Levee system

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Along the bank of the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, A levee system can be seen stretching up and down the river. From the map, it appears to be a thick dirt road following the river, as it is somewhat hard to see the height of the levee. A levee can be a naturally occurring formation, or a man-made structure. The specific levee I have selected is a man-made levee, constructed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) beginning in 1954 under the Flood Control Act of 1954, and ultimately completed in 1968. While this levee was funded and built by the United States government, it is now operated locally under regulations placed on levees. This site is a great example of a man-made levee, and is a good representation of what most levees look like along the Mississippi River. Essentially, this levee is comprised of large amount of dirt high enough to control the river, and wide enough to compensate for the inevitable erosion from the river and the sheer force of the river. These structures are relatively big, simply because of the amount of stress they are under when the water levels rise. A levee of this size and length is easily made of thousands upon thousands of pounds of dirt. Many levees take a long time to make, requiring heavy machinery to manually move dirt and build it into its proper shape. To make it easier to picture, the levee is like a man-made hill, or wall of dirt which stretches along the river, typically flat on the top in case it needs to be raised to better protect against flooding. When the river rises, the levee prevents the water from flowing into the areas behind it, preventing damage and saving lives. I personally have never seen a levee in person, to my knowledge, but I have seen them on the news quite frequently with all of the flooding happening in Missouri over the past few months. There are many videos on levees found on Youtube, several of which we have watched for class. The link below is to the National Levee Database maintained by the United States government, which is where I found the information regarding the levee I have mapped, it has a lot of interesting information!
https://levees.sec.usace.army.mil/#/levees/system/5105260006/segments

Great Rivers Ecology
updated 07/2019 by Hulahan18167571