# data[].attributes.body
Morganza spillway🌏

# data[].attributes.body
Effects on land ->
🌊☁️💧
Impact was overall positive.
🌊☁️💧
Flood waters deposited much needed sediment into the wetlands, adding a 12cm deep layer of nutrient rich mud and flushing out some oil from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
🌊☁️💧
The Morganza Spillway was opened in May and this allowed the waters to spill out into the wetland areas of Louisiana and the Atchafalaya Basin, flushing out stagnant waters.

# data[].attributes.body
Human Causes:

Deforestation;
There has been extensive deforestation in the Mississippi Basin since the arrival of European settlers in the 18th century. At that stage, the lower Mississippi between Cairo and the delta had 10 million hectares of hardwood and swamp forests. Between 1800 and 1935 50% of this forest was cleared for agriculture. From 1950 to 1970 a further three million hectares were cleared for rice and soya bean crops, leaving just two million hectares (A total loss of 80% of Forest covered since 1800). Fewer trees meant that there was less interception of rain when it fell, causing peak disacharges to rise more quickly in higher levels.

Urban Development;
St. Louis- has one of the largest strip malls in the country, along with 28,000 new homes. In the Missouri area, $4.3 billion was spent on urban development on land that was flooded in 1993. The growth of urban increase surface runoff, resulting in faster and higher peak discharges, and reduced the storage capacity of the river increasing the total volume of discharge in the river.

# data[].attributes.headline
Adam and James       Causes and Effects on People

# data[].attributes.subject
Adam and James       Causes and Effects on People

# data[].attributes.body
Causes:
Deforestation🌲:
- Extensive deforestation in the Mississippi basin-50% of this forest was cleared for agriculture😡
Urban Development in the Floodplain:
-8-hectare area in Chesterfield Valley in St Louis was urbanised 🏙🚆🚏

Effect:
-43,000 people felt some effects of the flooding😵🌊
- The number of fatalities was quite low for the size of the flood.(30people lost their lives in total.) ⚰️

# data[].attributes.body
There are two primary triggers of the floods in 2011. They occurred in the form of two unusually extreme weather events that happened at similar times:

Snowmelt in the Rookies-
In the upper Mississippi and Missouri tributaries to the West, the snowfall was record breaking with it being around 600mm deeper than average. In addition there was a cooler-than-average spring which delayed the snowmelt. When the snow finally melted in April it meant there was a higher quantity of water entering the river system. Peak discharges increased and a flood pulse occurred down these tributaries that rose to 15m in Illinois (south of confluence). In May, a years worth of rain fell in a month which further increased.

Intense rain in the Ohio tributary basin-
In Ohio there was record breaking weather in the form of four intense rainstorms in April which produced 6 times the monthly average rainfall. This also sent a flood down this tributary towards the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois.

# data[].attributes.body
Effects on property

Total damage to property was around  $2.8 billion and more than 21,000 buildings were affected

Some damage was caused by human attempts to prevent damage in other higher value areas e.g. The birds point levee was blown up to save Cairo and the floodwater spilled onto the surrounding landscape and one hundred homes were damaged costing over 360 million dollars

In Memphis the levees that protected the downtown area worked but the water instead covered the surban area flooding 1300 homes.

In Mississippi the flood peak cause 1 billion dollars in damage from the fifteenth to the twenty first of May.

😢😱🌎🌊☔️🌧☂️👩🏿‍🚒🗺🏗🏚🏚🏚💵💵💵🔧🔧🚿📰📰💔🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸