Flooding, intense scour, and bank erosion often contribute to the failure of bridges and culverts. While geomorphic assessment techniques have been devised to evaluate whether structures are vulnerable to the effects of high-magnitude flooding, they generally require prolonged onsite appraisals. Because of financial constraints, however, many state transportation agencies cannot hire staff dedicated solely to geomorphic assessments. As such, agencies can benefit enormously from having access to a simple, holistic, and robust method for quickly evaluating the sensitivity of bridges and culverts to severe hydraulic forcings-one that leverages data gathered during existing inspection routines and accounts for the condition of structures and their criticality. This paper outlines the development and application of the Bridge and Culvert Sensitivity Index (BCSI), which was originally created on behalf of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Using information from the National Bridge Inventory and Cabinet-specific inspection data points, the BCSI (when combined with geostatistical methods and dynamic mapping) facilitates a multilevel hierarchical analysis of bridge and culvert inventories, allowing agency personnel to quickly appraise the performance of structures from the district level down to the level of individual structures. Applying the BCSI in Kentucky identified clusters of bridges and culverts in the western, eastern, and north-central parts of the state that exhibit heightened sensitivity to hydraulic forcings.

State-and-transition models (STM) are used to describe, model, interpret, and predict when landscapes will undergo a qualitative state change. Although rangeland ecologists pioneered STMs, geomorphological STM-type models were developed prior to and independently of ecological STMs. This study categorized 47 geomorphological STMs according to whether they were: based on single or multiple study areas; primarily for description and interpretation or predictive and prescriptive use; explicitly concerned with complex system dynamics; and the role of biogeomorphic interactions in the model. Each STM was represented as a graph and the structure identified. Spectral radii were calculated to measure the complexity of each STM. Although STMs are associated with conceptual frameworks that recognize the possibility of nonequilibrium, alternative states, and path dependency, results show that an explicit concern with complexity does not necessarily lead to the identification of more states and transitions, or a more complex transition pattern. The purpose for which a STM was created, as well as the number of study sites it can be applied to, also had little bearing on the models' complexity. This review suggests that geomorphic STMs, rather than being used to fit explanations about landscape evolution into predefined theoretical categories, are veridical representations of empirical observations. Although STMs are particularly useful for grasping the biogeomorphological dynamics of landscapes, this review indicates their utility is not limited to biogeomorphology or to systems with a strong ecological imprint. Time scales involved in geomorphic change can make it difficult to observe a large number of states and transitions, which may constrain what types of STM structure can be identified, as the number of observed states and transitions required to develop particular graph structures varies widely.

The most important geomorphic responses to storms are qualitative changes in system state. Minor storms produce no state change or very rapid recovery to pre-storm state, and extinction events wipe out the system. In other cases disturbance results in a state change, which may be transitional (change to a previously existing state), state space expansion (change to a new state), and clock-resetting events that return the system to its initial state. Recovery pathways are much more varied than the monotonic progressions represented in classic vegetation succession and linear channel evolution models. Those linear sequential pathways are only one of several archetypal recovery pathways, which also include binary, convergent, divergent, and more complex networks. Filter-dominated systems are more likely to follow linear sequential or convergent patterns, whereas amplifier-dominance is characteristic of divergent and more complex mesh or fully-connected patterns. Amplifier domination is also more likely to lead to evolutionary or state space expansion responses. Amplification and filtering in geomorphic response and recovery can be assessed using the 'Four R's' framework of response, resistance, relaxation, and recursion. High resistance and resilience, rapid relaxation times, and stable recursive feedback networks reduce or offset effects of disturbances, thus filtering their impacts. Conversely, low resistance and resilience, slow relaxation, and dynamically unstable feedbacks can exaggerate disturbances, creating disproportionately large and long-lived impacts, thereby amplifying disturbances. Unless new filter mechanisms evolve (either autogenically or anthropically), or the number of extinction or clock-resetting events increases, intensified storminess will result in more geomorphic variability. These ideas are applied to a case study of a flood on the Clark Fork River, Montana, USA. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

There is an imperfect symmetry between the patterns of channel evolution observed during laboratory flume experiments and those which materialize in rivers exposed to ambient environmental conditions that produce hydrogeomorphic fluxes which are more complex, contingent, and unpredictable. One strategy to improve our understanding of short- to medium-term channel evolution is to study landscapes that have undergone significant disturbance and have had their biogeomorphic templates reset to a known condition — in effect, creating a flume in nature. This study adopts a diagnostic state-and-transition framework to narrate and document baseline hypotheses for the potential evolutionary trajectories Clark Fork River, near Milltown, Montana. Following dam removal and remediation, a 5-km stretch of the Clark Fork River and its adjoining floodplain were reconstructed. Since flow was introduced to the newly constructed channel in December 2010, complex evolutionary trajectories have been observed on the Clark Fork's mainstem, its secondary channels, and floodplain. Focusing particularly on the river's secondary channels, this paper develops a typology of channel states that have been observed and demonstrates that multiple adjustment trajectories have materialized, sometimes within the same channel. A diagnostic state-and-transition framework offers a parsimonious strategy to quantitatively or qualitatively anticipate the influence of water, sediment, and ecological fluxes on channel evolution at the basin, reach, or segment scale. It provides environmental agencies with a robust method to devise spatially explicit scenario-based management plans for rivers in a variety of geomorphic settings.

Many port facilities in the US and Europe have ramped up efforts to improve the sustainability of their operations over the past 20 years. Because of their size and access to financial capital, coastal ports have been more aggressive in pursuing sustainable initiatives than inland ports. This is especially true in the US. Often, the ports that serve inland waterways do not operate on the same scale as coastal ports. Thus, given smaller budgets, inland ports cannot implement sustainability initiatives with the same aggressiveness or scope as coastal facilities. This paper describes a port sustainability audit template that smaller inland ports can use to assess the sustainability of their current operations. In completing this audit, port operators will gain a clearer picture of what areas their facilities excel in with respect to sustainability and where room for improvement exists. The objective of this audit template is not to encourage inland ports to replicate the efforts of larger operations with greater financial resources. Instead, the template underlines policies and practices that smaller ports can affordably implement. In targeting the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability, the template lets port operators holistically evaluate their facilities’ performance and determine what new sustainability initiatives will yield the most significant short- and long-term financial yields.

Critical physical geography (CPG) proposes to bridge the lingering gap between human and physical geographers. To rejuvenate conversations among different corners of the discipline about the possibility of trans-disciplinary collaboration, CPG must provide unique epistemological, methodological, and conceptual frameworks that human and physical geographers alike will find appealing, relevant, and timely. These should help them perceptively characterize, narrate, and anticipate changes in socio-biophysical landscapes. This paper outlines a conceptual framework that can be harnessed in future CPG studies and reflects on what it means to be a critical geographer. To solve the epistemological dilemmas confronting CPG, this paper demonstrates that state-and-transition models (STMs) can provide a unifying framework to address questions about socio-biophysical landscape evolution. Originally developed to account for nonlinear dynamics in rangeland ecosystems, STMs have been used to analyze a variety of ecological, geomorphic, and hydrological transitions in complex biophysical landscapes. STMs have epistemological commonalities with explanatory frameworks pioneered by political ecologists, and while thus far they have been used to account for complex biophysical dynamics, they can be expanded to accommodate critical investigations of the social dynamics underpinning landscape change. By foregrounding the transitional dynamics of socio-biophysical landscape – a theme that has interested physical and critical human geographers – STMs establish a conceptual space in which to holistically interpret the interacting drivers that underwrite socio-biophysical landscape change.

Shifts in the hydrologic regime of Florida’s Apalachicola River have been attributed to anthropogenic changes throughout its watershed, including local dam construction. To assess impacts of those shifts on floodplain forests, we reconstructed tree growth using dendrochronology and compared these trends with hydrological and climatic variables. Comparisons of stream-gage data before and after dam construction on the Apalachicola River revealed statistically significant mean declines in annual average stage. Mean minimum annual stages, rise rates, and fall rates also decreased, while hydrograph reversals increased. Growth in four tree species correlated strongly with site-specific inundation parameters. A wetter climate in the two decades following dam construction and fine-scale fluctuation of the hydrograph may have set the stage for positive growth releases. Logging and hurricane wind throw events may have also contributed. However, drier conditions in the last two decades are now exacerbated by stage-discharge declines that had been masked previously. Tree growth rates and recruitment have decreased and, in the absence of a major disturbance, the forest canopy is composed of an older cohort of individuals. Our findings highlight how hydrograph variability, climate change, and vegetation disturbance are all relevant for gaging and anticipating the range of impacts of river modification on floodplain forests.

AbstractOver the past 30 years, fluvial geomorphologists have sought to understand the historical trajectory of channel adjustments after disturbance by developing channel evolution models (CEMs). These models use a combination of quantitative data and qualitative indicators to describe the spatial progression of channel evolution. This article surveys the historical development of CEMs, how they function, and what types of CEMs are best suited for different geomorphic settings. It describes the logic underlying classic CEMs, and their subsequent application to predict channel response following dam removal. After this, it recounts the emergence of multi‐pathway CEMs, which have been used to capture the evolutionary trajectories in complex fluvial systems (e.g., anastomosing rivers). Lastly, it argues that a state‐and‐transition framework offers an appropriate modeling template to document channel evolution in a wide variety of fluvial systems, including those originally modeled using classic CEMs. A state‐and‐transition approach sees rivers as composed of interrelated process and form (morphological) states. They identify under what conditions a river channel would undergo a transition from one formal state to another (e.g., from a single‐threaded to braided planform). They can also be used to understand the form‐process dynamics underlying subtle morphological transitions that produce changes in a river's biogeomorphological structure without triggering wholesale river metamorphosis.

In recent years nonrepresentational theory has been applied with increasing frequency to landscape studies. This paper responds to this trend in two ways. First, through a close reading of John Wylie and Mitch Rose's writings, I critique the application of nonrepresentational theory to landscape interpretation. While nonrepresentational theory has, crucially, highlighted the importance of performativity, affect, excess, and relationality, it has been imperfectly translated to landscape studies. Landscape studies grounded in nonrepresentational theory overburden the landscape with philosophical and theoretical propositions, which has the effect of exonerating landscapes from their temporal, spatial, and visual circumstances. Second, drawing mainly on the work of Catherine Malabou and Bruno Latour, I suggest that different metaphors and concepts are needed to improve landscape studies: plasticity and a revamped, historical account of relationality. The aim of this paper is to establish a means of visualizing the dynamics of landscape and their historical mutability, with the intention of producing readings that are more ecumenical, and avoid the theoretical reductionism found in current nonrepresentational accounts of landscape.

This report investigates the use and effectiveness of temporary flood barriers (TFBs) to mitigate the impacts of flood waters on Kentucky's roadways. TFBs are structures, usually filled with sand, which are constructed along the edges of roadways and thus serve as a buffer against rising waters. In doing so, they can protect the structural soundness of roads, and ensure that roads remain open to traffic during flood events. The report is divided into four main sections. The first chapter introduces the concept of TFBs and notes situations in which they have been effectively deployed. The second chapter surveys the different kinds of TFBs currently available on the market and advances recommendations regarding which types are the most efficient and cost effective options for Kentucky. After this, the report investigates 8 potential sites at which TFBs may be deployed, in Kentucky's Highway Districts 1 and 2. Two sites are recommended for further testing and potential implementation, and two alternative sites are suggested in case the preferred sites prove unworkable. The fourth chapter briefly explores the legal issues related to TFB usage. Because of the potential liability issues involved, to avoid legal action being taken against state employees in the case of TFBs failing and causing damage to adjacent property, the report recommends subcontracting the installation and maintenance of TFBs out to private entities. A final chapter summarizes all of the conclusions and recommendations of this report, and suggests that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet move forward by (a) inviting manufacturers to demonstrate their products onsite; and (b) developing, in consultation with emergency managers and other officials at the local level, a comprehensive flood mitigation strategy that incorporates TFBs.

Since oxidative/nitrosative stress cause diabetes, can we prevent this chemistry generating the disease? Streptozotocin causes diabetes by entering the pancreatic beta cell generating excessive nitric oxide which reacts with oxygen creating a toxin possibly peroxynitrite, dinitrogen trioxide, dinitrogen tetraoxide and so forth. The toxic compounds damage the DNA causing beta cell death. This prevents insulin synthesis, storage and release. By using antioxidant substances that destroy the nitric-oxide-based toxins (e.g., carboxy-PTIO (oxidizes nitric oxide), polyphenolic-quercetin and monophenolic acetaminophen (Tylenol)) which are oxidation and nitration targets can the diabetes I causing toxins in animals be destroyed? Will this tri-drug combination completely prevent the deleterious effects of diabetes namely poor blood glucose control and blindness from cataracts for the entire length of the experiment (one year). These disease reversal experiments were accomplished in rats where the streptozotocin-diabetic effects were completely thwarted. In vitro experiments were accomplished to provide the scientific basis for the experimental results in animals.

Recently we demonstrated that streptozotocin (STZ) diabetes (type I) in rats is preventable using a simultaneous equimolar injection of carboxy-PTIO (c-PTIO). Both changes in blood sugar and cataracts are prevented. This apparently occurs because the nitric oxide (NO) (from STZ) generated in the beta cells is oxidized to nitrite by c-PTIO preventing diabetes. STZ generates NO producing a NO-based toxin. The toxin damages DNA by nicking and activates poly-ADP-ribose causing necrosis and triggering inflammation. Is there evidence that O/N stress occurs in early human type I diabetes? We studied 40 children with or without early type I diabetes and observed that urate is decreased 25% in all these diabetic children each over the age of 3 years. Urate is a major portion of blood-antioxidant load. Surely this decrease in urate indicates ongoing O/N stress. Does O/N stress initiate disease? STZ studies in rats indicates that this is correct.