What are Levees?
Nearly 2,000 kilometres of levees built along the Mississippi River over the past century helped protect cities and farmland from major floods.
- A levee is a structure, either natural or artificial, built along the edges of a stream or river channel to prevent flooding of the adjacent land.
- It can also be used to divert the river to increase land for construction.
- In some countries, levees are used to prevent water from flowing inland from the sea or diverting the river’s course, revealing fertile soil.
- They can also be used to prevent rivers from overflowing into cities during storms.
- They are very important features, but if they break, the consequences are disastrous.
- A majority of levees form from earth material.
- The flow of a water body pushes river sediments to the sides, thus creating a levee.
- The riverbank forms a levee made of silk, sediment, and other material such as dead plants to the side as the water flows.
- They stretch parallel to the river and control the flow.
- Natural levees can be reinforced using artificial material.
- In cases where levees do not exist, then artificial ones are constructed. They are made by piling rocks, sand, and soil along the riverbank.
- When the river flow is too strong, they can be made of metal, wood, or plastic material. In some places, they are made of concrete.
- Levees are constructed to a variety of heights and widths and with a variety of materials. The height or width of a levee often depends upon possible rain and storm events.
- One of the largest modern systems of levees is that built along the Mississippi River In the central United States.
Sea Levees:
- A majority of the leaves are used to control the flow of the river, but others are built along the coast.
- The Netherlands is a prime example of how dams, levees, and dikes can be used to control tides.
- The reclaimed land is then used for agricultural or residential use.
- A levee was also constructed along the coast of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in Canada to prevent high tides from flowing inland.
