Elevated Houses and Multiple Lines of Defense in the Louisiana Wetlands and in the Missouri and Tennessee Wetlands

In January as we were all talking about the inauguration of a new president and his stimulus program, I wrote several times about infrastructure as stimulus. I included this graphic that comes from the Comprehensive Recommendations Supporting the Use of the Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy to Sustain Coastal Louisiana, published in August 2007. The writers’ strategy [...]

A Riff on the Kaskaskia River: Illinois Second Longest Tributary to the Mississippi

I was first drawn to the Kaskaskia when I noticed that wheat flourishes in its basin, a place where nineteenth century-town proprietors platted towns and built flour mills and churches to provide anchors for their communities.
I next noticed the Kaskaskia when I flew over its channelized lower reaches and noticed the cut off oxbows that [...]

Conservation Buffers, Water Quality, and the Dead Zone

When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, it regulated sewage produced in our houses and businesses. It did not regulate water that washes off our streets and farm fields. What washes off our farm fields in the Midwest ends up in the Gulf of Mexico.  Freshwater is lighter than salt water. When it [...]

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] [...]

Diverting freshwater from the Mississippi to Bayou Lafourche

Len Bahr at lacoastpost.com has a fantasy: Cut back on the Morganza-to-the-Gulf, which comes with a $11 billion price tag and funnel some of that money to the diversion of freshwater to Bayou Lafourche and all the little bayous that spring from it, beginning with Bayou Terrebonne at Thibodaux. At present the freshwater diversion,which has [...]

It’s June and the Dead Zone

Every June the U.S. Geological Survey predicts the size of the Dead Zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The Dead Zone is a hypoxic zone in the gulf, the place where levels of oxygen drop so low that it becomes inhospitable to fish and shellfish.
Hypoxia happens naturally every summer, when the Mississippi pours its [...]

Cache River Natural Area and Cypress Creek NWR

“Everything around us seemed dreary and dismal, and had we not been endowed with the faculty of deriving pleasure from the examination of nature, we should have made up our minds to pass the time in a state similar to that of Bears during the time of hibernation. We soon found employment, however, for the [...]

New Blog

Before I decided to devote this blog to the Mississippi River and other landscapes, I made several postings on political art.
Over Memorial Day I returned to the Iraq Section at Arlington National Cemetery, made a series of images, and started thinking about the nature of photography: Is it art or reportage.
I decided to start a [...]

Two River Birthdays in the Last Week

 
We celebrate two birthdays that are important to the Mississippi River and its ecosystem this week.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just celebrated the 85th birthday of the Upper Mississippi National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, which I noted last week has been designated a Wetland of International Importance.
The refuge came into being after after the [...]

Upper Mississippi: A Wetland of International Importance

 
On Monday, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the approval of the Upper Mississippi between Rock Island, Illinois and Wabasha, Minnesota as a Wetland of International Importance. The 300,000 acres covered include the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, the Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge. 
Between the bluffs the Upper Mississippi is a mosaic of [...]