The Mississippi River, West America And One Of The World

Geologically speaking, Louisiana is a very young state. Environmentally speaking, Louisiana is a very fragile state. Louisiana has always been dependent upon the nutrient rich deposits from the Mississippi River to build up the land. Centuries ago the Mississippi River periodically changed its course, building up Louisiana one delta at a time. The erosional forces of the Gulf of Mexico and annual hurricanes depleted Louisiana’s coastline, but the mighty Mississippi River would replenish the land losses. Such is the relationship that forces of nature have with one another. Place mankind in the mix, and the relationship becomes stressed and dysfunctional. The present day Louisiana coastline is a mere shadow of its former self. Let’s look

Since the settlement of the American West, rivers have experienced changes in the natural flows and movements. Among these processes flooding has become controlled as dams have been built. Esselman et al. (2011) tracked numerous categories of anthropocentric activities through geographical informational systems. The team found that upstream fish habitats were exponentially impacted by human activities downstream. In addition to the upstream movement of impacts human impacts also travel downstream. Different human impacts on the Yellowstone River versus the Platte River have greatly affected the river ecosystems.

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

In the ¨River Restoration Project Offers a Sprinkling of Hope¨, Ron Jacobsma, general manager of the Friant Water Authority, said “We hope to get double duty out of that water by taking it the long way around.¨ As Jacobsma is a general manager of the Friant water Authority, this offers us his experience, his ideas and his thoughts of how we can have hope for the project. President Barack Obama signed the Omnibus Public Lands Bill in March, the agreement turned into federal law when he signed it. The parties had been working on the restoration plan for more than two years laying the groundwork for the physical changes to come. When the president signed it, it made them get the approval which he supported for them to continue the process. The credibility of the author right has now been believable because he provided us with the ethics of President Obama and Jacobsma. The river will not necessarily end up to its full, natural path along its entire length. Too much has changed in the decades since the dams construction. They would use canals along some stretches to carry the water short distances and to ferry the salmon upstream. This is showing us logos with facts and information it offers an explanation on how to solve one of the problems with the plan. A professor named Peter Moyole, from UC Davis also had his opinion on the project. He said “We have never done anything on this scale”, but we were willing to try it and approve of the

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

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.

The Spanish in 1801 signed in secret, a treaty with France to return Louisiana Territory to France. This set off a series of concerns for the Americans. Americans had been moving westward into the Ohio River and Tennessee River valley areas since the 1780’s and the Port of New Orleans was a strategic port of entry as well as the Mississippi River which was needed if the U.S was going to be able to ship good through the Gulf of Mexico.

They had thought about it but there was certain effects they just couldn’t over look. The Atchafalaya was used as a safety valve, to relieve a good deal of pressure and help keep New Orleans from ending up in Yucatan. The Atchafalaya was the source of water in the swamps and bayous of the Cajun world. The Atchafalaya was the water supply of countless towns and small cities. The Corps was not in a political or moral position to kill the Atchafalaya. The principles of nature said the more the Atchafalaya was given, the more it would want to take, because it was the deeper stream. The more it was given, the deeper it would make its bed. The Corps would have to build some kind of contraption that could give the Atchafalaya a portion of the Mississippi and at the same time prevent it from taking it all.

The purpose of me writing this essay is to discuss the history and achievements of Mississippi. Mississippi joined the Union as the 20th state in 1817 and gets its name from the Mississippi River, which forms its western border. Spanish explorers arrived in the state in 1540 but it was the French who made the first permanent settlement in Mississippi in 1699. In the 19th century, Mississippi produced the most cotton in the United States. The capital of Mississippi is Jackson. Its population for 2010 is at around 2,967,297. Its size is approximately 48,432 square miles. Mississippi state nickname is famously known as “The Magnolia State”. Its state motto is “By valor and arms”. Its state is known as the Magnolia. Its state bird is the Mockingbird.

Levees are very helpful in a lot of ways and are needed to have a safe place to live, but they hurt the marshes that surround Louisiana. The levees that surround the Mississippi River are very good at their job and keep the river contained but with the river contained, there is no natural flooding that occurs in the coastal marshes and without the natural flooding, there is no depositing of sediment that replenishes and builds up the marsh. This creates an upset in the balance of land loss and land gained. The subsidence due to the lack of new sediment accounts for 53% of the land loss in Louisiana over the past

    Schleifstein begins by going straight into how much land Louisiana is losing. He states that the coastline is “losing wetlands at a rate of 16.57 square miles a year during the past 25 years”, which is about a football field every hour (Schleifstein 1). Most of the wetlands that were lost were results of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Gustav and Ike in 2008. A study found that “a post-Katrina and Rita estimate of 217 square miles of wetlands” but there were

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

The outflow channel was dig between the two rivers in the path of the former Upper Old River. The overbank structure did just what it sounds like. It’s a large dam the spans over the land. It has large levees on each side to keep the river separate but in the event that the Mississippi River was out of its banks they could open the overbank structure and continue to allow water to the Atchafalaya River as well as relieve the stress on the Mississippi River. This potentially saved the Mississippi River from breaching its banks and flooding the city of New Orleans. In 1973 a massive flood plagued the area and sent the Mississippi river over its banks. The overbank structure opened and began letting massive amounts of water flow into the Atchafalaya. The flood of 1973 nearly caused the downfall of the Old River Control Structure. During the flood a large hole opened up causing the Low Sill Dam to partially collapse. The Army Corps was able to dump large amounts of rock behind the dam in order to prevent a complete failure. Had the dam failed the Mississippi river would have changed course causing thousands of miles of southern Louisiana swampland to become completely flooded. Following the flood of 1973 the U.S. Army Corps were able to repair the dam and restore original flow rates. In order to prevent failure in the case of a future flood that began renovations and additions to the

The Atchafalaya kept on getting bigger and bigger till it finally captured the Mississippi. The Mississippi River has created most of Louisiana. The River’s purpose is always to get to the Gulf by the shortest &