Mapping Underground Rivers

  • DNR hydrologist Jeff Green consults a high-resolution topographic map to figure out which sinkhole is ahead of him. The trees and grass that grow up around the sinkhole form a buffer, allowing water to soak into the soil and filtering any pollutants before it reaches the aquifer.(Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

Spring in the north is a time of melting snow and running water. It’s the best time of year for people who study underground water flows. Those underground rivers are important, especially where surface water easily drains into bedrock. It can quickly carry pollution long distances. Hydrologists try to map these underground rivers to help protect fragile ecosystems. As Stephanie Hemphill reports, the first step in making these maps is a process called dye tracing.

Transcript

Spring in the north is a time of melting snow and running water. It’s the best time of year for people who study underground water flows. Those underground rivers are important, especially where surface water easily drains into bedrock. It can quickly carry pollution long distances. Hydrologists try to map these underground rivers to help protect fragile ecosystems. As Stephanie Hemphill reports, the first step in making these maps is a process called dye tracing.

When the snow is melting in the woods and fields, Jeff Green wants to know where it’s going.

“We’re going to hike back to two springs.”

Green is a hydrologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and an expert in the limestone geology of Southeast Minnesota.

Green climbs a fence and splashes through a stream that’s flooding a pasture. The stream is bordered by a natural wall of limestone.

Melting snow seeps into the limestone. It runs down vertical cracks to bigger horizontal openings that look like miniature caves. Jeff Green calls these “conduits,” and some are three inches wide.

“You can imagine a pipe that big — water would move very fast, like we’re seeing. So these conduits are what we’re dye tracing.”

Green has traipsed out to this pasture to put what he calls a “bug” in a spring. The ‘bug’ is a small mesh bag about the size of a cellphone, packed with charcoal. The charcoal will capture a dye that he’ll pour into melting snow in a sinkhole a few miles away. He’ll do this in several different spots.

By tracing the paths of different colors of dye, he’ll learn the sources of the water that feeds each spring. That will help him make what he calls a springshed map.

We slog across a corn field that’s dotted with small groves of trees. They’re growing around miniature canyons, about 20 feet deep. Here, you can see how this honeycombed water highway works, and this is where Jeff Green will pour the first dye.

“This is a place where there was a conduit, an opening in the limestone.”

Green climbs down carefully into the crevasse.

“Listen! … All right!”

He’s found some running water.

“Water’s running right here. I don’t know where it’s going but it’s going someplace. So I’m going to try pouring dye here.”

He pours a cup or so of a bright red fluorescent dye into the snow.

Green marks the spot with a GPS unit. This is a place where surface water and groundwater meet.

“That snow-melt is surface water, it’s going into this sinkhole and it’s becoming groundwater as you’re listening to it.”

That means what happens here on the land directly affects the quality of the groundwater.

“In this case, it’s pretty good, you’ve got conservation tillage, lots of corn stalks left to keep the soil from eroding, and then you’ve got grass, permanent cover, around the sinkholes. So this is actually really good.”

There are wonderful trout streams around here. The map Green is making will help protect those streams by pinpointing the source of the water that feeds them.

In a day or two, Green will check the “bugs” he put in the springs, and find out exactly where the dye from this sinkhole went.

He usually finds water traveling one-to-three miles underground before it surfaces.

When the springshed map is finished, he’ll share it with local governments, farmers, and people who want to protect the water in this landscape.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Online Map of Wildlife Diseases

  • Dr. Robert McLean works on a West Nile disease project at the National WIldlife Health Center with a Carolina Chickadee (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

There’s a new online map for tracking
wildlife diseases that threaten animals and
people. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

There’s a new online map for tracking
wildlife diseases that threaten animals and
people. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Diseases such as West Nile Virus, Chronic Wasting Disease, Avian Flu, and
others are now often in the news. A website partly developed by the US
Geological Survey aims to track reports of the disease outbreaks around the
world.

Veterinarian Josh Dein leads the project. He says he hopes both health care
professionals and the general public use the online map.

“One of the things you can do is say ‘what’s happening in my neighborhood,
what’s happening in my state, my country?’ And maybe I’m traveling to
someplace else. Maybe I want to look to see what’s happening somewhere else.”

Dein says the map also allows people to narrow their search to specific countries, types of
disease and affected species.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Mapping the Path Less Traveled

Sidewalks don’t go a lot of the places we’d like to walk. So people do what people have always done: cut through empty lots… or woods… or across railways. A lot of these pathways, worn down by use, never seem to make it onto maps. The GLRC’s Jennifer Guerra reports one group thinks they ought to be mapped… and their stories told:

Transcript

Sidewalks don’t go a lot of the places we’d like to walk. So people do
what people have always done: cut through empty lots… or woods… or
across railways. A lot of these pathways, worn down by use, never
seems to make it onto maps. The GLRC’s Jennifer Guerra reports one
group thinks they ought to be mapped… and their stories told:


When Hilary Ramsden moved to Detroit from England, she thought the
best way to explore the city was to bike it.


“And I was run off road by cars, and people shouted and screamed at me.
So I decided to cycle on sidewalk but then I noticed sidewalks came to
end, and started singing little paths.”


Ramsden points to a little ribbon of dirt that run thru a neighbor’s yard
or cut through a vacant lot…


“And I noticed there was a whole network of these paths through the
city. So I started exploring them!”


Soon Ramsden’s co-worker, Erika Block, starts tagging along on the
walks, and since none of the trials they want to take are listed on any
maps, the two just start wandering:


“And then we started thinking about mapping and what’s really
represented on traditional maps and what’s missing.”


Block thinks of maps as a kind of storytelling. So if the short cuts and
gravel paths that people take aren’t listed on a map, then the stories of the
people who use them aren’t being told. So Block and Ramsden – who
run a theatre company in the city – decided to turn their walks into a performance
art piece of sorts. It’s called The Walking Project.


Once a week they pick out a section of Detroit and walk it. To track their
route, they use a handheld Global Positioning System device. They also
bring along digital cameras to snap pictures and record conversations
they have with people. Eventually, the photos, recordings and GPS tracks will
all be uploaded to a computer and transformed into a sort of 3-D digital map.


“And so a representation of place is going to be more than just lines and
dots and symbols on a map, it hopefully will become the video, and audio, and drawings
and conversations that people bring to it.”


And that’s really what these walks are about for Hilary Ramsden…
meeting people.


“…oh look at path here…this is a great shortcut. Is there a story here?
Tons of stories here, but no one walking here to ask at the moment. I’d
be interested in talking to someone.”


About twenty minutes into the walk, we cut across a gravelly path that
runs through a small field. There, we run into a homeless man. The
minute Block and Ramsden say hello, the man starts talking. About
himself, about the path and about the field we’re standing in…


(Sound of talking)


Block and Ramsden snap pictures and record everything he’s saying.
Their hope is to one day have it all linked to a virtual map that places this
man and his image on this particular Detroit dirt path, and because Block
recorded their conversation, his story will become a part of the map, too:


“People will ultimately be able to drag and drop images to build their own maps
of these places that tell different stories. And I think people are fascinated by
other people’s stories, and I think that ultimately the more we know of other
people’s stories the less afraid we become and the more comfortable it becomes.”


Block admits that the technology for creating such a map is at least two
years off. But in the meantime, she and Ramsdon will continue to walk
around and record the stories of those who choose to travel off the beaten
path. In hopes that maybe one day they’ll have a map to call their own.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

Computer Mapping for Endangered Butterfly

  • The Karner blue butterfly is an endangered species. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

There are several groups in the region working to protect and restore the endangered Karner blue butterfly. Now these efforts could be helped by a new computer mapping and statistical modeling technique. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has more:

Transcript

There are several groups in the region working to protect and restore the
endangered Karner blue butterfly. Now these efforts could be helped by a
new computer mapping and statistical modeling technique. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has more:


Habitat maps for endangered species can be based on broad general
estimates. But some scientists hope a combination of computer
software and data such as soil type and vegetation will lead to
more accurate information on where the Karner Blue butterfly lives.


David Mladenoff is a professor of Forest Ecology at the University of
Wisconsin – Madison. He says having a better idea of the butterfly’s
habitat might save companies money on things like surveying costs.


“In other words, if they say we’re planning on doing work on this utility
right away or potentially harvest this area of forest, is this even
a place we have to be concerned about for the Karner Blue butterfly
occuring?”


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a state agency, and some power
companies are funding a computer mapping project in Wisconsin.
Scientists say the same technique could be used in other states.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Farming With Computers

You probably have a computer in your car, on your desk and maybe even in your stove. It seems like there are computers everywhere these days helping with everything from our checking accounts to our turkey roasts. Now researchers want to install computers in another place, where most of us would least expect it – in Old MacDonald’s tractor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has this story:

Study Seeks to Reduce Car/Deer Collisions

It’s that time of year again. Car/Deer collisions are at their highest in the months of October, November, and December. It’s a dangerous and expensive problem. Insurance companies paid out more than one hundred million dollars last year in Michigan alone because of car/deer crashes. Now a new study is looking at ways the collisions can be reduced. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports: