There are 29 articles by Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk :
Starting in late April, two major broods of cicadas will emerge together in the U.S. for the first time in 221 years. Memphis, however, won’t see cicadas outside of our normal ones until 2028.
“Since (this legislation) was first introduced (in 2021), the conditions of the world we live in just keep showing us that there is an urgent need to address these problems, and they’re not solving themselves,” said the executive director of the Mississippi River Network.
“We have some huge rainfall deficits that have built up, not only over the last year but the last few years,” said the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub.
The upper Mississippi River is getting saltier but concentrations of most metals have decreased.
The past few years have brought wild fluctuations between flooding and drought, bringing more stress to the communities nestled along the Mississippi’s 2,350 miles.
But moving mountains of sand during historic low water levels creates its own problems.
The Mississippi River is a big deal. One of the world’s great rivers, it hosts an abundance of wildlife habitat and provides drinking water for almost 20 million people. But it seems to carry less reverence than other iconic water bodies across the country.
Within the contiguous U.S., temperatures have risen by 2.5°F since 1970, compared to a global average rise of about 1.7°F over the same period.
The Johnson family is raising cattle on about 15 of the 200 acres they own in Mississippi. During long spells without rain, the grass dries up, and the Johnsons have to buy hay. Then the pond dries up and they have to use a hose from the house to water the cows.
Since June, the Army Corps of Engineers has spent $38 million maintaining the Mississippi River channel, mostly through dredging the equivalent of 5,000 Olympic-sized pools of sediment.
Floodplain forests play a pivotal role in the river ecosystem – creating wildlife habitat, improving water quality, storing carbon and slowing flooding. But they’re disappearing.
As the Shelby County Health Department cautions sensitive groups to reduce outdoor air exposure on Friday, June 9, due to smoke from Canadian wildfires, some scientists question whether the whole idea of “wildfire season” still applies.
The Great Plains Action Society’s Walk for River Rights was the centerpiece of a three-day summit last month for organizers from in the Mississippi River basin, who, among other things, want to grant the river legal standing.
Traffic is increasing, and the locks and dams have aged far past their life expectancy. They slow barges down, and shippers and commodity groups fear a breakdown on the horizon.
“COVID really kind of kicked the baby boomers out,” said one industry insider, “and now that we had such a huge exodus of them, there’s just nobody to replace ’em.”
Unlike other pollutants, chloride doesn’t break down in water over time. In other words, once it’s in, there’s no getting it out — and just a teaspoon of salt can pollute five gallons of water forever.
PFAS are a class of more than 12,000 human-made compounds. They accumulate in the environment and human bodies over time and don’t easily degrade, which is why some call them “forever chemicals.”
While emissions from sectors such as energy production have fallen in the past few decades, those from agriculture — especially livestock and corn — are growing in most places.
A plume of chemical contaminants is traveling along the Ohio River at about one mile per hour and will eventually enter the Mississippi River.
Pumping water from the Mississippi River to drought-stricken western states is an option, but an expensive one.
Some of the “forever chemicals” that scientists have linked to various health risks were found at five locations along the Mississippi River in Louisiana at levels well above the EPA’s most recent guidance, according to a new report.
What’s at stake in the case is the federal jurisdiction over the nation’s most valuable natural resource: water.
A new multi-year report from the U.S. Geological Survey found the range of black carp in the Mississippi River basin now includes the entirety of the river, from New Orleans to the southeastern edge of Iowa.
This fall’s drought could be a harbinger of challenges ahead for the Mississippi River shipping industry.
“Low water can have as great a cost, or greater, than high water,” Strickland said. “We have all these tools at our disposal for floods, but very few for droughts.”
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