The Realities of the Mississippi, the Missouri,the Atchafalaya, the Louisiana Coast, and New Orleans

Last week a pair of geologists, at the University of Texas, Austin, proposed diverting the Mississippi and its sediment to Breton Sound on the east and Barataria Bay to the west in order to build new deltas in each body of water.They would make the diversions about ninety miles south of New Orleans, my guess near Grand [...]

Conflicting Demands: Levees and Wetlands

 
The Flood of 2008  breached several agricultural levees along the Upper Mississippi in Henderson, Hancock, and Adams Counties in Illinois. 
The farmers who till the 4-mile-wide floodplain here were wiped out for the summer. The village of Meyer, right on the Mississippi, saw its population reduced from 40 people to 10. The flood caused $80 million [...]

Illinois Wetlands Short on Ducks in Fall 2008

 
Four million ducks fly over the Confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, and the Confluence of the  Mississippi and Missouri Rivers a few miles downstream.
There are plenty of geese in Illinois this fall and winter, but the geese will make do with a golf course. Ducks need wetlands and Illinois wetlands were short on [...]

The Flood of 2008–December

It happened again on Saturday: Warm moist air hit a cold front and dumped inches and inches of rain, two inches in two hours in west-central Illinois, melting ice and snow and bringing flooding once again to the  Midwest. The Mississippi rose 2.83 feet at St. Louis on Saturday, 9.68 inches on Sunday, and 4.o5 [...]

The Flood of 2008–The Dead Zone

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 [...]