Is the Mississippi delta flat?

It measures seventy miles across at its widest point and encloses an area about two hundred miles long that writer William Alexander Percy called “a badly drawn half oval.” The Delta is unusually flat, with elevation going from 205 feet above sea level below Memphis to 80 feet above at Vicksburg and averaging an ...



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Rather, the Mississippi Delta is part of an alluvial plain, created by regular flooding of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers over thousands of years. The climate is humid subtropical, with short mild winters, and long, hot and wet summers. The land is flat and contains some of the most fertile soil in the world.

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Deltas, like the Mississippi River Birdsfoot Delta, are river-dominated ecosystems. A river-dominated delta is only partially influenced by tides and waves. In this instance, wave energy dissipates before connecting with the coastline.

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The Delta forms the most important bird and waterfowl migration corridor on the continent and supports North America's largest wetland area and bottomland hardwood forest. The Delta's cultural traditions are as rich and diverse as its natural resources.

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The Delta was swampland, with rivers and streams flowing through it and the Mississippi River flooding each spring. Wetlands in the Delta offer extensive water resources and a natural river pathway to support an “avian superhighway” for countless migrating birds.

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One big difference between the two is that while the Nile delta is shrinking (the Mediterranean Sea is eating away more sediment than the river can supply), the Mississippi delta is growing. The image below shows the growth of the Mississippi delta over the past 10,000 years.

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The Ganges Brahmaputra Delta, also named Ganges Delta, Sunderban Delta or Bengal Delta is situated in Asia where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers discharge into the Bay of Bengal. It is, with a surface area of some 100.000 km2, the world's largest Delta.

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For 7,000 years, the Mississippi River has snaked across southern Louisiana, depositing sediment from 31 states and 2 Canadian provinces across its delta. As sediment accumulated under water, plant communities began to develop, trapping more sediment and building land.

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The city area in New Orleans is between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. This whole area is a delta area on the Mississippi River with the mouth located about 130 km southeast from there.

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The problem is the delta's wetlands were and still are built and sustained by sediment delivered by the river. Leveeing of the river cut the tie between the sediment-filled river and its delta, stopping the cycle of new wetland growth.

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