The Mississippi River Alluvial Plain, the largest ecoregion in Louisiana, covers some 12,350 square miles (31,990 square kilometres) of the state. It occupies parts of seven states, from southern Louisiana to southern Illinois. In Louisiana, it includes all of the historic Mississippi River floodplain.
The MississippiAlluvialPlain (73) extends along the Mississippi River from the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers southward to the Gulf of Mexico; temperatures and annual average precipitation increase toward the south.
The MississippiAlluvialPlain (73) has been widely cleared and drained for cultivation; this widespread loss or degradation of forest and wetland habitat has impacted wildlife and reduced bird populations.
Between the levees that parallel the Mississippi River is a corridor known as the" batture lands".
The MississippiAlluvialPlain is in the northern part of the Mississippi Embayment, a geologic structural trough in which the underlying crust of the Earth forms a deep valley.
The natural regional flow of ground water in the Mississippi Embayment in the Tertiary aquifers is from the outcrop areas in the upper Gulf Coastal Plain, laterally along the aquifers toward the embayment axis, and then upward through overlying confining units and aquifers to the surface of the MississippiAlluvialPlain (Grubb, 1986; Ackerman, 1989).
The Mississippi River confining unit is composed of the upper silt and clay of the Quaternary alluvium, whereas the Mississippi River alluvial aquifer is composed of the lower sand and gravel of the Quaternary alluvium (Boswell and others, 1968; Ackerman, 1989).
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