Floods Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Floods - Research Paper Example This implies that there is the likelihood of the upper Mississippi River basin experience changes in its eco systems depending on the responses of consumers and food resources to a high magnitude, unpredicted flood. The evidence for this research was based on Laboratory experiments. In order to determine the authenticity of the main hypothesis of this research work, samples were collected from the upper Mississippi River near the city of Louisiana Missouri (Delong et al, 2001). This area was used to act as a representative of the river flood plain features of the upper part of Mississippi River and it is characterized by a broad channel with a number of side channels and backwaters. Samples representing the potential nutrient sources and consumers were collected from all the three rivers in October 1993 and July 1994 for analysis of the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes (Delong et al, 2001). Statistical analysis was done on the collected samples and using pair wise comparison. The results indicated there were few inter-annuals differences for each rivers n regard to the sources of the organic matter and the consumers. The main implication of this research is that the findings of past studies relate in a big way to the large-magnitude flood events in the upper Mississippi River system, therefore this strengthens the conclusion that the flood served to enhance rather than change the trophic structure within these river-floodplain ecosystems. The results obtained from this research imply that the consumers continued to rely on the sources of organic matter that would be used in the absence of the unpredicted 1993 flood (Delong et al, 2001). It is proposed that the trophic structure did not change in response to flooding in the Missouri Rivers because both rivers exhibited the same trends observed in the Ohio River. From the article â€Å"Pesticide and