East St. Louis and Vicinity Hydrogeomorphic Project

It is said, and is probably true, that the American Bottoms can never have an adequate system of drainage without lowering the bed of the Mississippi. The drainage question of the Bottoms has for many years been an unsolved problem, and will probably remain so until some freak of nature shall settle the vexed question.”[i] [...]

MRGO is Closed but not Gone

I am working on the index and page proofs for my book on the Mississippi River, how it was formed, what we have done to change it, and how we are trying to restore it.
Hence, I present you with an oldie, but goody: MRGO. Go to my catagories section and find the other postings on [...]

Towhead of Island #18 and Least Terns

Wildlife officials in the State of Kentucky are warning residents riding off-road vehicles to stay away from places like the Towhead of Island #18 in the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers where least terns nest during the summer.
“Island No. 18: Lies close to the right shore. Opposite the head of No. 18 is a bar, may [...]

Pike’s Peak, Iowa and the Mississippi

When a fast moving stream meets a slow moving stream or a still body of water, it deposits its load of sediment in the slow moving stream. This is how the tributaries to the Upper Mississippi built its floodplain. Rivers, like the Wisconsin, deposited sediment eroded from its uplands in the slow moving Mississippi, creating [...]

At Riverlands: If you build it, they will come. With a bow to William Kinsella.

When I first started my work on the Mississippi River, I went up to Riverlands to listen to the people up there who know wetlands and birds. They defined the success of Riverlands as a bird sanctuary: “If you build it, they will come.” Congress ordered the Corps to replace “acre for acre” every bit [...]

The Ratio of the Atchafalaya to the Mississippi

The New Orleans District of the Corps of Engineers has initiated a study that would change the ratio of Mississippi water and sediment that could be diverted to the Atchafalaya River, which is the only functioning distributary of the Mississippi, that is a river that carries water from the big river to the Gulf of [...]

Fountain Bluff and Tower Rock and the Mississippi River

Before Illinoian ice sheet pushed south through Illinois, the Mississippi flowed along the eastern valley wall. The ice blocked the flow of the Mississippi between the eastern valley wall and Fountain Bluff.
The river eroded a new channel around the the west side of the bluff and along the western valley wall, leaving Fountain Bluff as [...]