Internal Improvements (1838–41)

John left farming in the wake of the panic of 1837 and found work as a surveyor, eventually working on a series of canal projects around western Pennsylvania, where he met Charles Schlatter. Despite his evident ability and expertise, John was doing little more than grubbing around for piecemeal surveying work before linking up with Schlatter. In 1838, Pennsylvania placed Schlatter in charge of surveying three potential railroad routes across the state, and he immediately drafted John to help. While submitting his survey report to the state authorities in Harrisburg, John got embroiled with Charles Ellet in a competition to build the first long span suspension bridge in the United States, over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Ellet won the contract, instituting a rivalry that would last much of the next twenty years.

Ambiguity

Chapter 2 argues that the adjective “good” is fundamentally three ways ambiguous between so-called evaluative, quantitative, and operational senses. Compare: “This painting is good” (evaluative); “It’s a good distance from here to the Schuylkill River” (quantitative); “The light bulb is good; it’s the wiring that’s frayed” (operational). On the basis of several semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties, it is argued that evaluative and operational “good” are irregular polysemes encoded in one lexeme, called “purposive ‘good,’ ” whereas quantitative “good” is a distinct lexeme, whose meaning stands in the relation of homonymy to the former two.

Poe’s Landscapes, Picturesque and Ideal

Associated with the urban venues in which he toiled as an editor, Edgar Allan Poe also became a first-hand observer and connoisseur of the natural (and improved) landscapes and landmarks in proximity to these areas. Examples include the Wissahickon Creek (emptying into the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia), the woods near Brennan farm in New York, and the bucolic Fordham Village in the Bronx. Painters, printmakers, and travel writers on the picturesque, notably William Hazlitt and Baron Herman von Pückler-Muskau, provide precedent and context for Poe’s marriage of verbal and visual styles in “The Domain of Arnheim” and “Landor’s Cottage.” Poe’s subtle handling of narrative perspective in his landscapes, following picturesque principles, derives from his impressionistic focus on painterly techniques supporting his developing aesthetics of effect.

Hydrological and Geophysical Investigation of Streamflow Losses and Restoration Strategies in an Abandoned Mine Lands Setting

Longitudinal discharge and water-quality campaigns (seepage runs) were combined with surface geophysical surveys, hyporheic zone temperature profiling, and watershed-scale hydrological monitoring to evaluate the locations, magnitude, and impact of stream-water losses from the West Creek sub-basin of the West West Branch Schuylkill River into the underground Oak Hill Mine complex that extends beneath the watershed divide. Abandoned mine drainage, containing iron and other contaminants, from the Oak Hill Boreholes to the West Branch Schuylkill River was sustained during low-flow conditions and correlated to streamflow lost through the West Creek streambed. During high-flow conditions, streamflow was transmitted throughout West Creek; however, during low-flow conditions, all streamflow from the perennial headwaters was lost within the 300 to 600 m “upper reach,” where an 1889 mine map indicated steeply dipping coalbeds underlie the channel. During low-flow conditions, the channel within the “intermediate reach,” 700 to 1,650 m downstream, gained groundwater seepage with higher pH and specific conductance than upstream; however, all streamflow 1,650 to 2,050 m downstream was lost to underlying mines. Electrical resistivity and electromagnetic conductivity surveys indicated conductive zones beneath the upper reach, where flow loss occurred, and through the intermediate reach, where gains and losses occurred. Temperature probes at 0.06 to 0.10 m depth within the hyporheic zone of the intermediate reach indicated potential downward fluxes as high as 2.1 × 10−5 m/s. Cumulative streamflow lost from West Creek during seepage runs averaged 53.4 L/s, which equates to 19.3 percent of the daily average discharge of abandoned mine drainage from the Oak Hill Boreholes and a downward flux of 1.70×10−5 m/s across the 2.1 km by 1.5 m West Creek stream-channel area.

Seasonal variability of the inorganic carbon system in a large coastal plain estuary

Carbonate geochemistry research in large estuarine systems is limited and widely understudied. Further, changes in land use activity have profoundly influenced watershed export of organic and inorganic carbon, acids, and nutrients to the coastal ocean. To investigate the seasonal variation of the inorganic carbon system in the Delaware Estuary, one of the largest estuaries along the U.S. east coast, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), total alkalinity (TA), and pH were measured down the estuary from June 2013 to April 2015. In addition, to explore how drainage basin mineralogy, weathering intensity, and tributary discharge impact total riverine DIC and TA fluxes to the estuary and export fluxes to the ocean, DIC, TA, and pH were periodically measured from March to October 2015 in the non-tidal freshwater Delaware, Schuylkill, and Christina rivers. Strong negative relationships between river TA and discharge support that changes in HCO3− concentrations reflect the dilution of the weathering derived products in the drainage basin. The ratio of DIC to TA, a rarely studied but important property, is high (1.11) during high discharge and low (0.94) during low discharge, reflecting additional CO2 input most likely from land surface organic matter decomposition other than HCO3− input from the drainage basin weathering processes. Our data further suggest that DIC in the Schuylkill River can be substantially different from DIC in the Delaware River, and thus in any river system, tributary contributions must be considered when addressing DIC inputs to the estuary. Long-term records of increasing alkalinity in the Delaware and Schuylkill river support global shifts toward higher alkalinity in estuarine waters with time. Annual DIC input flux to the estuary and export flux to the ocean are estimated to be 15.7 ± 8.2 × 109 mol C yr−1 and 16.5 ± 10.6 × 109 mol C yr−1, respectively. CO2 flux produced within the estuary inclusive of inputs from intertidal marshes is small (5.1 × 109 mol C yr−1) when compared to total riverine flux. This finding suggests that, in the case of the Delaware Estuary and perhaps other large coastal systems with long freshwater residence times, the majority of the DIC produced by biological processes is exchanged with the atmosphere rather than exported to the sea. Based on a CO2 mass balance model, we concluded that annually the Delaware Estuary is a weak heterotrophic system (−1.3 ± 3.8 mol C m−2 yr−1), which is in contrast to many highly heterotrophic smaller estuaries.