Tipping Point I The Mighty Mississippi I A PBS News Special Hosted at SAFL

The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory was the setting for Tipping Point: The Mighty Mississippi. This live News Hour featured many experts who spoke about the power of the Mississippi River as well problems associated with it today, from social to environmental to existential. Among the guests were two from Saint Anthony Falls Lab: Assistant Professor of Geography Emily Fairfax and Professor Emeritus of Earth and Environmental Sciences Chris Paola. 

Dr. Fairfax spoke about the benefits of beavers, who once were abundant along the length of the Mississippi River. She discussed beavers’ ability to mitigate flooding through engineering ponds that, similar to man-made stormwater ponds, absorb floodwaters and filter contaminants. Emily’s work includes researching how beavers fight both flooding and fire.

Dr. Chris Paola spoke about his work studying the Mississippi River, a “system that creates its own geometry,” and in deciphering the sedimentary record, or what he calls the “planet’s diary” through physical experiments that compress space and time. 

Paola also emphasized the overall importance of SAFL, where scientists from many disciplines converge to conduct physical as well as computational experiments in fluid mechanics, hydrology, and earth-surface dynamics. We still have a lot to learn about even simple-seeming things, like a river’s flow; our work building this fundamental knowledge is key if we want to live well alongside the mighty Mississippi, or any of the powerful rivers we humans depend on.