Why is the Mississippi delta not a delta?

The shifting river delta at the mouth of the Mississippi on the Gulf Coast lies some 300 miles south of this area, and is referred to as the Mississippi River Delta. Rather, the Mississippi Delta is part of an alluvial plain, created by regular flooding of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers over thousands of years.



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Over thousands of years, sediments carried by the Mississippi River collected and formed the delta--25,000 square kilometers (9,650 square miles) of land, about half of which is wetlands, on the Louisiana coast.

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The Mississippi River Delta is a river-dominated delta system, influenced by the largest river system in North America. The shape of the current birdfoot delta reflects the dominance the river exerts over the other hydrologic and geologic processes at play in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

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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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Why do they call it the Mississippi Delta? The Mississippi Delta in the state of Mississippi is not a true delta as it is hundreds of miles from the Gulf of Mexico which is the terminus for the Mississippi River.

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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 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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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 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 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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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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1925: Huff Daland Dusters, the predecessor of Delta, is founded in Macon, Ga., before moving to Monroe, La., a few months later. This was the first commercial agricultural flying company, and Huff Daland's 18 planes become the largest privately owned fleet in the world.

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The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers.

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Untutored Yanks like me are sometimes surprised to learn that the fertile Mississippi River Delta extends all the way up to Memphis, Tennessee.

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As the course of the Mississippi River changed over the last 6,000 years, sedimentary deposits resulted in a series of 16 distinct river deltas, also called deltaic lobes.

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