Where is the location of the Mississippi River? What is the size of the Mississippi River?

Question

What is the aquatic life? Is it used by humans?

Answer 1

It is a river that runs from Minnisota to Lousiana and finally into the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River is the longest river in North America.

Answer 2

The Mississippi is the SECOND longest river in North America. (The Missouri is longest.) The river is located in the central United States. Its source is Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. The river flows south in Minnesota to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and then forms the border between many states. Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi lie to the east of the Mississippi River, while Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana lie to the west. Along the way it flows past the cities of LaCrosse, Davenport, St. Louis, Memphis, and Vicksburg. The river flows through southern Louisiana past the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans to its mouth in the Gult of Mexico.

The Mississippi is about 3900 miles (6300 km) long. Best known among its aquatic life is the catfish., but numerous other freshwater fish call the river home.

The river is heavily used by humans. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was one of the biggest ports in the world, and barges still transport crops and industrial goods up and down the river. River transportation is regulated by a series of locks and dams mostly constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Mississippi can be navigated in summer as far north as Minneapolis. South of Cairo, Illinois, levees contain the main channel of the Mississippi all the way to its mouth. While these levees prevent river flooding, they have speeded erosion of the river delta in Louisiana and may have caused more severe hurricane damage.

Answer 3

The Mississippi River, derived from the old Ojibwe word misi-ziibi meaning 'great river' (gichi-ziibi 'big river' at its headwaters), is the second-longest river in the United States; the longest is the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi.[4] Taken together, they form the largest river system in North America. If measured from the head of the Missouri, the length of the Missouri-Mississippi combination is approximately 3900 miles (6300 km), making the combination the 4th longest river in the world. Apart from the Missouri, the largest of the many large Mississippi tributaries is the Ohio River. The Mississippi River is the main river that supports much of the American civilization.

Geography
With its source Lake Itasca at 1,475 feet (450 m) above sea level in Itasca State Park located in Clearwater County, Minnesota, the river falls to 725 feet (220 m) just below Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis. The Mississippi is joined by the Illinois River and the Missouri River near St. Louis, Missouri, and by the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. The Arkansas River joins the Mississippi in the state of Arkansas. The Atchafalaya River in Louisiana is a major distributary of the Mississippi.

The Mississippi drains most of the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains, except for the areas drained by the Great Lakes and the Rio Grande. It runs through two states — Minnesota and Louisiana — and was used to define the borders of eight states (the river has since shifted) — Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi — before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles (160 km) downstream from New Orleans. Measurements of the length of the Mississippi from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico vary, but the EPA's number is 2,320 miles (3,733 km). The retention time from Lake Itasca to the Gulf is about 90 days.

The river is divided into the upper Mississippi, from its source south to the Ohio River, and the lower Mississippi, from the Ohio to its mouth near New Orleans. The upper Mississippi is further divided into three sections: the headwaters, from the source to Saint Anthony Falls; a series of man-made lakes between Minneapolis and St. Louis, Missouri; and the middle Mississippi, a relatively free-flowing river downstream of the confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis.

A series of 29 locks and dams on the upper Mississippi, most of which were built in the 1930s, is designed primarily to maintain a 9 foot (2.7 m) deep channel for commercial barge traffic.[6][7] The lakes formed are also used for recreational boating and fishing. The dams make the river deeper and wider but do not stop it. No flood control is intended. During periods of high flow, the gates, some of which are submersible, are completely opened and the dams simply cease to function. Below St. Louis, the Mississippi is relatively free-flowing, although it is constrained by numerous levees and directed by numerous wing dams.

Through a natural process known as deltaic switching the lower Mississippi River has shifted its final course to the ocean every thousand years or so. This occurs because the deposits of silt and sediment raise the river's level causing it to eventually find a steeper route to the Gulf of Mexico. The abandoned distributary diminishes in volume and forms what are known as bayous. This process has, over the past 5,000 years, caused the coastline of south Louisiana to advance toward the Gulf from 15 to 50 miles (25-80 km).

U.S. government scientists determined in the 1950s that the Mississippi River was starting to switch to the Atchafalaya River channel because of its much steeper path to the Gulf of Mexico, and eventually the Atchafalaya River would capture the Mississippi River and become its main channel to the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, the U.S. Congress authorized a project called the Old River Control Structure, which has prevented the Mississippi River from leaving its current channel that drains into the Gulf via New Orleans. Because of the large scale of high energy water flow through the Old River Control Structure threatening to damage the structure, an auxiliary flow control station was built adjacent to the standing control station. This US$300 million project was completed in 1996 by the Army Corp Of Engineers.

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Answer 4

Mississippi