Sediment Diversions on the Lower Mississippi River: Insight from Simple Analytical Models

ABSTRACT Dean, R.G.; Wells, J.T.; Fernando, H.J., and Goodwin, P., 2014. Sediment diversions on the lower Mississippi River: insight from simple analytical models. River diversions offer a mechanism by which sediment-laden waters can be introduced into interdistributary basins and bays to build new land that provides a substrate for wetland growth. Two geometric models were developed to allow calculation of future performance of river diversions with emphasis on the Mississippi River. These geometries, a truncated cone and a uniform width geometry, assume a constant discharge of sediment into the receiving basin and thus avoid many of the complexities of the evolutionary processes. Model results from both geometries show a clear life cycle of growth and deterioration in a diversion that experiences relative sea level rise and, under certain combinations of relative sea level rise, depth of receiving waters and sediment discharge rate, situations in which a subaerial platform will never form. A comparison ...