landscape – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: landscape

April 13, 2010 – 12:00 pm

pathological geomorphology

[Russian thermokarst near Nova Zembla] I’ve been tremendously entertained lately by Pathological Geomorphology, a blog run by “a loosely defined and unified group of geobloggers” which catalogs “images of extreme landscapes, landforms, and processes”.   April is “delta month” (or, as one of their bloggers put it, “April deltas bring May fold and thrust belts”), so […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Also tagged , | Comments (3) | Permalink
February 27, 2010 – 8:00 am

katabatia

[Perhaps the perfect image for mammoth to end our participation in Glacier/Island/Storm week (it’s been great fun, and lots of great research, commentary, and speculation has been posted) with: an Antarctic glacier sinking past Inexpressible Island (really) into Terra Nova Bay, while providing graphic evidence of the powerful winds which operate on the Antarctic coast.  […]

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February 25, 2010 – 10:29 pm

islands draw the clouds, and glaciers are wind-catchers

[Above, the volcanic peaks of the South Sandwich Islands distort wave patterns over the Pacific Ocean, through processes described, and, of course photographed, by NASA Earth Observatory: …the islands disturb the smooth flow of air, creating waves that ripple through the atmosphere downwind of the obstacles. The cloudy-clear pattern that is produced highlights the location […]

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December 9, 2009 – 5:55 pm

total service delivery

The Dirt has a lengthy interview conducted by Pierre Belanger with Joe Brown, chief executive of planning, design, and development at AECOM, the architecture and engineering firm that swallowed EDAW (formerly the world’s largest firm primarily focused on landscape architecture, if I recall correctly). The interview covers a wide range of issues, from the “need […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure, landscape-architecture, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (5) | Permalink
November 24, 2009 – 4:18 pm

the new dutch water defense line

There’s nothing particularly original about the observation that the Dutch have a peculiar national relationship to their landscape (and, in particular, its hydrology), but that peculiarity produces endlessly fascinating oddities and, apparently, endless mammoth posts on Dutch hydrology.  As lewism noted on one such post, Bulwarks and Flux: …the whole of Dutch landscape and history […]

By rholmes | Posted in landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (3) | Permalink
November 5, 2009 – 10:59 pm

park supermarket

Dutch architects van Bergen Kolpa (with research ecologists Alterra) propose a “Park Supermarket” for the Randstad, transforming polders — historically landscapes of food production, now pressured by both development and rising waters — into a park subdivided into new climate zones (“moderate, Mediterranean, and tropical”) and constructed hydrological conditions (basins for the cultivation of tilapia, […]

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August 19, 2009 – 7:44 am

tree cultivation in the sahel

Farmers in the Sahel are combating desertification with trees — but by cultivating them, not planting them: Amidst his fields of millet and sorghum, Sawadogo is also growing trees. And the trees, he says, work wonders.  The temperature here is very different than in town, Sawadogo says. The forest acts like a pump. The air […]

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July 21, 2009 – 2:52 pm

american turbine

Adam Goodheart mulls over the place of the wind turbine in the American landscape: Just a century ago, however, windmills by the hundreds of thousands dotted many of the same landscapes where their present-day descendants now loom. Nearly every farmyard had its own spindly device atop a steel tower, pumping water and powering lamps. Those […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Also tagged , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
June 3, 2009 – 11:41 am

time-lapse earth observatory

Time-lapse videos of the urbanization of Dubai, the draining of the Aral Sea, deforestation in the Brazilian state of Rondônia, the depletion and replenishment of southern Iraq’s wetlands, and drought in Utah’s Lake Powell, at Wired Science, compiled from NASA Earth Observatory imagery.

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May 21, 2009 – 9:26 am

the ambiguity of seamelt and landrise

One of the trends which most observers of global warming warn us could have particularly dire consequences is the rise of sea levels. And not without reason. The recent evacuation of the Cateret islands, chronicled by Dan Box as the tale of the world’s first climate refugees (though perhaps most recent would be more appropriate, […]

By rholmes | Posted in geography, landscape | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink