How does one define a place? Is it a location someone has visited? Does one have to stand on the shores of a lake to feel like they know the lake? Can someone who has never visited a place still have a connection to it?   I grapple with these questions as my time as […]

We all know that water flows downhill, seeking its own level, flowing to the sea. Water is a primary force shaping our planet and environment. It will erode rock, move soil, and, in its frozen form as glaciers, sculpt mountains, valleys, and plains. I’ve been traveling upstream on the North Platte River through western Nebraska, […]

Lateral erosion of banks is a defining characteristic to any braided stream like the Platte. As water moves downstream, banks are transformed as water tends to spread out over the broad, shallow valley of the Platte River. Over the course of a year, our camera unexpectedly observed this happening at a camera location owned and managed by the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program.

Driving into Mullen Nebraska, in the heart of the Sandhills, the wind howled outside our Suburban as the sun set over a vast landscape. The few hundred residents of the biggest little town in Hooker County pride themselves on hospitality—a hospitality that the weariest of travelers would certainly have come to love, providing a brief reprieve from powerful gusts.

In recent years, the river has formed an S-shaped route a short distance upstream from the measurement weir and has caused the riverbanks near the gauging station to erode, threatening to bypass the weir itself.