Mississippi River threatens to make Dogtooth Bend peninsula in Illinois an island

Excerpt

The receding floodwaters of the Mississippi River in January of 2016 left behind barren sand dunes on southern Illinois farmland reminiscent of the windswept dunes of the movie Lawrence of Arabia (figure 1). Large sand deposits up to 1.3 m (4 ft) deep covered nearly 800 ha (2,000 ac) of farmland south of Miller City, Illinois, in the Dogtooth Bend peninsula. Rainfall almost three times above average in November and December of 2015 over Missouri set in motion record flooding with the Cape Girardeau river gage breaking the 1993 record at 14.89 m (48.86 ft) and led to the breaching of Len Small levee on January 2, 2016. Floodwaters cut deep craters and scoured the landscape as they poured through the breach at mile marker 34 and then followed an old meander channel across the narrow neck of Dogtooth Bend peninsula to reconnect with the Mississippi River at mile marker 15 (figure 2). Levee breaches and land scouring are not new events for this region, occurring in 1993, 2011, and 2016; and there is high likelihood these farmlands will experience similar events in the future. Each event deepens the meander channel when the floodwaters take a 4.6 km (3.5 mi)…