Lake Blackshear
Lake Blackshear is a man-made lake that is approximately 8500 acres that sits on the Flint River, a river contained entirely in the state of Georgia. It originates south of Atlanta near the airport and runs through the Piedmont region, ending in Lake Seminole. Blackshear was formed from a dam made to harness “cheap” power for the region; the lake is home to a number of fish species like Largemouth Bass, Crappie, White Bass, Hybrid Bass, Striped Bass and Catfish according to the national park’s websites which are maintained by the park. The dam was made in 1930 and is the first dam after over 200 miles in the unimpeded Flint River, making it one of the longest unimpeded rivers in the US. Lake Blackshear has been characterized as “Eutrophic” or in excess of nutrients causing algae and other plant life to grow in excess. These processes make life for other organisms difficult, taking out a lot of nutrients from the water
Although Lake Blackshear is a manmade lake, it still has geomorphic processes which shape the land around its area. The placement of dams disrupts sediment flow, changing the behavior of the channel bed and surrounding land of the river downstream, inversely causing a buildup of this sediment above the dam. Above the lake, the Flint River flows through a swampy, forested channel with a sediment covered bed, but after the lake, the river flows through a limestone channel since there are fewer sediment deposits. In terms of cultural landscape, people have surrounded the lake, making use of its features for power, recreation, and real estate. There are many trees throughout the lake that are both dead and alive (those who engineered the dam thought these trees would die off due after the damming, but many still survive today). These make recreational boating quite difficult to the inexperienced boater.
Sources
Cordele. (2013, August 15). New Georgia Encyclopedia. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/counties-cities-neighborhoods/cordele/
Krakow, Kenneth K. (1975). Georgia Place-Names: Their History and Origins (PDF). Macon, GA: Winship Press. p. 20. ISBN 0-915430-00-2
Lake Blackshear. (2021, January 1). Crisp County Power Commission. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://crispcountypower.com/lake-blackshear
This post written by Jack Hudson, an undergraduate environmental science student at Emory University.