MISSISSIPPI, a river in the USA, one of the largest in the world. 3950 km, from the source of the Missouri 6420 km. The basin area is 3268 thousand km2. Flows into Mexican Hall. Main tributaries: Missouri, Arkansas, Red River, Illinois, Ohio. Average water consumption in... encyclopedic Dictionary
Mississippi Mississippi River Mississippi north of St. Louis Flows through the United States Source of the lake. Itasca ... Wikipedia
Mississippi (Mississippi, big river in the language of the local Indians), a river in the USA, one of the greatest rivers in the world. Length 3950 km (from the source of the Missouri 6420 km), the basin area extends from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians and from the Great Lakes region to ... ... Big Soviet encyclopedia
- (Mis sissippi, i.e. Big water) the largest and important river in the North American United States, the 4th longest river in the world: if we take the Missouri River as its source, its flow length is 6530 km; The area irrigated by it and its tributaries is equal to... ...
- (Mississippi, i.e. Big Water) is the largest and most important river in the North American United States, the 4th longest river in the world: if we take the Missouri River as its origin, its flow length is 6530 km; the area irrigated by it and its tributaries is 3,100,000... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Ephron
The river flows into the Gulf of Mexico of the Atlantic Ocean; USA. In 1519 the Spanish Conquistador Alon and Alvarez Pineda explored the north. coast Gulf of Mexico and discovered the mouth of some huge river, to which he gave the name Rio Grande del... ... Geographical encyclopedia
Mississippi: Mississippi River in the USA. Mississippi state of the USA. The Mississippi Territory is an incorporated organized territory of the United States, admitted to the United States as a state in 1817. Mississippi list of counties of the same name in the USA ... Wikipedia
Mississippi- Mississippi. MISSISSIPPI, a river in North America (USA), one of the largest in the world. Length 3950 km, from the source of the Missouri 6420 km. It crosses the United States from north to south along the Central Plains and the Mexican Lowland, flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Basic... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
Mississippi: Mississippi River in the USA. Mississippi State of the USA ... Wikipedia
Not to be confused with Mississippi (river). This term has other meanings, see Mississippi. View from Highway 417 near Antrim ... Wikipedia
Books
- Five rivers of life, Viktor Erofeev. `Everyone has their own fifth river. Don’t sleep, get ready, don’t waste time, search, breathe, fistula, no one will help you, find it yourself - you won’t regret it. Find her and open the chain: dream - life - word - death -...
- Five rivers of life. Dawn of a new revelation, Viktor Erofeev. `Everyone has their own fifth river. Don’t sleep, get ready, don’t waste time, search, breathe, wax, no one will help you, find it yourself - you won’t regret it. Find her and open the chain: sleep - life is a word- death -…
Mississippi is the greatest and most abundant river North America and the world, the basin of which stretches from the forested mountains of the Appalachians in the east to the highest rocky ridges of the Cordillera in the west, from the Great American Lakes in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south. The Indians gave the name “Father of Waters” (Messi Sipi) to the Mississippi River, the River of the Holy Spirit; in its lower reaches it is called the “River of Ramparts.”
Mississippi is complicated river system looks like giant tree from the interweaving of many water streams, and its mighty daughters are the Missouri and Ohio rivers. Until a certain time, the Mississippi-Missouri Watercourse was considered the longest on earth, but after the straightening of its channel, the length decreased by several hundred kilometers. Now this system ranks third in extent on Earth after the Nile and the Amazon. The Mississippi–Missouri system has a length of 6,420 km. Length of the Mississippi River according to the American gazetteer is 3730 km, although there are other data (3770 km, 3902 km). The Mississippi Basin occupies about ½ of the US territory and is home to half the country's population. This river is the most abundant in North America; it carries 2.5 times of water into the Gulf of Mexico more Volga. The Mississippi is called the river of disasters.
Where does the Mississippi River begin?
The Mississippi River begins in the northern part of the United States in the Central Plains in Minnesota. The source of the river is Lake Itasca, located at an altitude of 467 meters. Lake Itasca is within national park"Itasca". The source coordinates are approximately 47.2 degrees. With. w. and 95.2 degrees. h. d.
The nature of the river flow
From its source, the Mississippi flows southward, that is, to the Gulf of Mexico, crossing ten states. At first she wanders for a long time among forests, lakes, and swamps. Then it crosses the plateau and comes out onto a spacious fertile lowland created by its sediments. by the mighty river it flows into the bay. On its way the Mississippi takes a large number of large and small rivers. Its course is typical for plain river. This river crosses the following states: Minnesota and Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. There are 31 states in the river basin. The Mississippi River is conventionally divided into two parts, upper and lower. The Upper Mississippi is before the confluence of the Ohio River, and the lower Mississippi is after its confluence.
In the upper part of the river, the current speed is significant, and there are rapids and waterfalls. The largest waterfall is near the city of Saint Paul, the height of which reaches 15 meters. Several dams have been built on the river between the cities of Minneapolis and St. Louis. Steep banks hang over the river, becoming lower to the south.
In the middle reaches, the river becomes wider and fuller after its confluence with the Missouri, and the flow speed slows down. In the area from the mouth of the Ohio, the river has many islands formed from the sediments of the river. These islands are slowly moving to the south, the current slowly washes out the rocks that make up the islands and carries them south. The islands do not have names, but numbers.
The lower reaches of the Mississippi, that is, after the Ohio River flows into it, has many branches, islands, and wetlands. The width of the river is from 2 to 2.5 km. At the point where the river flows into the Gulf of Mexico, the width of the channel reaches 160 km. A large delta has formed near the river, its width is 300 km and its length is 320 km. The delta is composed of silty rocks brought by the river.
Tributaries of the Mississippi
The largest left tributaries are the Missouri, Ohio and Illinois, in addition to such smaller tributaries as the Chiptowa, Black River, Wisconsin, Rock, Beaver Creek, Middle Aubayon, Yazoo, Homochitto and others.
The largest right tributaries are the Missouri, Des Moines, Arkansas, and Red Rivers. At the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi, rivers flow for many kilometers in the riverbed. bright waters Mississippi and the dirty brown waters of the Missouri. Smaller right tributaries are the Minnesota, Zambro, Ruth-Turkey, Wopepinikon, Cedar, White River and others. All tributaries are full, they flow into the Mississippi great amount water, turning it into a deep river.
Nutrition and river regime
The main type of river feeding is rain; snow feeding also occurs; underground feeding plays a lesser role. Moist winds from the Gulf of Mexico come to the lower reaches of the river and bring a lot of precipitation. When these winds meet cold polar air masses coming from the north, heavy downpours occur. Rainfall leads to a large increase in water levels on the Mississippi and its tributaries, causing severe flooding. The Mississippi floods in March–April and shallows in August–September.
The river experiences severe flooding in the spring due to active snowmelt in the Appalachian Mountains, where the Ohio River begins. The water in the Mississippi can rise so quickly that at a certain distance from the confluence of the Ohio it flows north, that is, against the current. In addition, the river bed quickly fills with water and it overflows its banks, flooding vast areas of the Mississippi and Mexican lowlands. The Missouri River also carries a huge amount of water into the Mississippi during the melting of snow and glaciers in the Cordillera.
Floods
People call the Mississippi the river of disasters. This river has experienced catastrophic floods many times. In 1882, writer Mark Twain witnessed a catastrophic flood. He wrote: “Water flooded all the lowlands from the city of Queiro to the mouth; it broke through dams at many points on both banks of the river; and in some places, to the south, where the water stood at highest altitude, the width of the Mississippi reached up to seventy miles! 70 miles corresponds to 112 km. In 1927, under the pressure of water, dams in the lower reaches of the river were broken in 200 places, and the flooded river valley resembled the sea. Floods during floods settlements, people are dying. So in the 20th century, the worst floods occurred in 1903, 1913, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1952. Because the river brings many disasters during floods, its people are an enemy who knows no mercy. The great American river basin remains a vast arena where the greatest human tragedies periodically play out.
Discovery of the river by Europeans
Which white man was the first to visit the Mississippi remains a mystery to this day. It is possible that the Normans visited here even before the second millennium AD. Of the later travelers, the names of H. Columbus, Gorai, and Pineda are mentioned. Pineda, for example, reported that he discovered a large river and saw 40 cities on its banks. He gave this river the name Espirito Santo - “River of the Holy Spirit”. However, the discoverer of the Mississippi is the Spanish conquistador Hernan de Soto, who in 1539 came to the Florida Peninsula with nine ships and landed on it. After long wanderings around the south of the mainland, Hernan de Soto came to the banks of a huge river, so wide that on the opposite bank it was impossible to see a man standing at full height.
Life on the Mississippi
In the distant past, Indians lived on the banks of the Mississippi. They fished in the river and hunted in the forests growing on its banks. The river valley has fertile soils on which the Indians grew tobacco, cotton, corn, potatoes, beans, nuts, maple sugar, and many types of berries. The culture of cultivating these plants was used by the incoming white population, who subsequently ousted the Indians from these lands.
Mississippi Length: 5,985 kilometers.
Mississippi basin area: 3,220,000 square kilometers.
Where does the Mississippi flow? the largest and most important river in North America, the 4th longest river in the world: if we take the Missouri River as its origin, its flow length is 6530 km; the area, it and its tributaries, is equal to 3,100,000 square kilometers. The Mississippi originates in northern Minnesota from Lake Itasca, which lies at an altitude of 1,575 meters above sea level, at 47° and 95° west longitude. Its source was precisely found by the American Schoolkraust in 1832. From Lake Itasca, the Mississippi flows first north into Lake Traverse, where it receives several other rivers, and soon turns east and, flowing through Lake Cass and many other lakes, makes turns into in all possible directions to Cross Wing, from where it heads south. On its way to Minneapolis, the Mississippi forms the majestic St. Antonia, where shipping begins; here the river descends 66' in less than a length of 1.5 km, including its sheer drop from a height of 17'.
Going further south, a few kilometers from the city of St. Paul, the Mississippi forms the border of the state of Wisconsin and expands into the huge and picturesque Lake Pepin, bordered by vertical calcareous cliffs about 400` in height. Going further and further to the south, the river flows on the borders of the states of Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana on the right, and on the left - the states of Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. After a winding path, below New Orleans, the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico in 5 branches, at 29° northern latitude and 89°12` west longitude. Its most important tributaries are the Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas and Red River; besides them, it takes on the right: Minnesota, Iowa and De Moines, and on the left - Wisconsin and Illinois. The Missouri is longer than the Mississippi until its confluence, where the river is called the Upper Mississippi. The average amount of water discharged by the Mississippi per second is 675,000 cubic meters. ft. The width of the Mississippi at St. Louis is 1,070 meters, at 1,200 meters, at New Orleans 760 meters, between Cairo and the mouth of the Red River - an average of 1,300 meters, below the Red River - an average of 1,020 meters. greatest depth between the Red River and New Orleans - 4.5 meters. The average speed of the river between St. Louis and the Gulf of Mexico is 110 km per day. The Mississippi River valley contains a vast and fertile, only occasionally undulating; and the works of its southern part are very different from the northern. In the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, along its banks there are alluvial plains that lie below the water level and suffer from, although they are partly protected by artificial embankments and dams.
At the mouth The Mississippi forms a delta 320 km long and 300 km wide, with an area of 31,860 square kilometers; 1/3 of this delta is occupied by swamps and lakes; sandy shoals greatly impede navigation at the mouth, as a result of which the main branch of the South Pass is deepened to almost 7 m with the help of dams; The delta is crossed by many streams called "bayous", which receive their water from the Mississippi when it is in flood. The amount of silt carried by the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the calculations of Abbott and Homphrey, will amount to an average mass per year of an area of 1.5 square km.
Tributaries of the Mississippi: The largest right tributaries are the Minnesota, Des Moines, Missouri, Arkansas, Red River; left - Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio.
Mississippi Freeze: doesn't freeze.
Mississippi River- the world's first liar, that's what he called the river famous writer Mark Twain. The river received this name due to its wayward flow. In the lower reaches, closer to the mouth, the river winds across the plain as it pleases. In just one spring, it can become either shorter or longer, changing its course, and with it the fates of the people who dared to settle on its troubled shores. The word Mississippi itself, translated from the Ojibbe Indian language, means “ great river" The Indians clearly did not show originality here.
The Great Flood of 1927 was captured in a Led Zeppelin song called "When the Levee Breaks." By the way, I suggest listening to it, so to speak, for the mood. I think this will help to better understand the upcoming story.
River length: 5,985 km.
Drainage basin area: 3,220,000 sq. km.
Current direction: mainly from north to south.
Where does it occur: The Mississippi is the main river and communication artery in North America. The river originates from Lake Itasca in Minnesota. The height of the source above sea level is 1575 meters. The area from the source to the confluence of the Ohio River is called the Upper Mississippi. Further downstream, the Lower Mississippi begins.
On the way to Minneapolis is the beautiful St. Anthony Falls. Behind it begins the navigable part of the river. Here the terrain changes to flat. The Mississippi flows slowly from north to south, spreading through a wide valley until it flows into the Gulf of Mexico, 160 km south of New Orleans.
The river's path is clearly visible on political map USA. Flowing through 10 states, it is also a natural border for most of them. If we take into account the main tributary, the Missouri, the river basin already covers 31 states. It reaches from the Appalachians in the east, to the Rocky Mountains in the west, and to the Canadian border in the north. It is the fourth longest river system in the world.
At its mouth, the Mississippi forms a large delta 300 km wide and an area of 31,860 sq. km. Most of it is occupied by swamps and lakes. A large number of sand shoals was a strong obstacle to the development of navigation. Plus, the river often experiences devastating floods. The construction of dams and deepening of the riverbed partially solved the problem. But, as always happens, they caused other problems. The deepening of the channel led to the fact that the river lost some of its natural meanders and shallows. And the construction of dams does not allow the river to supply the surrounding areas with fertile silt. It also led to a decrease in the growth rate of the delta, which throughout history has constantly expanded, cutting deeply into the Gulf of Mexico.
Main tributaries: on the right - Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, Red River; on the left - Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio.
Characteristics, regime of the Mississippi River
Average water consumption in the river is 12,743 m3/s.
Freezing: in the lower reaches it does not freeze. In the upper part, freeze-up lasts 3-4 months.
Nutrition: the river gets most water from melting snow and precipitation. It is noteworthy that the right tributaries bring mainly water formed by melting snow in Rocky Mountains, and the left, on the contrary, predominantly feed the river with rain and storm water. The Mississippi regime is characterized by spring-summer floods, as well as rain floods. Floods can simply reach catastrophic proportions, which has happened more than once when snow melting in the Mississippi and Missouri river basins coincides with heavy rains in the Ohio River basin. In this situation, severe floods occur in the middle and lower reaches. During such catastrophic floods, water flow can increase to 50-80 thousand m3/sec.
Interesting Facts:
1) After the clay-yellow waters of the Missouri flow into the bluish Mississippi River, their waters flow separately for another 40 km. In the Cairo area, history repeats itself again when the bright Ohio River flows into the already darkened waters of the Mississippi. And, what is completely incredible, this happens again, but this time in the ocean. As satellite imagery shows, the Mississippi does not end when it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Her fresh waters without mixing with the sea, they go around the Florida peninsula and, entering the Gulf Stream, turn north. Only at the latitude of Georgia river water finally dissolves into the salty ocean.
2) In literature, the name of the Writer Mark Twain is most closely associated with the river, who described travels and adventures on it in his famous work “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
3) The Mississippi River is the cradle of jazz. It was on its banks in New Orleans that the great jazzman Louis Armstrong was born.
4) The 19th century is considered the golden age of the river. It was then that river steamers plied along it at full speed. Now this tradition is being revived, but now the ships are used mainly for tourism purposes.
1985 video film: “Mississippi—Ally and Adversary”:
Also: Mississippi National River and Recreation Area
And to close with one more song: “Road to the Mississippi.”
The most important and water artery North America - Mississippi. “Father of Waters”, “Big River” was what the Indians called it. The Mississippi originates from a small lake in Minnesota and falls slightly short of the Great Lakes.
Contemplating majestic river V central regions USA, it’s hard to imagine that a thousand kilometers upstream is an unremarkable trickle. In the upper reaches, the river flows through small lakes and swamps, forming rapids and rocky rifts. Before the confluence of the first large influx- Minnesota - the river is expanding and narrowing, which does not dare to become the powerful Mississippi that we know. Near the city of Minneapolis, the river bed is compressed by rocky banks and split rapids. Flowing through the Central Plains, the Mississippi receives many major tributaries: Minnesota, Des Moines, Missouri, Arkansas, Red River (right), Chip Pevala, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio (left). Tributaries make their way through arid spaces and, cutting deep into the rocks, carry out huge amounts of alluvium, but little water. Therefore, the Mississippi, even after merging with the Missouri, does not yet become a full-flowing river. It becomes powerful only after the Ohio flows into it. Further along almost the entire length of the Mississippi there is a wide channel.
The section of the river from the confluence of the Ohio to the mouth is considered the lower reaches. Here the river begins to meander, and the bed becomes a “bagatoru” - one that forms a wide belt of channels. In terms of quantity and strangeness of the jingle, the river can claim one of the first places in the world. It looks like a strip of paper folded like an accordion. If all the loops were straightened, the river would become three times longer. It is interesting that the Mississippi expands towards the mouth, but on the contrary, narrows. At the same time, its flow slows down, and a highly branched river delta begins from the city of Baton Rouge.
The Mississippi regime is very complex, due to great variety natural conditions on its territory huge swimming pool. Maximum water flow occurs in the spring, due to snowmelt in the upper part of the basin, and in the summer, due to the maximum on the Ohio River and rain in the mountains. Ohio is usually the main culprit for flooding. Often this river swells so that the bed of the Mississippi cannot contain its waters, and then part of the waters of the Ohio, at its confluence with the Mississippi, is directed up the main river turning it water flow back over several tens of kilometers. By the end of summer, the Mississippi becomes very shallow. Great depths are preserved only in the lower reaches.
There are so many islands in the Mississippi, they were given numbers instead of names. After each flood, the islands undergo metamorphoses: some turn into peninsulas, some disappear, some are divided into parts, others appear again, confusing sailors. At the same time, the islands... are slowly moving downstream. their sides facing the current are eroded by the river, and on the opposite sides new sediments are deposited. Therefore, in the upper part you can see a forest, and in the lower part - a bare sand spit.
The Mississippi carries a large amount of sediment to the sea: one million tons every day. Over the course of a year, this is equivalent to a landmass with an area of 2.5 km2 and is equal to 90 m. It is not surprising that over the years it was able to create a huge lowland, turning into a continuously growing delta. It grows by about 100 m per year. Imagine how a huge river, for many millennia, tirelessly erodes the banks along its entire large swimming pool and deposits all suspended material in its downstream stream. Where the current is fast, the water flow will drag pebbles, where it is slow, it will carry thin silt, and so on they continue to move downstream until they reach the edge of the continent.
The shape of the delta resembles a goose's foot. In the area where it is located, the coastline decreases, so part of the delta is submerged, and its thickness reaches hundreds of meters. The accumulation of sedimentary rocks occurs as follows: under the weight of river sediments, surface layers earth's crust sag, this temporarily relieves the pressure and allows the river to fill the newly created space with the next batch of sediment. The river has long “reached” the Gulf of Mexico, or as it is called the “hot frying pan,” entering it with a “tongue” 320 km long and 300 km wide.
Earthquakes are not uncommon in this area. After each of them, the delta settles lower and lower. The “land of descent” is thoroughly saturated with water. The waters of the Mississippi soak the soil, so rainwater stagnate without good drainage. A huge area is covered with swamps, here is the kingdom of alligators, turtles, otters, mosquitoes and mosquitoes. The low-lying islands are overgrown with damp subtropical forests, consisting of swamp cypress, magnolias, holm oak, crocodile pear, poisonous grapes. The forests are densely intertwined with vines, the branches are covered with hanging epiphytes - “gray beards”.
The Mississippi Delta is like a huge chemical plant "created" by the river. Some of its layers consist of native sulfur, while oil gushes from the depths of others. These geological formations owe their origin to the pressure produced by the delta, equivalent to the colossal amount of heat in the middle of the Earth, which both melts the substances contained in rocks, and they pour out to the surface when the movement of the earth’s crust gives them an additional push.
Speaking about the Mississippi, it is impossible not to talk about the Missouri, its tributary, which itself is one of largest rivers world and almost 800 km more " Big river"! This rarely happens. The question arises: why is the Missouri considered a tributary of the Mississippi, and not vice versa? Firstly, the Mississippi flows along the central axis of the North American plain and is, as it were, the trunk of a river tree, just as Missouri and Ohio approach it from two sides, forming like branches of this trunk; secondly, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, the first carries significantly more water, thirdly: the Canadian Joliet discovered the upper reaches of the Mississippi when Europeans had no idea about the Missouri.
The Missouri is a young river; it originates at an altitude of 4200 m in the Rocky Mountains. Icy waters flowing from the snowy peaks mix with the boiling water of geysers yellowstone park. The Missouri produces many more rapids and waterfalls than the Mississippi. Even when it reaches the Great Plains, it retains higher speed, eroding the loose rocks that make up the channel, which is why it is so muddy. “Fat dirty little thing” - Americans call Missouri in familiar terms. And rightly so: the river looks like a dirty yellow stream during the spring flood. It not only carries sand and gravel, but also carries stones, branches, and even entire trees. In Mississippi, a significant part of the turbidity settles in the lakes of the upper reaches, and then it flows calmly and slightly erodes the banks. Having united near the city of St. Louis, the Missouri and Mississippi flow without mixing for several tens of kilometers. This is how the American historian Parkman describes the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi: “A yellow muddy stream rushed madly across the calm blue current of the Mississippi, boiling, rising, carrying stumps, branches, uprooted trees. It was Missouri wild river, which, madly rushing through unknown deserted countries, poured muddy waters into the bosom of his soft sister." Missouri's water supply is extremely variable. IN upper reaches The water supply is snowy, in the lower part it is rainy; the river is characterized by spring-summer floods. During the winter, the upper reaches of the Missouri freeze for 2-4 months.
The Missouri-Mississippi Valley is home to a variety of birds, from the gray nymph to the great great blue heron. One of the most interesting North American birds, the red-winged marsh trumpet, is a resident of river marsh banks. The Hen Harrier is also found here; its home is a wide platform of stems and grass.
Taking into account the significant differences in climatic conditions in the river basin and meteorological phenomena, which can be observed here, it becomes clear that predicting the behavior of the “Father of Waters” is not easy. But what was called the Great Flood of 1993 became the largest flood in the last 70 years. It covered the states of Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri. The main cause of the disaster was heavy rainfall, which was caused by unusual meteorological conditions. Warm temperatures collided over the Midwest air masses from the Gulf of Mexico and dry cool air from Canada. Formed atmospheric front, hovered for two months over the territory of North Dakota, Kansas and Iowa. The rivers could not accommodate the huge amount of water and began to overflow their banks in early August. Water levels in the Mississippi and Missouri near Saint-JIyïca exceeded the permissible level on about 150 days. An area of about 18,000 km2 was under water. The flood claimed 50 human lives, more than 30 thousand residents of the states had to be evacuated. Of the 56 thousand buildings, 10 thousand were completely destroyed. 9,300 km of water protection structures were seriously damaged.
Shipping on the Mississippi, an important waterway, had to be disrupted for several weeks. And its basin completely or partially covers thirty-one states. This is not a river, but a huge conveyor belt with cargo. Cargo on different areas different, but the main ones are grain, coal, Construction Materials, coke, timber, oil. As a result of the disruption to traffic flow, losses amounted to a million dollars every day. The total damage caused was staggering - more than $18 billion.
When in 2008 p. The Mississippi again overflowed its banks and broke the dam, the authorities were using helicopters to evacuate people from the disaster area. The flow of water interrupted road traffic between the states of Illinois and Iowa, and small town Gulfport, Mississippi, was flooded with three meters of water after a dam broke. In addition to Iowa, the states also affected were Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. The disaster damaged many buildings, the restoration of which requires a lot of time and money.
Due to the flooding of agricultural land at the Chicago Commodity Exchange, prices for corn and soya beans. The rising cost of these feed crops has led to higher prices for livestock and poultry until high level for 22 years. This has hit not only American consumers, but also countries that import food from the United States. The United States supplies half of all the corn consumed in the world, a third soybeans and almost a quarter of wheat.
The Mississippi and its navigable tributaries played vital role in US history. In its lifetime, the river has seen Indians, settlers, numerous herds of bison, and herds of horses brought from Europe. During civil war Between North and South, Mississippi became the scene of hostilities.
Mississippi for a long time was the border separating America from the “Wild West”. The main wave of colonization reached Mississippi at the beginning of the 18th century. Then the prairies of Illinois and Ohio turned into fields of wheat, the banks of the lower reaches became cotton plantations. Railways did not yet exist, and the Mississippi with its tributaries was the only highway of the interior states. Bread from the Midwest flowed down to feed the workers on the cotton plantations. Planters also transported cotton down to New Orleans, for export.
Today, the Mississippi Basin covers, in whole or in part, 31 states. More than 130 million people live in this territory, almost half of the US population. The large industrial and agricultural areas along the Mississippi owe their development to it. The river provides them with water, irrigates the land, and provides electricity.
The rivers of the Mississippi system are of great transport importance. There are more than 20 thousand km of navigable areas throughout the basin. The Mississippi is connected by canals to the Great Lakes shipping system: Lake Michigan via the Illinois River, and Lake Erie via the Ohio. Sometimes you can see tugboats sailing along the Mississippi - a string of barges and a small, wiry tug. No boat, no sail on the water, no man with a fishing rod or net.
Inhabited from the headwaters to the mouth of the Mississippi. At the origins coniferous forests settlers from Scandinavia - Swedes, Norwegians, Finns. This lake region reminded them of their former homeland. The Germans settled below, one of their occupations is farming.
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