Modelling and Mapping Elusive Locations of Historic Water-Powered Grist Mills

Abstract. Grist mills are structures in which stone wheels are used to grind grain (e.g. corn, wheat) into a powder-like form for human consumption. Circular stone wheels provided the pressure to grind the grain and separate seed components. In most grist mills the energy for turning the heavy stones was derived from water power. The most visible part of some these mills was the externally mounted water wheel. However, other common configurations of the water 'turbine' internal to the structure were used (Figure 1). While grist mills existed in Europe at least as early as the 11th century such mills were not present in the United States until the last 1600s. No comprehensive census has been conducted for grist mills in the U.S. although an estimate of all water powered mills in eastern U.S. was 65,000 in 1840. Many of these water powered mills in the census estimate were for textile, sawmills, manufacturing, and other non-grain-grinding applications.Most often, the mill site included a small impoundment for creating a reliable source of water during low-flow stream conditions. These ponds were created in the late 1700s and especially in the 1800s as a reliable water source for turning grist or saw mills. By the middle of the 20th century the grist mills had all but vanished. Except for a few historic relics and conversion to touristic sites, the mill infrastructure has disappeared on the landscape while the mill ponds typically remain, serving other purposes, such as fishing or hunting lakes, or merely aesthetic environments.The local ecosystems around the mills sites have been artificially modified by the presence of these stream impoundments providing a new environment for fish, mammals, avian species, and of course, humans. While numerous positive ecosystem values may be observed from their continued presence, the risk of dam failure to both downstream systems and humans is substantial. In fact, such a catastrophic series of dam failures (51 in South Carolina) occurred in October of 2015 from a heavy rainfall event. In other instances the impoundments now store toxic sediment originating from sources farther upstream such as mining, military or industrial processes.Where are these historic mill sites and mill ponds? No inventory of mills or their ponds exist in South Carolina (and only for a few northeastern states). In this research we developed a systematic approach for identifying and mapping historic mill sites and ponds using a geohistorical framework and applied to South Carolina. The approach relied on 1) numerous geospatial sources, and 2) an analytical model of confidence mapping for predicting sites. The developed approach resulted in a new database of definitive and likely historic mill sites and mill pond locations throughout South Carolina. The sources of geospatial information was largely cartographic in nature including the following:USGS Historic Topographic Map SeriesRobert Mills 1820 atlas covering South CarolinaHistoric aerial photographyNational Hydrography Data (NHD)National Wetlands Inventory (NWI)National Inventory of DamsSC Department of Health and Environmental Control for Regulated DamsToponyms from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)U.S. Census TIGER street dataThe design for a predictive model (Figure 2) using diverse historic data with various scales and reliability is problematic. Most of the grist mills have disappeared from the landscape and do not exist in contemporary geospatial databases. Historic maps might include toponyms for the sites or ponds but their map projection, scale, and subsequent distortions in geometry are problematic. In addition, some of the sources for data are derived from a similar source and thus, are not statistically independent. The design of the analytical model for mapping confidence in mill site locations was calibrated and subsequently validated using several independent sources of information. Numerous field visits to known and suspected locations for mills sites were conducted throughout the physiographic regions of South Carolina.The model of likelihood included factors for the reliability of the source, the mapping scale and spatial accuracy of the source, correlation with other sources, and likelihood of correspondence with grist mills.</p

The application of GIS in railway heritage management: the case of Yunnan-Vietnam Railway

Abstract. Railways were a key mode of transporting goods and people for industrial and urban development in the late modern age. Their special part in economic growth comes with their role in the development of cultural heritage along their pathways. However, because of competing urban construction, many railway heritages are in danger, such as the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway (YVR) in China, an important international narrow-gauge railway built in 1901, acknowledged as a railway heritage in 2018. As a typical linear heritage, the railway integrates both the natural and cultural landscapes, related to the large spatial extent and complex composition of single heritage elements. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offer a great support in the investigation, assessment, and management of railway heritage. In this research, the huge cultural heritage related to the YVR was studied using a combined geo-historical and GIS approach. This paper aims to 1) give a brief review of the current status of the application of GIS on linear railway heritages studies, including heritage resources surveys, spatial analysis, thematic mapping and public service, 2) introduce the case study of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, and 3) present a geodatabase design for the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway heritage management.</p

Forest in Military Through Cartography: the Case of the McCrady Training Base

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Forests as Protagonists on Battlefields: the case studies of Rivers Bridge and Honey Hill Through the Lens of a HGIS

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QUANTE PADOVE? Fascicolo cartografico PADOVA A OVEST

Si assiste all’urbanizzazione del quartiere seguendo la crescita degli sparuti abitati settecenteschi in direzione del nucleo cittadino, che occupano il vuoto lasciato dal Guasto cinquecentesco in un percorso che, passando per la costruzione di nuove direttrici ferroviarie e stradali, l’industrializzazione, la sregolata espansione residenziale del secondo dopoguerra e l’installazione di strutture al servizio dell’intera città, arriva fino ai rioni attuali; dove la ricerca di un ruolo attivo come centri all’interno nel sistema cittadino poggia su una ricca storia raccontata dai numerosi luoghi della memoria, grandi e piccoli, che popolano il territorio ad ovest di Padova. Il fascicolo contiene una serie cartografica (1780-2021) della zona “Padova a Ovest”, con 16 episodi di repeat cartography che ne illustrano la trasformazione

An indoor landscape for instruction of 3-D aerial drone imagery

An introduction in the use of small unmanned aerial systems for mapping is becoming a desirable course for undergraduate stu-dents. The controllability of drone aircraft and quality cameras, even in less expensive aerial models, offers opportunities for students to learn and collect their own imagery for a variety of applications. This opportunity can be taught with an active learning approach. The challenge for instructors is to cover the three fundamentals in the remote sensing workflow \u2013 planning, collection, and image proces-sing \u2013 while minimizing logistical issues associated with actual flight operation. The logistical issues (e.g. policy, legal, safety, weather) for an outdoor aerial drone learning experience are quite daunting, particularly for urban campuses with local/state restrictions on the use of drone aircraft. In this article, we separate the fundamental learning concepts in the remote sensing workflow from the flight operation and provide a learning environment for unlimited experiments. Using a synthetic indoor scaled landscape, students are given the opportunity for repeat experiments in a tightly controlled environment, saving the focus on actual flight operation for later times in the semester. The advantages of the indoor landscape are many, and also minimize the logistical issues for actual flight operation

L’ex-ferrovia Ostiglia-Treviso: analisi di una foresta e greenway sui binari

Il percorso della ferrovia Ostiglia-Treviso, aperta tra il 1925 e il 1941 e chiusa definitivamente tra il 1945 e il 1987, è stato parzialmente convertito in pista ciclabile a partire dal 2005. Oltre alla trasformazione parziale in ciclopedonale, il tracciato ha visto altre dinamiche, tra cui l’inglobamento in terreni agricoli, la conversione in strade e carrarecce e l’abbandono. Questa ricerca studia la densa vegetazione originatasi a seguito dell’abbandono della linea e si concentra sull’analisi spaziale dei poligoni vegetati nel loro contest storico-culturale e naturalistico. A tal fine è stato creato un database GIS di tutti i poligoni vegetati lungo l’intero percorso della ex-ferrovia. L’analisi quantitativa ha fornito dati che sono stati comparati con i parametri richiesti dalla definizione di foresta della FAO. Ciò ha portato a definire la copertura vegetale lungo l’ex-Ostiglia Treviso come una “serie di foreste”. Inoltre, la sua conformazione lineare funge da collegamento tra elementi di particolare interesse naturalistico e culturale che caratterizzano il territorio rendendola agli effetti sia un corridoio ecologico che una potenziale greenway nella sua totale lunghezza

Military-engineered floods as defense from the enemy: a brief review and case study from WWI in Northern Italy

During the First World War, after the Austrian-Hungarians broke through the Caporetto front in the fall of 1917, the Italian Army established new defense positions in the Veneto plain along the Piave River. Subsequently, in 1918 the Italian Command made contingency plans for another Austrian-Hungarian offensive that might overrun this new Piave River defensive line. These new plans were based on a southern line called the Mincio-Po line and were based on engineering-controlled breaks along the mighty Adige and Fratta-Gorzone rivers, thus, creating a massive anthropogenic flood stretching from the Adriatic Sea in the east to almost the city of Mantua in the west. Although a few large scale anthropogenic induced floods have been used as desperate war-time measures, these activities are rare. Little is known of these secret plans to inundate the Adige River floodplain and almost nothing is known of the resulting impact to the population, infrastructure, and agricultural landscape. In this research we used a geo-historical approach (GIS, historical cartography, aerial imagery) to model the location and extent of the planned flood. Using a dasymetric approach we modeled the population distribution during 1918 and estimated the displaced population, agricultural, roads, railroads, and poultry impacted

How many Carolina bays? An analysis of Carolina bays from USGS topographic maps at different scales

Carolina bays are elliptical or oval geomorphologic depressions often characterized by the presence of shallow ponds or swamps that occur in the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the US from Delaware to Florida. Explanations of their origin include meteor impacts, subsidence from subsurface karst, and thermokarst or thaw lakes. Quantification of the number of Carolina bays, which may help in forming theoretical explanations for their origin, is also elusive ranging from 10,000 to 500,000. This research demonstrates the large variations in numbers of Carolina bays as a function of mapping scale, the most important factor in enumerating topographic features. The systematic skills from analysts and cartographers in the USGS who mapped Carolina bays on two different scale map series in the national mapping program was exploited. The results indicate the number of Carolina bays is twenty times greater when enumerated at a 1:24,000 scale as compared to a 1:100,000 scale. An empirical model of the frequency of Carolina bays using different minimum mapping units (MMUs) was developed and applied to estimate bay frequency at any MMU. A more reliable estimate of the number of Carolina bays in the U.S. using an MMU of 0.1 ha is between 40,000 and 50,000