Mississippi River Delta (La.)

The Mississippi River Delta is the confluence of the Mississippi River with the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, southeastern United States. The river delta is a three-million-acre (4,700 mi2; 12,000 km2) area of land that stretches from Vermilion Bay on the west, to the Chandeleur Islands in the east, on Louisiana's southeastern coast. It is part of the Gulf of Mexico and the Louisiana coastal plain, one of the largest areas of coastal wetlands in the United States. The Mississippi River Delta is the seventh-largest river delta on Earth (USGS) and is an important coastal region for the United States, containing more than 2.7 million acres (4,200 sq mi; 11,000 km2) of coastal wetlands and 37% of the estuarine marsh in the conterminous U.S. The coastal area is the nation's largest drainage basin and drains about 41% of the contiguous United States into the Gulf of Mexico at an average rate of 470,000 cubic feet per second (3,500,000 US gal/s; 13,000 m3/s).