Land clearing and forestry mulching in the Arkansas Delta

The Delta is flat river ground with one ridge of hills

61 of the 64 Delta towns we serve sit on the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, which the EPA maps as flatter than the ground around it. The other 3 sit on Crowley's Ridge.

On the plain, the ground runs from the Mississippi River's old channels to sandy terraces and the rice prairie around Stuttgart. Each drains differently, and drainage decides when a machine can work the ground without rutting it.

1. Sandy terraces

   Mississippi Alluvial Plain, Western Lowlands Pleistocene Valley Trains (73g), 26 towns

   Wynne, Forrest City, Brinkley, and Marianna sit on terraces of glacial outwash the Mississippi River carried down, covered with windblown silt (loess), sand sheets, or dunes. They sit higher than the river bottoms, so the uplands rarely if ever flood. Post oak and loblolly pine are native here, and the low sandponds hold overcup oak, water hickory, willow oak, and pin oak. Most of it is soybean and cotton ground today.

   Towns hereAubrey, Brinkley, Cherry Valley, Clarendon, Colt, Crumrod, Elaine, Forrest City, Goodwin, Haynes, Hickory Ridge, Holly Grove, Lambrook, Lexa, Marianna, Marvell, Monroe, Moro, Oneida, Palestine, Poplar Grove, Turner, Vanndale, Wabash, Wheatley, and Wynne

2. Mississippi River bottoms

   Mississippi Alluvial Plain, Northern Holocene Meander Belts (73a) and Northern Backswamps (73d), 18 towns

   West Memphis, Earle, and Helena sit in the Mississippi's meander belt of point bars, natural levees, and old channels marked by oxbow lakes. Levee soils are coarser and drain well, then grade to very heavy, poorly drained clay in the old channels and swales. Around Marion, the backswamps are low overflow ground where water levels change with the season, the clay shrinks and swells, and the woods are bald cypress, water tupelo, overcup oak, and Nuttall oak.

   Towns hereBrickeys, Clarkedale, Crawfordsville, Earle, Edmondson, Gilmore, Helena, Heth, Hughes, Marion, Mellwood, Parkin, Proctor, St. Francis, Turrell, West Helena, West Memphis, and Widener

3. Grand Prairie

   Mississippi Alluvial Plain, Grand Prairie (73e), 15 towns

   Stuttgart, Hazen, DeWitt, and Des Arc sit on a broad terrace of loess that once held Arkansas's largest prairie, about 400,000 acres of tall grass. The land is almost level, and its soils drain slowly to very slowly. Rice is the main crop now, with soybeans, cotton, corn, and wheat. The low hills to the east grew white oak, black oak, and southern red oak, and the drier ridges grew post oak.

   Towns hereAlmyra, Casscoe, Crocketts Bluff, De Valls Bluff, Des Arc, DeWitt, Ethel, Gillett, Hazen, Hickory Plains, Roe, St. Charles, Stuttgart, Tichnor, and Ulm

4. Crowley's Ridge

   Mississippi Valley Loess Plains, Bluff Hills (74a), 3 towns

   Madison, Caldwell, and La Grange sit on Crowley's Ridge, a broken line of loess-capped hills up to 500 feet high that rises out of the flat plain. Its soils drain well and are more loamy than the lowlands around it. It's wooded land and pasture more than cropland, with oak and beech woods, and it's the only place tulip poplar grows wild in Arkansas.

   Towns hereCaldwell, La Grange, and Madison

5. White and Arkansas river bottoms

   Mississippi Alluvial Plain, Western Lowlands Holocene Meander Belts (73f) and Arkansas/Ouachita River Backswamps (73i), 2 towns

   Biscoe sits in the White River's meander belt, which holds some of the largest tracts of native bottomland hardwood forest left on the plain. Humphrey sits in the Arkansas River backswamps, where drainage canals and ditches are common and willow oak and water oak are the native trees.

   Towns hereBiscoe and Humphrey

What the ground changes on your job