Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Making Predictions That Change the Future, Forecasts and Alternative Visions for the Illinois River: Keynote Speech at the Third Biennial Governor's Conference on the Management of the Illinois River System
The Illinois River Floodplain. Although the undisturbed Illinois River was relatively small in terms of flow (approximately equal to the Rock River, prior to the largescale diversion of Lake Michigan water down the Illinois starting in it has an unusually large floodplain for its size. Large river-floodplain ecosystems have always been rare, because not every large river has a large floodplain: the Columbia, the Colorado, and the St. Law rence are large North American rivers, in terms of water flow, but they are enclosed in narrow valleys or canyons, without large floodplains. The miles wide (2 to 7 miles) floodplain of the middle and lower Illinois River is a gift of much larger ancestral rivers (figure Intact large river-flood plain ecosystems are extremely rare, and are becoming rarer still, because the developed countries of the world have altered entire watersheds and channel ized and impounded virtually all their large rivers, and the developing coun tries are hurrying to catch up with them (sparks 1992; Sparks.
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