Effects On Local Rivers
The continual slumping of the rubble within the crater has affected the flow of the rivers and shaped the Chesapeake Bay. The impact crater created a long-lasting topographic depression, which helped predetermine the course of local rivers and the eventual location of Chesapeake Bay. Most important for present-day inhabitants of the area, the impact disrupted aquifers. The present freshwater aquifers lie above a deep salty brine, making the entire lower Chesapeake Bay area susceptible to groundwater contamination.
The crater is also one factor contributing to the sinking of land near the Chesapeake Bay. For example, Hampton Roads is gradually sinking at a rate between 15 and 23 centimeters (5 and 7.5 inches) per century. This is occurring because of the slippage of the coast into the crater and groundwater removal, counteracting “isostatic rebound” of the crust of the earth from the weight of long absent glaciers.
Read more about this topic: Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater
Famous quotes containing the words effects, local and/or rivers:
“Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider’d as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of thought to pass from cause to effects and effects to causes, according to their experienc’d union.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Surely there must be some way to find a husband or, for that matter, merely an escort, without sacrificing one’s privacy, self-respect, and interior decorating scheme. For example, men could be imported from the developing countries, many parts of which are suffering from a man excess, at least in relation to local food supply.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)