New Orleans - A City of Confluence

摘要

Steeped in human history and lore, Louisiana's largest city, New Orleans, lies at the confluence of a number of natural forces, both fleeting and enduring-and all of them inexorable. Located at the juncture of North America's largest river, the Mississippi, and the subtropical waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the "land" surrounding and on which New Orleans sits, the Mississippi River Delta region, might best be described not as terrestrial or coastal, but as terraqueous, with its low sweeps of deposited sediment and myriad estuaries, lakes, ponds, and waterways. Some of the youngest land of the earth's surface, the Mississippi has slowly built its delta region bit by eroded bit of sediment carried from locations throughout its massive drainage area.