Nestled in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, Williamstown is home to one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country, Williams College. In this engrossing and entertaining ...book, Dustin Griffin offers fourteen vignettes that detail the local history of this ideal New England college town. Each chapter focuses on the stories behind a single feature that visitors to present-day Williamstown and Williams College might encounter, including a Civil War statue on Main Street, town-wide holidays, a popular hiking trail, a stained-glass window in the college chapel, and a song that alumni sing at reunions.
Well researched and written in an accessible style, Williamstown and Williams College is a must-have resource for anyone connected with Williams College -- from students and parents to alumni -- as well as visitors who want to understand what makes this town unique.
An extensive literature documents relations between reservoir storage capacity and water supply yield and the properties of instream flow needed to support downstream aquatic ecosystems. However, the ...literature that evaluates the impact of reservoir operating rules on instream flow properties is limited to a few site-specific studies, and as a result, few general conclusions can be drawn to date. This study adapts the existing generalized water evaluation and planning model (WEAP) to enable general explorations of relations between reservoir storage, instream flow, and water supply yield for a wide class of reservoirs and operating rules. Generalized relationships among these variables document the types of instream flow policies that when combined with drought management strategies, are likely to provide compromise solutions to the ecological and human negotiations for water for different sized reservoir systems. The concept of a seasonal ecodeficit/ecosurplus is introduced for evaluating the impact of reservoir regulation on ecological flow regimes.
In Ireland, constructed wetland systems are increasingly being used to perform tertiary treatment on municipal waste effluent from small towns and villages located in areas whose receiving waters are ...deemed sensitive. The bedrock formation in the west of Ireland is primarily karst limestone and where the overburden–soil cover is very shallow, such waters are highly sensitive to pollution sources, as little or no natural attenuation and/or treatment will occur. Constructed wetland technology has been seen to offer a relatively low-cost alternative to the more conventional tertiary treatment technologies, particularly when dealing with low population numbers in small rural communities. This paper examines the waste treatment performance, in terms of nutrient (P and N) reduction, of a recently constructed surface-flow wetland system at Williamstown, County Galway, Ireland. Performance evaluation is based on more than two years of water quality and hydrological monitoring data. The N and P mass balances for the wetland indicate that the average percentage reduction over the two-year study period is 51% for total N and 13% for total P. The primary treatment process in the wetland system for suspended solids (between 84 and 90% reduction), biological oxygen demand (BOD) (on average, 49% reduction), N, and P is the physical settlement of the particulates. However, the formation of algal bloom during the growing season reduces the efficiency of the total P removal.
The compositional variation in the komatiites, basalts and gabbros of the Kalgoorlie greenstones illumines the magmatic–tectonic evolution of this Archaean belt. Gabbro sills and basalts are the ...principal host for gold mineralization in the goldfields, yet have received relatively little attention. We present major, trace, rare earth element, and Nd isotope data for several suites of these rocks from around the Kalgoorlie gold mines. At the base of the Kalgoorlie sequence, the Hannan's Lake Serpentinite is an uncontaminated komatiite that fractionated by olivine-pyroxene fractionation. The geochemistry of the overlying high-Mg Devon Consols basalt was controlled by moderate levels of crustal contamination and low-pressure fractionation of olivine and orthopyroxene. The Paringa Basalt is an internally variable high-Mg basalt and it is strongly contaminated by crustal material. Zircon xenocrysts in the mafic lavas show that they were erupted through continental crust. All of the mafic/ultramafic lavas appear to have been derived from a mantle plume; early uncontaminated magmas evolved through to strongly contaminated magmas, all derived from shallow parts of the plume (residual plagioclase). Later magmas were less contaminated and were derived from deeper in the plume (residual garnet). Layered gabbro sills intruded 20–30 Ma after the eruption of the (ultra)mafic volcanic sequence. The uncontaminated Golden Mile–Aberdare gabbro is a highly fractionated tholeiitic rock. The Eureka-Federal gabbro is a thin, weakly differentiated sill. The Williamstown peridotite is intruded deeper in the stratigraphic pile. Both of these latter sills may be contaminated. The transition from high-Mg to tholeiitic magmatism coincided closely with the onset of compressional regional deformation and felsic magmatism. The Eastern Goldfields lack classic features of subduction — ophiolites, sheeted dykes, paired metamorphic belts, and regional granitoid zonation. Felsic volcanic rocks between 2710 and 2670 Ma do not show an evolution in composition as would be expected in a transition from plume to subduction tectonics. Regional compressive deformation may be related to stress in the crust with the impingement of neighboring plumes, and/or subsequent granitic plutonism. Crustal melting and generation of felsic melts may have been a response to this massive mafic volcanic event.
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