engineering

Mississippi River Basin Model

Mississippi River Basin Model is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mississippi River Basin Model rather than just read about it. In short: The Mississippi River Basin Model was a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire Mississippi River basin, covering an area of 200 acres. It is part of the Waterways Experiment Station, located near Clinton, Mississippi.

Key takeaways

Mississippi River Basin Model belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mississippi River Basin Model to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mississippi River Basin Model from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Mississippi River Basin Model was a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire Mississippi River basin, covering an area of 200 acres. It is part of the Waterways Experiment Station, located near Clinton, Mississippi. The model was built from 1943 to 1966 and in operation from 1949 until 1973. By comparison, the better known San Francisco Bay Model covers 1.5 acres and the Chesapeake Bay Model covers 8 acres. The model is now derelict, but open to the public within Buddy Butts Park, Jackson.

Background Large scale, localised flood control measures such as levees had been constructed since the early 1900s, especially in the decade after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and following the Flood Control Act 1936. From 1928 onwards, the Army Corps of Engineers built a huge number of locks, run-off channels and extended and raised existing levees. These control measures only targeted single sites, and did not look at the entire river system. There had already been extensive modelling of individual sections of the river at the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, including a 1060 ft long model of the 600 river miles from Helena, Arkansas to Donaldsonville, Louisiana, but in early 1937 it was clear that impact of control measures were not completely successful. In 1941 Eugene Reybold proposed a large-scale hydraulic model which would allow the engineers to simulate weather, floods and evaluate the effect of flood control measures on the entire system. This would cover approximately 200 acres, include all existing and proposed control measures, and a network of streams nearly 8 miles in total length.

Design

The scale of the model was 1:100 vertical and 1:2000 horizontal. At this scale, the Appalachian Mountains are raised 20 ft above the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains by 50 ft. The larger vertical scale was thought to reduce surface-tension and therefore better simulate turbulence. The model used individually cast 10 ft x 10 ft (approximate) concrete panels, contoured with the land shape and river bed, including tributaries, cliffs, lakes, flood plains, bridges, and levees. Metal plugs or divots in the river bed provided roughness to simulate different types of material, whilst folded metal mesh simulated dense foliage. With each gallon of water representing 1.5 million gallons, an entire day of river flow along the whole system could be simulated in 5 minutes.

Construction As wartime labour was short, it was proposed to make use of Italian and German prisoners of war. Construction at the site was begun in January 1943, commencing with housing for the WES personnel needed to direct work on the model, as well as an internment camp for 3,000 men at nearby Camp Clinton. The first POW's (200 of Rommel's Afrika Korps) arrived in August 1943, and by December, there were almost 1800. Enlisted men received 90 cents for 8 hours labor. Officers and non-commissioned officers were not required to work, but could volunteer. By May 1946, the last of the prisoners had been repatriated, and the site was almost ready for model construction. Individual sections were in operation from 1949, but construction was not completed until 1966, partly due to the complexity of modelling such a vast area, but also due to irregular funding.

Operation By 1952 the Missouri River segment was fully operational and used extensively to predict problems during that year's April floods, helping to avoid damage of an estimated $65 million. By 1959 the model was complete as far as Memphis and a comprehensive testing program was begun which coordinated the entire model. In 1964, the site was opened to visitors for self-guided tours, and facilities included an assembly center, 40 ft observation tower, operation observation room, and elevated platforms, drawing about 5,000 visitors a year. On completion in 1966, basin-wide tests examined the effectiveness of reservoirs and looked at maximizing flood protection. For the next three years, the historic floods of 1937, 1943, 1945 and 1952 were reproduced, as well as hypothetical floods at different periods of the year. Tests on individual problems were conducted until 1971 but high costs and growth of computer modelling meant that the facility was put on standby. The last use was in 1973, when a potentially catastrophic failure arose at the Old River Control Structure. The model was used to show that the untested Morganza Spillway could be opened effectively, without diverting polluted water through New Orleans and Baton Rouge, as well as identifying levees that required topping up.

Current status In 1993 the site was taken over by the City of Jackson, designated as a Mississippi Landmark and a city park was formed around the site. The cost of maintaining the site as a tourist attraction was too high, so the model was abandoned and became overgrown. In 2000, the model was included in the Mississippi Heritage Trusts' 10 Most Endangered List, featured in a Google Sightseeing post in 2007 , and thereafter was visited and blogged about by several urban explorers and photographers. In 2010, it was reported that the panels were still intact, and observation platforms and walkways still in place. In 2011 students from Louisiana State University received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for their project to revitalise the park and relaunch the model as a tourist attraction. Richard Coupe of the Jackson Free Press visited the site in 2013 and reported it as overgrown, but open to the public within Buddy Butts Park. A team from 16 WAPT News surveyed the site using the Eagle Eye 16 drone and reported it as overgrown, defaced, and with several pieces of the grid collapsing. Access is via the park entrance on McRaven Road, the model is next to the soccer fields. Friends of the Mississippi River Basin Model is a group consisting of local volunteers who have started clearing out the model with the hope of opening it to the public. The Libertarian Party of Hinds County also assists with this project. The model was designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2018.

References

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Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mississippi River Basin Model

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mississippi River Basin Model claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mississippi River Basin Model before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mississippi River Basin Model ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mississippi River Basin Model

In research: Mississippi River Basin Model appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mississippi River Basin Model in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mississippi River Basin Model is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1943 establishments in Mississippi, Buildings and structures in Hinds County, Mississippi, Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mississippi River Basin Model outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mississippi River Basin Model in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mississippi River Basin Model means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mississippi River Basin Model out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mississippi River Basin Model in simple terms?

Why does Mississippi River Basin Model matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mississippi River Basin Model?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mississippi River Basin Model.