Front page of the Rocky Mountain News following the catastrophic flood in Big Thompson Canyon in August of 1976. Photo credit: Colorado Geological Survey.
“The Fluvial Hazard Zone (FHZ) is defined as the area a stream has occupied in recent history, may occupy, or may physically influence as it stores and transports water, sediment, and debris.”
House precariously undercut by lateral scour on the Big Thompson River a quarter of a mile below Glen Comfort, Larimer County, August 1976. Photo credit: Ralph Shroba.Severe road damage from bank erosion along CR-43 (Devils Gulch Road) caused by the extreme flooding event along the northern Front Range of Colorado, September 2013. Photo credit: Jon White for the CGS.
Local, state, and federal agencies often collaborate on projects concerning emergency preparedness and community resilience. In this case, the Colorado Geological Survey assisted the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), and local governments by providing technical expertise for the Colorado Hazard Mapping Program (CHAMP). The CHAMP project facilitates effective long-term flood hazard reduction in Colorado. A crucial part of that process is the development of FHZ mapping protocols and debris flow hazard assessments in combination with traditional floodplain mapping. Community engagement and education on the FHZ protocols is ongoing across the state. more “Case study: Fluvial Hazard Zone”
neoscenes is again participating in the Reveil global audio streaming project for the tenth year, adding a small sonic expression to this ongoing collaborative broadcast: Reveil 24-hour live broadcast 2024 (one dimension of Soundcamp) 03-05 May (depending on your time zone — see below for exact local times).
Reveil is a collective production by streamers at listening points around the earth. Starting on the morning of Saturday 4 May in South London near the Greenwich Meridian, the broadcast will pick up feeds one by one, tracking the sunrise west from microphone to microphone, following the wave of intensified sound that loops the earth every 24 hours at first light.
Streams come from a variety of locations and situations, at a time of day when many people are unaccustomed to be up and out, but sounds are vivid, especially in Spring. The Reveil broadcast makes room by largely avoiding speech and music, gravitating to places where human and non human communities meet and soundworlds overlap.
Sounds produced by birds, amphibians, weather, fish, electromagnetic fluctuations, people, machines, vegetation, transmission artifacts, convey the variety of planetary soundscapes, captured from many specific places and projects. In the process, Reveil brings together dispersed and lesser known ecological projects and practices across disciplines and time zones, in a sketch of an acoustic commons in the making.
Streams range from temporary projects in people’s homes to large research networks. Each open microphone adds to the diversity of the mix.
This Reveil stream, neoscenes’ tenth year participating, comes from the property of friend and artist Jennifer Riefenberg, a tract of land sitting at 6850 ft (2015 m) on a rich riparian corridor along Surface Creek in western Colorado. The nearest village, Cedaredge is a couple miles away. To the northwest, north, and northeast, 10 miles (16 km) as the raven flies, sits Grand Mesa, the largest flat-topped mountain in the world, at 11,000 ft (3300 m). The surrounding property was formerly an agricultural area relying on irrigation waters coming off the Mesa. Before the white colonization in the late 18th century, this area was the Ute tribal homeland: it still is. There is a rich range of wildlife in the area—birds including Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), Red-tail Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), Great Horned Owls, Ravens (Corvus corax), Black-billed Magpies (Pica hudsonia), Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), Western Meadowlarks (Sturnella neglecta), Mountain and Western Bluebirds, Nuthatches, House Sparrows and Finches along with bears, mountain lions, coyotes, mule deer, foxes, raccoons, skunks, marmots, and ground squirrels. Surface Creek, the main drainage for the area, runs on the east side of the property in a shallow valley lined with cottonwood, juniper, box elder, mountain mahogany, 3-leaf sumac, service berry, yarrow, rabbit brush, and volunteer fruit trees. In the sonic foreground there is an irrigation holding pond that sees regular visits of a variety of birds. Early May is a time for maximum snow-melt off the Mesa, and Surface Creek can swell to more than 600 cfs (17 cms)—two orders of magnitude over minimum flow. It typically displays large diurnal variations in flow, depending on the ambient temperatures. The creek flow will be the dominant sonic texture.
The neoscenes stream, hosted on the locusonus soundmap will be live for the entire weekend; it will be selectively broadcast in the Reveil stream as follows:
Date: 06 May 05:50-06:20 AM MDT UTC-6 (this is the approximate time that the neoscenes stream will be mixed into the whole 25-hour stream)
Civil twilight (local time): 5:40 AM / 0538 (UTC-6) Local time in Cedaredge
Sunrise (local time): 6:07 AM / 0606 (UTC-6) Local time in Cedaredge
Location: online and Cedaredge, Colorado, USA
Streamer: John Hopkins / neoscenes
Coordinates: N +38.92349163182399° / W107.91730709264802°
Timezone: MDT UTC-6 — 7 hours behind London
JR invited me to harvest two of her apple trees, one, a large cultivar Golden Delicious next to the house, the other a scrappy volunteer in the riparian area along Surface Creek, probably a Macintosh, but not quite as tart as my memory of Macs from childhood. I cleared out the Golden Delicious the evening before a hard freeze ended the season, side-stepping the deer and bear apple-poop under the tree. The Macs fortunately waited a couple days even after the hard freeze with snow.
Apple butter and applesauce were the final outcomes. Using very little sugar in both cases, but also, molasses in the apple butter: so far getting a good response from consumers! After the apricot labor, this was easier and although time-consuming, it is great to have a jar of applesauce at hand in an instant! And still, a month-and-a-half later, have some of the Macs left for a couple batches of apple crisp for the holidays.
A great shift comes. All things are questioned. Martial law in the sounds of choppers and F-18s overhead. Is this The Great Reckoning? Or simply the systematic operation of Life on the planet? What will be … will be. Doris is long dead.
Hardly the impetus to record in words what is happening. Audio has supplanted saying. I’d rather go listen to the birds, especially the (male) red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) congregating in the artificial riparian zones scattered around the golf course that sits in the middle of Golden.
Cycling twice a day, legs getting a workout, arms not, swim-less, pool closed. Back at home::office, there is food to stuff the face with, no attention for tasting. Nights that are full with shades of wakefulness. Remote connection, once my creative tool of choice: now a form of labor. Remote-ness becomes the societal norm.
About to depart to the West. Will I find vigilantes controlling the way?
[ED: After meeting and talking to Kirsten Volpi, Mines COO/CFO, at a faculty barbecue, I had some follow-up comments for her on being an employee at Mines. Especially relevant was the issue of tele-commuting, although we happened to be still some few months before the Covid cataclysm. We, the staff at the CGS, had been lied to by the former State Geologist, Karen Berry, who told us in a staff meeting that Mines did not allow any remote working, apparently because she didn’t want to allow it. The rest, as of March 2020, is history. I worked four years 100% remote until retiring, no problem.]
Hi Kirsten:
My comments here fall broadly under the ongoing topic of employee retention—an important interest for institutional management—that President Johnson mentioned at last Friday’s staff plenary session. I would hope that perhaps they might shed some anecdotal light on that critical issue from the point of view of an employee. I write as an alumni and a three-year administrative faculty member; and, as someone who cares about the place I work, the people I work with, executing my job with a high degree of professionalism, and the value of work/life balance.
Following up on the question I posed during the Faculty/Staff plenary regarding ‘remote working’, I would offer that if you are considering any staff participation in policy-making around this issue, I’d be happy to contribute my expertise to the discussion. I was surprised when you stated that there was no policy and that some people *were* actually telecommuting. We have been told by our so-called “manager” that it is a Mines policy: remote work is absolutely *not* allowed (thus my original question). And I note that recently one of my professional colleagues left the CGS because of this arbitrarily fabricated limitation. There is substantial research available on the subject that confirms that flexible working conditions augment productivity *and* job satisfaction. They also improve the ability for employees to fond and construct healthy work/life balances.
This brings me to a second point. When I was on the faculty at CU-Boulder, I noted that there was the Ombuds Office (https://www.colorado.edu/ombuds/our-services) that allowed for confidential tabling of any university-related issues. I feel that Mines is deficient in this area—that there is no equitable means for addressing the complex issues that may arise—especially as the school is expanding so rapidly. There is the confidential CARE system, but this seems to focus on student issues, not the wider spectrum of institutional dynamics. Perhaps the ombuds model should be considered.
Moving on, I will relate a couple example of negative issues that I have witnessed as directly impacting both myself and my colleagues at work, both which exhibit a flagrant disregard of staff and their well-being. There are others.
The CGS is located in the Moly Building which is currently under heavy construction and has been for the last eight months. The entire project was ‘presented’ to the staff essentially as a fait accompli. What little information that was passed to us was in a two-line email format: this is what is happening, deal with it. Further occasional emails dealt with the absolutely minimal warnings that understated risk to life and limb if one walked outside the building, ever.
Our first real experience of this particular ‘development’ project was to arrive at work to watch 15 100-year-old trees ripped down and sent to a landfill, while a large and well-established natural riparian area was eviscerated with heavy machinery. That area served, among other functions, as a buffer between our offices and the loud traffic of 6th Avenue, as well as, more importantly, a small but rich wildlife refuge. Given that Mines now has the word “Environment” in its tag line, we found this a richly disturbing irony. The water flow of that riparian corridor was completely disrupted by a typical ‘modern’ solution that shunts surface drainage from areas where it normally would be absorbed into groundwater. I could go into much more detail about available knowledge that demonstrates development does not have to mean utter destruction of a landscape. This violent construction process continues to this day with zero consideration or opportunities for any expression from our staff, despite the persistent stress of environmental destruction, noise, dislocation, delay, and general chaos.
There is a concept called ‘participatory design’ which operates under the principle that those who are to use the designed object or environment are given an active role in the design process. This is a crucial dimension to truly sustainable development. In this particular situation, however, the feeling is that there is no recourse, no mechanism for ‘speaking truth to power’. This is a sure way to cause those who can to move on to more humane working situations to do just that. If such a feeling is the dominant modus, an institution will be in constant internal conflict with its own potential (humane) success. I see this on a daily basis among my colleagues, how these small things add up to embodied stress and dissatisfaction.
The next step in this destruction process was paving over what remained of the open area bordering the riparian zone, so not only did we lose the buffer of trees, but then a vast sheet of unshaded black asphalt was installed that, among other negative effects, markedly increased solar heat buildup immediately outside our entire wing of the building. Car windshields reflected glare directly into half of our offices for much of the day. These are two tiny details, but it is in these details that makes a difference: there are many more that I will not enumerate here. There are ways to pave an area that allows for stormwater percolation using perforated pavers among a variety of other solutions.
The parking lot debacle segues into the second issue. Admittedly, the CGS is a bit of an orphan child at Mines, and this aspect came into sharp focus when the dictate came down to us from above that our parking lot fee would double from $265 to $497 per year. Not only that, but the lot is now requiring a ‘reserved’ permit that restricts the user from parking *anywhere* else on campus, despite the high cost! Our work flow at the CGS is not so similar to a ‘regular’ staff member in that we do come-and-go a lot, often with field gear, attending off-campus meetings (on campus meetings are even more complicated in that it can take 20 minutes to get somewhere on campus on foot). I’m wondering if the time lost to walking too and from personal vehicles is to be deducted from *my* time or from the institution’s time—if I do pay more to park, the institution wins on both counts, my cash *and* my time. I personally decided to subtract *my* cash completely from that picture—by canceling my parking pass completely, in protest—I will follow your advice on the second factor. I happen to live in Golden, though, and can bike commute, while most my colleagues have significant car commutes. Many other staff folks dropped a tier or cancelled, tired of being cash cows with no good alternatives. Some of the few who went for the higher fee did so because they were afraid of the risk to their cars and personal safety as has been demonstrated most recently in the area. Given the fact that no one else will be using this lot aside from folks working in the Moly building, the occasional contractor, and perhaps a few Facilities Maintenance folks, it would seem that this decision to double rates is a shameless and rather ignorant grab.
I know this may read like an editorial, but that’s because, in part, I was a Special Editor for the Oredigger, back when. And while I would like to think that this letter will have only positive outcomes related to my employment here, sadly, I am not confident that. Being a squeaky wheel—one that actually cares about the institution, its legacy, and the people working here—will perhaps ultimately cause my departure.
At any rate, thanks you for your time and consideration, I would reiterate my interest in helping develop an up-to-date policy for telecommuting (noting that my father authored a number of reports out of the White House’s Office of Technology Policy on tele-medicine among other tele-processes *in the early 1970s*). It’s about time!
Another aporee.maps participant, Stéphane Marin, founder of Espaces Sonores, invited me to add a composition to a larger project that he’s facilitating, North American PhoNographic Morning. He’s been gathering compositions from sound artists with works relating to specific physical regions. In this case, Colorado, and its surrounds. At fifteen minutes the piece is short, and perhaps, as the neoscenes signature, tending to high density. This is partially in the wall-of-sound tradition, where a bit of aural discomfort counterpoints the delicacy of some parallel tracks.
(00:15:00, stereo audio, 36 mb)
From morning crickets, waking to stories from the reservation; from the acequias, wandering in the cut-straw fields; the black-billed magpies (Pica hudsonia) conversing between hummingbird courtship dives and chatter; a cooling vacuum making the teapot chirp; rocks thrown into endless trickling waters; children playing in fountains under Western suns; Navajo singing on the roads across the Colorado Plateau; and the previous night’s campfires dwindling as woodpeckers chatter: Widely dispersed sounds from years of nomadic wandering across the rich slick-rock canyons, rocky mountains, and riparian valleys: the headwaters and basins of the Rio Grande and Rio Colorado.
Aim for the nearest topological features to the south, some small intrusives, an isolated fault block, likely, rhyolitic basalts of some sort (with some peridotites or greenstones possibly?). Lake Bonneville paleo-shorelines are visible, with a prominent one slicing the hills like a poorly-made isometric topo model. The hills are technically on the Air Force test range, but I disregard the signs (parking behind some low hills across the road in order not to attract attention).
Definitely a different regime than, say, the Sonoran desert. Here, the land seems more sterile and has only very low scrub, most less than a foot high. Low or black sagebrush (Artemisia), salt brush (Atriplex), rabbit brush, black brush, tumbleweed (Salsola pestifera), and a handful of other species are thinly scattered, with either desert varnish, pebbly sand, or the occasional small colony of cryptobiotic soil. Can’t really tell if this lack is a direct result from severe overgrazing (this is, after all, BLM land) or just a harsh (colder, drier!) regime here compared to the relatively abundant biota of the Sonoran.
Plenty of evidence of other human intrusions on top of the igneous stuff that these hills are made of. Bullet casings, scraps of glass and metal everywhere, bullet holes in anything worth shooting at. Two mines have burrowed into the earth, leaving debris, holes, and mounds, a refrigerator with major firearm damage, a twisted bike frame, and the shattered glass crunching underfoot.
The hills are much larger than they initially appear, a frequent phenomena in a landscape without the normal metrics for scale (trees and human structures). A great view in all directions from the top.
A lake shore sand deposit in the form of a light tan mudflat attracts my attention on the talus-skiing descent, as it is bisected by the old roadbed which exhibits the typical roadbed riparian affect — with visibly larger brush on either side of the eroding pavement — the direct affect of the slight concentration of runoff precipitation. Walking here in the flats one feels … exposed … as the occasional mining truck speeds by a mile or so away. The only relief among short sage brush are the holes dug by coyotes into smaller varmit holes, now that would be something to watch! Good for spraining an ankle if step is not watched closely. The only other difference are the widely scattered aluminum beer cans, mostly effaced of any markings by the brutal sun, sitting pell-mell in the sand.
I notice later that the Nikon has more crap on the CCD, about which nothing can be done — you can see two spots in the lower left center of the images. My irritation with this camera system increases as the years go by. I am constantly astonished at the poor quality of the lens, along with the dirt accumulation on the CCD — it’s a closed system, for god’s sake, how does it keep getting dirty? I don’t even take the lens off, ever! I think the Canon system is superior both optically and technologically. But nothing to be done about it, unless I decide against getting a new laptop and instead get a new camera. Ach, I get tired of technology!
In the sonic realm, this part of the western desert (the spatial extent defined by precipitation at least) seems, at first, quiet. Stepping out of the car after a bruising day of fighting the wheel, ah, only the susurration of blood pumping in the ears. But, despite this initial impression, human intrusion in the western desert is never silent. The ambient pre-human sonic domain is defined by a few animals making occasional signals “I am here.” Ravens and coyotes are perhaps the noisiest, with others following in a rapidly declining decibel range. Wind is mostly, literally, in the ear of the beholder as a register of turbulent flow around the aural orifice but occasionally one is in a place where the wind makes some secondary sound (in a riparian regime, in seasonal leaves, or whistling around a certain rock formation, but these are rare and difficult to record without exceptional and expensive equipment). Otherwise, then, there is only the human incursion. This incursion is typically related to the movement of those intrusive humans through the domain as few have the desire to stop and actually hear silence. The few who volunteer or are forced to stop for a longer time are not necessarily prone to sonic disturbances, though that group, as a whole, are dominated by willing or unwilling participants in the military-industrial machine. The balance, a small remainder, are likely seeking the silence. The members of the machine make plenty of noise via everything from weapon systems testing to mining to toxic waste incineration, but access to these secretive sonic sources are for the select, not the transitory rabble.
Those engaged in field recording are left with the experience of tangential contact. That is, functioning as a stationary point, recording the arrival and departure of a nearby transport vector — trains, planes, and cars. Given the proper conditions, especially the lack of wind, these can make interesting (and startling) recordings. Trucks may be heard many miles away and render an impossibly slow Doppler shifting that is also modulated by differential density and velocity metrics of the intervening air. Planes are often more difficult as the most dramatic contact is with the low-flying fighter aircraft which will show up practically without warning and are so loud that recording is impossible. The db peak of that tangential contact pegs the meter. Before the air-to-ground missiles are launched at you, the target, and field incursions become moot.
So, what to do? Muddle along. Hit the casinos. Though I’ve been tossed out of those in the distant past for making photographs, the H4 Zoom looks suspicious, so I think it also will attract attention from security for sure. Ach.
a much longer ramble with a heavy wind at my back until it’s time to turn around. the dunes are located here for a reason and that reason is the frequency of very intense winds being funneled across the valley into Medano Pass where the sand generated by the Rio Grande out-wash in the (west side of the) valley is dropped in large quantities against the Sangre de Christo mountains. it’s a marvelous phenomena. today, I follow the base of the dunes along Medano Creek which is flowing with copious quantities of chilly snow-melt. the intersection of the dunes with the creek and the mountain terrain is rich with variable riparian regimes and provides shelter from the wind which is carrying plenty of grit up to about 3 feet off the dune surface. the air is charged with particles, it is charged. more “Medano Pass”
I join Joanne on a half-day excursion to Verde Springs at the headwaters of the Verde River. she is an old acquaintance from the mid-80’s when she and Mike led biology and geology field trips at the local community college — I was on a memorable week-long one to Death Valley in the winter of 1985. the hike today is part of local Earth Day activities, although she has been leading these monthly for the last year as part of the public awareness campaign that the Center for Biological Diversity is mounting in opposition to the plans for massive groundwater mining by the towns of Prescott, Prescott Valley, and Chino Valley. a representative of the Nature Conservancy was along as well to introduce the land that they recently bought protecting one of the most sensitive areas of the riparian headwaters. there was an eclectic group of folks from a thirteen-year-old to several couples who’ve retired to Prescott. more “Verde Springs”
Approaching the solstice, ahead only 3 weeks. Too early to be really thinking about it. In a phone call, Deb mentions “since Hector died,” in passing.
“What? I knew he had cancer, but when did this happen?”
“Didn’t you get the email we sent in February?”
“No.”
Sheesh. email is so imperfect, as far as my experience of it is. Too many mission-critical failures over the years, and things like this. Gees. more “Hector Howey 1948-2007”
posted
place: en route Steamboat Springs - Echo Park, Colorado
as Anthony stated once: re-arriving simultaneity. back in Echo Park. brew some black tea, and wander down to the water’s edge. after craning neck for a long look at Steamship Rock. the river seems high but not near flood stage.
frogs texture the air with the only sounds except for birds. a few people in the small camp ground. maybe a total of 5 people in the whole place. and one just left. hoping that there will be only silence and nature this evening. as my small stove roars while heating water. taking glasses off when NOT looking at this screen. what is it that the glass shields us from? full-tilt apprehension of the world. blurry.
different amphibians make sounds now, others stopping, the texture becomes more varied as I listen more closely, something I can do only when I stop typing and sleep the hard drive. so, I do that now. the battery is low anyway. more “craning neck”
Finally made it up Granite Mountain in the Wilderness area. Up early, but not early enough, so the late morning sun told us on the way down, but we didn’t know that at the time. on the trail from Granite Basin by 0715, the first mile a mild level upstream through the riparian wash that leads to the artificial lake across Mint Wash at the trail head. the next two miles a brutal climb zig-zagging up a south-west-facing slope of scrub oak, prickly pear, manzanita, yucca and such. With the main bulk of the mountain directly to the east, we were early enough to get some shadow cover on the way up, but even still, intense exposure. Saw several horned toads and plenty of lizards, but nothing more (i.e., snakes). The last mile, a traverse through partly ponderosa forest was easy. The final ascent to the peak we were aiming for, (500 feet below the main peak which would require an extra six miles return trip, bush-whacking), was relatively easy.
A snack at the top, and in the building heat, a tiring walk back. Saw the largest (greenleaf) manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita, Arctostaphylos patula) I’ve ever seen, with several trunks over 9 inches in diameter. The splendid surface in molt now, but after the peeling bark falls, the trunks are soft-glisten smooth to the touch, and have an unmistakable warm coppery color. Treks like this, moderate as they are, remind me that I am soft. No tough survivalist, though I can read much in the landscape, it is clearly a leap away from actually living in the environment. Just the solar exposure for that brief time is grueling.
and hardly anything to be said about this place. no textual naming enough. walking the riparian canyon with clear running water. not too much, but enough. not too cold, but enough. harvesting a few spring fronds of sage. not sure exactly why, but just to have, perhaps for future blessings. climbing to the smallish cave that overlooks the end of the access canyon at Echo Park. turns out it is not really a cave, but a hole into a face to a whole slice of open fracture plane. open to the sky. the whole small canyon follows a massive fracture plane cutting across the formation. these energy configurations. we are so used to, so comfortable with, pre-configured energy packages. that the raw flow on all scales, at all levels, under all conditions, is just too much to bear. while the wind blows across skin. and the skin is raked by the radiative solar flux. and this machine starts its own fan. the environment too harsh for it. couldn’t take outside into the wind and dust, that’s clear. soft device. needing the feed of electric energy to keep it functional. at all. or it becomes a paper-weight only. to fight the wind.
house-sitting for Nick and Deb. while they are away in Missouri. even some rain falls, enough to wet non-porous surfaces for a short time. air siphons the dark spots off, invisible (hungry ghosts). other storms in previous days build up over the mountains, but then go nowhere and drop nothing in the dry plains and little in the high country. while two new fires burn near Boulder. countless others elsewhere. and at the same time, the burned places fear the rain because of the potential for massive mudflows and loss of soil which will ruin what running water is left in the area and complete the destruction of the riparian strips. and so it goes.
