Impact+Amplify promotes integrated whole systems
thought and proaction at both ecosystemic and cultural scale.

    Impact+Amplify
We seek to enable life-long learning and sustained, productive
collaborations among people of good will to integrate culture within nature.
Mountains to the Sea

Mountains to the Sea: The Headwaters Region:

Located near the Eastern Continental Divide, this region’s essential identity is established by headwaters of the three major river systems that diverge here. [The New River flows to the Ohio and Mississippi River Basins and on to the Gulf of Mexico. The Roanoke River flows to the Outer Banks. The Upper James River flows to Chesapeake Bay.]

A large part of the Southeastern United States is affected by whether we live and develop our forest and farm land and our built environments in ways that send solutions downstream.

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Low-Impact Living at ecosystemic and cultural scale

Formation of the mountains, the Piedmont and the Coastal Plain (on-going dynamic processes of erosion and sedimentation)

It wasn't until the late 18th century that Scotsman James Hutton made the seemingly innocuous observation that what was then occurring had always occurred. This first principle of geology, known as uniformitarianism, provides the basis for such observable features as rock strata that are similar in structure and composition to sediments collecting in streambeds and, by association, the notion of sedimentary rocks. But uniformitarianism does not adequately account for earthquakes.

That the continents may have a relationship to each other was likely first manifest when accurate maps became available in the 18th century and the striking similarity between the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa was first noted. Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, first introduced the theory of continental drift in a 1912 publication. By reassembling the continents that contained similar glacial striations and similar assemblages of fossil plants, he posited that South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica were at one time a single landmass he named Gondwanaland (from a region in central India which gave its name to Gondwana sedimentary rocks that were found to exist on other continents, thus supporting the theory).

By the late 20th century, the theory of independent floating continental landmasses was supplanted by the theory of plate tectonics; the continents being higher elevation portions of their respective plates. This was precipitated by several antecedent observations. Oceanographers had determined that the ocean ridges are connected in a worldwide system and that the ridges were actually areas where the crust was being pulled apart and new crust was forming. At about the same time, it was noted that earthquakes occurred in areas where the ocean basin trenches dip beneath the edge of a continent like South America or an island arc, like Japan. These zones were named subduction zones to account for the resorption of the continental crust into the mantle, thus maintaining a geologic balance for the crust created in the expanding ocean ridges. In 1968, three American geophysicists named Isacks, Oliver and Sykes advanced the theory of plate tectonics, naming a dozen major plates and several minor ones separated by oceanic ridges and subduction zones.

Genius Loci (the Spirit of Place)
The Eastern Continental Divide: Geology, Topography and Hydrology

Plate tectonics animation
Maps that may be used or modified for personal use, teaching, research or in scientific publications as long as credit is given to the author (Scotese, C.R., 2001, Computer Animations on CD-ROM, PALEOMAP Project, Arlington, Texas).

Learn more about the water cycle. Save for the annual addition of meteors and meteoric dust, everything on the Earth is recycled. Taken together these cycles of matter through the environment are called biogeochemical cycles and they have been fine tuned over the 4.5 billion years of earth history.

USGS

Plate tectonics is a relatively new scientific concept, becoming widely accepted some 40 years ago, but it has revolutionized our understanding of the dynamic planet upon which we live. The theory has unified the study of the Earth by drawing together many branches of the earth sciences, from paleontology (the study of fossils) to seismology (the study of earthquakes). It has provided explanations to questions that scientists had speculated upon for centuries -- such as why earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in very specific areas around the world, and how and why great mountain ranges like the Alps and Himalayas formed.
View a USGS exhibit that explains the history of our new understanding of the Earth and provides a brief overview of the theories behind it.

"Leaders exist in every segment of the community, but they rarely form an effective network of responsibility because they don’t know one another across segments. They must find each other, learn to communicate, and find common ground. Then they can function as keepers of the long-term agenda."
-- John Gardner, “Civic Partners,” 1997.

The story of the Appalachian Mountains begins where the Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate come together. It is a complicated story with a global scale, a continental scale and a local (Blue Ridge) scale. It is now theorized that the continents have come together through plate movements as many as six times in the last 3 billion years, about once every 500 million years. However, it is only the last three that are of direct concern; the geologic history of the Appalachians, as it is currently understood, being therein explained. About 1.2 million years ago, the Grenville orogeny (from the Greek oros meaning mountain -- the formation of mountains through structural disturbance of the earth's crust) occurred as the plates came together to form a single large landmass named Rodinia.

The crust at the interface buckled and formed the Grenville Mountains, believed to have been as high as the Rocky Mountains are today, as they were formed by a similar process. The temperatures and pressures that were generated within the mountains by the grinding plates were such that the crustal rocks melted to form magma. This magma slowly cooled, forming the backbone of the current Appalachian Mountains, most visible as Old Rag Granite at Old Rag Mountain and as granodiorite of the Pedlar Formation at Mary's Rock. As the Grenville Mountains eroded during this early period, the coarse grained, conglomerate Swift Run Formation was formed.

According to the plate tectonic model, the super continent Rodinia broke up about 750 million years ago, resulting in the formation of the Iapetus Ocean, the proto-Atlantic. (Iapetus was one of the twelve titans of Greek mythology and was the father of the god Atlas, for whom the Atlantic is named). It is theorized that these breakups occur because the large continental mass acts like an insulator over the molten magma underneath. The magma eventually heats up to the point that it rises to the surface and drives the continents apart. In the case of the Blue Ridge, the magma flowed out onto the surface and covered the Old Rag Granite, the Pedlar and the Swift Run formations with thick layers of extrusive, volcanic igneous rock which we know as the Catoctin Formation.

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What happened to the Grenville Mountains? They eroded, probably much more rapidly than uniformitarianism might indicate, as there was no vegetation to check the flow. This occurred for hundreds of millions of years, depositing layers of sediments up to 60,000 feet in depth on top of the Swift Run and Catoctin Formations. Sand particles were deposited and gradually compressed into the quartzite of the Weverton Formation. As the Iapetus Ocean widened and became deeper, finer grained sediments formed the Harpers (Hampton) Formation and the succeeding Antietam (or Erwin) Formation. the Weverton, Harpers and Antietam Formations are collectively known as the Chilhowee Group. The Skolithos Ichnofossils, trace fossils of the burrowing of marine worms, are evidence of the tidal basin paleoenvironment of these formations.

In keeping with the theory that supercontinents must eventually break up due to the magma heating effect, Pannotia broke up and set in motion the movement of the tectonic plates that ultimately resulted in the closure of the Iapetus Ocean and the creation of Pangea (from the Greek pan meaning all and ge, earth). This process started in the Ordovician Period, about 450 million years ago. As the Eurasian plate descended under the North American plate, the hardened sediments that had been formed by the erosion of the earlier Grenville Mountains were uplifted in what is known as the Taconic orogeny, affecting primarily the northern Appalachians. As the subduction of the Eurasian plate continued, the continental landmasses moved closer and closer until they collided in the Devonian Period, about 400 million years ago. This second event, known as the Acadian orogeny, thrust up the northern Appalachians a second time.

The central and southern Appalachians were formed by the collision of the African plate with the combined Eurasian and North American plates in the Alleghany orogeny in the Permian period, about 250 million years ago. This was the final uplift of the Blue Ridge Province. The supercontinent Pangea did not stay together long, by geologic standards. Northern and southern continental landmass groupings first opened to create the Sea of Tethys about 200 million years ago (Tethys was the sister and consort of Oceanus, the Greek god of the ocean; in keeping with the Iapetus tradition, both were titans). Europe and North America forming the northern Laurasia, and South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica forming the southern Gondwanaland (remember Wegener). And then the erosion began yet again, ultimately revealing what we now see, the 1.2 billion year old plutonic core surrounded by the magmas and sediments that are the inferred evidence of a complex history.

It is beyond our capacity as ephemeral transients to truly comprehend the time frames that encompass the geologic events that have created our small corner of the earth. It is only when an irresistible geologic force meets an immovable geologic object and cataclysm results that we take note. But one can stand atop Old Rag Mountain and imagine what has happened, and seek to understand where we may fit in. Or maybe we have it all wrong and there is something obvious that we have missed. Only geologic time will tell. And we will therefore never really know.

Like the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians were created by the collision of large tectonic plates in a series of orogenies or mountain building episodes. Unlike the Rockies, the Appalachians are old and eroded. The east coast of the United States and Canada has been a passive margin for the last 200 million years. During this time no tectonic activity has been taking place on the margin of the Appalachians and the only geologic events to occur were erosion and sedimentation as rivers carried sediment to be deposited on the continental margin.

The Appalachians are old mountains. A look at rocks exposed in today's Appalachian mountains reveals elongated belts of folded and thrust faulted marine sedimentary rocks, volcanic rocks and slivers of ancient ocean floor, which provides strong evidence that these rocks were deformed during plate collision. The birth of the Appalachian ranges, some 480 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain building plate collisions that culminated in the construction of the supercontinent Pangea with the Appalachians near the center. Because North America and Africa were connected, the Appalachians forms part of the same mountain chain as the Atlas mountains in Morrocco.

During the middle Ordovician Period (about 440-480 million years ago), a change in plate motions set the stage for the first Paleozoic mountain building event (Taconic orogeny) in North America. The once quiet, Appalachian passive margin changed to a very active plate boundary when a neighboring oceanic plate, the Iapetus, collided with and began sinking beneath the North American craton.

With the birth of this new subduction zone, the early Appalachians were born. Along the continental margin, volcanoes grew, coincident with the initiation of subduction. Thrust faulting uplifted and warped older sedimentary rock laid down on the passive margin. As mountains rose, erosion began to wear them down. Streams carried rock debris downslope to be deposited in nearby lowlands. The Taconic Orogeny was just the first of a series of mountain building plate collisions that contributed to the formation of the Appalachians.

By the end of the Mesozoic era, the Appalachian Mountains had been eroded to an almost flat plain. It was not until the region was uplifted during the Cenozoic Era that the distinctive topography of the present formed. Uplift rejuvenated the streams, which rapidly responded by cutting downward into the ancient bedrock. Some streams flowed along weak layers that define the folds and faults created many millions of years earlier. Other streams downcut so rapidly that they cut right across the resistant folded rocks of the mountain core, carving canyons across rock layers and geologic structures.

Source: http://www.sierrapotomac.org/W_Needham/PlateTectonics.htm

Living within nature: mountains to sea

Teaching collaboration with natural processes through integrated implementation of low-impact development strategies for forest and farm land and for the built environment to send solutions downstream

Our Ecoregion

Our ecoregion, together with the adjacent mixed mesophytic forests, represents one of the world’s richest temperate broadleaf forests on the planet

Impact + Amplify exists to explore the creative and the
destructive potential of the edge between nature and culture

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Contact webmaster: mbentley@livingwithinnature.org

FOREST
Recognizing and valuing natural processes, forest biodiversity and ecosystem services and living sustainably with and within Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests.

Blue Ridge Forest Cooperative
– projects like Yokohama's "Forever Forest" (locally and globally) as living case study/histories recorded (and cultivated) there could be the seeds (and the stimuli) for developing physical gardens - including the "Lorax Common Garden and Environmental Playscape," "The Barrens," internationally themed nature reserve and botanic garden, and home, school and businesses garden (or "gardens") in the Lick Run and Trout Run Watershed and throughout the headwaters region.

Field
Proposed landcare case study: Grayson Landcare
The Lorax Common Garden and Environmental Playscape
“The Barrens”
Form
Learning Corridor
Flow

The Headwaters Region
1. Establishing a national urban watershed demonstration project using the Lick Run and Trout Run Watershed [in collaboration with the Virginia Water Resources Research Center]
2. Getting the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Program (APNEP) to serve the entire Roanoke River Basin
3. Making the Bi-State Roanoke River Basin Commission more useful

Virginia Water Monitoring Council (VWMC)
Sustainability Science (please see also the Green and Ethical Headwaters Regional Economy section of this website)
Natural Capital Services (stable flows of clean water, clean air, and carbon sequestration)
Whole Systems Thinking
Whole Systems Proaction
The Blue Ridge Environmental Network