Linking Grand, National and Everyday Challenges

T.S. Eliot referred to it as "a big strong brown god." Mark Twain called it the "Body of the Nation. " In his legendary book, "Life on the Mississippi," Twain vividly portrayed the sweep of the mighty river, weaving a tapestry of narrative and lore over its ancient origins and endless twists and turns, both in fact and in its human history: the Mississippi's vast banks luring the earliest European explorers; the often fatal encounters between the intrepid explorers and the river's indigenous peoples; the drama of the steamboat; the reality of slavery; the sound and fury of the Civil War, raging across land and water; and the ceaseless struggle of civilization to "tame" the Mississippi and its major branches, the Missouri, Ohio and Illinois rivers.

This epic struggle continues to this day, a persistent expression of the nineteenth century view that our destiny as a species is to "conquer" Nature. Nevertheless, the great floods of 1927 and, more recently, of 1993, serve to remind us that there are limits to "engineering" Nature. As the country becomes more "cost conscious, " the escalating price of flood disasters is inducing government and citizenry alike to learn to adapt differently to the ways of the river. The establishment by the White House of the multi-agency Scientific Assessment and Strategy Team (SAST) expressed a growing recognition among government, scientists and engineers that more flexible approaches to floodplain management and flood prevention are needed. Developing such approaches will, in part, rely on current efforts to better comprehend the behavior of entire river systems.

Nevertheless, a wealth of information, data and tools already exists with which to understand and dynamically explore the rich interplay of human settlement with the geology, ecology, and hydrogeology of the Mississippi Basin, from its uppermost reaches down to the Delta and into the Gulf of Mexico.

During 1996 an alliance of NCSA's Education & Outreach Group, several other groups at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Illinois State Museum (a part of the Illinois Division of National Resources) and the Illinois Rivers Project based at Southern Illinois University intends to work locally, regionally and nationally with numerous organizations in education, business and government to define the scope of a multi-faceted program we term RiverWeb^(TM).

RiverWeb^(TM)'s overriding vision is to build a multidimensional, digital information architecture for the entire Mississippi basin, a sustainable framework to enable broad public access to and use of knowledge, tools and data required for integrated river management, wetland conservation and land use, thus empowering government, business and the citizenry-at-large to make informed choices about environmental issues of vital importance to their communities.

As an unfolding program, RiverWeb^(TM) will eventually encompass one or more of the following components, each with a scope that will depend on funding or cost-sharing by participating organizations and agencies:

• Hands-on exhibitions at museums and science centers located on the Mississippi River or its major tributaries. Exhibits could feature small-scale physical models of river dynamics, computer simulations, digital video and audio materials, and even virtual reality walk-throughs or fly-throughs enhanced with recorded and/or synthetic sounds.
• A World Wide Web (Web)-based, multi-layered, virtual exploratorium of river history, culture, science and management, parts of which could also be made available on CD-ROM.
• An accompanying television series to be broadcast nationally and providing material for a searchable, Web-accessible, digital video clip database.
• The " Living Web, " a sustainable program of educator training and outreach projects aimed at schools, colleges, libraries and their communities.

Traversing informal and formal science education as well as lifelong learning, these resources, which will be designed to excite, educate and inform a variety of audiences will vividly illustrate the following themes.

Ancient Beginnings

How the Mississippi basin came into being and why understanding its origins is important in the present day: the inland sea; glaciation; origins of the Mississippi; its changing course.

Twists and Turns

The key scientific concepts required to comprehend the ways of the river and how humans and Nature have altered its course through the centuries.

Webs of Life

The impact of natural forces and human culture on the diversity of life in the different zones of the Mississippi basin.

Heartland Saga

The story of human development along the river, and its cultural expressions (language and visual arts, literature, music, cuisine), from pre-historic times to the present, emphasizing the river's role as a communications network both in metaphor and fact.

Hard Choices

What do disasters like the Great Flood of '93 tell us about the limits of river containment? Can and should humans learn to adapt more flexibly to the ways of rivers? How can the tools of science, as well as knowledge of river history and culture help us make tough yet informed choices?

Bringing alive these interconnections among the millions of people that reside in the Mississippi Basin and the country as a whole, RiverWeb^(TM) provides a unified conceptual framework in which new information technologies, particularly networking, virtual environments, geospatial information systems (GIS), video servers and advanced modeling and simulation, can be developed, tested and made accessible to a very broad user base.

In the Web architecture we propose to design and develop, the look and feel of the user interface will echo the role of the Mississippi river system as a communications network, both in metaphor and fact. At the top levels, users will enter RiverWeb^(TM) through an interactive, 3-D flyover of the entire basin from space, then zoom in and follow the major tributaries. Travelling along the branches, explorers will be able to alight on virtual "landing sites," each offering a unique, multimedia, multisensory kaleidoscope of science, history and culture linked by subtle thematic "hooks. " Such hooks will not only engage viewers with the topic or theme at hand, but will also help trigger exploration of other domains in the knowledge network represented in RiverWeb^(TM). At the lower levels of the "Living Web, " interactive Web tools will enable users to annotate and customize the information as well as author and incorporate new resources, in keeping with their specific needs.

Implementing RiverWeb^(TM) in part or whole will undoubtedly pose substantial challenges, technically, administratively and content-wise. For this reason, we will actively seek partners among a variety of agencies, educational institutions and industries in order to develop implementation strategies consistent with RiverWeb^(TM)'s primary mission: to excite, educate and empower both individuals and communities to manage their destinies in greater harmony with the ways of the river.