113 research outputs found
Race and Relief in New Orleans: A Hazardous Topography
No full textPoster for the lecture titled "Race and Relief in New Orleans: A Hazardous Topography" by Craig E. Colten, the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University
New Orleans expert delivers lecture about race and relief after flooding
No full textIncludes descriptive metadata provided by producer in MP3 file: "Craig E. Colten, the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University and a leading expert on the geographical and social/racial issues that complicate the recovery of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, shared his unique perspective on the aftermath of the tragedy during a lecture at Vanderbilt Law School Jan. 26." Colten provides a history of flooding, levee construction and the provision of social services in New Orleans. Poverty shaped the geography of vulnerability in New Orleans
An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature
No full textStrategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an impossible but inevitable city. How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans\u27s natural environment from 1800 to 2000. Before the city could swell in size and commercial importance as its nineteenth-century boosters envisioned, builders had to wrest it from its waterlogged site, protect it from floods, expel disease, and supply basic services using local resources. Colten shows how every manipulation of the environment made an impact on the city\u27s social geography as well - often with unequal, adverse consequences for minorities - and how each still requires maintenance and improvement today. For example, while the massive levee system has controlled the unpredictable Mississippi, it also captures heavy down-pours, creating a new set of internal flood problems.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1598/thumbnail.jp
Southern Waters: The Limits to Abundance
No full textWater has dominated images of the South throughout history, from Hernando de Soto\u27s 1541 crossing of the Mississippi to tragic scenes of flooding throughout the Gulf South after Hurricane Katrina. But these images tell only half the story: as urban, industrial, and population growth create unprecedented demands on water in the South, the problems of pollution and water shortages grow ever more urgent. In Southern Waters: The Limits to Abundance, Craig E. Colten addresses how the South -- in an environment fraught with uncertainty -- can navigate the twin risks of too much water and not enough.From the arrival of the first European settlers, the South\u27s inhabitants have pursued a course of maximum exploitation and control of the area\u27s plentiful waters, investing widely in wetland drainage and massive flood-control projects. Disputes over southern waterways go back nearly as far: obstruction of fish migration by mill dams prompted new policies to protect aquatic life as early as the colonial era. Colten argues that such conflicts, which have heightened dramatically since the explosive urbanization of the mid-twentieth century, will only become more frequent and intense, making the shift toward sustainable use a national imperative.In tracing the evolving uses and abuses of southern waters, Colten offers crucial insights into the complex historical geography of water throughout the region. A masterful analysis of the ways in which past generations harnessed and consumed water, Southern Waters also stands as a guide to adapting our water usage to cope with the looming shortage of this once-abundant resource.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1186/thumbnail.jp
Perilous Place, Powerful Storms: Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana
No full textThe hurricane protection systems that failed New Orleans when Katrina roared on shore in 2005 were the product of four decades of engineering hubris, excruciating delays, and social conflict. In Perilous Place, Powerful Storms, Craig E. Colten traces the protracted process of erecting massive structures designed to fend off tropical storms and examines how human actions and inactions left the system incomplete on the eve of its greatest challenge.Hurricane Betsy in 1965 provided the impetus for Congress to approve unprecedented hurricane protection for the New Orleans area. Army Engineers swiftly outlined a monumental barrier network that would not only safeguard the city at the time but also provide for substantial growth. Scheduled for completion in 1978, the project encountered a host of frustrating delays. From newly imposed environmental requirements to complex construction challenges, to funding battles, to disputes over proper structures, the buffer envisioned for southeast Louisiana remained incomplete forty years later as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the city.As Colten reveals, the very remedies intended to shield the city ultimately contributed immensely to the residents\u27 vulnerability by encouraging sprawl into flood-prone territory that was already sinking within the ring of levees. Perilous Place, Powerful Storms illuminates the political, social, and engineering lessons of those who built a hurricane protection system that failed and serves as a warning for those guiding the recovery of post-Katrina New Orleans and Louisiana.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1395/thumbnail.jp
Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change. Edited by Craig E. Colten. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Pp. x, 272. 19.95, paper.
No full textCollections of essays, even those organized around a common general theme, do not always cohere. That, emphatically, is not the case with respect to the essays in Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change, which originated in a 1998 conference on the impact of human settlement and activity on the Lower Mississippi Valley. The volume s 12 essays and the accompanying introduction by the editor, Craig Colten, together make an integrated and valuable contribution to the fields of environmental history, economic history, and historical geography.
North American Odyssey: Historical Geographies for the Twenty-First Century
No full textThis groundbreaking volume offers a fresh approach to conceptualizing the historical geography of North America by taking a thematic rather than a traditional regional perspective. Leading geographers, building on current scholarship in the field, explore five central themes. Part I explores the settling and resettling of the continent through the experiences of Native Americans, early European arrivals, and Africans. Part II examines nineteenth-century European immigrants, the reconfiguration of Native society, and the internal migration of African Americans. Part III considers human transformations of the natural landscape in carving out a transportation network, replumbing waterways, extracting timber and minerals, preserving wilderness, and protecting wildlife. Part IV focuses on human landscapes, blending discussions of the visible imprint of society and distinctive approaches to interpreting these features. The authors discuss survey systems, regional landscapes, and tourist and mythic landscapes as well as the role of race, gender, and photographic representation in shaping our understanding of past landscapes. Part V follows the urban impulse in an analysis of the development of the mercantile city, nineteenth- and twentieth-century planning, and environmental justice. With its focus on human-environment interactions, the mobility of people, and growing urbanization, this thoughtful text will give students a uniquely geographical way to understand North American history. Contributions by: Derek H. Alderman, Timothy G. Anderson, Kevin Blake, Christopher G. Boone, Geoffrey L. Buckley, Craig E. Colten, Michael P. Conzen, Lary M. Dilsaver, Mona Domosh, William E. Doolittle, Joshua Inwood, Ines M. Miyares, E. Arnold Modlin, Jr., Edward K. Muller, Michael D. Myers, Karl Raitz, Jasper Rubin, Joan M. Schwartz, Steven Silvern, Andrew Sluyter, Jeffrey S. Smith, Robert Wilson, William Wyckoff, and Yolonda Youngshttps://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1180/thumbnail.jp
Factors Affecting Hydrocarbon Vapor Transport From Leaking Storage Tanks to Buildings in Texas
No full textAs of January 1998, 152,000 underground storage tanks containing mainly common petroleum fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, jet fuel, and aviation gasoline were located at 63,400 facilities in Texas. Since 1986, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) has documented more than 20,000 known leaking petroleum storage tank (LPST) sites in the state. The contamination caused by these releases may be limited to minor soil contamination or, in more serious cases, it may migrate to the groundwater and travel to drinking water wells. One of the most serious hazards of leaking storage tanks, vapor impacts to buildings, often requires emergency measures to prevent potential explosions. Fortunately, vapor impacts occur in only a small proportion of the sites with petroleum storage tanks. The occurrence of vapor impacts appears to be a result of a combination of factors involving the depth to groundwater, soil type, precipitation, type of petroleum product, and the presence of phase-separated hydrocarbons (also termed free product). The most common vapor impact occurs from a release of gasoline into clayey soil that results in phase-separated hydrocarbons (PSH) on shallow groundwater. Sites with a shallow, impermeable rock layer are particularly susceptible to vapor migration. Underground utility lines in contact with, or near, the groundwater allow for easy transport of the vapors into nearby buildings. Precipitation events that release adsorbed hydrocarbons by wetting the soils appear to initiate most vapor impacts. The results of this study will be used to identify those leaking storage tank sites which may result in a vapor impact so that monitoring and corrective measures can be initiated as necessary.Geography and Environmental Studie
Ecotourism Demand and Supply in El Cielo Biosphere Reserve, Tamaulipas, Mexico
No full textEcotourism development is a comparatively new research topic. Owners, planners, and designers typically rely more on intuition rather than research when planning for ecotourism development. Details of tourism demand and the supply of goods and services, as well as the linkages between the two, must be understood in order to successfully develop ecotourism as a profitable local industry. I used a visitor questionnaire distributed over the six busiest visitation months to determine visitor demand characteristics in El Cielo Biosphere Reserve in Tamaulipas, Mexico. The questionnaire was also used to measure the adequacy of supply and to identify site usage and spending patterns within the most heavily traveled tourist corridor in the reserve. I also incorporated observations of tourists and unstructured interviews with tourists and residents in the study, which identified that the supply of services, goods, and infrastructure is adequate to meet the demands of four primary tourist types identified. Likewise, I developed supply improvement recommendations to aid the residents of the study area in accommodating growing tourist demands in the reserve, which has little visitor management, no enforcement or compliance mechanisms, and no ongoing monitoring of natural resources.Geography and Environmental Studie
Water Quality Issues in the Cypress Creek Watershed
No full textNo abstract prepared.Geography and Environmental Studie
- …
