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In late summer 1988 the dead zone disappeared as the great drought caused the flow of Mississippi to fall to its lowest level since 1933. During times of heavy flooding in the Mississippi River Basin, as in 1993, "the "dead zone" dramatically increased in size, approximately 5,000 km (3,107 mi) larger than the previous year". [72]
The Mississippi River drains about 41% of the nation's water systems into the Gulf of Mexico. The river itself begins at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and runs through 10 states before it reaches the Gulf.
The political and engineering focus in the 20th century was to separate the Lower Mississippi River from its floodplain.Levees and channelization—along with substantial loss of bottomland forests to agriculture in the alluvial valley—have resulted in a loss of wildlife and fish habitat, decreased water quality, and an expansion of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
The likely starting cause is waste nutrients being carried into the estuaries by the Mississippi River, although the oil made it worse. The dead zone appeared to be created by low amounts of oxygen in the region, known as hypoxic zones, as a result of phosphorus and nitrogen blocking out sunlight. It grows the most during the summer, when the ...
An example of this is the dead zone located off the coast of the Mississippi River. According to NOAA, the 2016 predicted size of this dead zone is going to be approximately 5,898 square miles with a nitrate concentration of 146,000 metric tons of nitrate flowing down the Mississippi and Atchafalaya River into the Gulf of Mexico. [5]
Discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto A.D. 1541 by William Henry Powell depicts Hernando de Soto and Spanish Conquistadores seeing the Mississippi River for the first time. Map of the French settlements (blue) in North America in 1750, before the French and Indian War (1754 to 1763). c. 1681 map of Marquette and Jolliet's 1673 expedition.
The Mississippi River System, also referred to as the Western Rivers, is a mostly riverine network of the United States which includes the Mississippi River and connecting waterways. The Mississippi River is the largest drainage basin in the United States. [3] In the United States, the Mississippi drains about 41% of the country's rivers. [4]
A shipwreck has emerged along the banks of the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as water levels plummet — threatening to reach record lows in some areas. The ship, which ...