The creation of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) in 1963 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) represents one of the most catastrophic, anthropogenic stressors ever to impact the Lake Pontchartrain estuary in southeastern Louisiana, USA. The artificial tidal pass provided a direct route from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans. It allowed for high saline waters to enter Lake Pontchartrain, resulting in detrimental changes to the biotic community of the Lake and surrounding wetland areas. In July 2009, the USACE closed the MRGO in hopes of restoring natural ecosystems. This study assesses changes in the adult, juvenile, and larval fish assemblages in the Lake from data taken before and after the closure. Water quality data were also examined for shifts related to the MRGO closure. Significant decreases in salinity were found following the closure, however no significant differences were found in adult or larval fish assemblages.

The Mississippi River (MR) has been engineered with the development of the levee system, dams for flood control measures, jetties, revetments and dredging of the navigation channel. These alterations have reduced the replenishment of the sediment to the Louisiana Coastal area. To aid in the restoration planning, 1-D numerical models have been calibrated and validated to predict the river response to various changes such as channel modifications, varied flow conditions and hurricane situations. This study utilized the HEC-RAS 4.1 and the CHARIMA (Dr. Forrest Holly, University of Iowa). The models were calibrated for hydrodynamics and sediment using Tarbert Landing discharges (HEC-RAS), Belle Chasse sand concentrations (CHARIMA), and Gulf of Mexico (GOM) stages. The models showed that a large percentage of the river flow is lost over the East Bank downstream of Bohemia which reduces the sand transport capacity of the river. This reach is subject to flow reversals during hurricanes.

My dissertation, titled “I’ve Known Rivers”: Representations of the Mississippi River in African American Literature and Culture, uncovers the impact of the Mississippi River as a powerful, recurring geographical feature in twentieth-century African American literature that conveys the consequences of capitalist expansion on the individual and communal lives of Black Americans. Recent scholarship on the Mississippi River theorizes the relationship between capitalism, geography, and slavery. Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism examine how enslaved black labor contributed to the expansion of capitalism in the nineteenth century, but little is known about artistic representations of the Mississippi in the twentieth century. While scholars point primarily to the Mississippi River’s impact on slavery in the nineteenth century, I’ve Known Rivers reveals how black writers and artists capture the relationship between slavery, capitalism, and the Mississippi River. I consider a wide variety of texts in this study, from Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children and early 20th century Blues music, to late 20th century novels such as Toni Morrison’s Sula. This broad array of interdisciplinary texts illustrates a literary tradition in which the Mississippi’s representation in twentieth-century African American literature serves as both a reflection of the continuously changing economic landscape and a haunting reminder of slavery’s aftermath through the cotton empire. Furthermore, I’ve Known Rivers demonstrates how traumatic sites of slavery along the river are often reclaimed by black artists as source of empowerment, thereby contributing a long overdue analysis of the Mississippi River in African American literature as a potent symbol of racial progress.

Bio-optical variability of surface waters in Northeastern Gulf of Mexico (NEGOM) was examined using satellite and in situ data. Relatively high chlorophyll-a concentration (chl>=1 mg m-3) and high colored dissolved organic mater (ag443>=0.1 m-1) were generally observed inshore, near major river mouths, and in plumes of Mississippi River water that extended offshore during the three consecutive summer seasons (1998, 1999, and 2000). River discharge dominated chlorophyll-a concentration variability inshore, particularly near major river mouths. Strong interannual variability in chlorophyll-a concentration was observed inshore from Escambia to Tampa Bay region during the winter to spring transition, which was different in 1998 compared to the winter to spring transition in 1999 and 2000. This was related to higher fresh water discharge during the 1997-1998 El Niño-Southern Oscillation event as well as strong upwelling in spring 1998. The Mississippi plume extended >500 km southeast of the Mississippi delta and up to the Florida Keys was observed for the periods extending over 14 weeks between May and September every year of the study. In general, ag443 covaried linearly and inversely with salinity inshore during spring and fall, indicating conservative mixing. The NEGOM salinity-ag443 relationship of fall 1998, i.e., Salinity=36.59-29.86*ag443 (n=8771, r2=0.86; 0.01<=ag443<=0.52, 16 <=S<=36), served as the best predictor of NEGOM salinity based on in situ ag443 observations for spring and fall seasons from all years (<3% mean percentage errors; corresponding to <1.03 psu). This may help estimate salinity from satellite ocean color data, but further testing using data from multiple years is needed to improve such relationship. While river discharge was an important source of colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), phytoplankton blooms also contributed to CDOM formation in the NEGOM. Using a pigment index of phytoplankton taxonomic groups, the variability in biomass proportion of microphytoplankton explained up to 76% of the variability of the average of normalized phytoplankton absorption coefficients (545, 625, and 673 nm). The clorophyll-specific absorption coefficient, a*ph(440), varies by a factor of 7 (0.02-0.15 m2mg-1). Particle size and pigment composition played important roles in determining a*ph(440) variability. This must be accounted for in chlorophyll-a concentration algorithms based on aph.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Ninety-eight percent of water taken from the Mississippi River Shallow Alluvial Aquifer, hereafter referred to as “the aquifer” or “MRVA,” is used by the agricultural industry for irrigation. Mississippi Delta agriculture is increasingly using more water from the MRVA and the aquifer has been losing about 300,000 acreeet per year. This research expands on previous work in which a model was developed that simulates the effects of climatic variability, crop acreage changes, and specific irrigation methods on consequent variations in the water volume of the MRVA. This study corrects an identified problem by replacing total growing season precipitation with an irrigation demand driver based on evaporation and crop coefficients and changing the time scale from the entire growing season to a daily resolution. The calculated irrigation demand, as a climatological driver for the model, captures effective precipitation more precisely than the initial growing season precipitation driver. Predictive equations resulting from regression analyses of measured versus calculated irrigation water use showed R2 and correlations of 0.33 and 0.57, 0.77 and 0.88, 0.71 and 0.84, and 0.68 and 0.82 for cotton, corn, soybeans and rice, respectively. Ninetyive percent of the predicted values fall within a range of + or - about 23,000 acreeet, an error of about 10-percent. The study also adds an additional conservation strategy through the use of surface water from onarm reservoirs in lieu of groundwater. Analyses show that climate could provide the entire water need of the plants in 70-percent of the years for corn, 65-percent of the years for soybeans and cotton, and even 5-percent of the years for rice. Storing precipitation in onarm structures is an effective way to reduce reliance of Delta producers on groundwater. If producers adopted, at a minimum, the 97.5:2.5 ratio suggested management practice, this minimal management strategy could potentially conserve 48-percent, 35-percent and 42-percent of groundwater for cotton, corn and soybeans, respectively. Even in extreme drought years such as 2007, cotton, corn and soybeans produced under the 97.5:2.5 management strategy could conserve 32-percent, 46-percent and 38-percent of groundwater, respectively.

The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate the importance of the military principle of unity of command by examining the military history of a Union army unit during the Civil War. The Mississippi Marine Brigade and its predecessor, the Ellet Ram Fleet, being a creation of the War Department, and yet conducting tactical operations within the scope of the Navy Department, vividly illustrates the problems inherent in joint army-navy operations. The brigade's primary mission was to counter guerrilla warfare in the Mississippi River valley. The text describes the organization, administration, and major operations of the brigade as a mobile, independent, private military force.

Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) data are used to report the temporal and spatial patterns of subsidence as well as the potential contributors to subsidence within the Barataria and Terrebonne Bays. In recent decades, subsidence in southeast Louisiana has become a topic of substantial and growing concern to the scientific community, the local residents, and all those invested in the region. Lidar data were acquired from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the LSU Center for Geoinformatics. The data has been manipulated to map the differenced Lidar, complete an instantaneous slope analysis, and determine the thickness of the Holocene sediments. The goal was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the subsidence patterns and the dynamic processes driving subsidence within the study area. These efforts provide a better ability to plan for the future of the Louisiana working coast and mitigate against relative sea level rise and coastal land loss.