The hills are evolving
From high above the Florida Panhandle, the Apalachicola Bluffs — a winding system of steep ravines — look like the branching veins of a leaf. But this is a leaf in motion: Through the millennia, the ravines have worked their way east from the Apalachicola River, rippling through the land like furrows in a plowed field. This branching network is built on a shallow system of groundwater, with hundreds of valleys carved out over the years by streams and springs. The Apalachicola Bluffs have been described as a living landscape, their sands constantly evolving and branching through a combination of shifting soil and flowing streams. Now researchers in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) have developed a model that gauges how fast the area’s hills and valleys are spreading. The researchers studied slopes at the very tips of the branching channels, which they refer to as “channel...