U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

Circular 1375

Prepared in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State

A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River 

Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River 

System and Delta
Cover. Construction of Gavins Point Dam, circa 1961 (source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).
A Brief History and Summary of the Effects 

of River Engineering and Dams on the 

Mississippi River System and Delta

By Jason S. Alexander, Richard C. Wilson, and W. Reed Green

Prepared in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State

Circular 1375

U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Department of the Interior

KEN SALAZAR, Secretary

U.S. Geological Survey

Marcia K. McNutt, Director

U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia: 2012

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Suggested citation:

Alexander, J.S., Wilson, R.C., and Green, W.R., 2012, A brief history and summary of the effects of river engineering 

and dams on the Mississippi River system and delta: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1375, 43 p.
iii

Contents

Abstract...........................................................................................................................................................1

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................2

Purpose and Scope .............................................................................................................................2

Description of the Mississippi River Basin ......................................................................................3

A Brief History of River Engineering in the Mississippi River Basin .....................................................7

River Engineering..................................................................................................................................9

Clearing of Snags and Obstructions.........................................................................................9

Channel Straightening and Cutoffs...........................................................................................9

Revetments .................................................................................................................................10

Dikes .........................................................................................................................................11

Levees and Floodways..............................................................................................................11

Dams and Reservoirs ................................................................................................................11

River Management ....................................................................................................................16

A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the 

Mississippi River System and Delta............................................................................................17

Effects on Hydrology ..........................................................................................................................18

Effects on Sediment Transport .........................................................................................................20

Effects on River Geomorphology .....................................................................................................24

Effects on Water Quality and Fish Communities............................................................................28

Effects on Water Quality...........................................................................................................28

Effects on Fish Communities....................................................................................................30

Effects on the Mississippi River Delta ............................................................................................32

Summary........................................................................................................................................................36

References Cited .........................................................................................................................................37

Figures

1. Map showing Mississippi River Basin, primary tributaries, large mainchannel dams, and selected cities along main-stem channels............................................4

2. Map showing mean annual water discharges of the main-channel and 

primary tributaries to the Mississippi River .............................................................................5

3. Map showing postdevelopment mean annual suspended-sediment 

discharge along the Mississippi River and major tributaries, circa 1980 ...........................6

4. Photograph of American family near their flooded farmstead during the 

Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927........................................................................................7

5. Color-enhanced satellite images of the confluence area of the Mississippi, 

Illinois, and Missouri Rivers near St. Louis, Missouri.............................................................8

6. Photograph showing a steamboat collision with snag on Mississippi River.....................9

7. Photograph of construction of Missouri River revetment, June 2, 1938 ...........................10

8. Photographs showing the siltation of a dike system, Indian Cave Bend, 

Missouri River .............................................................................................................................12

9. Illustration of levee design and failure mechanisms............................................................14
iv

10. Construction of Gavins Point Dam, circa 1961.......................................................................15

11. Graph showing low-water surface elevation profiles on the upper 

Mississippi River before and after construction of navigation locks 

and dams......................................................................................................................................16

12. Schematic drawing depicting storage capacity and designated uses 

of water in the main-stem reservoir system in the Missouri River ....................................17

13. Discharge duration hydrographs of the 25-percent to 75-percent 

exceedance boundaries for four locations on the Missouri River 

downstream from Gavins Point Dam.......................................................................................19

14. Graph showing generalized longitudinal patterns of bed-elevation 

changes along the lower Missouri River from 1954 to the mid-1990s 

depicted as stage changes for constant discharge at measurement 

stations downstream from Gavins Point Dam........................................................................20

15. Time-series histograms of total suspended-sediment discharge at 

stations along the lower Missouri and lower Mississippi Rivers.......................................21

16. Map showing estimated predevelopment (circa 1800) and 

postdevelopment (circa 1980) mean annual suspended-sediment 

discharge along the Mississippi River and major tributaries..............................................22

17. Graph showing time series of annual suspended-sediment discharge 

of the Mississippi River at Tarbert Landing, Mississippi, and the rate of 

construction of engineered dikes and bank revetments along the lower 

Mississippi River.........................................................................................................................23

18. Map of changes in channel and flood-plain configuration from 1890 to 

1989 along the lower Mississippi River...................................................................................25

19. Graphs of temporal trends in river-bed elevations for 50- to 90-percent 

exceedance discharges at four streamflow-gaging stations along the 

lower Missouri River..................................................................................................................26

20. Map showing changes in land cover from 1891 to 1989 along the 

reach of the upper Mississippi upstream from lock and dam 8, near 

LaCrosse, Wisconsin..................................................................................................................27

21. Pie charts showing proportion of nitrates and water discharge from 

tributaries in the Mississippi River Basin ...............................................................................29

22. Map showing percentage of nitrogen export from approximately 

equally sized interior watersheds of the Mississippi River Basin 

delivered to the Gulf of Mexico ................................................................................................30

23. Map showing frequency of occurrence of midsummer hypoxia in the 

Gulf of Mexico, 1985–2008.........................................................................................................31

24. Satellite image and map showing generalized extent and depositional 

time periods of the Mississippi River Delta complexes .......................................................32

25. Graph showing time series of land-area changes in coastal wetlands of 

Louisiana, 1932 to 2010...............................................................................................................33

26. Schematics of the cross sectional shape of a river delta depicting two 

mass balance scenarios. A quasistatic sea-level elevation. B rising 

sea level .......................................................................................................................................34

27. Graph showing time series of estimated sediment mass balance for the 

Mississippi delta region under varying scenarios of sediment supply, 

subsidence, and sea-level rise.................................................................................................35
v

Conversion Factors

Inch/Pound to SI

Multiply By To obtain

inch (in.) 2.54 centimeter (cm)

foot (ft) 0.3048 meter (m)

mile (mi) 1.609 kilometer (km)

square foot (ft2

) 0.0929 square meter (m2)

square mile (mi2

) 2.590 square kilometer (km2) 

cubic foot (ft3

) 28.32 cubic decimeter (dm3) 

cubic foot (ft3

) 0.02832 cubic meter (m3) 

foot per second (ft/s) 0.3048 meter per second (m/s)

cubic foot per second (ft3

/s) 0.02832 cubic meter per second (m3/s)

pound-force per square foot (lb/ft2

) 47.89 newton per square meter (N/m2)

pound per foot-second (lb/ft-s) 14.59 newton per meter-second (N/m-s)

acre-feet (acre-ft) 8.11 hectare meter (ha-m)

SI to Inch/Pound

Multiply By To obtain

millimeter (mm) 0.03937 inch (in.)

meter (m) 3.281 foot (ft) 

kilometer (km) 0.6212 mile (mi)

square meter (m2

) 10.76 square foot (ft2)

square kilometer (km2

) 0.3861 square mile (mi2)

cubic meter (m3

) 264.2 gallon (gal)

cubic meter (m3

) 0.0002642 million gallons (Mgal) 

meter per second (m/s) 3.281 foot per second (ft/s)

cubic meter per second (m3

/s) 35.31 cubic feet per second (ft3/s)

newton per square meter (N/m2

) 0.1622 pound-force per square foot (lb/ft2)

newton per meter-second (N/m-s) 0.0685 pound per foot-second (lb/ft-s)

hectare meter (ha-m) 0.1233 acre-feet (acre-ft)

 

Water year is defined as the 12-month period October 1 through September 30.

The water year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends.

Vertical coordinate information is referenced to National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD29) 

A kiloyear is equivalent to 1,000 years.
View of Lock and Dam 27, last navigation lock on the Mississippi River, oriented north; 

St. Louis, Missouri, is in the background (source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).
A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River 

Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River 

System and Delta

By Jason S. Alexander, Richard C. Wilson, and W. Reed Green

Abstract

The U.S. Geological Survey Forecast Mekong project 

is providing technical assistance and information to aid 

management decisions and build science capacity of 

institutions in the Mekong River Basin. A component of this 

effort is to produce a synthesis of the effects of dams and other 

engineering structures on large-river hydrology, sediment 

transport, geomorphology, ecology, water quality, and deltaic 

systems. The Mississippi River Basin (MRB) of the United 

States was used as the backdrop and context for this synthesis 

because it is a continental scale river system with a total 

annual water discharge proportional to the Mekong River, 

has been highly engineered over the past two centuries, and 

the effects of engineering have been widely studied and 

documented by scientists and engineers.

The MRB is controlled and regulated by dams and riverengineering structures. These modifications have resulted 

in multiple benefits including navigation, flood control, 

hydropower, bank stabilization, and recreation. Dams and 

other river-engineering structures in the MRB have afforded 

the United States substantial socioeconomic benefits; 

however, these benefits also have transformed the hydrologic, 

sediment transport, geomorphic, water-quality, and ecologic 

characteristics of the river and its delta. Large dams on the 

middle Missouri River have substantially 

reduced the magnitude of peak floods, increased base 

discharges, and reduced the overall variability of intraannual 

discharges. The extensive system of levees and wing dikes 

throughout the MRB, although providing protection from 

intermediate magnitude floods, have reduced overall channel 

capacity and increased flood stage by up to 4 meters for higher 

magnitude floods.

Prior to major river engineering, the estimated average 

annual sediment yield of the Mississippi River Basin was 

approximately 400 million metric tons. The construction of 

large main-channel reservoirs on the Missouri and Arkansas 

Rivers, sedimentation in dike fields, and protection of channel 

banks by revetments throughout the basin, have reduced the 

overall sediment yield of the MRB by more than 60 percent. 

The primary alterations to channel morphology by dams and 

other engineering projects have been (1) channel simplification 

and reduced dynamism; (2) lowering of channel-bed elevation; 

and (3) disconnection of the river channel from the flood plain, 

except during extreme flood events.

Freshwater discharge from the Mississippi River and its 

associated sediment and nutrient loads strongly influence the 

physical and biological components in the northern Gulf of 

Mexico. Ninety percent of the nitrogen load reaching the 

Gulf of Mexico is from nonpoint sources with about 

60 percent coming from fertilizer and mineralized soil 

nitrogen. Much of the phosphorus is from animal manure 

from pasture and rangelands followed by fertilizer applied 

to corn and soybeans. Increased nutrient enrichment in the 

northern Gulf of Mexico has resulted in the degradation of 

water quality as more phytoplankton grow, which increases 

turbidity and depletes oxygen in the lower depths creating 

what is known as the “dead zone.” In 2002, the dead zone was 

22,000 square kilometers (km2

), an area similar to the 

size of the State of Massachusetts. 

Changes in the flow regime from engineered structures 

have had direct and indirect effects on the fish communities. 

The navigation pools in the upper Mississippi River have 

aged, and these overwintering habitats, which were created 

when the pools filled, have declined as sedimentation reduces 

water depth. Reproduction of paddlefish may have been 

adversely affected by dams, which impede access to suitable 

spawning habitats. Fishes that inhabit swift-current habitats in 

the unimpounded lower Mississippi River have not declined 

as much as in the upper Mississippi River. The decline of the 

pallid sturgeon may be attributable to channelization of the 

Missouri River above St. Louis, Missouri. The Missouri River 

supports a rich fish community and remains relatively intact. 

Nevertheless, the widespread and long history of human 

intervention in river discharge has contributed to the declines 

of about 25 percent of the species. 
2 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

The Mississippi River Delta Plain is built from six delta 

complexes composed of a massive area of coastal wetlands 

that support the largest commercial fishery in the conterminous 

United States. Since the early 20th century, approximately 

4,900 km2 of coastal lands have been lost in Louisiana. One of 

the primary mechanisms of wetland loss on the PlaqueminesBalize complex is believed to be the disconnection of the 

river distributary network from the delta plain by the massive 

system of levees on the delta top, which prevent overbank 

flooding and replenishment of the delta top by sediment and 

nutrient deliveries. Efforts by Federal and State agencies to 

conserve and restore the Mississippi River Delta Plain began 

over three decades ago and have accelerated over the past 

decade. Regardless of these efforts, however, land losses are 

expected to continue because the reduced upstream sediment 

supplies are not sufficient to keep up with the projected 

depositional space being created by the combined forces of 

delta plain subsidence and global sea-level rise.

Introduction

Large rivers are important for economies and global 

ecosystems. For economies, a large river is an important 

source of transportation, power generation, and water supply, 

which are key elements of infrastructure, industry, and 

security and, therefore, are cornerstones for economic 

development and stability. Large-river ecosystems, on the 

other hand, are some of the most biodiverse on earth and 

provide natural, renewable sources of food for industrialized 

and emerging economies. Large rivers also are primary 

components of global biogeochemical cycling because they 

integrate and deliver the chemical and sedimentary loads of 

landscapes to major deltas and continental shelves, which 

are also global centers of biodiversity, and provide important 

sources of a secure food supply (Stanley and Warne, 1997; 

Day and others, 2007b). 

The importance of large rivers to societies is easily 

recognizable because many modern and ancient population 

centers are located along the banks of large rivers, tributary 

streams, and deltas. Engineering works typically are 

constructed along large-river systems to increase the ease of 

transportation of goods, produce reliable base-level energy 

production, secure or increase water supplies, and mitigate or 

control flood hazards. Although engineering in river systems 

has economic benefits to society, these benefits often come 

with ecologic consequences that, if not fully considered, 

may eventually counterbalance some economic benefits or 

conflict with modern societal values (Schmidt and others, 

1998). In recent decades, industrialized nations such as the 

United States, members of the European Union, and Australia 

have recognized these ecologic consequences and have 

been making expensive and politically contentious attempts 

to rehabilitate riverine ecosystems, often with the goal of 

preserving or recovering animal species pushed to the brink 

of extinction or improving the quality of municipal water 

supplies (Bernhardt and others, 2005; Lake and others, 2007). 

Over the past two decades, societal pressures to rehabilitate 

riverine ecosystems has advanced scientific understanding 

of the effects of alterations on river hydrology and sediment 

regimes on river channels, physical habitat, and water quality. 

The U.S. Geological Survey Forecast Mekong project 

is providing technical assistance and information to aid 

management decisions and build science capacity of 

institutions in the Mekong River Basin in the nations of 

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (Turnipseed, 2011). 

A component of this effort is to produce a synthesis of the 

effects of dams and other engineering structures on largeriver hydrology, sediment transport, geomorphology, ecology, 

water quality, and deltaic systems. The Mississippi River 

Basin (MRB) of the United States was used as the backdrop 

and context for this synthesis because it is a continental-scale 

river system with a total annual water discharges similar to 

the Mekong River, has been highly engineered over the past 

two centuries, and the effects of engineering have been widely 

studied and documented by scientists and engineers.

Purpose and Scope 

The purpose of this report is to summarize the effects 

of dams and other engineering projects (in particular levees, 

dikes, and revetments), on the hydrology, sediment transport, 

geomorphology, ecology, water quality, and delta on the 

Mississippi River system. This report provides a synopsis 

of existing scientific literature and other agency reports 

organized into series of summaries that the authors deem 

critical to understanding how and, to the extent possible, 

why the Mississippi River and its delta have been changed 

by engineering activities. This report is not intended to 

provide new analyses or insights not previously published. 

This synopsis is not spatially comprehensive, in part because 

current scientific investigations have not quantified effects 

on every river mile within the basin, but also because the 

effects of particular engineering activities can generally be 

constrained by magnitude to particular parts of the river 

basin. For example, engineering on the Missouri River is 

widely suspected to have substantially affected the natural 

sediment supply delivered to the Mississippi River Delta Plain 
Introduction 3

(National Research Council, 2011) and, therefore, most of the 

scientific analyses of sediment transport have been focused on 

this tributary. No analyses of the potential effects of planned 

developments in the Mekong Basin are provided.

Description of the Mississippi River Basin 

The MRB spans parts of 31 States in the United States 

and 2 Provinces in Canada (fig. 1). The MRB covers 41 

percent of the conterminous United States and totals 3,224,600 

square kilometers (km2

). The Mississippi River extends 

approximately 3,770 kilometers (km) from its headwaters at 

Lake Itasca, Minnesota, to the Gulf of Mexico (Kammerer, 

1990) and, in combination with its longest tributary the 

Missouri River, is one of the longest rivers in the world 

(Leopold, 1994). The MRB is bound on the west by the 

Rocky Mountain Belt, on the north-central by the West 

Lake section of the Interior Plains, and on the east by the 

Appalachian Mountains (Fenneman, 1928). Because of the 

width of its span as well as its geographic position, the MRB 

is physiographically and ecologically diverse, incorporating 

24 ecoregions along its course to the Gulf of Mexico 

(Omernik, 1987; Mac and others, 1998; Ricketts and others, 

1999). Primary MRB tributary basins are the Ohio River, the 

Missouri River, the Arkansas River, and the Red River. 

For the purposes of this report, the terms “upper,” 

“middle,” and “lower” are used in reference to the reaches 

of the Mississippi River upstream from St. Louis, Mo., from 

St. Louis to the confluence with the Ohio River, and from 

the confluence of the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico, 

respectively. In reference to the Missouri River, the terms 

“upper,” “middle,” and “lower” correspond to the reaches 

of the Missouri River upstream from Fort Peck Lake, 

Montana, between Fort Peck Lake and Gavins Point Dam, 

South Dakota, and downstream from Gavins Point Dam, 

respectively (fig. 1).

The Mississippi River, in combination with its largest 

distributary the Atchafalaya River, discharges an annual 

average of 580 km3

 of water into the Gulf of Mexico (Meade 

and others, 1995; Brown and others, 2005). About half of the 

total annual discharge is contributed by the Ohio River alone, 

which drains the more humid regions of the basin but only 

constitutes one-sixth of the total MRB area (Meade, 1995). 

Alternatively, the Missouri River drains approximately 

43 percent of the MRB but contributes only about 12 percent 

of the total annual water discharge (fig. 2). In the MRB, the 

primary sources of sediment and water are decoupled. The 

primary source of sediment in the basin is the Missouri River, 

which drains large parts of the Great Plains region of North 

America (fig. 3). The Great Plains region, which includes 

the Missouri, Arkansas, and Red River Basins, produces 

proportionally larger sediment discharges because of a 

combination of a semiarid climate, resulting in a lower density 

of vegetated land cover, yet enough precipitation to mobilize 

substantial masses of sediments into streams (Langbein and 

Schumm, 1958).

Dams and river engineering in the MRB have afforded 

the United States substantial socioeconomic benefits allowing 

for agricultural expansion into the nutrient-rich soils of 

the valley bottomlands adjacent to the river (Pinter, 2005), 

water supplies for irrigated agriculture and municipalities, 

maintenance of a deep navigation channel for shipping, 

base-level power generation, flood protection for communities 

adjacent to the river, and a resource for material extraction. 

Over the past 60 years, parts of the MRB also have emerged 

as important recreational resources, which have become a 

more substantial component of the economic base in rural 

parts of the river basin, particularly in areas surrounding 

reservoirs (Hesse, 1995).

Although the economic benefits of dams and engineering 

projects in the MRB have undoubtedly been substantial, these 

benefits also have come with socioeconomic and ecologic 

costs. The construction of the massive system of reservoirs 

between 1932 and 1962 in the Missouri River Basin required 

displacement of thousands of people, including many Native 

Americans, inhabiting the river bottoms (Weist, 1995; 

Sims, 2001). Reservoir sedimentation along the Missouri 

River has induced sedimentation and elevated groundwater 

levels upstream from reservoirs, severely enough in some 

locations that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) 

has permanently moved entire communities to higher ground. 

The channelization of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers 

has come at the expense of wetland and riparian habitats 

and reduced the water and nutrient storage capacity of the 

bottomlands, magnified flood stages, and added to the difficult 

problem of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico (Rabalais and 

Turner, 2001; Pinter and Heine, 2005). Additionally, besides 

having substantial ecologic consequences, loss of wetlands 

off the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi—which has 

been partly attributed to human-induced disconnection of 

the Mississippi River Delta Plain from the Mississippi River 

distributary network as well as reductions in sediment loads 

from upstream reservoir construction—has reduced the natural 

wave attenuation capacity of the coastal shelf, increasing 

the risk of flood hazard from storm surge in nearby coastal 

communities (Day and others, 2007a). 
4 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Figure 1. Mississippi River Basin, primary tributaries, large main-channel dams, and selected cities along main-stem channels.

Base modified from U.S. Geological Survey digital data, 1:2,000,000, 1990Albers Equal-Area Conic projectionNorth American Datum of 1983

EXPLANATION

Missouri River main-stem dam 250 MILES

0 250 KILOMETERS0

125

125

Old River

Atchafalaya

Hermann

O

maha

Yankton

Natchez

Baton Rouge

Shreveport

Grand Chain

St. Louis

New Orleans

Waverly

Kansas City

Sioux City

Fort Benton

Red River Landing

Keokuk

St. Joseph

Boonville

Rock Island

Minneapolis

St. Paul

Memphis

Pittsburg

Nebraska City

LaCrosse

Vicksburg

Tarbert Landing

Cape Girardeau

Head of Passes

FORT PECK DAM

GAVINS POINT DAM

GARRISON DAM

OAHE DAM

BIG BEND DAM

FORT RANDALL DAM

COLORADO

UTAH

IDAHO

NEW MEXICO

TEXAS

KANSAS

OKLAHOMA

PENNSYLVANIA

 WESTVIRGINIA

VIRGINIA

MICHIGAN

MICHIGAN

ARKANSAS

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NO

RTH

CAROLINA TENNESSEE

KENTUCKY

INDIANA

ILLINOIS

MISSOURI

IO

WA

MINNESOTA

WISCONSIN

NO

RTH

DAKOTA

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

SASKATCHEWAN

WYOMING

MONTANA

OHIO

NEW YORK

CANADA

UNITED STATES

ALBERTA

MANITOBA

ONTARIO

QUEBEC

Arkansas River Basin

Missouri River Basin

 Lower Mississippi

River Basin

 Upper Mississippi

River Basin

Ohio River Basin

Illinois

River Basin

 Red River Basin

GULF OF MEXICO

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Arkansas River

Red River

Kansas River

Platte River

Missouri River

Yellowstone River

Atchafalaya River

lI nil o si

i R ev r

Mississippi River

Oh oi River

North

South

Old River

Fort Peck

 Lake

Mississippi River Basin

50°46°42°38°34°30°

80° 90° 100° 110°

Figure 1
Introduction 5 Figure 2. Mean annual water discharges of the main-channel and primary tributaries to the Mississippi River (modified from Meade and Moody, 2010). 

Base modified from U.S. Geological Survey digital data, 1:2,000,000, 1990Albers Equal-Area Conic projectionNorth American Datum of 1983

EXPLANATION

Mean annual water discharge, in cubic kilometers per year

0 500

250 MILES

0 250 KILOMETERS0

125

125

Natchez

Keokuk

Vicksburg

COLORADO

UTAH

IDAHO

NEW MEXICO

TEXAS

KANSAS

OKLAHOMA

PENNSYLVANIA

 WESTVIRGINIA

VIRGINIA

MICHIGAN

MICHIGAN

ARKANSAS

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NO

RTH

CAROLINA TENNESSEE

KENTUCKY

INDIANA

ILLINOIS

MISSOURI

IO

WA

MINNESOTA

WISCONSIN

NO

RTH

DAKOTA

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

SASKATCHEWAN

WYOMING

MONTANA

OHIO

NEW YORK

CANADA

UNITED STATES

ALBERTA

MANITOBA

ONTARIO

QUEBEC

Atchafalaya GULF OF MEXICO

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Arkansas River

Red River

Kansas River

Platte River

Missouri River

Yellowstone River

lI nil o si vi R er

Mississippi River

Oh oi River

North

South

Atchafalaya River

50°46°42°38°34°30°

80° 90° 100° 110°

Figure 2
6 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta Figure 3. Postdevelopment mean annual suspended-sediment discharge along the Mississippi River and major tributaries, circa 1980 (modified from 

Meade and Moody, 2010).

Base modified from U.S. Geological Survey digital data, 1:2,000,000, 1990Albers Equal-Area Conic projectionNorth American Datum of 1983

EXPLANATION

Mean annual suspended-sediment discharge, in millions of metric tons per year—circa 1980

0 100 200 300 400

250 MILES

0 250 KILOMETERS0

125

125

Atchafalaya

St. Louis

Vicksburg

Tarbert Landing

Burlington

COLORADO

UTAH

IDAHO

NEW MEXICO

TEXAS

KANSAS

OKLAHOMA

PENNSYLVANIA

 WESTVIRGINIA

VIRGINIA

MICHIGAN

MICHIGAN

ARKANSAS

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NO

RTH

CAROLINA TENNESSEE

KENTUCKY

INDIANA

ILLINOIS

MISSOURI

IO

WA

MINNESOTA

WISCONSIN

NO

RTH

DAKOTA

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

SASKATCHEWAN

WYOMING

MONTANA

OHIO

NEW YORK

CANADA

UNITED STATES

ALBERTA

MANITOBA

ONTARIO

QUEBEC

GULF OF MEXICO

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Arkansas River

Red River

Kansas River

Platte River

Missouri River

Yellowstone River

lI nil o si vi R er

Mississippi River

Oh oi River

North

South

Atchafalaya River

50°46°42°38°34°30°

80° 90° 100° 110°

Figure 3
A Brief History of River Engineering in the Mississippi River Basin 7

A Brief History of River Engineering in 

the Mississippi River Basin

The Mississippi River and many of its tributaries have 

served as a vital transport route for the United States. In 1811, 

the first steamboat traveled from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 

down the Ohio River and then the Mississippi River to 

New Orleans (Evans, 1907; Dohan, 1981); in 1819, the first 

steamboat traveled the Missouri River (Ferrell, 1993). By 

1867, the Missouri River had been cleared of snags allowing 

steamboats to navigate as far upstream as Fort Benton, 

Montana (fig. 1) (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1984). The 

MRB also has been the source of devastating floods. The Great 

Mississippi River Flood of 1927, estimated at 66,545 cubic 

meters per second (m3

/s) at Red River Landing, approximately 

97 km below Natchez, Mississippi, inundated an estimated 

69,930 km2

 of land in seven states (Barry, 1997). The 1927 

flood killed 246 people, and over 700,000 people were forced 

to evacuate (fig. 4). Total property damage from the flood was 

estimated at $400 million, exceeding the losses of all previous 

Mississippi River floods combined (U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, 2002).

In 1993, the costliest flood in the history of the United 

States occurred in the upper MRB, later deemed the 

“Great Flood of 1993” (Johnson and others, 2004). The flood 

was the result of widespread and persistent precipitation in the 

Midwestern United States from June through August of 1993. 

The discharge of the Mississippi River during the peak of the 

flood was estimated to be a record 30,582 m3

/s at St. Louis, 

Missouri (Johnson and others, 2004), and also posted a 

record flood stage of 15.1 meters (m) on August 1. The 

flooding (fig. 5) caused widespread levee failures, damaged 

transportation systems and municipal infrastructure, 

destroyed more than 50,000 homes, and killed at least 

48 people (Johnson and others, 2004). Economic damage 

from the Great Flood of 1993 approached $20 billion 

(Johnson and others, 2004).

Figure 4. American 

family near their flooded 

farmstead during the 

Great Mississippi River 

Flood of 1927 (source: U.S. 

Army Corps of Engineers).
8 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Figure 5. Images of the confluence area of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers near St. Louis, Missouri.

N

N

0 5 KILOMETERS

0 2.5

2.5

5 MILES

0 5 KILOMETERS

0 2.5

2.5

5 MILES

A. August 14, 1991—Rivers within banks

B. August 19, 1993—Rivers at peak of Great Flood of 1993

Missouri River

Mississippi River

Illinois River

Missouri River

 (outside of banks)

Mississippi River

 (outside of banks)

Illinois River

 (outside of banks)

Missouri River

Mississippi River

Illinois River

Missouri River

 (outside of banks)

Mississippi River

 (outside of banks)

Illinois River

 (outside of banks)

Satellite image courtesy of Jesse Allen, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Earth Observatory

and U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation Systems Data Center

Satellite image courtesy of Jesse Allen, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Earth Observatory

and U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation Systems Data Center

Figure 5
A Brief History of River Engineering in the Mississippi River Basin 9

River Engineering

The MRB is controlled and regulated by dams and 

other river engineering structures. These modifications, some 

of which began in the early 1800s (U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, 2002), have resulted in multiple benefits including 

navigation, flood control, hydropower, bank stabilization, 

and recreation. The Mississippi River and its tributaries serve 

as major transportation routes, and the natural channel and 

hydrology did not provide the stable, uniform, consistently 

deeper channel that was needed for efficient navigation of 

the river. Channelizing and stabilizing the Mississippi and 

Missouri Rivers was a monumental task, requiring extensive 

modifications to stabilize the freely meandering river channel 

and banks and to create a self-scouring channel for navigation 

by reducing channel width and complexity. Flood control in 

the MRB is accomplished through a complex combination 

of levees to confine and separate the river channel from the 

flood plain, engineered floodways to reduce flood stages near 

critical infrastructure, channel straightening to increase the 

conveyance capacity of the channel, and the construction 

of dams on the tributaries to attenuate flood peaks and store 

irrigation water. 

Clearing of Snags and Obstructions

The first major MRB modifications consisted of 

widespread clearing of snags and obstructions to increase 

the ease and safety of river navigation. Downed trees and 

rocks snagged and sank keelboats and steamboats, whereas 

sandbars and rapids slowed or prevented the upstream 

movement of boats (fig. 6). The Missouri River was known to 

be particularly treacherous for steamboat navigation because 

of the numerous snags caused by fallen trees and branches 

(Bureau of Reclamation, 2011). The USACE began removing 

snags and dredging the main channel of the Mississippi River 

in the early 1800s, and in the main channel of the lower 

Missouri River by 1832 (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

1984). The problem of snags was not limited to the Missouri 

River. The 1882 Annual Report of the Secretary of War states, 

“The snag boat O.G. Wagner removed 834 river snags and 

380 shoreline snags from the Red River in one week” 

(U.S. War Department, 1882). The result of the clearing of 

snags and obstructions made navigation easier and safer; 

however, the modifications were only temporary because 

annual channel migration caused substantial bank erosion, 

and continuously fed the channel with additional trees from 

the banks. Thus, snag clearing often was repeated after each 

high-water event (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1980). 

River engineering projects such as channel straightening, dike 

construction, and revetments reduced the number of snags and 

obstructions, but channel dredging continues today. 

Channel Straightening and Cutoffs

The meandering rivers of the MRB have been 

extensively modified by channel straightening and shortened 

by cutoffs of river bends. Meandering “loops” are created 

as the river erodes the outside of a river bend and deposits 

sediment on the inside of the curve. This process causes 

the channel to migrate across the valley bottom and occurs 

because the velocity of the river is higher on the outside of 

the curve and slower on the inside of the curve (Dietrich and 

others, 1979). As the process of channel migration continues, 

the bend in the river eventually becomes larger and more 

circular, the length of the channel increases, and channel 

slope decreases. If allowed to persist, the large-meander loops 

would eventually naturally “cut off” during a high discharge 

event, disconnecting the meander loop from the channel, 

leaving behind an oxbow lake, and substantially shorten and 

steepen the channel. 

Construction of long radius channels that reduce 

the overall curvature of river bends, in combination with 

engineered cutoffs of large meanders, have modified the 

channel alignment and made the river more efficient for 

navigation. River cutoffs were designed to ensure that the 

artificial channel shape, size, slope, and alignment were 

adequate to allow the cutoff to evolve naturally with the 

discharge of the river (Morris and Wiggert, 1972). The 

result is a shorter river, with higher average velocities and 

self-scouring channels. Channelization and cutoffs in 

the lower Missouri River shortened the river length by 

approximately 116 km. Between 1929 and 1942, the USACE 

constructed 14 cutoffs in the lower Mississippi River between 

Memphis, Tennessee, and Red River Landing, Louisiana. The 

engineered cutoffs, in combination with two natural cutoffs, 

resulted in a net shortening of the river of approximately 

235 km (Winkley, 1977). 

Figure 6. A steamboat collision with snag on Mississippi 

River (source: Mississippi River Commission).
10 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Revetments

Revetments are used extensively throughout the MRB 

to stabilize river banks, prevent bank erosion, and reduce 

the tendency of the river to migrate across the flood plain. 

Revetments cover the bank from the top high water-surface 

elevation and extend below the water surface to the submerged 

toe of the bank. Revetments are constructed by using a 

variety of techniques and materials. Early revetments were 

constructed of willow fascine or lumber framework mattresses 

wired together to form a protective structure and then placed 

on the graded sloped bank (Morris and Wiggert, 1972). 

Mattresses were backfilled with sediment and armored with 

rock riprap (fig. 7). The 1920 Annual Report of the Chief of 

Engineers (U.S. War Department, 1920) reported “for the 

Missouri River bank protection project at Vermillion, South 

Dakota standard permeable dikes with foot mattresses and 

revetment of continuous woven-brush mattresses with rock 

paved upper banks were used extensively at revetment works.” 

Today, common forms of revetments are articulated concrete 

block mattresses and trench-fill revetments. Typical concrete 

block mattresses used on the lower Mississippi River measure 

1.2 m in width and 7.6 m in length. The individual mats are 

woven together with steel wire and placed on the bank by 

barge (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2011). Trench-fill 

revetments are constructed by placing riprap along the margin 

of a bank, allowing the river to erode the toe of the bank, 

creating a trench, and allowing the riprap to fall into the trench 

creating the protective structure. 

Figure 7. Construction of Missouri River revetment, June 2, 1938 (source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).
A Brief History of River Engineering in the Mississippi River Basin 11

Dikes

Dikes are used for river-flow contraction and training 

and alignment of the wide meandering river channels of 

the MRB. Dikes extend from the riverbank into the river 

channel, perpendicular to the direction of flow. The dike 

structure directs the river flow toward the center of the 

channel, increasing the velocity in the channel midsection, 

causing scouring of the bed sediment, and resulting in a 

deeper channel. Dikes take many sizes and alignments and 

consequently have been called by a variety of names including 

spur dikes, spur dams, wing dikes, wing dams, groins (or 

groynes), contracting dikes, transverse dikes, cross dikes, 

cross dams, jetties, longitudinal dikes, L-head dikes, and vane 

dikes (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1980). Dikes have two 

primary forms: impermeable and permeable. Impermeable 

dikes are armored structures constructed of riprap, concrete, 

rubble, or other hard materials and are the most commonly 

used dike in the MRB. Permeable dikes such as the pile-clump 

dike are constructed of timber piles, woody debris, or trees 

woven together. Permeable dikes reduce the velocity of the 

surrounding flow field, allowing sediment to naturally deposit 

and fill within the voids of the structure (fig. 8.). Permeable 

dikes are most effective in rivers with heavy sediment loads, 

such as the Missouri River (Linsley and Franzini, 1979). 

Although fundamentally different in design, impermeable and 

permeable dikes have been used to successfully create and 

maintain the navigation channels throughout the MRB. 

Levees and Floodways

Levees and floodways have been constructed extensively 

for flood protection in the MRB. In 1920, the Annual Report 

of the Chief of Engineers (U.S. War Department, 1920) 

reported 2,700 km of levees, totaling 276,694,000 m3

 of 

material, between Rock Island, Illinois and Head of Passes, 

La. Today, the lower MRB alone has over 5,630 km of 

levees (Mississippi River Commission, 2011). The levee 

is essentially a dam placed on the river bank parallel to the 

channel to prevent flooding during times of high discharge 

stages (fig. 9). Unlike a dam, the levee is expected to be 

subjected to high water only for a few days to several weeks at 

a time (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2000). Most levees in 

the MRB are constructed of compacted sediment. By design, 

the least permeable sediments, such as clays, are placed in the 

riverside of the structure. Levee heights are variable and are 

designed on the basis of a combination of factors including the 

estimated flood stage, types of land uses and structures behind 

the levee, material type, foundation, and the availability 

of land for construction. The levees in the MRB generally 

have broad bases and gentle side slopes, particularly on the 

landward side (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2000). 

Floodways are used to supplement and enhance the flood 

protection capabilities of the system of levees in the MRB. 

Floodways are designed to carry and redirect excess flood 

discharges around cities to less densely populated areas, often 

agricultural areas along the valley bottomland. When opened, 

the floodways reduce the discharge in the main river channel, 

thereby reducing flood stage, allowing high water to bypass 

more densely populated areas, and alleviating stress on the 

levee systems (Winkley, 1994; Smith and Winkley, 1996). In 

the lower MRB, three major floodways have been constructed 

in Louisiana at the Atchafalaya River, the Morganza 

Floodway, and the West Atchafalaya Floodway, and one in 

Missouri at the Birds Point-New Madrid floodway.

Dams and Reservoirs

Dams are used throughout the MRB to stabilize, 

harness, and regulate the discharges of rivers. The MRB has 

thousands of single-purpose and multiple-purpose dams and 

navigation locks that provide flow regulation for navigation, 

flood control, hydropower, water supply, irrigation, fish and 

wildlife habitat, water-quality control, and recreation (U.S. 

Army Corps of Engineers, 2006). Of note, the middle and 

lower sections of the Mississippi River are not impounded by 

any main-channel dams; however, all of their major tributaries 

have impoundments. 
12 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

A. September 1934

B. November 1934

Figure 8. The siltation of a dike system, Indian Cave Bend, Missouri River (source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

Omaha District).
A Brief History of River Engineering in the Mississippi River Basin 13

Figure 8. The siltation of a dike system, Indian Cave Bend, Missouri River (source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

Omaha District).—Continued

C. August 1936

D. May 1946
14 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

The Missouri River Mainstem Reservoir System located 

in the northern High Plains is an example of multiple-purpose 

dams and their operation as an integrated system. Five of the 

six massive earthen main-stem dams were authorized by the 

Flood Control Act of 1944, commonly referred to as the 

“Pick-Sloan Act.” The six main-stem dams were constructed 

from 1933 to 1964 (fig. 10), and the system of dams now 

composes the largest reservoir system in the United States 

(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2004). The Missouri 

Mainstem Reservoir System is primarily operated by the 

USACE, but the Bureau of Reclamation also operates other 

reservoirs within the system. The main-stem system contains 

about 90.5 million hectare-meters (ha-m) of storage capacity 

and 404,700 ha of surface area and constitutes over 52 percent 

of the total storage in the Missouri River Basin (U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers, 2006). Over 71 percent of the capacity 

of the Federal hydroelectric power system is generated by 

the main-stem system. The main-stem system provides flow 

for navigation and flood protection for over 810,000 ha in the 

flood plain of the Missouri River.

Several series of locks and dams in the MRB have helped 

to create an inland navigational waterway that extends south to 

north from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota and east to west 

from West Virginia to Iowa. Navigational locks and dams have 

been built on the upper Mississippi River, Ohio River, and 

Arkansas–Red Rivers but not on the lower Mississippi River 

or Missouri River. Navigation dams are similar to other dams 

in that their intended purpose is to impound water; however, 

navigation dams are designed to maintain the water surface 

upstream from the dam and, thereby, provide sufficient depth 

Figure 9. Levee design and failure mechanisms.

Riverside Levee

Overtopping

Bank erosion Internal erosion (piping)

Seepage

Sandboil

Landward side

NOT TO SCALE

Water surface

Figure 9
A Brief History of River Engineering in the Mississippi River Basin 15

for the navigation of boats and barges (fig. 11). The passage 

of vessels between the upper and lower water-surface levels 

is accomplished by a navigation lock. In 1930, the U.S. 

Congress authorized the construction of a 9-foot-deep and 

400-foot-wide navigation channel on the upper Mississippi 

River from Minneapolis downstream to the confluence with 

the Missouri River. These structures were built during the 

1930s and 1940s (with the exception of the Keokuk power 

dam that was constructed in 1913) and resulted in a total of 

29 locks and dams in the upper MRB. At least partially as a 

result of the system of navigation locks and dams, waterborne 

commerce has increased on the Mississippi River from 

30 million tons in 1940 to nearly 400 million tons in 2011 

(Mississippi River Commission, 2011). Currently, there are 

21 navigation locks and dams on the main stem of the Ohio 

River (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2012a), 18 on the 

main stems of the Arkansas and White Rivers (U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers, 2012b), and 5 on the Red River 

(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2012c). The U.S. Congress 

authorized the Missouri River navigation channel from 

St. Louis, Mo., to Kansas City, Mo., in 1910 and authorized 

the extension of the navigation channel to Sioux City in 1927. 

The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1945 authorized a 9-footdeep and 300-foot-wide channel in the lower Missouri River 

(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2006). Although flow for 

navigation in the lower Missouri River is regulated by the 

upstream system of reservoirs, the navigation channel of 

the lower Missouri River has no system of dams with 

navigation locks.

Figure 10. Construction of Gavins Point Dam, circa 1961 (source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).
16 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

River Management

The Mississippi River is managed by the Mississippi 

River Commission (MRC), which was created by an Act of the 

U.S. Congress, on June 28, 1879 (Camillo and Pearcy, 2004). 

The MRC is responsible for developing plans to improve the 

condition of the Mississippi River, foster navigation, promote 

commerce, and prevent destructive floods. The MRC is 

comprised of three generals from the USACE, one member 

from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 

and three civilian members. The responsibilities of the 

MRC include the recommendation of policy, flood control, 

navigation, and environmental projects on the Mississippi 

River. The MRC also is responsible for the study and 

reporting on needed system modifications and for conducting 

inspections and public hearings. The work of the MRC is 

implemented by six USACE districts (St. Paul, Minnesota; 

Rock Island, Illinois; St. Louis, Mo.; Memphis, Tenn.; 

Vicksburg, Miss.; and New Orleans, Louisiana) (Camillo and 

Pearcy, 2004). The original operating procedure of the MRC 

for flood control was a “levees-only” approach, but the Great 

Mississippi River Flood of 1927 forced the MRC to reevaluate 

the plan for the lower Mississippi River (Barry, 1997). The 

U.S. Congress approved the Flood Control Act of 1928, and 

the MRC implemented a plan that changed the flood control 

approach to a comprehensive system that incorporates the use 

of floodways, reservoirs, spillways, cutoffs, and levees, while 

still improving and promoting the inland waterway.

The USACE in conjunction with other government 

agencies manages the Missouri River primarily by the 

Missouri River Master Manual (U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, 2006). The Master Manual was developed for 

operation of the Missouri River Mainstem Reservoir System. 

Because the extent and storage capacity of the main-stem 

reservoirs is larger than all the other tributary reservoir 

projects in the basin, the Master Manual integrates the 

operation of the system and tributary reservoirs into one 

comprehensive plan. The Master Manual provides guidance 

on implementing the authorized purposes of the Pick-Sloan 

Act including navigation, flood control, hydropower, water 

Figure 11. Low-water surface elevation profiles on the upper Mississippi River before and after construction of navigation 

locks and dams (modified from Meade, 1995).

Distance upstream from Head of Passes, in river kilometers

2,800 2,600 2,400 2,200 2,000 1,800

Elevation, in meters above

National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929

250

200

150

100

0

Low-water surface elevation

 Before lock and dam construction

 After lock and dam construction

EXPLANATION

Riverbed

St. Louis

Keokuk

Rock Island

Minneapolis

St. Paul

Figure 11
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 17

supply, irrigation, fish and wildlife, water quality, and 

recreation. The U.S. Congress did not assign priorities to 

these purposes. Instead, the USACE, in consultation with 

affected interests and other agencies, balances these functions 

to obtain the optimum development and use of the water 

resources of the Missouri River Basin to best serve the public 

(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2006). The Master Manual 

is implemented by the Missouri River Mainstem Reservoir 

System Current Water Control Plan (CWCP). The CWCP 

delineates operational objectives during periods of drought, 

flood, and normal runoff conditions. The USACE adjusts the 

CWCP as conditions change to meet the operational objectives 

of the authorized purposes. The six main-stem reservoirs are 

divided into separate zones that dedicate the 9.0 million ha-m 

storage volume for the different authorized purposes. The top 

6 percent of the storage volume is the exclusive flood-control 

zone; 16 percent is the annual flood-control and multiple-use 

zone or the normal operating zone; 53 percent is the carryover 

multiple-use zone for irrigation, navigation, power production, 

water supply, recreation, and fish and wildlife; and 24 percent 

is the permanent pool zone (fig. 12). The main-stem system 

is managed by the Missouri River Reservoir Control Center 

(RCC). The RCC was created in 1953 and controls the entire 

system from one central location (Ferrell, 1993). 

A Summary of the Effects of River 

Engineering and Dams on the 

Mississippi River System and Delta

Large-river systems are extremely complex in both time 

and space. Over time, rivers respond to natural stressors, 

primarily climate, and adjust their geometries (channel size 

and shape) within the constraints of local geological controls. 

A river system in a deep bedrock canyon (for example, 

Colorado River in Grand Canyon) has limited capacity to 

adjust its horizontal position over short time periods, whereas 

a river in a wide alluvial valley (the Mississippi River 

downstream from the Ohio River) may shift its horizontal 

position annually. Over space, a large river will traverse 

a variety of landscapes, with local and regional geologic, 

climatic, and biologic changes that influence the geometry 

and hydraulics of the channel and flood plain. Engineering 

and modification of river systems are superimposed on this 

natural complexity, and the effects of individual engineering 

projects typically take many decades to run their course, often 

in parallel to a host of other engineering activities and changes 

in land use (Williams and Wolman, 1984). 

Figure 12. Storage capacity and designated uses of water in the main-stem reservoir system in the Missouri River.

Exclusive flood control zone = 580,000 hectare-meters

Total storage capacity = 9,010,000 hectare-meters

Annual flood control and multiple use zone – 

normal operating pool = 1,430,000 hectare-meters

Carryover multiple use zone 

 = 4,800,000 hectare-meters

Permanent pool zone 

 = 2,200,000 hectare-meters

Figure 12
18 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

The combination of natural spatial and temporal 

complexity, prolonged response times, number of engineering 

activities, and limited datasets confounds the determination 

of clear and direct cause-and-effect relations, such as those 

revealed through controlled experiments in a laboratory 

setting. Instead, geoscientists must use a combination of 

geologic and engineering theory, field investigations, historical 

accounts, and qualitative and quantitative data from varying 

sources and of varying quality to infer or interpret how a 

river system has responded to human influences. One of the 

primary difficulties is the fact that predevelopment datasets 

are typically limited in quantity, spatial and temporal extent, 

and quality and, therefore, an accurate characterization of 

a reference or “control” condition is difficult. In the United 

States, the host of writings dating back to Spanish missionaries 

through government-sponsored scientific explorations of the 

western territories in the 19th century provides some account 

of the predevelopment condition of the land and river valleys. 

Although the predevelopment condition of a river was 

affected to some extent by the activities of native peoples, 

these early accounts often are used as the reference condition 

when assessing human-induced changes to river systems 

(Moody and others, 2003). 

Although the summaries of the effects of dams and 

engineering projects in this report are divided into individual 

physical and biological components of the river system, in 

reality, the components work in a systematic fashion through a 

complex series of interactions and feedback loops, which have 

developed over the geologic history of the river. Many of these 

interactions and feedback loops are still poorly understood by 

the scientific community. The summaries are a simplification 

of the system, intended to distill the effects of the dams and 

engineering structures into the most completely known and 

most clearly documented effects today. 

Effects on Hydrology

A. Although main-channel dams are distributed 

throughout primary tributaries of the MRB, the 

regions with the most intensively altered hydrology 

are reaches of the middle and lower Missouri River. 

In the middle Missouri River, most of the river is now 

a system of large reservoirs and short intervening 

open-river (free-flowing) reaches with highly altered 

hydrology between dams and reservoir pools (Galat 

and Lipkin, 2000). Below each dam, the river has 

substantially reduced peak flood magnitudes, shifted 

seasonality of high and low discharge events, and 

overall reduced intraannual discharge variability 

(Hesse and Sheets, 1993; Galat and Lipkin, 2000) 

(fig. 13). Additionally, the magnitude, duration, and 

daily variability of low discharges in the middle 

and lower Missouri River have increased (Galat 

and Lipkin, 2000; Ehlman and Criss, 2006). The 

magnitudes of the hydrologic alterations from 

dams on the middle Missouri River are attenuated 

downstream from the lowermost dam, Gavins 

Point, because of contributions from less regulated 

tributaries and are not detectable in the reaches of the 

middle and lower Mississippi River (Jacobson and 

Galat, 2008; Harmar and Clifford, 2006). 

B. In the upper Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, the system 

of locks and dams raises the stage of low-magnitude 

discharges (the goal of the structures) to allow for 

reliable and safe navigation, but the stages of higher 

discharges are reduced or unchanged because the 

dams are overtopped or operated as a run-of-river 

during high-magnitude discharges (Chen and Simons, 

1986). Loss of storage because of sedimentation 

in the pooled reaches behind the dams has steadily 

increased the flood stage at older dams since 

construction such that it is nearly equal to predam 

levels and, subsequently, the number of flood days 

in reaches upstream from the navigation pools also 

has steadily increased over time (Grugbaugh and 

Anderson, 1989). 

C. Changes to hydrology in the MRB also have been 

associated with the construction of dikes, revetments, 

and levees (Belt, 1975; Criss and Shock, 2001). 

Wing dikes have concentrated flow into narrower 

channels and, in combination with reduced overall 

sediment supplies, caused bed incision, resulting 

in progressively lower stages over time for lower 

magnitude discharges (fig. 14). However, wing 

dikes, in combination with levees, have reduced 

overall channel capacity for intermediate and higher 

discharges, increasing stages over time (Pinter and 

Heine, 2005). Levee construction is still active within 

the MRB, and the restriction of overbank discharges 

by levees has increased flood stages by up to 4 m in 

various locations over the past 50 years (Belt, 1975; 

Criss and Schock, 2001; Pinter and Heine, 2005). 

In the lower Mississippi River, the increase in flood 

stages over the past 50 years has been offset by the 

USACE cutoff program, which caused an initial 

reduction of stages by as much as 4.8 m. However, 

as much as 40 percent of the stage reduction from 

the cutoff program has been regained at Vicksburg, 

Mississippi, indicating that flood stages over time 

may return to precutoff elevations in the absence 

of additional engineering (Criss and Shock, 2001; 

Harmar and others, 2005). 
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 19

Figure 13. Discharge duration of the 25-percent to 75-percent exceedance boundaries for four locations on the Missouri 

River downstream from Gavins Point Dam (modified from Jacobson and others, 2009).

Month

Jan. Mar. May July Sept. Nov. Jan. Mar. May July Sept. Nov.

Jan. Mar. May July Sept. Nov. Jan. Mar. May July Sept. Nov.

Month

5,000

4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0

7,000

6,000

5,000

4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0

Discharge, in cubic meters per second

4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0

4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0

Sioux City, Iowa

Nebraska City, Nebraska

Kansas City, Missouri

Hermann, Missouri

Figure 13

Modeled daily flow

 Controlled by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

 dam operations

 Not controlled by upstream dam

EXPLANATION
20 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Effects on Sediment Transport

A. Prior to major river engineering, the combined 

Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system is estimated to 

have transported an annual average of approximately 

400 million metric tons of sediment to coastal 

Louisiana (Meade and Parker, 1985; Kesel and 

others, 1992). From 1987 to 2006, annual sediment 

delivery to the coastline averaged approximately 

170 million metric tons (fig. 15), a 60-percent 

decrease from predevelopment estimates (Rebich and 

Demcheck, 2007; Meade and Moody, 2010). Much 

of the decrease in sediment loads has been attributed 

to the construction of the systems of dams along the 

Missouri and Arkansas Rivers (Meade and Parker, 

1985). After completion of the six main-stem dams 

on the middle Missouri River, suspended-sediment 

concentrations on the lower Missouri River declined 

by as much as 80 percent; average annual sediment 

load (fig. 16) transported to the Mississippi River 

declined by at least 60 percent (Keown and others, 

1986; Blevins, 2006). Similarly, construction of flood 

control and navigation dams on the Arkansas River 

resulted in a nearly 90-percent decrease in sediment 

transported to the lower Mississippi River from 

approximately 93 million metric tons to 11 million 

metric tons (Keown and others, 1986).

B. Land accretion in wing-dike fields on the lower 

Missouri River has been estimated to account 

for as much as 14 percent of the decline in mean 

annual suspended-sediment loads of the Missouri 

River Basin between 1910 and 1981 (Jacobson and 

others, 2009). Similar accounts of land accretion 

around wing dikes have been reported in the lower 

Mississippi River (Kesel, 2003), indicating that 

sediment accumulating in dike fields, during and 

for periods after dike construction, may account 

for a substantial part of initially estimated declines 

in basinwide sediment loads (fig. 17). However, 

because dike fields have already accreted substantial 

volumes of sediment, their efficacy as sediment traps 

today is negligible. Construction of wing dikes also 

coincided with channel straightening and, on the 

lower Mississippi River, channel cutoff programs, 

which required substantial bank protection to ensure 

sustained channel stability. The emplacement of 

revetments further reduced sediment supplies by 

causing a 90-percent decline in bank caving, a 

substantial source of the total sediment load in the 

lower Mississippi River prior to major channel 

engineering projects (Kesel and others, 1992). 

1,200 1,000 800 600

River distance upstream from St. Louis, in kilometers

400 200 0

-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

Approximate stage change,

in meters

+1

+2

+3

Gavins Point Dam

Sioux City

Omaha

Nebraska City

St. Joseph

Kansas City

Waverly

Boonville

Hermann

St. Louis

Channelized segments

2,800 m3/s

1,100 m3/s

566 m3/s

8,500 m3/s

14,000 m3/s

m3/s, Cubic meters per second

Figure 14

Figure 14. Generalized longitudinal patterns of bed-elevation changes along the lower Missouri River from 1954 to the 

mid-1990s depicted as stage changes for constant discharge at measurement stations downstream from Gavins Point Dam 

(modified from Jacobson and Galat, 2008).
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 21

Figure 15. Total suspended-sediment discharge at stations along the lower Missouri and lower Mississippi Rivers 

(modified from Meade and Moody, 2010).

250 MILES

0 250 KILOMETERS

0

125

125

N

1950 1960 1970 1980

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Millions of tons per year

Water year

0

100

200

300

400

1950 1960 1970 1980

Millions of tons per year

Water year

GAVINS POINT DAM

FORT RANDALL DAM

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

0

100

200

300

Millions of tons per year

Water year

0

100

200

300

1940 1950 1960 1980

Millions of tons per year

Water year CANADA

UNITED STATES

GULF OF MEXICO

Mississippi River

Missouri River

Ohio Rive r

Tarbert Landing

Hermann

Omaha

Yankton

Figure 15
22 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Figure 16. Estimated predevelopment (circa 1800) and postdevelopment (circa 1980) mean annual suspended-sediment 

discharge along the Mississippi River and major tributaries (modified from Meade and Moody, 2010).

Base modified from U.S. Geological Survey

digital data, 1:2,000,000, 1990

Albers Equal-Area Conic projection

North American Datum of 1983

EXPLANATION

Mean annual suspended-sediment discharge, in

 millions of metric tons per year

0 100 200 300 400

Circa 1800

Circa 1980

250 MILES

0 250 KILOMETERS

0

125

125

COLORADO

UTAH

IDAHO

NEW MEXICO

TEXAS

KANSAS

OKLAHOMA

PENNSYLVANIA

 WEST

VIRGINIA VIRGINIA

MICHIGAN

MICHIGAN

ARKANSAS

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NORTH TENNESSEE CAROLINA

KENTUCKY

INDIANA

ILLINOIS

MISSOURI

IOWA

MINNESOTA

WISCONSIN

NORTH

DAKOTA

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

SASKATCHEWAN

WYOMING

MONTANA

OHIO

NEW YORK

CANADA

UNITED STATES

ALBERTA MANITOBA

ONTARIO

QUEBEC

COLORADO

UTAH

IDAHO

NEW MEXICO

TEXAS

KANSAS

OKLAHOMA

PENNSYLVANIA

 WEST

VIRGINIA VIRGINIA

MICHIGAN

MICHIGAN

ARKANSAS

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NORTH TENNESSEE CAROLINA

KENTUCKY

INDIANA

ILLINOIS

MISSOURI

IOWA

MINNESOTA

WISCONSIN

NORTH

DAKOTA

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

SASKATCHEWAN

WYOMING

MONTANA

OHIO

NEW YORK

CANADA

UNITED STATES

ALBERTA MANITOBA

ONTARIO

QUEBEC

ATLANTIC OCEAN

GULF OF MEXICO

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Arkansas River

Red River

Kansas River

Platte Ri ver

Missouri River

Yellowstone River

Illinois River

Mississippi River

Ohio River North

South

GULF OF MEXICO

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Arkansas River

Red River

Kansas River

Platte Ri ver

Missouri River

Yellowstone River

Illinois River

Mississippi River

Ohio River North

South

Atchafalaya Atchafalaya River

Atchafalaya Atchafalaya River

50°

46°

42°

38°

34°

30°

110° 100° 90° 80°

50°

46°

42°

38°

34°

30°

110° 100° 90° 80°

Figure 16
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 23

Revetments

Dikes

1930 1950 1970 1990 2010

Year

0

400

300

200

100

Cumulative revetment or dike construction, in kilometers

Annual suspended-sediment discharge, in million metric tons per year

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Decline = -15 million

metric tons per year

R2

 = 0.42

Decline = -1.1 million metric tons per year

R2 = 0.14

Figure 17

Figure 17. Time series of annual suspended-sediment discharge of the Mississippi River at Tarbert Landing, 

Mississippi, and the rate of construction of engineered dikes and bank revetments along the lower Mississippi River 

(Meade and Moody, 2010).

C. Since the more pronounced changes associated 

with the completion of major channel-engineering 

projects, sediment transport has continued to 

gradually decline (Meade and Moody, 2010). 

Continued declines in sediment transport have 

been attributed to improvements in agricultural 

conservation practices and material extraction 

(dredging). These processes are more temporally 

and spatially diffuse than closure of large main-stem 

dams and were occurring simultaneously with dam 

and wing-dike construction, making estimates of the 

magnitude of effects difficult (Meade and Moody, 

2010) (fig. 17). For example, although widespread 

deforestation and poor tillage practices substantially 

increased sediment yields from agricultural lands of 

the upper MRB in the late 19th and early to mid-20th 

centuries, much of the additional sediment was stored 

in tributary bottomlands and flood plains, resulting in 

a small net change to total sediment delivered to the 

Mississippi River main stem (Trimble, 1999; Knox, 

2006). Commercial dredging also has been identified 

as contributing to reductions in sediment supply. 

Dredging operations generally are concentrated 

around metropolitan areas and have been estimated 

to extract an average of 5 to 7 million metric tons 

of sediment per year in the upper Mississippi and 

lower Missouri Rivers. In the lower Missouri River, 

7 million metric tons of sand are the equivalent of 

40 percent of the sand fraction of the most recent 

estimate of the average annual suspended-sediment 

load (Jacobson and others, 2009). 
24 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Effects on River Geomorphology 

A. The geomorphology of the MRB has been affected 

by dams, dikes, revetments, and levees in three 

primary ways: (1) channel simplification and reduced 

dynamism, (2) lowering of channel-bed elevation, 

and (3) disconnection of the river channel from the 

flood plain. 

B. Prior to major human modification, main-stem 

channels of the MRB in many locations were 

more complex and dynamic, exhibiting substantial 

planform alignment shifts from year to year, which 

resulted in a physically and biologically diverse 

channel and flood-plain structure (Yin and Nelson, 

1996; Moody and others, 2003; Harmar and Clifford, 

2006). This was particularly true of the lower 

Missouri and upper Mississippi Rivers, where the 

river channels were composed of series of sandbar 

complexes, side channels, and backwaters, and 

incorporated substantial amounts of large woody 

debris (Hesse, 1987). Channel simplification has been 

accomplished through a combination of river-channel 

shortening (reduction in curvature) and consolidation 

of multiple channel threads to a single channel 

(fig. 18) (Yin and Nelson, 1996). River-channel 

lengths in the lower Missouri River decreased by 

approximately 120 km, or 10 percent, over the past 

200 years because of natural and engineered cutoffs; 

active channel area has decreased by 41 percent, and 

the number of islands and sandbars has decreased by 

99 percent (Funk and Robinson, 1974; Hallberg and 

others, 1979). In the upper and middle Mississippi 

River, overall channel position and length have not 

changed substantially, and island areas have increased 

in pools behind locks, but open-channel reaches have 

simpler geometry and reduced dynamism because 

of side-channels cutoffs, wing-dike construction, 

and emplacement of revetments (Chen and Simons, 

1986; Grugbaugh and Anderson, 1988). The channel 

cutoff program in the lower Mississippi River 

initially resulted in a total engineered shortening of 

331 km. However, the tendency of the river to regain 

curvature, resulted in a net shortening of 235 km, and 

the emplacement of revetments has kept the channel 

approximately the same length and in the same 

position since the 1970s (Winkley, 1977; Biedenharn 

and others, 2000). Although the channel of the lower 

Mississippi is much shorter than prior to the cutoff 

program, the channel is, on average, wider than prior 

to the cutoff program (Kesel, 2003).

C. Riverbed elevation in the MRB has lowered (scoured) 

in most locations where measurements are available. 

Streambed lowering in the lower Missouri River has 

resulted from a reduction in sediment supply, flow 

concentration by wing dikes, and localized material 

extraction (dredging) (fig. 19) (Jacobson and others, 

2009). Between Gavins Point Dam and Sioux City, 

Iowa, the riverbed has scoured as much as 4 m 

because the river no longer receives sediment from 

upstream but still retains a large sediment-transport 

capacity (Schmidt and Wilcock, 2008). Downstream 

from Sioux City, Iowa, the Missouri River channel 

is substantially engineered, and has scoured between 

2 and 5 m because of a combination of reduced 

sediment supply, constriction of the channel by wing 

dikes, and channel dredging (National Research 

Council, 2011). Riverbed elevation in the upper and 

middle Mississippi River has been locally scoured 

and aggraded. Scour generally has been associated 

with reaches below dams and with channel dredging, 

although reaches of the upper and middle Mississippi 

River do not exhibit a consistent pattern or trend of 

aggradation or degradation over time. River stage 

per unit discharge lowered between 0.5 and 5 m in 

the lower Mississippi River in response to channel 

shortening associated with the USACE cutoff 

program (Kesel, 2003). River-stage lowering in the 

lower Mississippi River has been interpreted to be the 

result of a combination of scour, which is apparent 

between at least Memphis, Tenn., and Natchez, 

Miss., and increased channel slope resulting in higher 

overall stream power (Smith and Winkley, 1996; 

Kesel, 2003). 
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 25

Figure 18. Changes in channel and flood-plain configuration from 1890 to 1989 along the lower Mississippi River 

(modified from Mac and others, 1998).

Cape

Girardeau

Cape

Girardeau

1890 1989

Land cover/land use

 Open water

 Marsh

 Grasses/forbs

 Woody terrestrial

 Sand/mud

 Agriculture

 Urban/developed

 No coverage

EXPLANATION

N

Mississippi River Basin

Area enlarged

Figure 18
26 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

D. Prior to major engineering projects, the Mississippi 

River and its tributaries flooded low-lying lands of 

the flood plain adjacent to the river semiannually 

and the entire valley bottom during extreme events 

(Yin and Nelson, 1996). Cyclical flooding was a 

fundamental ecosystem process that was essential 

to deliver nutrients to the flood plain, replenish 

off-channel wetlands, and regenerate aging riparian 

forest galleries (Galat and others, 1998; Dixon and 

others, 2010). The construction of levees, lowering 

of the riverbed elevation, and, in some locations, the 

reduction of peak-discharge magnitudes has resulted 

in a nearly universal disconnection of the river 

main channel from the flood plain, except during 

extreme flood events (Pitlick, 1997; Galat and others, 

1998). In the lower Missouri River, the reduction 

in annual peak-discharge magnitudes because of 

flood-control dams, the lowering of the riverbed 

elevation from reductions in sediment supply and 

wing-dike construction, and the construction of a 

massive system of levees has resulted in a 90-percent 

reduction in flood-plain inundation (Hesse and 

others, 1989). In the upper Mississippi River, floodplain inundation in open river reaches has been 

substantially reduced because of riverbed scour and 

levee construction; in pooled reaches, historical flood 

plains are permanently inundated or have converted 

to wetlands/marshes because of sedimentation and 

increased groundwater levels (fig. 20) (Yin and 

Nelson, 1996). In the lower Mississippi River, the 

increase in channel capacity associated with the 

USACE channel cutoff program, in combination 

with 3,000 km of levees, has reduced flood-plain 

inundation by approximately 90 percent relative to 

the preengineered condition (Kesel, 2003). 

Figure 19. Temporal trends in river-bed elevations for 50- to 90-percent exceedance discharges at four streamflow-gaging 

stations along the lower Missouri River (modified from Jacobson and others, 2009).

Year Year

1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

314

315

316

317

318

319

320

321

322

323

324

282

283

284

285

286

287

288

289

290

291

292

208

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

Mean streambed elevation, in meters above

National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929

Sioux City, Iowa

Omaha, Nebraska

Kansas City, Missouri

Hermann, Missouri

Figure 19
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 27

Figure 20. Changes in land cover from 1891 to 1989 along the reach of the upper Mississippi upstream from lock and dam 8, 

near LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The dam for pool 8 was completed in 1938 (modified from Mac and others, 1998).

1891

La Crosse La Crosse

1989

LOCK AND

DAM 7

LOCK AND

N DAM 8

Open water

Marsh

Grasses/forbs

Woody terrestrial

Sand/mud

Agriculture

Urban/developed

6,494

2,995

1,479

2,613

31

83

1,362

3,261

1891 1989

343

4,441

5,834

355

587

238

15,059 15,057

Land cover, in hectares,

 by year

EXPLANATION

Mississippi River Basin

Area enlarged

Figure 20
28 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Effects on Water Quality and Fish Communities

Damming a free-flowing river to create an impoundment 

(reservoir) changes the river upstream and downstream from 

the dam. As it regulates discharge, the dam changes the 

magnitude, duration, and timing of discharge downstream, 

and it changes the physical and chemical condition of water as 

well as ecological conditions both upstream and downstream. 

Dams result in upstream-downstream shifts in biotic and 

abiotic patterns and processes (Ward and Stanford, 1995); 

the direction and extent of the shift depend on the variable of 

interest and are a function of the position of the dam along 

the river continuum (Vannote and others, 1980). Reregulation 

of discharges from dams typically results in alternating 

series of lentic (still water, lakes) and lotic (flowing water) 

ecological functioning reaches (Ward and Stanford, 1983), 

affecting physical (temperature), chemical (nutrients—

nitrogen and phosphorus, organic matter, metals, and others), 

and biological characteristics at the population, community, 

and ecosystem levels. Regulated rivers regain more natural 

attributes as distance downstream from the dam increases in 

relation to the mode of dam operation (Stanford and others, 

1996). The extent of these changes downstream from the dam 

(the tailwater) is a function of the size of the impoundment, 

changes to hydrology, downstream channel geomorphology, 

and number, size, and nature of tributary inflows and riparian 

conditions (Ashby and others, 1997). 

Some of the most dramatic effects of dams result 

from the change of the downstream flood regime (Baxter, 

1977). One purpose of building dams is to reduce annual 

variations in water level, making the terrestrial flood plain 

habitable throughout the year and allowing its ecosystem to 

become more mature as a terrestrial ecosystem. Often, this 

altered terrestrial flood plain will be replaced by a different 

ecosystem maintained in a state of immaturity by the practice 

of agriculture. In a natural system, floods deliver nutrientrich sediments to the flood-plain floor and the river delta, 

acting as a natural fertilizer to the flood-plain soils. Dams 

trap sediments and reduce peak flood discharges, keeping 

water flows within the channel banks (as designed). This 

modification to the river continuum prevents nutrient-rich 

sediments from replenishing the flood plain or delta plain. 

Consequently, if a river runs into an ocean, the nutrients that 

would have otherwise been deposited (filtered out) on the 

flood plain, now discharge into the estuaries and coastal sea 

waters. Consequently, deltaic land converted to agriculture 

must be supplemented with inorganic commercial fertilizers 

because of a lack of natural nutrient delivery. Excess fertilizer 

runoff then becomes available for transport downstream, 

enriching the downstream ecosystems. 

Effects on Water Quality

A. The freshwater discharge of the Mississippi River and 

its associated sediment and nutrient loads have strongly 

influenced the physical and biological processes in the 

northern Gulf of Mexico over geologic time and past 

centuries, and even more strongly during the last half of 

the 20th century (National Research Council, 2008). 

The Mississippi River is the dominant source of 

freshwater, sediment, and nutrients to the northern 

Gulf of Mexico (National Research Council, 2008), 

carrying roughly 96 percent of annual freshwater 

discharge, 98 percent of total nitrogen, and 98 percent 

of total phosphorus load (Dunn, 1996; Rabalais and 

others, 2002). Sediments carry nutrients and other 

contaminants. As a result of dam construction on the 

Missouri River, the amount of sediments transported 

down the Mississippi River during the 1700s and 

1800s has been reduced (Meade, 1995). Now the 

sediment inputs from the upper Mississippi and Ohio 

Rivers are proportionally greater, and these rivers carry 

the largest proportions of the total load of nutrients in 

the form of nitrate (fig. 21). 

B. The National Research Council (2008) reported that 

about 90 percent of the nitrogen load reaching the 

Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River is from 

nonpoint sources, including about 60 percent from 

fertilizer and mineralized soil nitrogen (Goolsby and 

others, 1999). The remaining 10 percent is from a mix 

of sources that include municipal and industrial point 

sources. Loadings of total phosphorus are relatively 

high and about equally divided among the combined 

upper and middle Mississippi, lower Mississippi, Ohio, 

and Missouri River Basins. Alexander and others (2008) 

determined that corn and soybean cultivation is the 

largest contributor of nitrogen (52 percent), followed 

by atmospheric deposition (16 percent), whereas 

phosphorus originates primarily from animal manure 

on pasture and rangelands (37 percent) followed by 

lands where corn and soybeans are grown (25 percent). 

The proximity of sources to streams and rivers is an 

important determinant of nitrogen and phosphorus 

delivery to the northern Gulf of Mexico (fig. 22) and 

the proportion of in-stream nitrogen and phosphorus 

delivered to the Gulf of Mexico increases with stream 

size; once in the river, it typically stays in the water. 

Reservoir trapping of phosphorus causes large 

local- and regional-scale differences in phosphorus 

delivery (Alexander and others, 2008). 
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 29

Figure 21. Proportion of nitrates and water discharge from tributaries in the Mississippi River Basin 

(modified from Meade, 1995).

Upper Mississippi River

(22 percent)

Illinois River

(4 percent)

Missouri River

(10 percent)

Ohio River

(41 percent)

Lower Mississippi River

(23 percent)

Upper Mississippi River

(51 percent)

Illinois River

(12 percent)

Missouri River

(9 percent)

Ohio River

(21 percent)

Lower Mississippi River

(7 percent)

B. Water discharge in the Mississippi River Basin

A. Sources of nitrate in the Mississippi River Basin

Subbasins of the Mississippi River Basin

Figure 21
30 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Figure 22. Percentage 

of nitrogen export from 

approximately equally 

sized interior watersheds 

of the Mississippi River 

Basin delivered to the Gulf 

of Mexico (modified from 

Alexander and others, 2000).

Nitrogen delivered,

 in percent

 0 to 20

 Greater than 20 to 30

 Greater than 30 to 50

 Greater than 50 to 80

 Greater than 80 to 90

 Greater than 90

EXPLANATION

Figure 22. Modified from Alexander and others, 2000

C. Increased nutrient enrichment in the northern Gulf of 

Mexico resulting from increased nutrient loading from the 

Mississippi River has resulted in the degradation of water 

quality as more algae grow, which increases turbidity 

and depletes oxygen (hypoxia) in the lower depths that 

typically affect 10 to 50 percent of the water column, 

and may reach within 2 m of the surface (Rabalais and 

others, 2002). The area affected by hypoxic conditions is 

commonly known as the “dead zone” because few marine 

animals can survive in the low oxygen concentrations 

(Rabalais and Turner, 2001). Swimming fish, crabs, 

and shrimp must escape or succumb to the low oxygen 

concentrations; other, less mobile organisms eventually 

suffocate and die. Additional factors that contribute to 

the hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico include the 

inflow of poorly oxygenated waters from the deep gulf, 

river loading of organic carbon, channelizing and coastal 

wetland loss, nitrogen flux from the atmosphere or deep 

gulf waters, and climate-induced alterations in water 

flux from the MRB (Rabalais and others, 2002). The 

size of the hypoxic zone south of the Mississippi River 

in the Gulf of Mexico averaged 12,900 km2

 between 

1985 and 2002 (Rabalais and Turner, 2006) (fig. 23) and 

was greatest in 2002 with 22,000 km2

. The extent of the 

oxygen-depleted waters was as large as the States of 

New Jersey or Rhode Island combined with Connecticut, 

and at its largest was the size of Massachusetts (National 

Research Council, 2008).

Effects on Fish Communities

A. Changes in the discharge regime from engineered 

structures can have direct and indirect effects on fish 

communities. The Mississippi River supports a rich fish 

community as discharge increases from its headwaters in 

the north, a cool temperate climate, flowing south more 

than 3,500 km to its subtropical outlet in the Gulf of 

Mexico (Schramm, 2004). The 195 species of freshwater 

fish in the main stem of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya 

Rivers represent almost one-third of the freshwater fish 

species in North America (Fremling and others, 1989). 

Most fish require several different habitats to complete a 

life cycle, and the quantity and quality of habitats have 

diminished in many reaches (Wiener and others, 1998) 

influenced by natural and human barriers to migration. 

The upper Mississippi River provides many aquatic 

habitats, including main channel, tail water, mainchannel border, side channel, navigation pool, floodplain lake or pond, slough, and tributary mouth 

(Littlejohn and others, 1985; Fremling and others, 1989; 

Wiener and others, 1998). These habitats can differ 

markedly in current velocity, depth, temperature, water 

quality, bottom substrate, vegetative structure, food 

resources, and other characteristics. The navigation 

pools in the upper Mississippi River are aging, and 

overwintering habitats for fish have declined as 

sedimentation reduces water depth (McHenry and 

others, 1984; Bhowmik and Adams, 1989; HollandBartels, 1992; and Gent and others, 1995). Some fish 
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 31

Atchafalaya

River

Mississippi

River

Sabine

 Lake

Calcasieu

Lake

Terrebonne

Bay

GULF OF MEXICO

Lake 

Pontchartrain

MISSISSIPPI

TEXAS LOUISIANA

New

 Orleans

30°

29°

94° 92° 90°

0 50 KILOMETERS

0 25

25

50 MILES Frequency of occurrence of midsummer

 hypoxia—1985–2008

 Greater than or equal to 75 percent

 Greater than or equal to 50 percent

 Greater than or equal to 25 percent

 Less then 25 percent

EXPLANATION

Area enlarged

GULF OF MEXICO

Mississippi

Sabine

River

River

TEXAS

ARKANSAS

MISSISSIPPI

LOUISIANA

New Orleans

Figure 23

Figure 23. Frequency of occurrence of midsummer hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, 1985–2008 (modified from a figure 

provided courtesy of Nancy Rabalais, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium).

that inhabit swift-current habitats have declined in 

the upper Mississippi River since the construction of 

navigation dams (Wiener and others, 1998). Reproduction 

of paddlefish in the upper Mississippi River may be 

adversely affected by dams, which could impede 

paddlefish access to suitable spawning habitat. 

B. In the main stem of the lower Mississippi River, swiftcurrent habitats include the river channel, natural steep 

banks, revetted banks (covered with protective materials, 

mostly limestone rock to prevent erosion), and flowing 

sandbars (Wiener and others, 1998; Baker and others, 

1991). Dike fields in the lower Mississippi River often 

contain many fish species (Pennington and others, 

1983). Fish that inhabit swift-current habitats in the 

unimpounded lower Mississippi River have not declined 

as much as in the upper Mississippi River (Pflieger, 

1975; Baker and others, 1991) with the exception of 

the pallid sturgeon. The decline of the pallid sturgeon, 

a native species which is listed as endangered by the 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, may be attributable to 

channelization of the open river below St. Louis, Mo. 

(Wiener and others, 1998).
32 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Figure 24. Generalized extent and depositional time periods of the Mississippi River Delta complexes. 

C. The Missouri River also supports a rich fish community 

from its headwaters in Montana flowing more than 

3,700 km to its confluence with the Mississippi River 

near St. Louis (Galat and others, 2005). Seventy-three 

of the 136 Missouri River species are classified as “big 

river” species. Populations of 17 species are increasing 

and 9 of these are introduced species. Populations of 

24 species are declining, and all but one of these are 

native species. The history of changes in the fish 

communities up and down the Missouri River has 

resulted from the complex interactions between natural 

and human factors. However, the richness of the Missouri 

River’s native fish populations remains relatively intact 

despite these assaults; no native fish have yet been 

extirpated (Galat and others, 2005), although the pallid 

sturgeon is on the Federal list of endangered species. 

Nevertheless, the widespread and long history of human 

intervention has contributed to declines of about 

25 percent of the species. Partly as a result of these 

declines, the National Research Council (2002) has 

suggested that the degradation of the Missouri River 

ecosystem will continue unless the part of the hydrologic 

and geomorphic processes that sustained the preregulation 

Missouri River and flood-plain ecosystem is restored. 

Otherwise, the Missouri River ecosystem will face the 

prospect of extinction of species. These processes include 

flood pulses that emulate the natural hydrograph and 

cut-and-fill alluviation associated with river meandering. 

Effects on the Mississippi River Delta 

A. The Mississippi River delta and associated coastal 

wetlands are built from six delta complexes 

(1) Maringouin-Sale-Cypremort, (2) Teche, 

(3) St. Bernard, (4) Lafourche, (5) PlaqueminesBalize, and (6) Atchafalaya-Wax Lake (fig. 24) 

(Blum and Roberts, 2009), which are the products 

of 6,000 to 8,000 years of cyclical depositional 

and erosional processes known as the “delta cycle” 

(Roberts, 1997; Coleman and others, 1998). The 

delta cycle consists of two primary phases: (1) a 

river-dominated phase in which the complex is 

protruding and expanding onto the sea floor, and 

(2) a marine-dominated phase in which the delta 

complex is progressively abandoned by the river, 

the delta subsides, and the perimeter of the delta 

is gradually reworked and eroded by wave action. 

Two delta complexes are currently active on the 

Mississippi River Delta Plain: the PlaqueminesBalize (also known as the “Birdfoot”) and the 

Atchafalaya-Wax Lake. The Plaquemines-Balize 

delta complex is currently river-dominated but is 

slowly transitioning to a marine-dominated phase. 

The Atchafalaya distributary channel, which has 

been capturing discharge from the Mississippi River 

since at least 1500, began building a delta in the 

early to middle 20th century; the Wax Lake lobe 

30°30'

30°00'

30'

29°00'

92°30' 92°00' 30' 91°00' 30' 90°00' 30' 89°00'

1 2

3

4 5 6

Baton Rouge

New Orleans

Lafayette

Mississippi River Atchafalaya River

GULF OF MEXICO

0 50 KILOMETERS

0 25

25

50 MILES

Modified from Blum and Roberts (2009)

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI

EXPLANATION

Mississippi River delta complexes and depositional time period

 Maringouin-Sale-Cypremort—About 7.5–5 kiloyears

 Teche—About 5.5–3.5 kiloyears

 St. Bernard—About 4.0–2.0 kiloyears

1

2

3

4

30°30'

30°00'

30'

29°00'

92°30' 92°00' 30' 91°00' 30' 90°00' 30' 89°00'

1 2

3

4 5 6

Baton Rouge

New Orleans

Lafayette

Mississippi River Atchafalaya River

GULF OF MEXICO

0 50 KILOMETERS

0 25

25

50 MILES

Modified from Blum and Roberts (2009)

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI

EXPLANATION

Mississippi River delta complexes and depositional time period

 Maringouin-Sale-Cypremort—About 7.5–5 kiloyears

 Teche—About 5.5–3.5 kiloyears

 St. Bernard—About 4.0–2.0 kiloyears

 Lafourche—About 2.5–0.5 kiloyears

 Plaquemines-Balize—About 1.3–0 kiloyears

 Atchafalaya-Wax Lake—About 0.5–0 kiloyear

1

2

3

4

5

6
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 33

Figure 25. Time series of land-area changes in coastal wetlands of Louisiana, 1932 to 2010 (modified from Couvillion and 

others, 2011).

(not shown on fig. 24) of the Atchafalaya-Wax Lake 

delta complex began building in the middle of the 

20th century with the construction of a diversion 

canal off of the Atchafalaya distributary. The slow 

capture of flow and sediment from the Mississippi 

River by the Atchafalaya distributary channel was 

stabilized in 1963 with the construction of the Old 

River Control Structure, and is currently limited to 

passing no more than 30 percent of the total discharge 

of the Mississippi River (Mossa, 1996). 

B. Louisiana coastal wetlands support the largest 

commercial fishery in the 48 conterminous States 

(Couvillion and others, 2011). Since the early 20th 

century, approximately 4,900 km2

 of coastal lands, 

mainly wetlands, have been lost in Louisiana 

(Day and others, 2007a). Wetland losses are mainly 

associated with conversion to open water, but 

small fractions also are from wetland draining and 

associated vegetative community succession 

(Britsch and Dunbar, 1993). Land-loss rates 

accelerated from 17.4 km2

/yr in the early 20th 

century to approximately 40 km2

/yr by the late 

1940s and were as great as 100 km2

/yr by the 1970s 

(fig. 25) (Britsch and Dunbar, 1993; Boesch and 

others, 1994). Since that time, rates have decreased 

to approximately 43 km2

/yr with intermittent greater 

rates of loss associated with recent hurricanes 

(Couvillion and others, 2011). 

C. Causes for wetland and coastal land losses are 

a mix of natural and human-induced processes, 

which have interacted over varying spatial-temporal 

scales. The natural stability of the delta surface and 

associated wetlands is a complex balance between 

the relative rates of depositional processes that drive 

vertical and horizontal growth of the delta plain, and 

the processes of submergence and erosion, which 

drive loss of lands on the delta top and margins 

(fig. 26). Replenishment of wetland surface mass 

with sediment, as well as carbon fixing and sediment 

stabilization from vegetation growth, are the primary 

mechanisms by which the elevation of the delta 

surface remains stable against the counteracting 

forces of subsidence, sea-level rise, and storm 

surge (Paola and others, 2011). One of the primary 

Year

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015

Land area, in square kilometers

20,000

19,500

19,000

18,500

18,000

17,500

17,000

16,500

16,000

15,500

15,000

14,500

14,000

Figure 25.
34 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Figure 26. Cross sectional shape of a river delta depicting two mass balance scenarios. A quasistatic sea-level elevation. 

B rising sea level (modified from Paola and others, 2011; used, with permission, from the Annual Review of Marine Science 

volume 3 © 2011 by Annual Reviews www.annual reviews.org).

Delta top

Sea level

Foreset

Sediment supply

Sediment supply

Sea level

Delta top

Foreset

A

B

Figure 26
A Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta 35

reasons for land loss in the Birdfoot complex of the 

Mississippi River Delta has been attributed to the 

construction of levees along distributary channels 

of the delta surface, which have compartmentalized 

and disconnected the delta surface from the channels. 

Sediments that would have otherwise been delivered 

to coastal basins when the river was overbank, and 

which nourish and replenish the adjacent wetlands, 

are now carried directly to the Gulf of Mexico 

(Paola and others, 2011). Additional losses of 

wetlands also are directly attributable to reduced 

sediment deliveries to the lower Mississippi River 

because of upstream reservoir construction, as 

well as several other factors including the removal 

of wetlands by canal dredging for navigation and 

the burying of wetlands with dredge spoil piles 

(Bass and Turner, 1997). Dredge-spoil piles also 

further contribute to compartmentalization of 

wetlands, similar to the effect of levees along delta 

distributaries. Saltwater intrusion, particularly along 

canals, and accelerated subsidence from petroleum 

fluid extraction also have been implicated as another 

potential cause of wetland deterioration and loss 

(Mallman and Zoback, 2007).

D. In response to the growing awareness of potential 

economic and ecological consequences of coastal 

wetland loss, the State of Louisiana began regulation 

of developmental activities affecting wetland loss in 

1978. In 1990, the U.S. Congress enacted the 

Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and 

Restoration Act (CWPPRA), which has allocated 

between 30 and 80 million dollars annually and 

funded approximately 151 coastal restoration 

or protection projects in Louisiana. Since 1990, 

approximately 450 km2 of coastal wetlands have 

been created and 2,200 km2 have been protected by 

using CWPPRA funds (Coastal Wetlands Planning, 

Protection and Restoration Act, 2011).

E. Comprehensive coastal protection and restoration 

planning were undertaken by the State of Louisiana 

and the USACE after a devastating hurricane season 

in 2005. Current planning includes a “multiple lines 

of defense” strategy composed of a combination of 

coastal restoration alternatives, structural protection 

alternatives such as levees and floodwalls, as well 

as nonstructural protection alternatives such as 

landowner buyouts and raising existing structures 

(State of Louisiana, 2007; U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, 2009). Regardless of the success of these 

strategies, coastal land areas are, at best, projected 

to lose additional delta plain land area because, in 

the absence of increased sediment supplies from 

upstream, sediment deliveries may not be sufficient to 

fill the depositional space projected to be created by 

the combination of land subsidence and sea-level rise 

(fig. 27) (Blum and Roberts, 2009).

Year

2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

Sediment mass balance, in billion tons

30

20

10

0

–10

–20

40

Standard

deviation

+10 billion tons }

}

Sediment required to fill accommodation

 With sea-level rise = 1 millimeter per year

 With sea-level rise accelerating from 3 to 4

 millimeters per year

Modern supply

 Sediment supply = 205 metric tons per year

 Mass balance with accelerated sea-level rise

Restored predam supply

 Sediment supply = 450 metric tons per year

 Mass balance with sea-level rise = 1 millimeter

 per year

 Mass balance with accelerated sea-level rise

EXPLANATION

Figure 27

Figure 27. Time series of estimated sediment mass balance for the Mississippi delta region under varying scenarios of 

sediment supply, subsidence, and sea-level rise (modified from Blum and Roberts, 2009; used by permission from Macmillan 

Publishers Ltd.: Nature Geoscience copyright 2011).
36 A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta

Summary

The U.S. Geological Survey Forecast Mekong project 

is providing technical assistance and information to aid 

management decisions and build science capacity of 

institutions in the Mekong River Basin. A component of this 

effort is to produce a synthesis of the effects of dams and other 

engineering structures on large-river hydrology, sediment 

transport, geomorphology, ecology, water quality, and deltaic 

systems. The Mississippi River Basin (MRB) of the United 

States was used as the backdrop and context for this synthesis 

because it is a continental-scale river system with a total 

annual water discharge similar to the Mekong River, has been 

highly engineered over the past two centuries, and the effects 

of engineering have been widely studied and documented by 

scientists and engineers.

The MRB is controlled and regulated by dams and 

other river-engineering structures. These modifications have 

resulted in multiple benefits including navigation, flood 

control, hydropower, bank stabilization, and recreation. 

The Mississippi River and its tributaries serve as a major 

transportation route, and a stable, uniform, deeper channel 

is needed for efficient navigation of the river. Channelizing 

and stabilizing the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers were 

monumental tasks, requiring extensive modifications to 

stabilize the freely meandering river channels and banks and 

create a self-scouring channel for navigation by reducing 

channel width and complexity. Flood control in the MRB 

is accomplished through a complex combination of levees 

to confine and separate the river channel from the flood 

plain, engineered floodways to reduce flood stages near 

critical infrastructure, channel straightening to increase the 

conveyance capacity of the channel, and the construction 

of dams on the tributaries to attenuate flood peaks and store 

irrigation water. 

Dams and river engineering in the MRB have afforded 

the United States substantial socioeconomic benefits; 

however, these benefits also have transformed the hydrologic, 

sediment transport, geomorphic, water-quality, and ecologic 

characteristics of the river and its delta. The parts of the MRB 

with the most altered hydrology are the middle and lower parts 

of the Missouri River, where large main-channel dams have 

substantially reduced the annual peak floods, increased base 

discharges, and reduced the overall variability of intraannual 

discharges. In the upper Mississippi River, the extensive series 

of locks and dams has raised the stage of low-magnitude 

discharges but has not altered high-magnitude peak discharges. 

The extensive system of levees and wing dikes throughout the 

MRB, although providing protection from floods, has reduced 

overall channel capacity for high-magnitude discharges, 

causing increases in flood stage by up to 4 meters since 

construction was completed. 

The primary source of sediment to the Mississippi River 

system is the Great Plains region, drained by three primary 

tributaries: the Missouri River, the Arkansas River, and the 

Red River. Prior to major engineering, the estimated average 

annual sediment load of the MRB was approximately 400 

million metric tons. The construction of large main-channel 

reservoirs on the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers, sedimentation 

in dike fields, and protection of channel banks by revetments 

throughout the basin have reduced the overall sediment load of 

the MRB by more than 60 percent. Sand dredging operations 

and improvements in agricultural conservation practices also 

are implicated in the decline of overall sediment yields. 

The primary alterations to river-channel morphology 

by dams, dikes, and revetments in the MRB have been 

(1) channel simplification and reduced dynamism; 

(2) lowering of channel-bed elevation; and (3) disconnection 

of the river channel from the flood plain. Prior to major human 

modification, many locations in main-stem channels of the 

Mississippi River system were more complex and dynamic, 

exhibiting substantial planform alignment shifts from year 

to year that resulted in a physically and biologically diverse 

channel and flood-plain structure. Channel simplification has 

been accomplished through a combination of river-channel 

shortening (reduction in curvature) and consolidation of 

multiple channel threads to a single channel. Channel-bed 

lowering has resulted from a reduction in sediment supply 

below main-channel dams, flow concentration by wing 

dikes, and localized dredging. The construction of levees, in 

combination with lowering of the riverbed elevation and, in 

some locations, the reduction of peak discharge magnitudes, 

has resulted in a disconnection of as much as 90 percent of the 

flood plain from the main channel of the Mississippi River and 

its primary tributaries except during extreme floods.

The freshwater discharge of the Mississippi River 

and its associated sediment and nutrient loads have 

strongly influenced the physical and biological processes 

in the northern Gulf of Mexico over geologic time and past 

centuries, and even more strongly during the last half of the 

20th century. Ninety percent of the nitrogen load reaching 

the Gulf of Mexico is from nonpoint sources with about 60 

percent from fertilizer and mineralized soil nitrogen. Much 

of the phosphorus is from animal manure from pasture 

and rangelands, followed by fertilizer applied to corn and 

soybeans. Increased nutrient enrichment in the northern Gulf 

of Mexico has resulted in the degradation of water quality 

as more phytoplankton grow, which increases turbidity and 

depletes oxygen in the lower depths creating what is known 

as the “Dead Zone.” In 2002, the Dead Zone extended over 

22,000 square kilometers, an area similar to the size of the 

State of Massachusetts. 

Changes in the discharge regime caused by engineered 

structures have direct and indirect effects on the fish 

communities. The navigation pools in the upper Mississippi 

River have aged, and these overwintering habitats, which were 

created when the pools filled, have declined as sedimentation 

reduces water depth. Reproduction of paddlefish may have 

been adversely affected by dams by impeding access to 

suitable spawning habitats. Fishes that inhabit swift-current 

habitats in the unimpounded lower Mississippi River have not 
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Alexander and others—A Brief History and Summary of the Effects of River Engineering and Dams on the Mississippi River System and Delta—Circular 1375 

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