Rivers as Complex Systems

Dr. Nikki Strong
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Environmental Studies, St. Olaf College

Rivers like all natural systems are inherently complex. They are systems comprised of numerous interconnected components that both self-organize as well as respond to outside perturbations in complicated unpredictable ways. How does one begin to understand and test hypothesis on the dynamics of these  complicated systems, especially given the temporal scales (tens to millions of years) and spatial scales (meters to thousands of kilometers) over which they evolve? I will present some results from physical experiments done at the Experimental Earthscape Facility at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (safl.umn.edu) that try to address this dilemma and demonstrate what can be learned and what can’t be learned from scaling the natural world into a sandbox.