Allan James

Allan James
University of South Carolina | USC · Department of Geography

B.A. in Geography, Univ. California, Berkeley, 1978; M.S. Water Resources Mgt., Univ. Wisconsin, Madison, 1981; M.S. Geography, Univ. Wisconsin, Madison, 1983; Ph.D. Geography & Geology (held jointly), Univ. Wisconsin, Madison, 1988.

About

106
Publications
55,544
Reads
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3,622
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Introduction
Primary research is on river and floodplain sedimentation, flood hydrology, use of geospatial methods (remote sensing and GIS) for these purposes. This includes sediment production from hill slopes, gullies, floodplains, and channels due to mining, agriculture, deforestation, and floods; sediment transport by fluvial systems, sediment storage potential, and sediment yields.
Additional affiliations
July 2018 - present
University of South Carolina
Position
  • Professor Emeritus
July 2018 - present
University of South Carolina
Position
  • Professor Emeritus
April 1994 - April 2006
University of South Carolina
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
Education
May 1983 - February 1988
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Field of study
  • Geography & Geology
May 1981 - May 1983
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Field of study
  • Geography
September 1978 - May 1981
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Field of study
  • Water Resources Management

Publications

Publications (106)
Article
Full-text available
Fluvial geomorphologists and stream restorationists often assume that pre-Columbian land use in parts of North America was relatively ineffective in accelerating slope erosion and floodplain sedimentation, and that erosion and sedimentation initiated by European settlement was sudden and substantial. Both of these beliefs, which underlie concepts o...
Article
Extensive anthropogenic terrestrial sedimentary deposits are well recognized in the geologic literature and are increasingly being referred to as legacy sediment (LS). Definitions of LS are reviewed and a broad but explicit definition is recommended based on episodically produced anthropogenic sediment. The phrase is being used in a variety of ways...
Article
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Significance This paper is of fundamental interest to the millions of residents living at the downstream end of this and other global river basins beset by industrial metals mining. Sediment-bound Hg has contaminated food webs of the San Francisco Bay-Delta, but the dominant geographical sources of Hg to downstream ecosystems in this and similar ri...
Article
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Geomorphological mapping plays an essential role in understanding Earth surface processes, geochronology, natural resources, natural hazards and landscape evolution. It involves the partitioning of the terrain into conceptual spatial entities based upon criteria that include morphology (form), genetics (process), composition and structure, chronolo...
Article
The ability to develop spatially distributed models of topographic change is presenting new capabilities in geomorphic research. High resolution maps of elevation change indicate locations, processes, and rates of geomorphic change, and provide a means of calibrating temporal simulation models. Methods of geomorphic change detection (GCD), based on...
Article
A discrete period of hydraulic gold mining in the northwestern Sierra Nevada, California (1853-1884) and extreme channel aggradation provide an opportunity to examine long-term catchment-scale sediment transport. This study used high-resolution LiDAR topographic data to reconstruct historical surfaces and compute spatially distributed sediment budg...
Article
Full-text available
Over the past decades, a number of water sciences and management programs have been developed to better understand and manage the water cycles at multiple temporal and spatial scales for various purposes, such as ecohydrology, global hydrology, sociohydrology, supply management, demand management, and integrated water resources management (IWRM). A...
Article
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People and water intersect in the movement of sediment downstream in rivers. Social processes and geomorphological processes become entangled as each system moves in ways that trigger corresponding responses from the other. Long-term dialectical relationships emerge that span multiple human generations. The power of sediment and water to change phy...
Chapter
Human land-use activities have fundamentally changed the hydrogeomorphology of rivers. Since the late Holocene, anthropogenic changes to alluvial stratigraphy and channel morphology have often been greater than those left by climate change. This chapter reviews four general topics related to land use: (1) landscape sensitivity and scale; (2) change...
Chapter
This article reviews the early history of the advent and intensification of agricultural land use as a cause of geomorphic change on broad scales of time and space. Anthropogeomorphic change increased with agriculture, which involved land clearance and erosive land-use practices. Early global responses to anthropogenic deforestation began in the mi...
Chapter
A synthesis of the rapidly growing field of anthropic geomorphology is presented that includes impacts on geomorphic systems, impacts of climate change, effects of geomorphic systems on society, and natural hazards. Conceptual models of anthropogenic geomorphic impacts that join human and physical factors are narrow in scope relative to the broad s...
Chapter
Full-text available
Mining is of interest to geomorphologists because of the unique types of excavated and accumulated landforms and landscapes that are vulnerable to geomorphic hazards. Mining is extensive worldwide. It produces more sediment than paved road construction, house construction or agriculture. Mining is associated with increasing vulnerability to slope f...
Chapter
Recognition of climate change impacts on river systems arose in the 1800s, soon after glacial theory. By the early 20th century, multiple theories competed to explain how a specific climate shift would affect river system behavior, with some emphasizing the role of sediment production and others emphasizing runoff production. Non-climatic factors,...
Article
Anthropogenic erosion and sedimentation are critical components of global change that involve life-sustaining natural resources of soil and water. Many geomorphic systems have responded to intense land use disturbance with episodic erosion and sedimentation, often orders of magnitude greater than background geological rates in the Holocene. Acceler...
Article
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Increases in impervious surfaces and land‐use changes associated with urbanization have long been the focus of urban hydrological research. However, studies and calculations that consider impervious surfaces alone do not encompass all factors that influence urban hydrologic response, as alternative urban structures may have a substantial effect on...
Chapter
Erosion is the movement of material from rest, as opposed to sediment transport, which is the ongoing movement of material, and deposition, which is the cessation of movement. The topics covered pertain to erosion of the land surface and related processes. It does not include subsurface movement of material that may occur by processes of dissolutio...
Article
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Stream restoration aims to improve hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecological processes and provides an opportunity for ecological design in an urban context. Urban stream restoration and stormwater management involve conventional and low impact development strategies that may employ ecological engineering techniques. Urban flood-risks may increase rap...
Article
Anthropogeomorphic changes to channels and floodplains occurred in response to destructive agricultural practices following the arrival of European settlers into the Americas. The southeastern Piedmont physiographic region of the USA experienced severe erosion and sedimentation after settlement in the 1700s and farming up through the 1930s. In plac...
Article
Disdain for empirical science has a long history dating back to eighteenth-century debates about the Earth’s surface formation. Scientific debates over global catastrophic flooding and the Earth’s geologic age were resolved by the mid-nineteenth century, but subsequent nonscientific debates about the Earth’s age and biological evolution spawned a d...
Article
The extreme rainfall of October 2015 in South Carolina generated numerous dam failures and spawned the flood of record at most U.S. Geological Survey stream gauges. Detailed field sampling and systematic image analysis are used to document the immediate and sustained geomorphic adjustments at four failed dams within the urbanized Gills Creek waters...
Article
This paper evaluates the relative importance of anthropogeomorphic sedimentation on floodplains in the mid-latitudes of North America before and after the arrival of EuroAmericans. Geohistorical and geoarchaeological theories have emerged that have conflicts concerning the relative effectiveness of pre- and postcolonial anthropogeomorphic change in...
Article
Full-text available
Research on urban flood hydrology—especially in small watersheds—is urgently needed in response to a dearth of small catchment studies, rapid urban growth, increased flash flooding, and precipitation variability. This study compares stormflow between three small catchments in the South Carolina Sandhills of the USA: two heavily urbanized, and one f...
Article
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Buildings, as impervious surfaces, are an important component of total impervious surface areas that drive urban stormwater response to intense rainfall events. Most stormwater models that use percent impervious area (PIA) are spatially lumped models and do not require precise locations of building roofs, as in other applications of building maps,...
Article
G.K. Gilbert's (1917) classic monograph, Hydraulic-Mining Débris in the Sierra Nevada, is described and put into the context of modern geomorphic knowledge. While the emphasis is on large-scale applied fluvial geomorphology, which is represented very well, other key elements—e.g., coastal geomorphology—are briefly covered. A brief synopsis outlines...
Article
Geomorphic systems often experience morphological changes that define a trajectory over decadal time periods. These trends can be halted by natural inhibitors such as vegetation, knickpoints, bed armor, or bank cohesion, or by anthropogenic inhibitors such as revetment, levees, or dams. Details about where and how channels and floodplains are stabi...
Conference Paper
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Article
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This issue’s cover photo is a view north up the Columbia Canal (Columbia, South Carolina) from near the Gervais Street Bridge on October 14th 2015, after it was dammed off with a rock barrier (upper right). The canal was dry due to a breach in the levee separating the canal from the Congaree River, sometime on October 4th after being over-topped by...
Conference Paper
Analysis of evolutionary trajectories is increasingly being practiced in Australia and Europe as an alternative river management strategy to conventional river restoration. This perspective and associated methods are described, contrasted with conventional restoration, and applied to the lower Yuba and Bear Rivers in northern California. River rest...
Article
Full-text available
Change in fluvial systems has interested geomorphologists for several decades, but awareness of change dates back much further to the ancient Greeks. This paper introduces seven articles that focus on aspects of temporal and/or spatial change in rivers in the central and southeastern United States of America. Timescales examined span from the late...
Article
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Spatial patterns in geomorphic variations are examined in a river transition from the Southern Blue Ridge to the Piedmont physiographic regions. Downstream hydraulic geometry (DHG), fining of bed material, and changes in reach-scale channel-bed morphology (bedforms) were sampled and analyzed. DHG power functions were well developed (r 2 > 0.75 for...
Chapter
Full-text available
Human land-use activities have fundamentally changed the hydrogeomorphology of rivers. Since the late Holocene, anthropogenic changes to alluvial stratigraphy and channel morphology have often been greater than those left by climate change. This chapter reviews four general topics related to land use: (1) landscape sensitivity and scale; (2) change...
Chapter
Full-text available
Mining is an activity integral to modern society that has a long history and occurs in a wide range of geomorphic settings. It is of interest to geomorphologists because of the unique types of excavated and accumulated landforms and landscapes that are vulnerable to geomorphic hazards. Mining landscapes covered more than a half million hectares wor...
Article
This synthesis examines agricultural development and potential geomorphic changes on broad scales of time and space. Anthropogeomorphic change increased with Neolithic agriculture. In Europe, substantial fluvial responses to deforestation began in small catchments during the Bronze and early Iron Ages and spread to larger rivers during the historic...
Article
Full-text available
Anthropogenic geomorphology is an emerging systematic field that overlaps with climate change and natural hazards research. Collectively, these three topics form a human dimension of geomorphology that should gain increasing prominence in the twenty-first century with mounting concerns over the ability to reconcile population growth, dwindling reso...
Article
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Previous studies of correlation coefficients between paired observations using census, hydrologic, and remote sensing data abound. It is well established that bivariate relationships at coarser spatial resolutions are often stronger than at finer resolutions. No assessment as yet, however, corroborates this tendency with water resources variables....
Article
Several indicators are commonly used to measure the degree of water resources vulnerability (e.g., water stress and scarcity) in different populations and regions. Little is known, however, about how these indicators respond to changes in the scale of data used to derive them. Two of the most widely used water resources vulnerability metrics, conve...
Article
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The seven papers in this special issue resulted from two special sessions by the same name, at the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG) in Knoxville, Tennessee, in November 2009. The sessions were convened to address research involving fluvial processes and form in small headwater streams, and the papers represe...
Article
Full-text available
Automated channel headwater mapping methods are reviewed and three methods are used to map a small watershed in the South Carolina upper Piedmont based on high-resolution LiDAR data. First, channels were mapped manually using crenulations on 0.6-m contours generated from the LiDAR data. Field verifications indicate the LiDAR-generated contour map i...
Article
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Spatial scales and methods for dealing with scale have been widely discussed in the water resources literature. Different spatial processes operate at different scales so interpretations based on data from one scale may not apply to another. Understanding the behavior of phenomena at multiple-scales of data aggregation is thus imperative to accurat...
Article
Full-text available
Hydraulic gold mining in the Sierra Nevada, California (1853–1884) displaced ~1.1 billion m3 of sediment from upland placer gravels that were deposited along piedmont rivers below dams where floods can remobilize them. This study uses topographic and planimetric data from detailed 1906 topographic maps, 1999 photogrammetric data, and pre- and post-...
Article
The concept of sediment waves is reviewed and clarifications are proposed for nomenclature concerning vertical channel responses to large fluvial sediment fluxes over a period of a decade or longer. Gilbert’s (1917) original sediment waves are re-evaluated at their type locale and used to develop a consistent set of definitions. A ‘sediment wave’ r...
Article
Full-text available
Hydraulic gold-mining tailings produced in the late nineteenth century in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California caused severe channel aggradation in the lower Feather and Yuba Rivers. Topographic and planimetric data from historical accounts, maps, topographic surveys, vertical sections, aerial photographs, and LiDAR (light detection and rangin...
Conference Paper
Geomorphic changes in the lower Yuba and Feather Rivers due to hydraulic mining provide a chance to study centennial-scale processes. Channel changes over 150 years were determined using channel-bank stratigraphy, geochemical signatures (total Hg, grain-size distributions, bulk geochemistry, fallout radionuclides, and Sr/Nd isotopes), and spatial a...
Article
Nineteenth century hydraulic mining in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California displaced ~ 1.0 x 109 m3 of sediment, much of which constructed large tailings fans that linked up into valley-scale fans (e.g. Yuba fan) and graded into the Central Valley more than 50 km downstream. Additionally, ~4.0 x 106 kg of mercury used in gold separation was l...
Article
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Natural physical conditions and the politics of flood management provide the historical context for structural flood control that underlies modern flood hazards in the Sacramento Valley. The valley is a broad, low plain with backswamp basins that were frequently inundated prior to Anglo-American settlement, continuing until the modern flood-control...
Article
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The Sacramento River's flood-control system was conceived as a series of weirs and bypasses that routes floods out of the leveed main channel into natural floodways engineered to drain directly into the bay delta. The system, superimposed on a natural geomorphic setting consisting of geologic, sedimentary, and tectonic controls, still relies on wei...
Article
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The southeastern Piedmont of the USA was severely gullied during the early 20th century. A thick canopy established by reforestation in many areas now inhibits the identification or mapping of gullies by aerial photography or other conventional remote sensing methods. An Airborne Laser-Scanning (ALS or LiDAR) mapping mission flown for the U.S. Fore...
Article
An extensive literature about fluvial sediment waves, slugs or pulses has emerged in the past 20 years. The concept has been useful in many respects, but has been applied to diverse phenomena using a variety of definitions. Moreover, inferred linkages between channel-bed changes and sediment loads are often not justifiable. This paper reviews conce...
Article
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Historical and modern scientific contexts are provided for the 2006 Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium on the Human Role in Changing Fluvial Systems. The 2006 symposium provides a synthesis of research concerned with human impacts on fluvial systems — including hydrologic and geomorphic changes to watersheds — while also commemorating the 50th anni...
Article
Recent initiatives to find ways to reintroduce anadromous fish to the Central Valley of California have identified the Yuba River as one of the best potential watersheds for expanding spawning habitat of spring-run chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Salmon spawning in the Yuba River would require substantial modifications or removal of Englebright...
Article
Full-text available
The fundamentally geographic issue of the amounts and spatial patterns of erosion necessary to produce classic glacial landforms such as U-shaped valleys has been debated by scientists for over a century. Terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) measurements in glacially abraded bedrock were used to determine patterns of glacial erosion and to quantify...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Suspended sediment loads in large rivers are increasing globally, but this trend has reversed in some basins due to dam construction, particularly in developed countries. Sediment loads in lower Sacramento Valley basins began decreasing by 1900 (as shown by G. K. Gilbert's classic 1917 study of hydraulic gold-mining debris), preceding most USA redu...
Article
Sand and gravel tailings from nineteenth century open-pit hydraulic gold mines formed large alluvial fans at tributary confluences in the northwestern Sierra Nevada, California. In the Bear River watershed, several of these fans were so large that they blocked main channels for decades. Some channels not only aggraded deeply, but also moved laterall...
Chapter
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Geographers have traditionally studied spatial relationships, human-land interactions, and the synthesis of this information on a regional basis. How better to integrate these foci than to study regional impacts of soil erosion and sedimentation following the introduction of European and African agricultural technology to North America? Physical ge...
Article
Pleistocene glacial erosion left a strong topographic imprint in the northwestern Sierra Nevada at many scales, yet the specific landforms and the processes that created them have not been previously documented in the region. In contrast, glaciation in the southern and central Sierra was extensively studied and by the end of the 19th century was am...
Article
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Successful implementation of water-quality management requires accurate scientific knowledge of water systems and sound judgment about environmental policy. This dual requirement calls for interactions between water scientists, managers, and policy experts who can jointly interpret and synthesize the data necessary for decision-making. With regard...
Article
Pleistocene fluvial landforms and riparian ecosystems in central California responded to climate changes in the Sierra Nevada, yet the glacial history of the western Sierra remains largely unknown. Three glacial stages in the northwestern Sierra Nevada are documented by field mapping and cosmogenic radionuclide surface-exposure (CRSE) ages. Two CRS...
Chapter
This chapter provides archaeological evidence to answer questions concerning Earth surface processes and history, i.e. geomorphology. As archaeological evidence is commonly found in floodplain sediments, tools used for analysing floodplain sedimentation are applicable. Finds should be located precisely on field drawings and depth logged. Artefacts...
Article
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This research examines the accuracy of contour maps subsampled from a 3D seismic survey. A 3D seismic data set was interpreted using LANDMARK's "Seisworks-3D" software to build three contour surfaces of stratigraphic horizons at various depths and structural complexities. These horizons were exported and imported to a Geographic Information System...
Article
A rich tradition in historical environmental change emerged in the 20th century within the discipline of fluvial geomorphology the study of river land forms. This tradition has produced considerable fruit, including a scientific and historic understanding of river channel change that has reached a much broader audience, including planners, environm...
Article
River managers need to understand fluvial systems as they change through time. Many river systems are presently in a state of flux as a result of substantial anthropogenic changes to water and sediment regimes and channel hydraulics. Yet, historical approaches to understanding river systems rarely receive adequate attention because historical metho...
Article
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A B STRA C T The 1993 flood on the Upper Mississippi River was a rare, large-magnitude hydrological event. Field and aerial survey analyses and Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper data were used to appraise the thickness of overbank deposits on leveed and unleveed reaches. Results indicate that minimal (,5 mm) overbank sedimentation occurred, except in the i...
Article
Patterns of overbank sedimentation in the vicinity of, and far removed from, levee breaks that occurred in response to the >100 year, summer 1993 flood in the upper Mississippi River valley are elucidated. Two suites of overbank deposits were associated with the failure of artificial levees within a 70 km long study reach. Circumjacent sand deposit...
Article
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Channel incision along the lower American River from 1905 to 1995 is investigated using channel cross-section plots and statistical analysis of stage-discharge data from two streamflow gages located at three sites. Channel incision lowered thalweg elevations at rates of up to 8.2 cm yr−1, and flow stages decreased at rates of up to 4.3 cm yr−1 for...
Article
An empirical evaluation of glacial trough cross-section shape is performed on seven vertical cross-sections in three Sierra Nevada valleys glaciated during the late Quaternary. Power and second-order polynomial functions are fitted by statistical regression. Power functions are very sensitive to subtle valley-bottom topographic features and require...
Article
Full-text available
The 1993 Mississippi River flood was notable for its high magnitude, long duration, summer occurrence, and low sediment discharge. A field survey of a 70-km-long reach in the vicinity of Quincy, Illinois, revealed that the event was characterized by 100 yr flood had remarkably little sedimentological or geomorphological impact on the flood plain wi...
Article
Deep canyon erosion and diversion of more than 300 km2 of the former upper Bear River is documented with stratigraphic and morphologic evidence. Stratigraphic relationships constrain canyon incision to no older than late Miocene in age. A hypothesis is advanced that channel diversion was caused by ice spilling over a divide between the Bear and Sou...