Digitizing Robert E. Horton’s Bibliography
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My name is Solomon Vimal and I'm a postdoc at Cornell Tech and the founder of Geothara, a New York startup that works on climate change and satellite data. I wish to raise about $100,000 to digitize, curate, and examine the unpublished or unknown works of Robert. E. Horton (1875-1945), a pioneer of the science of hydrology, because I believe his research will have a huge impact on our understanding of modern hydrology. Any small donation will help!
BACKGROUND:
Horton is one of the most important scientists in modern hydrology. His scientific legacy has already allowed us to make great strides in hydrology, hydraulics, hydro-meteorology and climate science over the past century. And yet, a great part of his research is still unknown. Many of his research works are hidden away in some 94 boxes at the National Archive at College Park (Maryland), but they are not indexed or digitized, so we don't know what's in there. In short: the plan is to dig through those boxes, digitize the papers they contain, examine and summarize what we find.
With an evidence-based study during my PhD research, I was able to demonstrate that there’s a lot we can learn from Horton’s unpublished or forgotten work to understand the behavior of water, ice, and evaporation (see results of Vimal and Singh 2022). I regard this as a first step in a much larger project to recover and ultimately implement Horton’s many insights on water and climate, to help advance our knowledge in an age of the climate crisis and over-abundance of highly detailed satellite data.
Unfortunately, scientific grant agencies do not typically support archival research, and the presentist outlook of contemporary science disincentivize revisiting the work of past generations. Yet the urgency of our current climate crisis demands that we consult Horton’s research anew for its potential insights into modern hydrology.
PROJECT BUDGET AND SPENDING
The $100K we wish to raise will be used to complete digitization of 94 boxes (300 books worth material) and support the work of a dedicated technical staff for the project. The main expense is mainly for an archival research assistant whom we hired in May 2023 to digitize the archive. We are keeping track of all the expenses in a Google Doc here (access restricted, but available to donors upon request).
BACKGROUND:
Circa 2004, 10 of the 94 archive boxes were examined by Prof. Keith Beven, a scholar from Lancaster University, U.K, but the vast majority of these materials still await rediscovery. Until 2018, Horton was believed to have written an estimated 200 scientific works, yet only about 80 were identified and available on the internet (Hall, 1987). Between 2019-2022, we expanded this list to 168 (see Appendix of my recent paper, Vimal and Singh, 2022). In the first quarter of the project, we expanded it further to over 200 papers and reports.
In our 2022 paper, we demonstrated that Horton's study of evaporation, largely misunderstood by both his peers and subsequent generations of scientists, is of immense significance for our understanding of river and lake hydrology. By implementing Horton's methodology with modern computation capabilities, we were able to achieve a >50% improvement in the estimation of evaporation even in small-scale bodies, the size of a rain puddle. This work also has far-reaching implications for public health, as it better enables us to predict mosquito populations and thus the spread of diseases such as malaria. It also helps explain the evaporation paradox which has received wide coverage in top scientific journals.
The archival document box I digitized in May 2023 revealed some voluminous unpublished texts related to prediction of river flow when the river is covered with ice - this phenomenon is known to cause glacial outburst floods and ice jam floods. These floods will occur more often in a warming climate, and they already cause huge losses, including exorbitant loss of life.
PROJECT QUARTERLY UPDATES:
Q1: June to September, 2023 (click here for a longer update), a short version is below:
- Completion of scanning of 5 boxes and we request donors to share their box priorities to resume the scanning (we have budget for about ~15 boxes);
- A brief update and some pictures of a Horton “Pilgrimage” visit to 6 sites: our work here led to an increase in bibliography items from 175 to 204 (especially after a jackpot we hit in one of the 6 sites - a list of title and abstracts prepared by Horton of his widely circulated publications);
- The list of known Horton’s lab assistants has grown considerably - now at a total count of 11 (up from 4);
- Horton’s family tree was found with detailed genealogy information dating back to 1500s and 1700s on his paternal and maternal sides;
- A summary of the new bibliography compilation process (method of search) and notes on key findings of some dozen works that are unknown, unpublished, unappreciated or inaccessible, especially those not enlisted in prior bibliographies. Among the most interesting findings, we now know that Horton contributed to a Hydrology textbook and a handbook! Apparently ~5 years of his time went into the textbook, but it was published posthumously, without crediting him as a co-author. Both were published in 1949 (4 years after his passing).
Q2: October 2023 to Jan, 2024 (click here for a longer update), a short version is below:
- Completion of scanning of 8 archive boxes and we request donors to share their box priorities to resume the scanning (we have budget for about ~7 more boxes);
- We found an interesting link between Horton and Theodore von Karman at the Caltech Archive, relating to a comprehensive runoff research program, in a report submitted to the White House, where Horton describes 40-50 rainfall-runoff processes and an algorithm that lays out the order of calculation that can significantly improve hydrologic modeling.
- We are now working on two papers on the subjects "Rainfall Extremes" and "Curating Horton's Bibliography", for the IAHS/IUGG History of Hydrology Special Issue - here we present the progress made and future directions, and recent finds from the archive.
- We are working on a grant proposal to NSF, to reach our funding goal and extend this work further. Those interested (i.e. NSF-eligible Co-PI) are invited to join us.
WHY DONATE?
Why should you donate for this project? Crowdsourced open science projects (e.g. Lutra Consulting projects) are inspiring as they are a great way to support projects that promise outcomes of great value. This project will involve hydrologists and scientists working in the nexus of water and climate. I will make sure that every penny donated to this project is well-spent, well-accounted for and broadly shared. Most importantly, the insights gained and all the data curated in this project will be broadly shared with scientists, operational forecast centers and students of hydrology, hydro-meteorology and hydro-climate science around the world. Reaching this fundraising goal will help us preserve and utilize Horton’s valuable knowledge to improve our current understanding of hydrology, and create a bridge between the past and the future of hydrology as a basic science in earth system sciences and climate.
Organizer
Solomon Vimal
Organizer
Los Angeles, CA