Mississippi Watershed: Land, Water, and People
The natural systems of the Mississippi Watershed and Basin have been engendered over evolutionary, ecological, and geological time,. The last glaciation, some 12,000-13,000 years ago, added a final biogeochemical contribution. Humans have long been in the Mississippi Watershed's landscapes, which covers some 43% of the United States. But it has only been 175 years or so since European settlers entered the landscape. In this relatively short time, they have played havoc with soils, water, forests, air, the landscape's flora and fauna, and its evolutionary and ecological systems in general.
We now have an industrial agriculture that is depleting soils via erosion and soil exhaustion, overusing and polluting water sources and hydrological regimes, and is leading to a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of Massachusetts. We have had forestry practices that have clear cut most of the region's forests, often supplanted by monoculture "plantations." We have had the dikers and the channelizers (The Army Corps of Engineers) that have manipulated the Watershed's major rivers, destroying natural flood plains and unintentionally devastating human communities. We now have the urban sprawl of the Basin's cities, which may outstrip them all in damaging Mississippi's natural systems and our life support system. We have recently witnessed an outcome of all these practices, the devastation in New Orleans and surrounding areas in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
What does the future have in store for the Mississippi's humans and nature? The Center for Humans and Nature and The Land Institute are convening a combined research, education, and outreach project to ask precisely this question. Focusing primarily on soil and water (agriculture and regional hydrology), the project will examine the problems facing this region and its future.