ABSTRACT
Rainwater and snow-melt in the upper reaches of the western face of the Southern Appalachian Mountains dissolve clods of soil, its silt and clay breaking away to begin a long journey that may terminate in the Mississippi River Delta in Arkansas or Louisiana, or beyond to the south in the Gulf of Mexico. Held in suspension, these colloidal or near-colloidal-size fragments move down rivulets to streams, on to the Little Tennessee River, the Tennessee River, and then the Ohio River. In Pennsylvania, for example, waters carry the particles down the Allegheny River to the Ohio River, and thence to the Mississippi’s great continental trough. Beyond the subcontinental Divide in the East, similar deposits are made to lesser rivers that, along with bays, estuaries, marshes, and lakes, make up the wetlands of which government leaders have pronounced “there shall be no net loss”.
