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.