What is the plant life in mississippi?

Question

What is the plant life in mississippi?

Answer 1

Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half of the state's area covered by wild trees; mostly pine, but also cottonwood, elm, hickory, oak, pecan, sweetgum and tupelo. Lumber is a prevalent industry in Mississippi.

Due to seasonal flooding possible from December to June, the Mississippi River created a fertile floodplain in what is called the Mississippi Delta, including tributaries. Early planters used slaves to build levees along the Mississippi River to divert flooding. They built on top of the natural levees that formed from dirt pushed up in flooding. As cultivation of cotton increased in the Delta, planters hired Irish laborers to ditch and drain their land. The state took over levee building from 1858-1861, accomplishing it through contractors. In those years planters considered their slaves too valuable to hire out for such dangerous work. Contractors hired gangs of Irish immigrant laborers to build levees and sometimes clear land. Before the war, the earthwork levees averaged six feet in height, although in some areas they reached twenty feet.

Flooding has been an integral part of Mississippi history. It took a toll during the years after the Civil War. Major floods swept down the valley in 1865, 1867, 1874 and 1882, regularly overwhelming levees damaged by Confederate and Union fighting during the war, and those repaired or constructed after the war. In 1877 the Mississippi Levee District was created for southern counties. In 1879 the US Congress created the Mississippi River Commission, whose responsibilities included aiding levee boards in the construction of levees. Both white and African-American transient workers built the levees in the late 19th century. By 1882 levees averaged seven feet in height, but many in the southern Delta were severely tested by the flood.

The levee system was expanded after the flood of 1882. By 1884 the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee District was established to oversee levee construction and maintenance in the northern Delta counties.

Flooding overwhelmed northwestern Mississippi in 1912-1913, causing heavy financial costs to the levee districts. Regional losses and the Mississippi River Levee Association's lobbying for a flood control bill helped gain passage of bills in 1917 and 1923 to provide Federal matching funds for local levee districts, on a scale of 2:1. Although US participation in World War I interrupted funding of levees, the second round of funding helped raise the average height of levees in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta to 22 feet in the 1920s.

Nonetheless, the region was severely flooded and suffered millions of dollars in damages due to the Great Flood of 1927. Property, stock and crops were all lost. In Mississippi, most damage was in the lower Delta, including Washington and Bolivar counties.