John Mcphee's The Control Of Nature

Flooding of the settlement was problematic. By 1812, the settlers had built miles of levees on the banks of the river. For the next two hundred years, the surrounding wetlands were drained to eliminate swamps filled with yellow fever carrying mosquitoes and to encourage economic development. Draining water from peaty soils encouraged subsidence. The land which was just inches above sea level to begin with steadily sank. In combat of this, higher and stronger levees were built, tightening the straight jacket already placed upon the Mississippi River. The massive flooding of 1928 brought further flood control systems implemented by the Army Corps of Engineers with Congressional blessing. By the 1950’s, dramatic rates of land loss in Louisiana’s coastal zone stretched across 300 miles from Texas to Mississippi and inland 50 miles. (Tibbetts)

Numerous different aspects were altered due to the ruckus of Hurricane Katrina. The first major aspect was housing and location. Katrina nearly demolished 300,000 homes. The ascending sea level along the coast resulting from onshore winds is a storm surge. With a twenty-two foot storm surge in New Orleans and a twenty-seven foot storm surge in Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina averaged a shocking twelve foot storm surge. As a storm surge’s footage increases, the surge will continue to move inland farther and farther. Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge is documented as moving inland a total of twelve miles into the state of Mississippi (FAQS, 2013). Hurricane Katrina impacted a total of seven states. Five of these states were Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Kentucky and Ohio were two more states affected but in a different way. Because of the tremendous amount of water, Kentucky and Ohio were victims of the Mississippi River flooding. Some states experienced more extreme destruction than others. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana experienced Hurricane Katrina’s wrath firsthand. These three southern states were affected the worst by the massive storm (FAQS, 2013). Mississippi’s forest industry experienced a great amount of destruction losing 1.3 million acres of valuable forest land. The main cause of destruction in New Orleans was blamed on the failure of the levee system to stand its ground

The characteristic warming climate of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene resulted in rising sea levels which contributed to the formation of the various deltas in the New Orleans area (Dunbar, Britsch, 2008). The natural formation of these deltas produced coastal wetlands that represent 30% of coastal wetlands currently in the United States (Cigler, 2007). In addition to these wetlands, the Mississippi River was surrounded by substantial forest growth (Pabis, 1998).

The Old River flows from the Mississippi to the Atchafalaya River. To regulate this flow, the Old River is dammed by the Old River Control Structure, which is an effort by the Army Corps to keep the Mississippi River from giving most of its water to the Atchafalaya River. If that were to occur, Morgan City (a town of 12,000 that sits on the banks of the Atchafalaya River) would be underwater and New Orleans would lose its most vital asset in the Mississippi River. To New Orleans, the Mississippi River means financial success, as New Orleans is a transportation hub. Baton Rouge, the state capital of Louisiana, also sits on the banks of the Mississippi River. Baton Rouge originally had an economy based on natural gas, to which the river was vital in a transportation aspect. Now, the state capital has an economy with many different sectors. Marucci Sports, best known for making baseball bats, calls Baton Rouge home. The Atchafalaya River would struggle to support economies that require transportation like the Mississippi River, as it doesn’t run the length of the United States. The Atchafalaya River is 137 miles long, compared to the Mississippi’s 2,320 miles, running from where the Red River and Old River meet all the way to the Atchafalaya Bay. The Atchafalaya Bay is connected directly to the Gulf of Mexico, which differs from the Mississippi River’s situation

It's not actually a silly question. The Mississippi no longer fits the definition a river as "a natural watercourse flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river." Rather, the waterway has been shaped in many ways, big and small, to suit human needs. While it maybe not be tamed, it's far from wild -- and understanding the floods that are expected to crest in Louisiana soon means understanding dams, levees, and control structures as much as rain, climate, and geography. From almost the moment in the early 18th century when the French started to build New Orleans, settlers built levees, and in so doing, entered into a complex geoclimatic relationship with about 41 percent of the United

Alexander Von Humboldt was a Prussian naturalist whose work has helped shape and define our modern understanding of nature. He used enlightenment rationalism to navigate his way through life and his deep connection to his natural environment inspired a visionary movement in ushering out the monotheistic creationist worldview. “Humboldt’s books, diaries and letters reveal a visionary, a thinker far ahead of his time. He invented isotherms...discovered the magnetic equator...came up with the idea of vegetation and climate zones that snake across the globe…and revolutionized the way we see the natural world.” (Invention of Nature, 5). Although his work was extensive, author of ‘The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf suggests that his work has largely been forgotten due to his polymath approach of including art, history, poetry and politics that made him unfavorable. While Humboldt gave us our concept of nature itself, “the irony is that Humboldt’s views have become so self-evident that we have largely forgotten the man behind them.” However, although his work individual work may be overlooked, Humboldt’s success in making science more accessible work and as a result, his legacy lives on as the source of inspiration for many influential thinkers throughout history.

Repeated events, highlighted by the flood of 1993 and the fallout of Katrina, continues to illustrate the US Army Corps of Engineers’ failure in strengthening flood control up and down the Mississippi, including the redesign and upgrading levees. America is a product of this constant struggle in dominating nature using science and reason.

New Orleans was originally founded on high ground overlooking the Mississippi River, above sea level. Also surrounded by Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, New Orleans was susceptible to hurricanes that would come up the coast into the Gulf. Originally New Orleans was naturally protected by “coastal swamps that helped absorb the energy of storm surges before they reached dry land.” (Stillman 228) At this point Americans were more concerned with the floods that happened annually from the Mississippi River. In the early days, settlers built a mile long levee to block overflows from the mighty Mississippi while landowners constructed their own levees.

Congress decided to take action and ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to build a control structure that would restrict the flow down the Atchafalaya River to 30% instead of it channeling all of the Mississippi River. The goal of restricting the flow of the Atchafalaya was to maintain the Mississippi River’s current route and prevent the merging of the Atchafalaya and Mississippi River. During the Corps attempts to maintain river control, a large flood threated to destroy the main structure the Corps had created. After the flood occurred, the Corps went back to the drawing board and redesigned a more efficient control system called the Old River Control Structure, otherwise known as ORCS. The Old River Control Structure was a lock and dam used to control and maintain the flooding of the Atchafalaya River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the Old River Control Structure in 1963 placing it in a side channel of the Mississippi known as the Old River, between the Mississippi’s current channel

The Mississippi River influences the states of Louisiana in numerous ways. The river can be both beneficial and harmful to the state. It may help with industries, but at the same time it may be harming by taking away from Louisiana’s coastline. While erosion is widely considered to be a destructive occurrence, it does have some necessary features. For example, erosion provides many nutrients for animals living in the water, and it creates new deltas that many animals live in. Since the beginning of Louisiana, the Mississippi River has been a crucial factor in the creation and the development of Louisiana’s economy. It has helped with things like trade and the growth of crops. The Mississippi is also significant in the way Louisiana is shaped

During the summer of 1926, heavy rains were beginning to swell to extraordinary levels in the basin of the Mississippi river. Also contributing to the swelling of the Mississippi River, was snow melting in Canada during the spring of 1927. The waters did not lessen until the following year. The flooding took place on the lower area of the Mississippi River valley during April 1927. During that month, the levee at Mounds landing in Mississippi was breached, from this point on the entire levee system among the river weakened and gave way to the huge volumes of water. The Mississippi River suffered thirteen levee breaks, “…there were twenty-six breaks on the Arkansas River, sixty-seven on the White River, and twelve on the St. Francis” (Whayne 312).

The city of New Orleans is the most populated city in state of Louisiana. Due to the geographical location, the city was at a significant risk for flooding. New Orleans was originally settled on the natural levees, along the Mississippi River. The Flood Control Act of 1965, authorized the United States Army Corps of Engineers to design and construct numerous flood control projects including the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity, Louisiana Hurricane Protection Project in the New Orleans region of south Louisiana ([PUBLIC LAW 89-298-OCT. 27, 19). Following the implementation of the act, the US Army Corps of Engineers built floodwalls and man-made levees to provide security against flooding. In the subsequent aftermath of Katrina, studies have shown that the levees were improperly built and flood water levels estimates were inaccurate during the initial planning phases and development. As a result, when Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August, 29 2005 the storm caused a breach in the levees which resulted in 80% of the city flooding. Over 20 feet of water covered certain parts of the city and New Orleans was declared a disaster area that required extensive recovery operations. operations.

n 1973, the Mississippi River was out of its banks for more than 2 mo from April to June. The thickness and the texture of overbank sediments were determined for a number of depositional environments on the Mississippi River flood plain in Louisiana. Average sediment thickness ranged from 53 cm along the natural levee to 1.1 cm in the back-swamp. The texture of deposits varied from natural levee sediments with 68 percent sand to backswamp sediments with 97 percent silt and clay. The amount of lateral erosion of bordering Pleistocene bluffs increased 271 percent over the previous 9 yr of record because of the flood. Using the rate of backswamp deposition during the 1973 flood, it is suggested that backswamp deposits in this area required 10,000

The ecology of New Orleans worsens the impact of Hurricane Katrina. According to Ari Kelman, after the flood of 1849 in New Orleans, levees-only decision was made to prevent further flooding into the city. However, this decision resulted in a “bowl shaped” New Orleans in which, on one side there is the ever-high levee barrier blocking off the Mississippi River and, on the other side, an uninhabitable swampland area. Moreover, with the influx of immigration and increasing population, the swampland area is being cultivated to an inhabitable place; thus, resulting in a decrease in swampland. With swampland diminishing, the water that stationed at the swampland is now

In the book, The Control of Nature by John McPhee, one can see humans in a multitude of locations attempting to control the various aspects of their natural environment. Furthermore, it is clear that the three enduring understandings of Earth Science are present throughout the book as an ongoing theme. The first, the idea that energy, from the Sun and from Earth’s interior, drives all of Earth’s cycles and processes, can be interpreted in many different ways. However, in the different sections of the book, one sees that the Sun can cause weather patterns and can lead to different outcomes. Additionally, the energy, or power, resulting from the intense heat and pressure from the Earth’s interior, can cause volcanic eruptions. As for the idea that matter moves through Earth’s spheres in cyclical processes, over varying periods of time, and at different scales, one can see that water, land, plant matter, and even molten rock come and go in a definite period, whether it is thirty years, or even centuries. In regards to the third idea, that Earth’s surfaces and processes are altered by human engineering, one can see a plethora of examples in the book. The energy from the Sun and from Earth’s interior and the events that are caused from that energy can cause humans to alter the surfaces and processes of Earth by building everything from levees to basins and can even cause humans to make an attempt at cooling flowing