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The Atchafalaya River is a distributary of the Mississippi and Red rivers, approximately 170 mi (270 km) long, in south central Louisiana in the United States. It is navigable and provides a significant industrial shipping channel for the state of Louisiana, as well as the cultural heart of the Cajun Country. The maintenance of the river as a navigable channel of the Mississippi has been a significant project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for over a century. The river is known locally as the "Tchafalya". A distributary is a river that branches off from a major river before it reaches the sea, particularly in a river delta. ...
Length 6,270 km Elevation of the source 450 m Average discharge Saint Louis¹: 5,500 m³/s Vicksburg²: 16,800 m³/s Baton Rouge³: 12,800 m³/s Area watershed 2,980,000 km² Origin Lake Itasca Mouth Gulf of Mexico Basin countries United States (98. ...
The Red River is one of several rivers with that name. ...
State nickname: Pelican State Other U.S. States Capital Baton Rouge Largest city New Orleans Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) Official languages None; English and French de facto Area 134,382 km² (31st) - Land 112,927 km² - Water 21,455 km² (16%) Population (2000) - Population 4,468,976 (22nd) - Density 39. ...
Cajun Country refers to a region in the US state of Louisiana that has been heavily settled by French Acadians who had lived in the North American, originally-French-controlled province of Acadia. ...
United States Army Corps of Engineers logo The United States Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, is made up of some 34,600 civilian and 650 military men and women. ...
It is formed near Simmesport at the confluence of the Red River with the Mississippi, where the Mississippi connects to the Red by the 7 mi (11 km) canalized Old River. It receives the water of the Red as well as part of the water of the Mississippi, which itself continues in its main channel to the southeast. It meanders south as a channel of the Mississippi, through extensive levees and floodways, past Morgan City, and empties into the Gulf of Mexico in Atchafalaya Bay approximately 15 mi (25 km) south of Morgan City. Simmesport is a town located in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. ...
The word meander has a number of senses. ...
A levee (from the French for raised) is a natural or artificial embankment or dyke, usually earthen, which parallels the course of a river. ...
Morgan City is a city located in St. ...
The Gulf of Mexico is a major body of water bordered and nearly landlocked by North America. ...
The Atchafalaya Basin, the surrounding plain of the river, is filled in bayous, baldcypress swamps, and marshes, that give way to more brackish conditions and end in the Spartina grass marshes. The basin is susceptible to heavy flooding and is sparsely inhabited. The few roads that cross it follow the tops of levees. Interstate 10, which crosses the Basin on elevated pillars west of Baton Rouge, is a continuous 18.2 mile bridge. A bayou (pronounced or ) is a small, slow-moving stream or creek formed in the former bed of a river. ...
Species Taxodium ascendens - Pond Cypress Conservation status: Secure Taxodium distichum - Bald Cypress Conservation status: Secure Taxodium mucronatum - Montezuma Cypress Conservation status: Data Deficient Taxodium is a genus of one to three species (depending on taxonomic opinion) of extremely flood-tolerant conifers in the cypress family, Cupressaceae, one of several genera...
A freshwater swamp swamp (disambiguation) A swamp is a wetland that features permanent inundation of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water, generally with a substantial number of hummocks, or dry-land protrusions. ...
Look up Flood in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A flood (in Old English flod, a word common to Teutonic languages; compare German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float) is an overflow of water, an expanse of water submerging land, a deluge. ...
A levee (from the French for raised) is a natural or artificial embankment or dyke, usually earthen, which parallels the course of a river. ...
Interstate 10, or I-10, is the southernmost east-west, coast-to-coast interstate highway in the United States. ...
Capitol Building Baton Rouge (pronounced in English, and in French) is the capital of Louisiana, a state of the United States of America. ...
Geologically, the Atchafalaya has served periodically as the main channel of the Mississippi through the process of delta switching, which has built the extensive delta plain of the river. Since the early 20th century, because of manmade alterations in the channel, the Mississippi has sought to change its main channel to Atchafalaya. By law a regulated proportion of the water from the Mississippi is diverted into the Atchafalaya at the Old River Control Structure. Geology (from Greek γη- (ge-, the earth) and λογος (logos, word, reason)) is the science and study of the Earth, its composition, structure, physical properties, history, and the processes that shape it. ...
Delta can signify: Δ or δ, a letter of the Greek alphabet. ...
The Old River Control Structure was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the confluence of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers in order to maintain the water distribution between the two at 70% and 30% respectively. ...
Degradation of the buffer marshes
The control of the river's floods, along with those of the Mississippi, has become a controversial issue in recent decades. It is now widely suspected that the channeling of the river and subsequent lowering of siltation rates has resulted in severe degradation of the surrounding saltmarsh wetlands as well as widespread submerging of populated and agricultural lands of the bayou country. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that over 75 kilometers are lost to the sea each year (see link). The coastal salt marshes form a buffer zone protecting the entire coast of Louisiana from the effects of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and dissipating their accompanying storm surges. The marshes depend on replenishment from deposited silt, which is now being deposited over the edge of the continental shelf, due to the artificially canalized flow of the Mississippi. From the 1950s through 1970s, the oil industry dredged deep channels into the marsh so that they could move barges in as work platforms. The edges continued to degrade, until wide shallow channels in the saltmarsh have resulted. A subtropical wetland in Florida, USA, with an endangered American Crocodile. ...
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) is a scientific agency of the United States government. ...
This article is about weather phenomena. ...
The Gulf of Mexico is a major body of water bordered and nearly landlocked by North America. ...
A storm surge is an onshore rush of water associated with a low pressure weather system, typically a tropical cyclone. ...
The continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent, which is covered during interglacial periods such as the one we live in by relatively shallow seas and gulfs. ...
The Oil industry brings to market what is currently considered the lifeblood of nearly all other industry, if not industrialized civilization itself. ...
The disappearance of the delta country is considered by many environmentalists, as well as by the State of Louisiana, to be one of the most significant ecological threats in the United States. The loss of the delta lands was discussed by author Mike Tidwell in his 2003 book Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast. 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
See also This is a list of rivers in the U.S. state of Louisiana Atchafalaya River Bayou Nezpique Mississippi River Old River Red River Sabine River See also List of rivers in the United States Categories: Lists of rivers | U.S. rivers | Louisiana rivers ...
To the natives of the state of Mississippi the Mississippi Delta is the distinct northwest section of the state, generally between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. ...
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