Excerpt
The rivers and canals of the northeastern United States were early transportation networks that settled interior “wildlands” and opened the subsistence farm economy to eastern markets. Industries and cities grew along these water courses, and although canals were replaced by railroads, it was the canal-river infrastructure of the early 1800s that transformed occupations, markets, and settlement patterns of the new country (Kalabon et al. 2013). Growing urbanization modified rivers and their watersheds to achieve new uses and goals. The processes of population growth and settlement create massive changes in the social-ecological dynamics of river uses, habitats, and landscapes (Grove 2009). About 3% of the world population in the 1800s lived in urban areas; by the 1900s urban populations grew to 14% (Grove 2009), and today over half (55%) of the world population lives in urban environments with a United Nations projection of 68% by 2050. The spatial changes in settlement patterns and spider-like intrusions into “wildlands” along river landscapes are historic and modern, and are present and future challenges to water conservation and management at the rural-urban interface.
These changes are concurrent with the growth in scientific knowledge about water ecologies and shifts in human perspectives and values about the…
- © 2019 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
