Is the Mississippi Delta shrinking?

On average, the Mississippi River Delta loses one football field of land per hour and has shrunk by 5,000 square miles in the last 80 years. To understand more about why some parts of the delta are disappearing due to sea-level rise, a team of NASA scientists will begin collecting data this spring.



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The Mississippi typically nears its lowest levels in the fall, but the drop has been more intense this year after a particularly dry summer in the Midwest, which failed to replenish the tributaries feeding into the river.

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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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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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A shrinking river is hurting people and the economy in a variety of ways. Barges can't operate on the river to get goods to market. Drinking water may also be at risk – for example, salt water moving upriver from the Gulf of Mexico could impact drinking water supplies in parts of Louisiana.

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As crazy as it sounds, engineers say the idea is technically feasible. It would involve building a system of dams and pipelines to move the water uphill across multiple states over the Continental Divide. Gravity would then work in our favor to drop the water down to the Colorado River watershed.

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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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The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is the world's largest delta, covering most of Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal (India). The size of the delta is a reflection of the enormous input of sediment being washed off the still-growing Himalayan mountains into the Ganges river basin.

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The soils maintain their fertility because the Mississippi River and its tributaries have often flooded, depositing new sediment and replenishing the topsoil. The diverse plants that grow in the Delta are recycled into the soil as a mulch and benefit the soil as natural fertilizer.

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