Environmental History of the Hudson River

About this book

The diverse contributions to Environmental History of the Hudson River examine how the natural and physical attributes of the river have influenced human settlement and uses, and how human occupation has, in turn, affected the ecology and environmental health of the river. The Hudson River Valley may be America's premier river environmental laboratory, and by bringing historians and social scientists together with biologists and other physical scientists, Environmental History of the Hudson River hopes to foster new ways of looking at and talking about this historically, commercially, and aesthetically important ecosystem.

Native people's influences on the ecological integrity of aquatic and shoreline communities were generally local and minor, and for the first 12,000 years or so of human use, the Hudson River was valued mainly as a source of water, food, and transportation. Since the arrival of European colonists, however, commerce has been the engine that has driven development and use of the river, from the harvesting of beaver pelts and timber to the siting of manufacturing industries and power plants, and all of these uses have had pervasive effects on the river's aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. In the meantime, aesthetic movements such as the Hudson River School of painting have sought to recover and preserve the earlier pastoral landscape, anticipating the more recent efforts by environmentalists that have led to dramatic improvements in water quality, shoreline habitats, and fish populations.

Despite the pervasive forces of commerce, the Hudson River has retained its world-class scenic qualities. The Upper Hudson remains today a free-flowing, tumbling mountain stream, and the Lower Hudson a fjord penetrated and dominated by the Hudson Highlands. The Hudson's unique history continues to affect current uses and will surely influence the future in remarkable ways.
 

Contents

Foreword
Frances F. Dunwell

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Robert E. Henshaw

The Hudson River Watershed: An Abbreviated Geography
Robert E. Henshaw

PART I. History and Biology: Providing Explanations
Robert E. Henshaw

1. Historical Facts/Biological Questions
Robert E. Henshaw

2. Linkages between People and Ecostystems: How Did We Get from Separate to Equal?
Stuart Findlay

3. Symbioses between Biologists and Social Scientists
Lucille Lewis Johnson

PART II. River of Resources
Robert E. Henshaw

4. Hudson River Fisheries: Once Robust, Now Reduced
Robert A. Daniels, Robert E. Schmidt, and Karin E. Limburg

5. Herpetofauna of the Hudson River Watershed: A Short History
Alvin R. Breisch

6. Human Impacts on Hudson River Morphology and Sediments: A Result of Changing Uses and Interests
Frank O. Nitsche, Angela L. Slagle, William B. F. Ryan, Suzanne Carbotte, Robin Bell, Timothy C. Kenna, and Roger D. Flood

7. The Earliest Thirteen Millennia of Cultural Adaptation along the Hudson River Estuary
Christopher R. Lindner

8. Archaeological Indices of Environmental Change and Colonial Ethnobotany in Seventeenth-Century Dutch New Amsterdam
Joel W. Grossman

9. Linking Uplands to the Hudson River: Lake to Marsh Records of Climate Change and Human Impact over Millennia
Dorothy M. Peteet, Elizabeth markgraf, Dee C. Pederson, and Sanpisa Sritrairat

10. Vegetation Dynamics in the Northern Shawangunk Mountains: The Last Three Hundred Years
John E. Thompson and Paul C. Huth

11. Agriculture in the Hudson Basin Since 1609
Simon Litten

12. Ecology in the Field of Time: Two Centuries of interaction between Agriculture and Native Species in Columbia County, New York
Conrad Vispo and Claudia Knab-Vispo

13. The Introduction and Naturalization of Exotic Ornamental Plants in New York’s Hudson River Valley
Chelsea Teale

PART III. River of Commerce
Robert E. Henshaw

14. The Rise and Emise of the Hudson River Ice Harvesting Industry: Urban needs and Rural Responses
Wendy E. Harris and Arnold Pickman

15. Human Sanitary Wastes and Waste Treatment in New York City
David J. Tonjes, Christine A. O’Connell, Omkar Aphale, and R. L. Swanson

16. Foundry Cove: Icon of the Interaction of Industry with Aquatic Life
Jeffrey S. Levinton

17. River City: Transporting Commerce and Culture
Roger Panetta

18. Out of the Fray: Scientific Legacy of Environmental Regulation of Electric Generating Stations in the Hudson River Valley
John R. Young and William P. Dey

PART IV. River of Inspiration
Robert E. Henshaw

19. Birth of the Environmental Movement in the Hudson River Valley
Albert K. Butzel

20.  The Influence of the Hudson River School of Art in the Preservation of the River, Its Natural and Cultural Landscape, and the Evolution of Environmental Law
Harvey K. Flad

21. “Thy Fate and Mine Are Not Repose”: The Hudson and Its Influence
Geoffrey L. Brackett

22. The Past as Guide to a Successful Future
Robert E. Henshaw

Afterword
Robert E. Henshaw

Customer Reviews

Biography

Robert E. Henshaw received his PhD in environmental physiology at the University of Iowa and worked for twenty years as an environmental analyst at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He has taught in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University at Albany-SUNY, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Hudson River Environmental Society.