Natural History of Planet Earth:
Topics in the Earth Sciences & Botany
An Educational Resource Presented by Raymond Wiggers,
Author of Geology Underfoot in Illinois and
The Plant Explorer's Guide to New England
Sunrise over a World-Class River. This view facing eastward was taken on the 200-foot-high bedrock bluff of the Ohio River, at Shetlerville, Illinois. A small portion of Livingston County, Kentucky is visible across the water, at right. This majestic waterway, which drains a large section of the Appalachian Plateau and the Midwest before meeting the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois, has been a primary transportation corridor for North Americans for countless centuries. But human use of this master stream constitutes only the latest and shortest chapter of its imense biography. Over millions of years, its course and flow have also been profoundly influenced by an assortment of geologic controls: continental uplift, fault zones, and the waxing and waning of Ice Age glaciers.
This scene illustrates a fact all too frequently overlooked: geology, meteorology, botany, hydrology, and the other sciences are not separate subjects, because they cannot be fully grasped by themselves. There can only be a continuum of integrated inquiry, interpretation, and understanding.
