AF: Texas A&M University, Department of Geography, College Station, TX 77843 United States
AB: A half century ago, Strahler (1956) and Leopold (1956) pointed attention to the reality of human impacts on river systems, outlining erosion and aggradation as system responses when steady state is disturbed by human activity, and linking river channel adjustments to changes in sediment yield owing to land use alterations. Significant advances have been made along these lines in the years since, with intensified research efforts producing a voluminous literature documenting a range of human impacts on fluvial geomorphology. This paper summarizes the progress made on understanding the impacts of urban development on river landscapes, with emphasis on the distribution of such impacts in a global context. Drawing from a database developed from published literature representing a range of world areas, the analysis quantifies the magnitude and direction of urban-induced change in a comparative context, evaluates how impacts vary with locale and scale, and assesses the persistence of such impacts across locales and scales. Results indicate high variability both in magnitude and persistence of impacts. The spatial distribution of research investigations has also been markedly uneven, with input to theory development having come from a limited number of sites. Substantial areas across the earth surface remain blind spots in this context; future investigations might serve the science best if they are conducted in some of these locations.
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects (4802, 4902)
DE: 1815 Erosion
DE: 1825 Geomorphology: fluvial (1625)
DE: 1834 Human impacts
DE: 1856 River channels (0483, 0744)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005