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Large Rivers
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A river is a natural body of running water that flows into a lake, another river, or the ocean. Arkansas has almost 12,000 miles of rivers. Smaller water courses, such as creeks, streams, and brooks, form tributaries which come together in the main channel of a large rivers. The area of land which drains all of these tributaries into one main river is called a "watershed."
Five large rivers, with watersheds of several thousand square miles, flow through Arkansas. Free-flowing large rivers were once dynamic forces in the natural landscape, creating islands, sloughs, marshes, and oxbows. Today, man-made dams and other alterations have changed the natural flow of most large rivers. The "riparian zone" (area around the river) provides rich habitat for a variety of plants and animals that are adapted to spending at least part of their lives in the water. Vegetation helps to stabilize the river bank and reduce erosion.
Rivers are used for transportation (moving tons of products); irrigation for crops; industrial water supplies (cooling processes and diluting wastes); municipal water supplies; electrical energy production; and recreation. We are facing critical decisions about how to balance the many human needs and uses of these rivers and the natural communities that depend on the aquatic habitat.
