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So let's get an even broader view. Have your students look at a map of Louisiana. It won't take much examination for them to see that the delta is actually much larger than the little tip they have been looking at. It extends up to Baton Rouge, and covers almost the entire southern coast of Louisiana. New Orleans itself is only a small area of the edge of part of the delta. The large size of the full delta shows how much of an impact the deposition from the Mississippi River has been over hundreds, thousands and even millions of years.

We now have a better sense of the answer to the original question: What happens when a river flows into the ocean? Or at least we have a better sense of the answer in the case of the Mississippi River, as of January 1985.

Teachers' Guide                            Page9.19