Alabama Rivers: A Celebration And Challenge

by William Deutsch

A map to endless treasures, this book will transport you down rivers and through time to encounter the rich human history and natural wonders that have defined Alabama and continue to enhance our lives and livelihoods. Along the way, you will celebrate magnificent rivers filled with unique plants and animals shaped over the ages by a remarkably diverse geology. You will appreciate how rivers have served people from the first Paleo-Indian settlements to the present. After reading this marvelous book, you will appreciate rivers as never before. You will cross bridges with a wonder of what flows beneath. Canoes and kayaks will be irresistible. And on perfect mornings and afternoons, you will find those places you sat when you were a child and caught a fish, watched a blue heron, or saw a waterfall, as if you dipped yourself in magic waters. The rivers, these waters, are part of your past, part of your present, and can be part of your future. Rivers are streams that support life. Alabama has an estimated 132,400 miles of streams. Picture these streams strung together end-to-end and stretching around the Earth more than five times! Alabama ranks first in the nation for stream miles per square mile of land area. More than 10 percent of all the water that flows through the lower 48 states passes through Alabama. Because many of those streams are large, the state has more than 1,400 navigable river miles, ranking Alabama first in the nation. Considering all the advantages these water resources have to offer us, also consider the fact that Alabama rivers sustain an amazing variety of plant and animal life. Alabama ranks in the top 10 nationally for the most types of native plants and animals. And a recent report on America’s biodiversity puts the number of species in Alabama at more than 4,500, with 144 species found only in the state. This places Alabama #1 in total biodiversity among all states east of the Mississippi River. Alabama is particularly rich in aquatic organisms and ranks #1 in the nation for the most species of fish, turtles, mussels, freshwater snails, crayfish, and caddisflies. With these impressive numbers, the state clearly deserves its title as an “Aquatic Biodiversity Hotspot” of the warm temperate regions of the world. The Mobile Delta rivers and their thousands of tributaries flow through a wilderness that is among the most biologically diverse places on earth. Because its streams have more aquatic species than any comparable area in the world, and because its forests have more tree species than anywhere else in North America, the Mobile Delta has been called America’s Amazon.

371 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 23, 2020

Reviews

[Brandi Snell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very informative book. It teaches about rivers, how they're formed, and what they do. Then it tells about several specific rivers in Alabama. It ends with questions that make you think about rivers and their services to humans and the environment. It lists several ways to get involved and/ or to just learn about rivers and their services.