Mississippi River Floodplains

Giving full credit to restricting the Mississippi River as the culprit for loss of wetlands is not accurate. The booming oil and gas exploration of the 1970’s and 1980’s merits a name on the marquee as well. The pipelines and canals used to transport the resources to the outside world placed a great deal of stress on the fragile wetlands. Erosion from the barges in and out of the marshes as well as the salt water allowed into the fresh water, providing a precarious habitat for fresh water species – flora and fauna alike. Plants provide root systems to hold soil in place. Fish and fowl provide an economy for the area. Enter

In 1923-1947 Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L) constructed several dams on two Arkansas lakes, Hamilton and Catherine. AP & L obtained “flood easements” on property adjoining the lakes. AP&L sold lake side property and kept the easement in force. These flood easements permitted AP&L to “clear of trees, brush, and other obstruction and to submerge by

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

In its prime, the Mississippi River was the the center for most of the United States trade and commerce inside its boundaries. The south would send up raw materials like cotton and sugarcane the north would process these and create products out of them. It was a perfect little system. Most of the materials were brought up via steamboat. The steamboat might have been, arguably, the best invention the of 19th century. In 1807, Robert Fulton invented the first successful steamboat. John Fitch had attempted, but his designs were too expensive and complex to operate. The steamboat revolutionized trade and river travel and so dominated the Mississippi River. Trade mostly depended on current of the river and the flow but the steamboat took those factors out because it could travel against the current and they could control the speed of the steam boat. To navigate the waters of the Mississippi, it took a special skill as the pilots had to have a feel for the current and always have their eyes peeled for any on obstruction that could cause damage to their precious vessel. Most people who worked on steamboats lived on the boat which averaged about 50 people. Life on the Mississippi was not all business. The Mississippi, known for its large and diverse ecosystem, was a perfect place to fishing. In its waters, 119 species of fish, according to Fish Species of the Mississippi River, waited. People would put a pole in for a minute and a they would find on the end of their hook a

Over the last few decades, the loss of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands has become a point of concern because of the vital roles the wetlands play in the environment. They have been destroyed over time because of natural causes such as hurricanes and weather as well as from the construction of man-made flood-control levees. Wetlands serve many purposes within the environment. Not only do the wetlands effect the residents of southern Louisiana, but they effect the animals that call the wetlands home as well as the industries that thrive off the wetlands. Since the wetlands have begun to disappear, steps have been taken in order to prevent Louisiana’s wetlands from disappearing. Restoration acts have been put in to place by the government to help

River, land and natural resources are important parts for people’s daily lives, and its configurations represent how people affected the environment over 150 years. With the improvement of technology, people are able to utilize these technologies to remold the river levee; however, the impacts that came from people also brought some significant changes to the area.

Human-environmental interaction contributes to processes that affect fluvial environments. Indeed, impervious surfaces are ubiquitous in urban areas; these anthropogenic surfaces reroute runoff (among other things), which can ultimately impact the morphology, water quality, vegetation, and floodplain soils of a local watershed if it is near an urban area. Similar to the above example, because of the complexities associated with

Information that was used to develop my conclusions were relative to the history of Clearwater River such as the average normal discharge of 40,000cfs, the fact that the river can accommodate 55,000cfs before flooding will occur, and that with every increase of 2600cfs the river rises one foot. For example, this information helped to determine that four of the thirteen noted Peak Flood Discharges listed on the worksheet were not at flood stage as the river is able to accommodate discharges less than 55,000cfs. However, nine of the thirteen Peak Flood Discharges listed on the worksheet were at flood stage or drastically above; with the maximum rise of 17.77 feet above and a discharge rate of 101,200cfs. The average discharge rate of the top three noted floods per information on the Stream Gauge Data of Peak Flow Discharges is 93,613cfs, which is resourceful later in determining the extrapolated 75-year flood.

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 lack of flood management measures and adequate conveyance capacity of the existing drainage system regularly caused flooding in the heavily urbanized areas. Streams Tech personnel installed hydro-meteorological equipment to collect data; processed an extensive array of satellite-based rainfall, topographic, and collected data in GIS; and expeditiously developed stormwater models using GeoSWMM and XPSWMM for the 50 square mile area. We assessed different flood control options, including cascaded detention ponds, lot-level storage facilities, restoration of natural watercourses, changes to land use planning, replacement of bridges and culverts, and relocation of settlements in the floodplains, and recommended effective measures to mitigate the flood risks.

For wetlands, it has been found that richness and species composition is related to flooding frequency and seasonal water levels as opposed to the availability of nutrients (2). For floodplain habitats, the composition of species is related to flooding and the availability of light (2). The arrangement of plant species can be explained by the number of floods that occur as well as the texture of the soil, with wetter soil near the canal and moist, dry soil towards the top of the levee (6). In this type of environment, vegetation generally becomes more abundant going up an elevational gradient from the canal to the top of the levee (1). It is hypothesized that if a floodplain wetland habitat has an environmental and elevational gradient, then there is a difference in the diversity of plant species and richness across that gradient, with a higher species composition and richness at higher

Ever since the 1700’s the Levee system has helped farmers with their crops, animals, and everyday life. The levee system has been improved many times since the first design,.Technology and environment took help in that. The length of the first Levee system was 5400 ft long & 18 ft wide.One of the ways the levee has changed is now we make them all different sizes. The Levee system could be made out of any substance that could hold water; anything that wouldn't let water through. Clay, rock, sand, metal, almost anything, but it would have to be in a great amount and would have to be enclosed tightly. You couldn’t imagine how much these people would have to work, the first levee system took 25 years to build and 3,500-2,500 people to construct it. Most of the people were slaves.

When most people think of wetlands the first thing that will pop into their mind will be visions of swamps and flooded plains. These marshy lands would seem to have no purpose, while in reality they are the most precious form of ecosystem that we have in America. Wetlands contribute to biodiversity, clean water, flood control, and provide a habitat for millions of species of plants and animals. Even with all this wetlands still face mass destruction, much like the rain forests they are just as productive and face similar rates of devastation (Mitchell, J. (1992, October). "Our Disappearing Wetlands" National Geographic, Pg 15).

Levee designs must take into consideration many effects of natural disasters including rising water height, damage from debris, and wind damage. However, civil and environmental engineers must also look at naturally occurring phenomenons overtime before disaster, such as erosion from wind and water, when designing levees. In the case of our levee, we utilized the given materials to build a levee which was able to withstand threats to integrity by both commonplace weather patterns and more severe damage caused by flooding.

Floodplains are landscapes that are formed when running water, often in streams and rivers, transports eroded rock and other similar materials from their banks to a lower part of the Earth’s surface. At these lower parts, the flow of water slows down, and the rock and materials that the water is carrying are dropped.