Managing Mississippi and Ohio River Landscapes: A Conversation with Kenneth R. Olson
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66659/0nae6h81Keywords:
Mississippi River; Ohio River; New Madrid Floodway; Birds Point levee breach; 2011 Great Flood; floodplain management; soil productivity; agricul-tural land; river engineering; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; land scouring; environmental recovery; climate variability; Dnieper watershed; war-related environmental impactsAbstract
This interview with Kenneth R. Olson focuses on Managing Mississippi and Ohio River Landscapes, a book devoted to the environmental, agricultural, historical, and engineering dimensions of two major US river systems. The conversation highlights the 2011 Great Flood, the New Madrid Floodway, the deliberate Birds Point levee breach, the effects of flood-control decisions on agricultural land, and the long-term consequences of erosion, land scouring, sediment deposition, and soil productivity loss. The interview also places the book in a wider context of climate variability, floodplain conversion, damaged hydraulic infrastructure, and war-related environmental risks in other river basins.
References
1. Olson, K. R., & Morton, L. W. (2016). Managing Mississippi and Ohio River Land-scapes. Soil and Water Conservation Society, Ankeny, Iowa. ISBN 978-0-9856923-1-5.
2. Olson, K. R., & Morton, L. W. (2012). The impacts of 2011 man-induced levee breaches on agricultural lands of the Mississippi River Valley. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 67(1), 5A-10A. https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.67.1.5A
3. Olson, K. R., & Morton, L. W. (2012). The effects of 2011 Ohio and Mississippi River Valley flooding on the Cairo, Illinois, area. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 67(2), 42A-46A. https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.67.2.42A
4. Olson, K. R., Matthews, J., Morton, L. W., & Sloan, J. (2015). Impact of levee breach-es, flooding, and land scouring on soil productivity. Journal of Soil and Water Con-servation, 70(1), 5A-11A. https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.70.1.5A
5. Olson, K. R., & Morton, L. W. (2016). Mississippi River threatens to make Dogtooth Bend peninsula in Illinois an island. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 71(6), 142A-148A. https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.71.6.140A
6. Olson, K. R. (2025). Managing Mississippi and Missouri River Landscapes. Scientific Research Publishing, 278 pp. ISBN 979-8-89507-746-7.
7. Barry, J. M. (1997). Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
