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Ox Bow Lake Formation, As Seen By the Google Earth Time Machine 50

djl4570 writes with a link to this "excellent study in the gradual change of geographic features as a river meander becomes an ox bow lake when the river current cuts through the meander. The same Google Earth feature can be used to view changes in urban and suburban geography. The historical data is a work in progress. The region I looked at only has images going back to 1993. Other regions will have a different mix and depth of data."
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Ox Bow Lake Formation, As Seen By the Google Earth Time Machine

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    ...or Mosquito Paradise?

  • ...to high school geography!

    This'll be a nice refresher, it was over 20 years ago and I don't remember a lot of it.

  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday July 21, 2012 @11:26PM (#40727713) Journal
    I've plotted a graph of all the ox bow lake formations found using Google Maps, and guess what? Not one formed before 1993. What happened in 1993? That's right, CO2 levels hit 350ppm. Coincidence? I think not. We need to save our ox bows, donate today.
  • I realize not everyone cares a whole lot about web design; but who the heck puts black text on a dark blue background and doesn't immediately notice it's awful for reading?

    • by cyn1c77 ( 928549 )

      Apparently a Texan geology student.

      He probably hasn't even noticed that it is hard to read. The twitter generation doesn't bother to read their post anymore.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I make sites just like this on purpose to troll the friends that I do have who are web designers. Only takes a few minutes with a wordpress install and some themes, then I just customize them to have horrible text/bg color combos such as black/brown, red/orange, etc

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Owner of the blog here. I follow the sources of my traffic back to their origins and I'm sorry the text bothered you. I've fixed it. However, your witty remark comes with a price. You owe me your eyeballs.

  • and you can watch continental drift in action

    • by kanweg ( 771128 ) on Saturday July 21, 2012 @11:52PM (#40727789)

      You can view that in the cinema right now.

      Scratch
      Full disclosure: I was in the movie

      In the Science museum in Paris they have a wall with a crack that was closed when the museum was opened. They move the walls apart over the years by the same distance that Europe and America drift apart. There was quite a wide crack when I was there many years ago. By now you must be able to walk through it quite easily.

      Bert

    • by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 ) <plasticfish@info.gmail@com> on Sunday July 22, 2012 @12:57AM (#40727981) Homepage

      Over the course of your lifetime, Europe and America will have drifted about 20 feet further apart.

      (Best estimate seems to be 5-10 cm/yr [uc.edu]. Split the difference and multiply by 75 years; that's about 5.6 metres.)

      • I hope they got plenty of filler foam.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Plate motions world-wide range from under 1cm/year to about 14 cm/year maximum at the present time. Across the Atlantic it depends upon where you measure the spreading, because along any plate boundary the rates of motion will inevitably vary (it's a feature of motion on a spheroid), but the Mid-Atlantic Spreading Ridge is generally a fairly slow spreading ridge. 1 to 4 cm/yr relative spreading rate is typical. Between North America and Europe is probably 2-3 cm/yr, depending on which path you measure ac

      • Compare that to ocean-level rise, which is measured in mm (around 3mm per year).
  • by IcyHando'Death ( 239387 ) on Sunday July 22, 2012 @06:50AM (#40729047)
    The blog provides the coordinates, 2915'34.29"N 09534'08.85"W, so you can view the formation on Google maps. If you check it out in map view [google.ca], it still shows the original river bend with no cut-through.
  • Ox Bow Lakes blew my mind in junior high. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was my first introduction to emergence, long before anyone was talking about emergence.

  • by Red Storm ( 4772 ) on Sunday July 22, 2012 @12:01PM (#40730407)

    Just in case our "Upside down" compatriots in Australia are confused about an Ox-Bow lake, you would know them as a Billabong, yes body of water that the Swagman boiled his billy by and ultimately jumped into is real...

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