sediment and infrastructure
The Big Data of Ice, Rocks, Soils, and Sediments
Places Journal
Inside the material archives of climate science, which get wilder and dirtier the deeper you go.
The Land Where Birds Are Grown
Places Journal
A visit to the engineered wetlands of California’s intensively cultivated Central Valley.
Traces of Traces
Places Journal
On the documentation of military landscapes by four American photographers: Richard Misrach, Jan Faul, Peter Goin, and David Hanson.
Balancing America’s (Sediment) Budget
Places Journal
The promethean geo-engineering of our river systems has resulted in the catastrophic erosion of American coasts. What can be done?
Community Plumbing
Places Journal
Let’s hear it for the neighborhood hardware store. Here, amidst the nuts and bolts, we cultivate the potential to order things, places, communities, politics, and values — we might even say, to build and repair worlds.
Thirsty City
Places Journal
An environmental historian assesses the massive infrastructure that brings water to the American West — and makes it possible to take a shower in Los Angeles.
Watermark: Along the California Aqueduct
Places Journal
The extraordinary achievement of modern California — the transformation of a semi-arid region into an abundant and prosperous place — has produced a wicked tangle of problems.
“We shall deal here with humble things”
Places Journal
It may be the smallest room in the house, but the humble bathroom is where our daily domestic lives connect with large-scale infrastructures of water, waste, and sanitation.
Infrastructural Tourism
Places Journal
For decades tourists have marveled at monumental dams of the American West. These days they trace infrastructures like satellite communications and nuclear waste transport.
Visualizing Landscapes: In the Terrain of Water
Places Journal
A portfolio exploring the representation of water and landscape, from the Beaux Arts to the digital.
In the Mississippi Delta: Building with Water
Places Journal
Without massive land-building, the Gulf Coast will disappear. LSU’s Coastal Sustainability Studio tackles the challenges of America’s Third Coast.
The Water Underground
Places Journal
A video that tracks the complex — and contested — systems of water supply, treatment, and waste that serve New York City.
Drylands: Water and the West
Places Journal
Our hydrological infrastructure is now nearly obsolete. Water is rapidly becoming the largest and least understood environmental challenge of the 21st century.
Preparing Ground
Places Journal
Two visionary landscape architects discuss their work on contested environments from the Mississippi to Mumbai.
Water in the West
Places Journal
A collaborative photography project focuses on the natural element that has defined the American West.
Isthmus: On the Panama Canal Expansion
Places Journal
The shockwave of Panama Canal expansion is reshaping cities throughout the Americas. We need to look through the lens of landscape, not logistics.