Mississippi vs. Yellow River

Team 9: Xiawa Wang

Surroundings

1. New Orleans
This article presents some basic historical geography aspects of New Orleans. The city is below sea level. The city is bothered with river flooding, swamps and sinking since its foundation. The levee building of helps to protect the city and water pumps allow the city to expand. Large construction has taken place in the city. It stays dry during floods by diverting water from the river channel into floodways.

2. The River Flood Plain
This article addresses mechanics of flood-plain and the result of human’s activities on it. When the river channel cannot hold the flows, the water will spread out to the flood plain. So we can say the river is composed of its channel and the flood plain. From the mechanics of the food plain, it can be concluded that over bank flow every few years is a rule rather than an exception. Therefore, the flood damage can be seen as the consequence of man’s utilization of the flood plain as a site for his activities.

3. Atchafalaya Basin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchafalaya_Basin

Atchafalaya Basin is unique because it has a growing delta system with nearly stable wetlands and is the nation’s largest swamp wilderness. It serves periodically as the main channel of Mississippi River. Now, due to the man-made project, a regulated proportion of water from Mississippi River is diverted into Atchafalaya. But now the channeling of the river and subsequent lowering of siltation rates has resulted in severe degradation of the surrounding salmarsh wetlands which help to protect coast of Louisiana from the effects of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and dissipating their accompanying storm surges. The disappearance of the delta country is now considered by many environmentalists to be one of the most significant threats.

4. Mississippi Delta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_Delta

Mississippi Delta is an area built up by the alluvium deposited by the Mississippi River. It is a region with biological and commercial importance. Each time the Mississippi River changed course, the delta will be affected. The Army Corps of Engineers has made changes to maintain the current distribution of the water to prevent it from changing courses due to some economic factors. The dams and artificial channeling and other land conservation measures make the rate of building up Delta decreasing which caused a net loss of wetlands. The rise of sea-level also caused increasing erosion. A lot of vegetation dies due to the influx of salt water.

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