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 [...]

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 [...]

Migration time at the Chippewa Delta and the Tiffany WMA

The Chippewa Delta: Swinger Slough
Pepin County, Wisconsin
When a fast-moving stream meets a still body of water, or a slow-moving stream, it comes to a halt and deposits its load of sediment in the slow-moving stream. In this way the Mississippi River built the Louisiana Delta over the last seven thousand years. In this way [...]

Scaups and Pool 19

 

Pool 19: Old Niota
Hancock County, Illinois
“Later that day I stopped near Fort Madison at a place over looking the best, open sweeps of Pool 19. It was a spring waterfowl mecca. Most were lesser scaup in great rafts spread on the open pool like tattered fabric, here tightly knit, there open and torn. With them, [...]

Island Building in Pool 8, Upper Mississippi River

 

Goose Island: Wigwam Slough
La Crosse County, Wisconsin
Contradictory processes happen along the margins of Goose Island, a classic V-shaped island off the Wisconsin bank, south of LaCrosse. Running Slough, which flows out of a large complex of backwater sloughs and ponds, runs between Goose Island and the delta of Mormon Creek. Together, they form a [...]

Confluence and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act

 
The Migratory Bird Conservation Commission, chaired by Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar, approved a $999,570 grant under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) for wetland restoration in the Confluence Region of Missouri.
The Great Rivers Habitat Alliance calls this peninsula the Confluence Floodway and this region between the Missouri and [...]

Riverkeepers

 
There was a great article about the Riverkeepers, formed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and John Cronin, a commercial fisherman in the Alton Telegraph today. They were concerned about the Hudson River.
Mike Bush,  the St. Louis Confluence Riverkeeper, is concerned about the Mississippi between the Golden Eagle Ferry Crossing north of the confluence of the [...]

Ecosystems as Infrastructure–The Stimulus Bill

I am so glad to find I am wrong. There is money in the stimulus bill for the Upper Mississippi Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program, $8,604,000 to be exact.
The stimulus bill will fund first phases of construction of new 1,200-foot locks on the first five dams north of St. Louis. It will implement small-scale navigation aids, [...]

Dead Zone

Whale Sharks in the Gulf of Mexico
During the Flood of 2008 tons of nutrients and fertilizers washed off midwestern farm fields and into the Mississippi River, which carried it to the Gulf of Mexico, where it nourished algae blooms and the growth of plankton.
This is an annual occurrence. 
Commercial fishing crews first began sighting whale sharks [...]