The topography surrounding the river has been draped with a Landsat satellite image taken on April 13, 1994. This false color image is composed of bands 3, 2, and 1 for red, green and blue, respectively, and represents most closely how this landscape would appear to the human eye from space.
As we approach the splashdown point, Jones Island looms in the foreground. Tennessee Highway 95 can be seen running left to right where it crosses the river. We have omitted the bridge, which should appear at the juncture between white and blue water, for clarity. Interstate 40 is also visible near the left corner of the region.
The water itself is transparent. The water color comes from Landsat bands 5, 3, and 2 for red, green, and blue, and the color of the water can be seen to change, particularly near the confluence of Poplar Creek, from a dark blue to a lighter blue-green. This probably reflects a temperature differential registered by band 5, which is in the near-infrared range.
As we splash through the water surface, the draped colors of the potential erosion/deposition filter become more vivid on the bottom. Red and yellow areas are local high spots, and are therefore potential erosion zones. Green and blue areas are local lows, and may potentially collect sediments.
Ridges surrounding the Clinch can still be seen up through the water surface. A map inset appears in the upper left corner to show progress down the Clinch with a growing red line.
Spherical black buoys floating on the water surface mark standard river miles. The first visible black buoy marks Clinch River mile 21, and river miles decrease downstream as the movie progresses, ending at river mile 9.
The oblong and spherical objects on the bottom represent locations of sample cores taken by Oakes in 1982. The Oakes cores were stratified into vertical sections with depth, and were counted for Cs-137. The color and shape of the icons on the bottom reflect the total inventory of Cs-137 (pCi/cm*cm) found within the entire length of the core sample at that bottom location. White spheres mark cores which contained no cesium. As Cs-137 content increases, the icons change color from green (100 pCi/cm*cm) through yellow (400 pCi/cm*cm) to red (13000 pCi/cm*cm), and grow from round spheres to tall pointed ``stalagmites''. Some of these stalagmites are tall enough to project well above the surface of the water.
We pass to the right of the submerged tip of Jones Island around frame 60. The shallows around the back side of Grubb island are visible on the right in frame 145, and we pass the far end of Grubb Island near frame 164.
We pass just to the left of a pair of yellow stalagmite cores near frame 260, near river mile 16. Around frame 310 we approach some taller red and yellow cores in the Grassy Creek area, just before river mile buoy 14. We pass another yellow core around frame 410, and then, after we round the corner, the mouth of Poplar Creek becomes visible where it joins the Clinch (frame 417).
Lighter blue warmer water can be seen flowing from the mouth of Poplar Creek in frame 430, and this warmer water slowly encroaches from the right side of the Clinch channel. By frame 450, the surface water color has changed to light blue across the entire width of the Clinch.
We approach a prominent submerged sandbar upstream of Brashear Island, near river mile 11 (frame 471). Because our elevation is fixed at 730 feet elevation, we pass right through this sandbar, travel briefly below the underside of the bottom ``surface,'' and emerge unscathed on the other side. Several yellow stalagmite cores can be seen around the shallows just upstream of Brashear Island, which comes into view around frame 507. Notice how the shading of the bottom changes as we pass around the northwestern side of Brashear.
Finally as we pass river mile 9 buoy, we leave the map and emerge into blackness ...
Several conclusions are obvious from this visualization:
