While it maybe not be tamed, it's far from wild - and understanding the floods that are expected to crest in Louisiana soon means understanding dams, levees, and control structures as much as rain, climate, and geography. The Mississippi no longer fits the definition a river as " a natural watercourse flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river." Rather, the waterway has been shaped in many ways, big and small, to suit human needs. What is the Mississippi River? It's not actually a silly question. How is a levee built? What's a revetment? What does the crucial Old River Control Structure look like? This explainer is intended to delve into these issues. The Mississippi was most elegantly laid out in John McPhee's stunning story "Atchafalaya," we found ourselves wishing for a simpler tech explainer (or companion piece). It's such a complex hybrid human-natural system with a deep and complex history that it's hard to know where to start.
While there are thousands of news stories about what's happening, I found myself wanting basic knowledge about how the Mississippi works now. The lower reaches of the Mississippi River are being hit by record floods, as detailed on our In Focus photography blog.
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