Western Water A to Z is the first ever field guide to Western water. Reinventing this twentieth-century genre for a twenty-first-century audience, Robert R. Crifasi answers questions about rivers, water projects, the culture of water, the ecosystems water projects have created or destroyed, and the reliance of cities, farms, and industries on this critical resource. Organized as a collection of terms, the book addresses the most salient water issues and provides helpful background information regarding their origins and implications. Photographs serve a vital role in the cultural dialogue on water and stand as an equal partner to the text. Each subject is covered in about one page and is accompanied by one or two striking images from famous photographers like Margaret Bourke-White, Carleton E. Watkins, Arthur Rothstein, William Henry Jackson, and Dorothea Lang as well as Crifasi's own work. Water often finds itself at the center of our cultural discourse in art, cinema, and literature, which play essential roles in shaping our understanding and experience of Western water. Crifasi also engages personalities that are nearly synonymous with Western water--John Wesley Powell, Elwood Mead, and Floyd Dominy, among others--to show how their lives intertwined with and often influenced the course of water development across the region.
Travelers, adventurers, students, and anyone interested in water will find Western Water A to Z a handy and entertaining reference guide.
Author(s): Robert R Crifasi
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 391
City: Denver
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Why Western Water A to Z?
Introduction
About the Scope of This Book
The Organization of Western Water A to Z
About the Photography
What Is the American West?
History of the West and Its Environment: A Land of Scarcity?
Conquest
Prior Appropriation and the Institutions of Water Management
Water Development
Part 2: Western Water A to Z
Abbey, Edward - Avanyu
Bank - Buy and Dry
California State Water Project - Cubic Feet per Second
Debris Flows - Dust Storms
Echo Park Controversy - Evaportranspiration
Fish Hatcheries - Fracking
Gages and Water Measuring - Groundwater
Hayden, Car - Hydropower
Indigenous Water Rights - Irrigation
Lahontan Cutthroat Trout - Losing Stream
Mead, Elwood - Mulholland, William
National Environmental Policy Act - Nonpoint Source Pollution
Outlet Works - Oxbow
Parker Dam - Powell, John Wesley
Rafting - Russian Olive
Salinity - Stream Narrowing
Tamarisk - Turf Grass
Union Colony - US Army Corps of Engineers
Virtual Water
Water Buffalo - Windmill
Yellowstone Lake - Yield
Zybach, Frank, andCenter Pivot Irrigation
Part 3: Thinking About Western Water in the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Bibliography
Index
