Fig. 176.—Anastomosing of a depositing stream. Yahtse River, Alaska. (Russell, U. S. Geol. Surv.)
Streams which are actively aggrading their valleys are likely to anastomose (Figs. [176], [177]). This results from the filling of the channels until they are too small to accommodate all the water. The latter then breaks out of the channel at few or many points. The new channels thus established suffer the same fate.
Fig. 177.—Anastomosing of the Platte River, Dawson Co., Neb. (U. S. Geol. Surv.)
Flood-plains due to obstructions.—Again, any obstacle in a stream’s course is likely to cause deposition above. Thus dams built across rivers entail the deposition of sediment above. Where a stream flows over the outcropping edges of strata of different strength, the more resistant serve, in some sense, as dams. Above them the stream cuts its bed to a low gradient, and, becoming sluggish, drops more or less of the detritus brought down from above. Obstacles of any sort across a stream’s channel, therefore, favor the development of alluvial plains.
Fig. 178.—The levees of the Mississippi in cross-section, 4 miles north of Donaldsonville, La. Vertical scale ⨉50. The horizontal line in the diagram represents sea-level. The bottom of the channel at this point is far below sea-level.
Levees.—As the stream in flood escapes its channel and overspreads its plain, its immediate banks are the site of active deposition, for it is here that the velocity of the overflowing water is first notably checked. On the banks of the channel, therefore, low alluvial ridges, called natural levees, are built up ([Fig. 178], and [Pl. XV]). They may be narrow, or hundreds of feet in width, and are often several feet above the plains behind them, giving the latter a slope away from the channel of the stream. They are sometimes high enough to control the courses of tributary streams, as shown by numerous tributaries to the Mississippi below the Ohio. The Yazoo, for example, flows some 200 miles on the flood-plain of the Mississippi before it joins that river near Vicksburg. The levees even become divides, directing drainage away from the streams they guard [(Pl. XV]). Streams sometimes build levees faster than their tributaries aggrade their channels. The latter are then ponded, giving rise to lakes. The lakes on the lower courses of the tributaries to the Red River of Louisiana are examples.[70] They are sometimes built up above their natural level and kept in repair by human agency so as to confine the streams in time of flood. This is a source of danger unless they be steadily maintained, for the breaking of such levees often occasions great destruction. A case in point is the breaking of the levees of the Mississippi near New Orleans in 1890. The water broke through the levees at the Nita and Martinez crevasses ([Fig. 187]) and flowed eastward (from the former) with a current of 15 miles per hour, spreading destruction in its path. The water flowed eastward through Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne, and entered Mobile Bay with such volume, velocity, and load of mud, as to destroy for a time the oyster and fish industries of that locality.[71]
PLATE XV.