21 June 2010

A new river graphic

Posted by Callan Bentley

I really appreciated the feedback everyone contributed regarding the river evolution graphic I posted a week and a half ago. The latest offering is from Kyle House, who linked to a couple of nice summary images derived from Stanley Schumm. Because the images were low-resolution, and black and white, I decided to do some re-drafting. Here’s one (click through twice for full size version):

And here’s the original:

Images like this (and the previous, obsolete “river evolution” image) are central to the way I teach — a nice summary picture that compares variables. This one is more complex than I consider ideal, but I think it will do the trick.

I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to the discussion. I felt that this episode was a great example of how blogging benefits its practitioners. By putting my earlier graphic online, I got valuable feedback that corrected the erroneous and oversimplified way I was teaching about fluvial geomorphology. It was great to get critiques from both geomorphological and educational perspectives. That feedback has lead me to do some deeper thinking about that topic, and to change the way I teach it. Thanks — on behalf of myself and my future students!

Now for the new image… what would you critique here? (…either in terms of Schumm’s original ideas, or my redrawing of them…)

EDIT: Michael M. pointed out in the comments that several of the arrows were too low contrast to be legible. Funny, those colors totally aren’t what they looked like in the Corel Draw drafting stage! Anyhow, I’ve darkened them up a bit in this version: