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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Flood control work in the Mississippi River and its tributaries has likely made floods worse in Mississippi and Louisiana, researchers say.
Using 500 years of data from tree rings and from sediment in oxbow lakes — bends that once were part of the Mississippi River but became lakes when the river changed its path slightly — they say the river has flooded more often and poured more water into those states over the past 150 years than any previous period.
Climate change may be responsible for about one-quarter of the difference, they estimate. Engineering, such as building levees and creating a straighter, narrow channel for navigation, is likely responsible for the rest, researchers from Massachusetts, Illinois, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and Liverpool, England, say in Wednesday’s journal Nature.
Some outside scientists praised the entire paper. Others praised the “paleoflood” work but had doubts about the conclusion that flood engineering is the main reason floods are worse.
Lead researcher Samuel Munoz of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said he had expected to find early floods that were greater than more recent floods — not because the river was unrestrained, but because other research had covered a fairly recent period.
“I just expected that, given more time, you would see events that were bigger,” he said. “Because there’s a longer perspective, there’s more chance for something really big to happen.”
The researchers said climate variability, particularly the multidecade changes in the North Atlantic’s surface temperature, has played a big part in flooding over the centuries. However, they said, changes in such cycles would predict a much smaller increase than has occurred since 1800.
“The other likely culprit is something we’ve done to the river or basin,” Munoz said. The Mississippi River Basin drains all or part of 31 states and two Canadian provinces.
“Their palaeoflood record is compelling. ... And if the authors are correct, and collective efforts to subdue the Mississippi have inadvertently pushed it to rise higher than ever, then the time might have come to consider loosening its restraints,” Scott St. George of the University of Minnesota wrote in a companion commentary.
However, he wrote, he thinks climate change could be the main driver behind the increased flooding. To test that, more work like Munoz’s is needed along the upper Mississippi and its main tributaries, he said.
Munoz said he and his colleagues are working on such studies.
“We have records we’re working on now from the Missouri River, the Ohio River and the Arkansas River — the big tributaries of the Mississippi. ... We’re also doing this in the Houston area to put Hurricane Harvey into context,” Munoz said.
Such work isn’t possible on the upper Mississippi, where locks and dams have permanently submerged oxbow lakes, he said.
Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University, said the work linking “floodiness” to climate cycles over five centuries is exciting.
But the argument about river engineering as the main driver is weak, Lall said. For one thing, he said, recent floods have included some very low as well as very high floods, but small floods probably didn’t leave sediment or tree ring records. The recent flood analysis also doesn’t offer any formal analysis of likely causes and ignores whether increased rainfall or changes in the landscape, such as Midwestern farm drainage, might be among them, he said.
Nicholas Pinter of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale said the study confirms and underscores what he described as extensive work he and others have done about flood frequency and magnitude over the last 100 to 150 years, and modeling studies looking forward.
It’s particularly notable that the study found large increases “along a stretch of the Mississippi that previous research has among the LEAST impacts of river engineering on flood levels,” he wrote in an email. “If the same research had been completed on the Middle Mississippi, the Lower Missouri, or parts of the Upper Mississippi, the increases in flood magnitudes and frequencies would have been MUCH greater.”
Munoz studied three oxbow lakes: Lake Mary, west of Woodville, Mississippi; False River Lake, northwest of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Lake St. John, in Louisiana about north-northwest of Natchez, Mississippi.
The scientists also used tree-ring data from a 2015 study by University of Alabama scientist Matthew Therrell, including three floods not described in that report.

Submitted Photo
Kiwanis Club of East St. Mary celebrated Terrific Kids and Bugs for the third nine weeks at J.S. Aucoin Elementary. The Kiwanians in the photo are, from left: Cal Carrier, Jodi Grizzaffi, Blane Aucoin and Susan Aucoin. 

Why wait for summer to enjoy pork ribs cooked slow and low on the grill? If you cook them in the oven, you can enjoy them right now. They won’t boast the trademark smokiness produced by grilling, but otherwise they’ll be as tender, succulent and finger-licking good as ever.
The key to making great baked ribs is to follow the same prep as for grilled ribs. Season them with a rub, paste or marinade containing salt, then bake them at a low temperature for many hours or until they become tender. The salted mixture acts as a brine, which helps keep the pork juicy and infuses it with flavor. Cooking slow and low makes the meat tender.
The marinade used here is a jerk paste, a spicy Jamaican flavoring that Jamaicans typically apply to pork and chicken, but which can be found glorifying everything from beef and lamb to fish and seafood to vegetables and tofu. Jerk is based on three key ingredients: Scotch Bonnet chiles, allspice (a dried berry native to Jamaica) and thyme.
Scotch Bonnets are some of the hottest chiles in the world. They’re in the same family as habaneros, so feel free to swap in the latter if you can’t find the former. The rub will be hotter or less hot depending on the number of chiles in it, your choice. And no matter the number of chiles, you’ll want to tame their heat with at least a little bit of sugar. I happen to love Scotch bonnets not only for their heat, but also for their fruitiness. They’ve always struck me as a kind of cross between a mango and very hot chile.
The labor-intensive part of this recipe is gathering all the ingredients and making the marinade, but then it’s easygoing.
Here I’ve finished them with a sweet/sour/spicy glaze. It’s not traditional, but I think it adds the perfect last touch.
OVEN BAKED JERK SPARERIBS
Start to finish:
20 hours, 40 minutes
(30 minutes hands-on)
½ cup coarsely chopped onion
1 cup coarsely chopped scallions (white and green part)
1 to 3 Scotch bonnet chiles, or to taste
6 cloves garlic, smashed
¼ cup fresh lime juice, divided
½ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup soy sauce (low-sodium if you prefer)
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
3 Tbsp. packed dark brown sugar, divided
2 tsp. kosher salt
2 tsp. ground allspice
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
¼ tsp. ground cinnamon
5 to 6 pounds pork spareribs (preferably St Louis style)
In a blender combine onion, scallions, chiles, garlic, 2½ tablespoons lime juice, oil, soy sauce, thyme, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, salt, allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon, and puree until smooth. Set aside ¼ cup for the glaze.
Pull off and discard the silver skin from the bone side of the ribs and cut them into 6- to 8-rib lengths. Coat both sides of the ribs with pureed marinade and put them in a shallow container. Cover and chill 16 hours, turning occasionally.
Preheat oven to 275 F. Remove ribs from marinade allowing the excess to drip off. Discard excess marinade.
Arrange ribs, meat side up, on two racks set into each of two baking pans. Put pans on the middle shelves of the oven and bake, switching pans midway through cooking time, until the meat is very tender when stuck with a fork, 4 to 4½ hours.
While ribs are baking, in a small bowl combine reserved jerk paste with remaining 1½ tablespoons lime juice and remaining 2 tablespoons brown sugar. Remove ribs from the oven when they are tender and brush tops evenly with glaze. Return ribs to the oven and bake for an additional 10 minutes.
Servings: 8
—Nutrition information per serving: 1,105 calories; 838 calories from fat; 93 g fat (27 g saturated; 1 g trans fats); 272 mg cholesterol; 1,047 mg sodium; 10 g carbohydrates; 1 g fiber; 6 g sugar; 54 g protein.
—Editor’s Note: Sara Moulton is host of public television’s “Sara’s Weeknight Meals.” She was executive chef at Gourmet magazine and hosted hosting several Food Network shows including “Cooking Live.” Her latest cookbook is “HomeCooking 101.”