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3.2: Classroom Activity

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    46420
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    Landform Identification on Mississippi River Floodplain Using Google Earth

    Map showing area with blue lines indicating waterways and an inset location map for context.
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Mississippi River and its floodplain in the region including Cahokia at the time of its settlement around 1050 CE. (From Pauketat et al. 2023.)

    Open Google Earth Online.

    1. Focus on the same region as the 1050 CE (Fig. \(\PageIndex{1}\)) map above. Make geomorphological comparison on identifiable landforms. What are the identifiable landforms within and around the floodplain in the 1050 CE map? Are these landforms identifiable on the Google Earth map of the present time? How have their morphologies changed? Make a list of these landforms and their geomorphological changes.
    2. How have the boundaries of the floodplain changed between 1050 CE and the present time? Make qualitative observation and quantitative floodplain width measurement/estimation at several representative locations.
    3. How has the path of the Mississippi River channel changed between 1050 CE and the present time? Make qualitative observation and quantitative channel width measurement/estimation at several representative locations.

    This page titled 3.2: Classroom Activity is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Likwan Cheng.