Changing Landscapes

This project is an attempt to reconstruct what the Ni-les'tun Marsh, along the Coquille River on the southern Oregon Coast, may have looked like shortly before Euro-American colonizers arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Here, I have the "present," a modern photo of the reconstructed marshland, and below, I have my illustration.

 

I made efforts to accurately depict where and how a tidal weir would have been used by the Coquille people, as well as the cedar-bark clothing, and the positioning of the plank-houses on the periphery of the estuary. Additionally, I  changed some elements of the erosion of the area, along with vegetation coverage, to reflect changes in water level brought about by dredging and other landscaping done by colonists since.