Straight Canals and Meandering Bayous

 
Water doesn’t run in a straight line, not even on your windshield.  
Through coarse sediment, sand and gravel it can run in a braided pattern, but through soft, fine alluvial soil it runs in a meandering pattern. 
Tim Carruthers made this aerial of a navigation canal cutting through the meandering bayous in the Louisiana marshes. I [...]

Ecosystem Restoration as Infrastructure–Houma Nav, Part 3

To understand the reasoning behind the Houma Navigation Canal Lock, you must first understand the ebb and flow of freshwater and saltwater in the Louisiana coastal marshes before the construction of the levees along the Mississippi, which stopped the annual influx of freshwater into the marshes. 
Before the construction of the levees, the Mississippi flooded the [...]

Ecosystem Restroation as Infrastructure–Houma Nav, Part 2

Maintaining the spoil banks along the completed canal became a critical factor in reducing the amount of saltwater that bled from the channel into the adjacent wetlands. In 1995 the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources closed four breaches with rock in the west bank of the Houma Nav. Ten years later the agency rocked 7,572 [...]

Ecosystem Restoration as Infrastructure–Houma Nav, Part 1

The Houma Navigation Canal is Terrebonne Basin’s answer to MRGO, with similar results. When I first visited the Caillou Marshes in the Terrebonne Basin in 1995, I crossed the road between Bayou Grand Caillou and Bayou du Large and came upon this dead cypress forest, the first I had seen. 

Bayou du Large/Bayou Grand Caillou: Caillou Marshes
Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana
Cross [...]