I am a hoopier frood than Archimedes.
As if to demonstrate that Life Goes On, I just had an Archimedes moment: I ran out of the shower, towel wrapped 'round my waist, shouting "EUREKA!"
You see, I finally figured out a series of graphics that would explain to observers just what I was seeing in all that Elkhorn Slough data back in 2004-2005. I was trying to get a coherent article out of three or four different studies, each of which insisted that the Big Erosion Hotspot was in a different part of the Slough. Unfortunately, because their studies found erosion and deposition occurring at opposite ends of the Slough, the PhDs responsible for two of the papers each had ... issues ... with the other.
Bear in mind that these gentlemen were supposed to be my co-authors.
Bear in mind as well that I'm the only guy who looked at all four and a half data sets spanning 15 years.
Of course, any hypothesis that reconciled these supposedly-contradictory datasets was going to get lambasted from both ends.
Of course, after staring at all that data for three years, I came up with one:
Elkhorn Slough would experience Big Erosion Events that would dump a lot of sediment at the head of the Slough, and it would work its way down to the mouth over a period of years, thus giving the pattern of "Erosion here, deposition there" in one study, and "Erosion there, deposition here" a few years later.
I just figured out how to make maps that show the bulge of sediment moving down the slough.
It's clearly visible in the "flip chart" of cross-sections I carried around with me during that whole project, but I just figured out a way to display the data in four or five Q&D maps, rather than making people scrutinize Excel graphs for three years to see the pattern emerge.
So, yeah, "Eureka".
And you know what's even better?
When I rattled this off to thoughtsdriftby, who's an engineer, he said, "oh, yeah. that's plug flow."
So:
I may have material for a Master's Thesis here.
You see, I finally figured out a series of graphics that would explain to observers just what I was seeing in all that Elkhorn Slough data back in 2004-2005. I was trying to get a coherent article out of three or four different studies, each of which insisted that the Big Erosion Hotspot was in a different part of the Slough. Unfortunately, because their studies found erosion and deposition occurring at opposite ends of the Slough, the PhDs responsible for two of the papers each had ... issues ... with the other.
Bear in mind that these gentlemen were supposed to be my co-authors.
Bear in mind as well that I'm the only guy who looked at all four and a half data sets spanning 15 years.
Of course, any hypothesis that reconciled these supposedly-contradictory datasets was going to get lambasted from both ends.
Of course, after staring at all that data for three years, I came up with one:
Elkhorn Slough would experience Big Erosion Events that would dump a lot of sediment at the head of the Slough, and it would work its way down to the mouth over a period of years, thus giving the pattern of "Erosion here, deposition there" in one study, and "Erosion there, deposition here" a few years later.
I just figured out how to make maps that show the bulge of sediment moving down the slough.
It's clearly visible in the "flip chart" of cross-sections I carried around with me during that whole project, but I just figured out a way to display the data in four or five Q&D maps, rather than making people scrutinize Excel graphs for three years to see the pattern emerge.
So, yeah, "Eureka".
And you know what's even better?
When I rattled this off to thoughtsdriftby, who's an engineer, he said, "oh, yeah. that's plug flow."
So:
- I still have all that data on my desktop hard drive.
- And I have an open-source GIS program that I've been wanting to figure out.
- And I want closure, dammit.
I may have material for a Master's Thesis here.