Hydrosphere of the Mississippi River A Case Study of * River management * People interfering in the hydrosphere * A flood management scheme River Basin / Catchment area The source of the river is the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains to the north. There are many hundreds of tributaries including the Red River, Missouri river and the river Ohio. The mountains form the river's watershed. From Minneapolis the river flows South-East into Iowa where it flows south as far as Davenport. At Davenport it is joined by more small tributaries. From Davenport it meanders South to St. Louis, where it is joined by the Missouri. It then flows South-East, to be joined by the Ohio. It then flows 400 km before being met by the Arkansas river. It then flows South through Louisiana, to the Gulf of Mexico, where it splits into the many distributaries of its delta. How is the Mississippi controlled ? How & why used ? Benefits Problems Levees Mounds of earth are built parallel to the river, along its banks. These contain the rising river in flood times and protect buildings along the valley on the flood plain behind. · Known & successful technology which follows nature (rivers deposit silt to build natural levees anyway) · Protect settlements · Allow land close to the river to be used for economic gain · Concrete levees are a barrier to the river draining away naturally · Expensive to build & repair · Restrict access to the river Channel straightening Straight channel is cut between two necks of a meander -shortens river. · Shortens river - cuts transport costs · Controls the flow of the river more closely · Evidence now suggests that river Mississippi too powerful - re-cut back to original meander course breaking away from artificial channel. Wing Dikes Structures built out into river to force faster current to midstream.
Case study: the flooding that occurred in Minden Hills in the spring of 2013, flooded the downtown core. The picturesque cottage town has the Gull River flowing through it. The river overflowed in April because of many reasons: a couple of days of rain, the third largest amount in over a century, but it also happened because the frost in the ground stopped the water from going into the Earth, the lakes and rivers being full from the spring thaw, and the rapid
There are three dams directly on the Genesee River, one at the south end of the park and two at the north end (Fish, n.d.). According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the dam at the south end of the park is the Portageville Dam, which was built for irrigation and affects 45.16 miles of river. The Portageville Dam is not documented on the cu...
Behind Millerton Lake, lies an existing structure made up of concrete of 319 foot high, this dam is called the Friant Dam. In the San Joaquin Valley below the project's authority of Fresno, Madera, Kern, and Tulare; the water holds and deliver up to a million acres. In 1933 and throughout 1934, the state couldn't find enough contributors to buy revenues bonds to complete the project. Luckily, the River and Harbors Act of 1935 by the United States Congress came through and financed under the United State Army Corps of Engineers.
In December 1936 the United States Department of the Interior authorized the Lower Colorado River Authority to construct a low dam at the site of an old crossing on the river known as Marshall Ford. Marshall Ford Dam was completed in 1941 through the collaboration of the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) of Texas. The original purpose of the dam was to prevent floods from devastating Austin, TX. The capital city had substandard heavy damage from previous floods since its establishment in 1846. Soon bureaucrats came together to create the Colorado River Project, wanting to create a series of dams along the Colorado River to create hydroelectric power and serve to control floods and droughts. With Buchanan dam well under way with a total of six planned Marshall Ford was the only dam designed primarily for flood control and the only dam in which USBR oversaw construction. With money scarce there was debate over the final height dam and it reservoir capacity. This issue resolves itself with the flood of 1938. Once completed Marshall Ford Dam would flood 65 miles of the Colorado to form Lake Travis, creating the largest of the seven reservoirs known as the Highland Lakes.
As dams became old and upkeep costs rose many were torn down. This allowed the river to flow freely again and the salmon population increased by 20%. It was discovered that the best way to increase the diminishing salmon population was to simply restore the rivers to their original state. In 2008, a judge ordered for the Columbia and Snake River dams to spill water, allowing the rivers to flow as they would naturally. This water flow allowed the salmon to swim along the currents, as they would have once done
First, it is important to know a few facts concerning the resources of the state state. The state gets its name from the Mississippi River, which flows along the western boundary of the state. Mississippi is heavily forest except for the Delta area, which is mainly agricultural. Its primary crops in the Delta are cotton beans, rice, potatoes, peanuts, and catfish. Its aquaculture farms produce the majority of the farm raised catfish in the U.S. Belzoni, Mississippi is widely known as the “Catfish Capital” of the world. Mississippi has a wide variety of land forms. Its many lakes and streams make it conducive to attract tourists who are interested in hunting and fishing. The lakes and parks are attractive to persons looking for good vacations spots. The thriving coastal area creates a perfect place to live with a wealth of opportunities along the coastline for shrimps, lobsters and deep water fishing. Within the last 20 years, Mississippi has become a great tourism are, especially along the Mississippi coast. There are casinos at Biloxi, Gulfport, Natchez, Vicksburg and all along the Mississippi River from Tunica to Natchez. Many Civil War Battles were fought in Mississippi. Some are the Battle of Vicksburg, the Battle of Clinton, the Battle of Natchez, the Battle of Jackson and therefore, now serves as memorial area that attract many tourists each year.
Then it flows in a generally southerly direction and forms the boundary between Arizona and the states on Nevada and California. Near Yuma, Arizona, the river crosses the international border into Mexico and flows for about 145km (90 miles) to its mouth on the Gulf of California. The River Colorado drains parts of 7 states, a total area in Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and California, of about 626,800sq km. What controls / how have people controlled the flow ?
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was one of the most destructive in the history of the United States, proving that the levee only policy was a failure and the limits of human control over the river. The beginning of the flood, from the initial crevasse, poured out “468,000 second-feet onto the Delta that triple the volume of a flooding Colorado, more than double a flooding Niagara Falls and the entire upper Mississippi ever carried” (pg 203). The flood of 1927 “shifted perceptions of the role and responsibility of the federal government… shattered the myth of a quasi-feudal bond between Delta blacks and the southern aristocracy...accelerated the great migration of blacks north. And it altered both southern and national politics....” (pg 422). America is a product of the flood of 1927 in shaping the political, social, and economic structure. With each reoccurring disaster, America, in that region, continues to face the same issues regarding social conditions and poor working conditions that failed to be addressed.
In this paper I will inform you with a few of these events and topics such as the Civil war, slavery, as well as facts of the state. I hope my readers walk away with a new respect and outlook of Mississippi and learn how the past can affect the future, as well as the beauty.
Mississippi History and how it has made it today. Mississippi past a big effect on it now. There were many events in Mississippi’s History that are still the same today. Mississippi was known for a lot of disasters. There were wars, the first war was between the Indians and the French, the French won and they took he land from the Indians, the land on the east side of Mississippi was given to the English who later lost it to the United States in 1783 after the Revolutionary War. Than there was The Battle of Vicksburg, marked a very important date in Mississippi state history. It pays tribute to the forces who fought the Confederate Army for 47 straight days. The Vicksburg National Military Park outlines the facts for current visitors with many commemorative monuments. In 1969 Mississippi and Louisiana were devastated by Camille one of the century’s worst Hurricane, in 1973 the Mississippi River rose to record levels in the state, and in 2005 Mississippi and Louisiana suffered widespread devastation, even greater than that from Camille, when Hurricane Katrina struck both states. Hundreds of people were killed. In 1929 and 1939 was the Great Depression, many farmers lost their land this was a major downfall in the history of Mississippi State. That left many in poverty. It pushed Mississippians, predominantly poor and rural to the point of desperation, and the state’s agricultural economy to the brink of disaster. In 1932, cotton sank to five cent a pound, and one- forth of the state’s farmland was forfeited for nonpayment of taxes. World War II unleashed the forces that would later revolutionize Mississippi’s economic, social and political order, bringing the state its first prosperity in the century. Many farmers were repl...
Roads, steamboats, canals, and railroads lowered the cost and shortened the time of travel. By making these improvements, products could be shipped into other areas for profit (Roark, 260). Steamboats set off a huge industry and by 1830, more than 700 steamboats were operating up and down the Ohio and Mississippi River (Roark, 261). Steamboats also had some flaws, due to the fact of deforesting the paths along the rivers. Wood was needed to refuel the power to the boat.
The culture of the Mississippi River has an effect on geography and in turn geography impacts the culture along the Mississippi River. The geography of the Mississippi River provided early settlers with the natural resources to survive and thrive. At the same time the aggressive expansion of culture significantly impacted the Mississippi River’s region.
Well, my essay is about Mississippi. It’s a great place to be. There all kinds of events you can participate in. Blues music its part of Mississippi’s culture. This music comes from slaves in the fields, singing about their struggles, their conditions and their sorry. Many of the songs carried secret messages of escaping the plantation life. The music told of life experiences as slaves knew them. The stories sung about in their music went back before the Civil War and even to the western coast of Africa where men, women and children were captured and sold into slavery and brought to America as slave laborers to work in Southern plantations. The Mississippi Delta is considered to be the birthplace of the Blues, with the new music coming out of the Blues-Rock and Roll. The earliest blues musicians came from the Mississippi Delta region, where the uniquely form of music was born. These early musicians in turn inspired blues greats like Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, who eventually took the blues northward to Chicago and contributed further to t...
In a passage from his book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, author John M. Barry makes an attempt use different rhetorical techniques to transmit his purpose. While to most, the Mississippi River is only some brown water in the middle of the state of Mississippi, to author John M. Barry, the lower Mississippi is an extremely complex and turbulent river. John M. Barry builds his ethos, uses elevated diction, several forms of figurative language, and different styles of syntax and sentence structure to communicate his fascination with the Mississippi River to a possible audience of students, teachers, and scientists.
During the years between 1840 and 1890, the land west of the Mississippi River experienced a wild and sporadic growth. The natural environment contributed greatly to this growth spurt and helped shape the development of the trans-Mississippi west. The natural environment dictated and facilitated the development of the west by way of determining who settled where, how the people survived, why people wanted to settle, and whether they were successful or not.