Field trip- river restoration - Essay Example

As a function of understanding this, this particular course has analyzed a great many human development projects and the varying degree that they have affected upon the surrounding ecology and environment as a whole. In much the same way, this particular essay will consider the case of the Bellefonte dam and subsequent ecological and environmental factors that many decades of variable types of industrialization has affected on the region and the environment. Furthermore, as a means of highlighting the long-term nature of what unthoughtful human development can affect on a given region over a period of time, the analysis will highlight the negative factors that human development have affected within the given environmental and ecological models that Many times we are tempted to believe that even though humanity and economic projects can alter the course of nature that there is some type of corrective mechanism that the environment is able to employ that over time will correct the mistakes that humans have made.

Although it is true that the environment can eventually, if given long enough, ameliorate many of the negative factors that inattentive human development has affected, there is no mechanisms whereby nature can rapidly or quickly undue the destruction and changes that human development have wrought on it.1 A good example of this can be found in the way that the Bellefonte sight has been developed over a period of the past 230 years. Beginning as early as 1790, water powered industry began to spring up along the Bellefonte site as hydro power was utilized to drive what was then the very first vestiges of industrialization in the United States.

However, the changes did not end there as the development of industry led to the site being utilized for steel and iron smelting and production. With the presence of such industry and the construction of a dam to regulate water rates and flow, several key ecological issues have since developed. Although this site has been in use perhaps longer than any other site that this course has discussed thus far this semester with regards to the impact that humans have on the environment and the way that the ecological landscape develops, the fact of the matter is that the ecological impacts that have been affected have been notably and demonstrably proven to be for the long term.

For instance, the first and most pressing is with regards to the migration of natural species that the dam itself retards and/or prevents. As trout can no longer have any approachable means to reach the upper regions of the watershed or river system, a whole host of issues surrounding spawning, food chain management, and the diversity of species with a given region are affected. Other concerns regard the buildup of sediment at the base of the dam, the regulation of an otherwise variable flood plain that had existed prior to the construction of the dam as well as a litany of other issues, as well as the existence of a powerful whirlpool at the base of the dam which acts to collect garbage.

Of course such situations as have been illustrated only serve to highlight the importance that environmental and ecological remediation and planning must be taken into account prior to affecting any major changes within a region. Although it is within the realm of possibility and human ability to work to remediate some of the