_Lead photo: map of "Chain of Rocks, Mississippi River" by

"Undergraduate and graduate students in the spring 2016 seminar Public Lab River Rat Pack joined assistant professor Derek Hoeferlin on a series of anti-drone expeditions along the Mississippi River, conducting radical fieldwork that exposed the complicated relationship of the St. Louis region to the river. Braving the fickle St. Louis spring weather, students took multiple trips into the field to document the conditions of the river, from flood stage at the start of the semester through the transitions that occurred over the course of the next three months.(https://www.samfoxschool.wustl.edu/node/11440)

Location

St. Louis, Missouri at nine sites along the Mississippi River, the Missouri River, and the River des Peres.

Goals and Motivations

The main goal of this project was to question and document the lack of access by the public to the rivers. Some of the things the group was also interested in exploring include the difference between high and low river stages, the intensity of industrial uses along the rivers, and the ecological areas.

People who are involved

Professor @derekhoeferlin and 12 students from Washington University in St. Louis

What are we working on now:

This project is wrapped up now! But you can read about how the group took the findings and presented them at Givens Hall for an exhibition of photography. Read about the exhibition here!

Updates

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Questions

Activities we’ve done in our project

The team mapped and took over 28,000 photographs of nine sites for this project.

Data

Here are some of the maps the maps students produced:

Melvin Price Locks Dam

https://mapknitter.org/embed/melvin-price-locks-dam_balloon-mapping

North Riverfront Cotton Belt

https://mapknitter.org/embed/north-riverfront_cotton-belt

North Riverfront Cotton Belt 2

https://mapknitter.org/embed/north-riverfront_cotton-belt

Chain of rocks

https://mapknitter.org/embed/chain-of-rocks