Louisiana Owes Its Existence To Mississippi River Floods

If it weren’t for flood waters bringing silt down the Mississippi River, the state would be below sea level.

Generalized Geology of Louisiana
Prepared by the Louisiana Geological Survey staff, 2008

The surface of Louisiana is underlain by geologically young sedimentary sequences that were deposited in or adjacent to rivers and deltas in a coastal-plain setting. These deposits and those in other states flanking the Mississippi valley indicate that a major river system corresponding to the Mississippi has persisted at least since the Gulf of Mexico began to form by the separation of North America from South America. In general, the entire suite of fluvial, deltaic, and coastal deposits has advanced farther into the Gulf through time, and continues now to fill it with sediment.

http://www.lgs.lsu.edu/deploy/uploads/gengeotext.pdf

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10 Responses to Louisiana Owes Its Existence To Mississippi River Floods

  1. Jimbo says:

    Correct me if I’m wrong but I think much of Bangladesh owes its existence to a similar process.

    “Development of the Ganges-Brahmaputra River delta began ca. 11000 yr B.P., when rising sea level flooded the Bengal basin, thereby trapping most of the river’s discharge on the inner margin.”
    Source

    “In particular, the large monsoon-controlled sediment supply has been historically sufficient to offset sea-level rise and subsidence, even during periods of rapid sea-level rise”
    [page 12]
    Source

  2. Latitude says:

    “The data suggest that some levees could be 3 feet (0.9 meter) lower than when they were built some 40 years ago.”

  3. Martin Weed says:

    Republican factory owners killed your family and friends in the catastrophic blizzards, floods, tornadoes, massive wildfires and other climate change that has been wiping out the bible-belt. This is the Climate Change that their factories created. This is the Climate Change that the Republicans lie about not existing. This is the Climate Change that they program their constituents to deny exists. This is the Climate Change that killed people, destroyed homes, further destroyed the economy that the Republican factories emissions caused so they could make profits by killing those people. Republicans deny Climate Change at all costs in order to keep their factories from having to pay to stop it. The Climate Change that is destroying massive pats of our country can no longer be hidden or denied.

    • I guess I don’t have to ask what you have been smoking.

    • Greg Locke says:

      Mr. Weed has a computer and uses electricity. How insidious are these Republicans and their heinous factory owners that they can snare even a totally right thinking person like Mr. Weed into contributing to the spiral of death and destruction wreaked by capitalism and its conservative adherents?

      My G-d, it is now so clear to me that I’ve had it wrong all these years! I thought that modern Western society, with its almost magical technology, made life better and more enjoyable for more people than at any other time and in any other culture in the history of humankind. But I was blinded by the Republican factory smoke! In fact, all we’ve done is destroy the world (or at least the Bible Belt) so that a few fat cats could make some, dare I utter the evil word, PROFIT! Now I see that the affluence of those around me is just a clever facade to keep the masses down, perpetuated by those whose actual goal is the destruction of GAIA all that is good in nature (like mosquitos and redbugs and the like). I have seen the light Mr. Weed! I no longer deny Climate Change (with capital letters no less). Tear down the factories!! Dynamite the generating stations!! Then let’s see what’s worse for more people, nature’s usual and occasional tempests, or a world without electrity and transportation. Your call, Mr. Weed.

    • Ralph says:

      Yes! We must prevent Winter, Summer, Spring, and Fall at all costs!

    • Tom Keene says:

      worst storms in Huntsville, Alabama since 1974…when the Republic Party didnt exist in Alabama. And all of the factories here have closed and moved to Mexico or China…

    • Jimbo says:

      Martin Weed, please read the following and let us know what caused these disasters? Read the comments too.

      http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/the-1930s-a-time-of-perfect-harmony-when-co2-was-low/

  4. mitchel44 says:

    There has been a lot of development since the last large scale flooding of the Mississippi, you can expect the damage figures to be quoted as “the highest ever recorded” or some such nonsense.

    Sad state of knowledge in the world today.

  5. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    Here’s a clue: don’t build houses and businesses where floods are known to happen.

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