You can find directions to the hike to Fort Chartres Island at twotanktours.com/StLouisTours.html. Download the Bluff Road tour. The cost is $7. It covers the American Bottom, the great Mississippi River Floodplain in Monroe and Randolph Counties in Illinois. It also includes a hike of the Fults Hilltop Prairie, a [...]
Filed under: American Bottom, Mississippi River | Tagged: Fort Chartre Island, Hiking, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Mississippi Side Channel | Leave a Comment »
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] [...]
Filed under: American Bottom, Ecosystem, Fine Art Photography, Infrastructure, Wetlands | 1 Comment »
You can find directions to the hike to the Kaskaskia River Lock and Dam at twotanktours.com/StLouisTours.html. Download the Bluff Road tour. The cost is $7. It covers the American Bottom, the great Mississippi River Floodplain in Monroe and Randolph Counties in Illinois. It also includes hikes of the Fults Hilltop Prairie, a rare ecosystem on top [...]
Filed under: American Bottom, Bluff Road, Ecosystem, Photography | Tagged: Kaskaskia River, Kaskaskia River State Fish and Wildlife Area, Two Tank Tours | Leave a Comment »
“I crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis, and after passing through the wood which borders the river, about half a mile in width, entered an extensive open plain. In 15 minutes, I found myself in the midst of a group of mounds, mostly of a circular shape, and at a distance, resembling enormous haystacks scattered [...]
Filed under: American Bottom, Mississippian Mounds | Leave a Comment »
In the Spring of 2008 it rained and rained just as Midwest farmers had fertilized their fields with nitrogen-based fertilizers. The rain washed the fertilizers into streams that flow to the Mississippi, which carried them to the Gulf of Mexico.
When the nitrate-laden freshwater from the Mississippi, lighter than the Gulf’s saltwater, reaches the Gulf, it [...]
Filed under: American Bottom, Dead Zone, Fine Art Photography, Flood of 2008, Mississippi River, Photography, Upper Mississippi, Water Quality, Waterloo Illinois | Tagged: Missouri River, Fertilizer, Nitrate Nitrogen, Fountain Creek, EPA, National Research Council | Leave a Comment »
It has been two months since I posted anything.
Instead I have been exploring Illinois’ American Bottom, the vast Mississippi River floodplain between the mouth of the Missouri River and the mouth of the Kaskaskia River. I am writing a ecological tour of the floodplain for the bikers and drivers who travel Bluff Road, which runs [...]
Filed under: American Bottom, Mississippi River | Tagged: American Bottom, Clifftop Prairies, Dupo, Fults Hill Prairie, Illinois, Kaskaskia River, Mississippi Floodplain, Mississippian Mounds, Missouri River, Rock Shelters, Two Tank Tours | Leave a Comment »
