Chuck Sutherland

Every spring my photographic activity emerges from its winter slumber and I begin re-learning everything I once knew about wildflowers again. I love this time of year when I can start wearing shorts again, and see the familiar wildflowers return to our roadsides and hollers. While I thoroughly enjoy capturing the beauty of wildflowers, I also like to think about how they ended up in their current location. As a practitioner of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), I find this question particularly intriguing. I provide this not as an empirical study, but rather a casual conversation to introduce readers to GIS concepts as related to wildflowers. The locations where I find my favorite wildflowers share a few common traits: steep slopes facing different directions (known as "aspect" in GIS) and intermittent water sources resulting from nested water tables. By seeking out these characteristics, I am more likely to find ideal habitats for wildflowers. Usin...

Geography Window Cliffs State Natural Area is located on the Eastern Highland Rim of Tennessee . It is a few miles south of Cookeville, and within Putnam County. It is within the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee, and within Middle Tennessee. Cane Creek flows through the designated natural area before its confluence with the Falling Water River at Center Hill Lake. Botany In the valley alongside Cane Creek one can find abundant flowering patches of phacelia, phlox, and trilliums. Along the rocky ledges and cliffs watch for bright red flowers of columbine. In a few places you'll also see usnea clinging to dead trees and be reminded of Spanish moss. Geology Cliffs of Fort Payne Limestone atop steep slopes of Chattanooga Shale are the obvious geology throughout the park. The base of the valleys is Catheys-Leipers Limestone, but doesn't play a large roll in the story that one sees at the Window Cliffs. In the above recreation of a map made by Hugh Mill...

Photo credit Annabelle Dempsey City Lake is an artificial impoundment located near Cookeville's Eastlake subdivision. It is within property managed by the city of Cookeville as a park, named City Lake Natural Area . While the history of City Lake in Cookeville is fascinating , I could never cover it as well as Jennie Ivey has. I will simply leave you with a brief explanation of the local geology. The karst spring which feeds the waterfall is formed at the contact of the St. Louis and Warsaw Limestones ( more about those types of waterfalls here ). It is a type of geologic contact based waterfall that is seen throughout the region. Other places include Milligan Road spring, Piper Falls, High Hope Falls, and Peters Falls (all in White County, Tennessee). The reason for this is due to an abundance of chert acting as an aquatard either in the lower portion of the St. Louis, or upper portion of the Warsaw Limestone. This prevents water from moving vertically and forces its latera...

This is intended to serve as a table of contents for existing, and future articles on the physiography of the Southeast United States. Cumberland Plateau Geology How it got here Crossbedding Fossils Liesegang Rings Minerals Sandstone as a Resource Tafoni Geography Natural Arches Overlooks Rivers Rock Shelters Slot Canyons / Caves Rock Towns Waterfalls Eastern Highland Rim Geology How it Got Here Pennington Formation Bangor Limestone Hartselle Sandstone Monteagle Limestone St. Louis Limestone Warsaw Limestone Fort Payne Limestone Chattanooga Shale Minerals ...

Tires-To-Spare is a fascinating cave whose entrance opened violently on April 25nd, 1994. The roof fell out of a previously unknown cave system exposing a passage down into the dark. In the video below, retired geology professor Ric Finch tells of its original exploration and what was found within. A description of the cave, written for the Tennessee Cave Survey by Ric Finch reads as follows: The sink entrance is 101 feet long, with a maximum width of 43 feet, and 31 feet deep. The entrance chamber is 50 feet by 75 feet. Two small holes through breakdown lead to the upstream passage. This solution passage carries a permanent stream and is subject to frequent flooding. Conduit dimensions are typically 15-20 feet wide by 10-12 feet high. The main conduit has been mapped 577 feet upstream from the breakdown, trending nearly due west, to a point where the ceiling lowers and the passage is submerged. There are several short loops and on significant side passage, for a total of 1230 fee...

The Twin Arches are a large pair of arches formed along a ridge just inside Scott County, Tennessee. They are topped by an erosion resistant rock now being called the Rockcastle Sandstone. Below that is the Fentress Formation, which tends to weather more rapidly. These arches both formed by a process of excavation where the cliff lines are receding on either side of a ridge towards one another. The base of the cliff weathers more rapidly than the top, creating large rock shelters. Eventually the rock shelters on either side of the ridge intersected one another creating an arch. The arch continues to grow and one day, sometime long from now, it will fail.