Land Cover of the Lower Mississippi Valley Fine Art Print Map

The Lower Mississippi Valley collects most of the streamflow of the 48 states. This narrow outlet between (worn) mountain blocks, sediment-filled and planed flat by millions of years of river meandering, is the Mississippi Delta.  This area is considered  “the best farmland this side of the River Nile”, comparable in size, shape, and agricultural significance to California’s Central Valley.

The uplands on either side are a mixed forest, grassland, and farmland mix. An exception is the large mostly evergreen forest just west of the Delta, between the Arkansas and the Red.

The map includes all of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama; most of Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and easternmost Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas as well as southern portions of Illinois and Indiana, western Georgia, and most of the Florida Panhandle.