Thesis Concept

winter pics-winter thoughts

Thesis Prep Document

Thesis Prep Document available, click here

National Roads + Trails

Through it was only a footpath, MacKaye characterized the proposal [The Appalachian Trail] as a "transportation project," because by its placement, the trail inverted the conventional hierarchy of transportation and development infrastructure.

An infrastructure of land or "super national" forest & a network of compact communities & industries would crystallize around the footpath to replace the suburbs. “The interstate geological formation of the Appalachian ridge would function as a kind of public utility or reservoir of natural resources, organizing transportation and hydroelectric networks while locating industry and community”

- Keller Easterling, Organization Space: Landscape, Highways, and Houses in America

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Landscape - Wind

Landscape - Dust Bowl

The Ogallala Aquifer underlies the heart of the Dust Bowl landscape. Catastrophic dust storms have subsided since the advent of irrigation technology and modern farming practices, yet dust bowl level droughts frequent the region still today. Without access to the irrigation from the aquifer cultivated top soil has little reason to stay put. In Oasis State Park, near Clovis New Mexico, blown top soil has settled due to sporadic trees and a lack of cultivation to create a entirely unique and foreign dune ecology.