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A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure used to keep the course of rivers from changing and to protect against flooding of the area adjoining the river or coast. It is usually earthen and often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines.Levees can be naturally occurring ridge structures that form next to the bank of a river or be an artificially constructed fill or wall that regulates water levels. However, levees can be bad for the environment. Floodwalls are a more confined alternative. Ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China all built levees. Today, levees can be found around the world, and failures of levees due to erosion or other causes can be major disasters, such as the catastrophic 2005 levee failures in Greater New Orleans that occurred as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Etymology Speakers of American English use the word levee, from the French word levée (from the feminine past participle of the French verb lever, 'to raise'). It originated in New Orleans a few years after the city's founding in 1718 and was later adopted by English speakers. The name derives from the trait of the levee's ridges being raised higher than both the channel and the surrounding floodplains. The modern word dike or dyke most likely derives from the Dutch word dijk, with the construction of dikes well attested as early as the 11th century. The 126-kilometer-long (78 mi) Westfriese Omringdijk, completed by 1250, was formed by connecting existing older dikes. The Roman chronicler Tacitus mentions that the rebellious Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land and to protect their retreat (70 CE). The word dijk originally indicated both the trench and the bank. It closely parallels the English verb to dig.In Anglo-Saxon, the word dic already existed and was pronounced as dick in northern England and as ditch in the south. Similar to Dutch, the English origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank alongside it. This practice has meant that the name may be given to either the excavation or to the bank. Thus Offa's Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench – though it once had raised banks as well. In the English Midlands and East Anglia, and in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south of England, a property-boundary marker or drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a running dike as in Rippingale Running Dike, which leads water from the catchwater drain, Car Dyke, to the South Forty Foot Drain in Lincolnshire (TF1427). The Weir Dike is a soak dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen, Lincolnshire. In the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, a dyke may be a drainage ditch or a narrow artificial channel off a river or broad for access or mooring, some longer dykes being named, e.g., Candle Dyke.In parts of Britain, particularly Scotland and Northern England, a dyke may be a field wall, generally made with dry stone. Uses The main purpose of artificial levees is to prevent flooding of the adjoining countryside and to slow natural course changes in a waterway to provide reliable shipping lanes for maritime commerce over time; they also confine the flow of the river, resulting in higher and faster water flow. Levees can be mainly found along the sea, where dunes are not strong enough, along rivers for protection against high floods, along lakes or along polders. Furthermore, levees have been built for the purpose of impoldering, or as a boundary for an inundation area. The latter can be a controlled inundation by the military or a measure to prevent inundation of a larger area surrounded by levees. Levees have also been built as field boundaries and as military defences. More on this type of levee can be found in the article on dry-stone walls. Levees can be permanent earthworks or emergency constructions (often of sandbags) built hastily in a flood emergency. Some of the earliest levees were constructed by the Indus Valley civilization (in Pakistan and North India from c. 2600 BCE) on which the agrarian life of the Harappan peoples depended. Levees were also constructed over 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, where a system of levees was built along the left bank of the River Nile for more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), stretching from modern Aswan to the Nile Delta on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Mesopotamian civilizations and ancient China also built large levee systems. Because a levee is only as strong as its weakest point, the height and standards of construction have to be consistent along its length. Some authorities have argued that this requires a strong governing authority to guide the work and may have been a catalyst for the development of systems of governance in early civilizations. However, others point to evidence of large-scale water-control earthen works such as canals and/or levees dating from before King Scorpion in Predynastic Egypt, during which governance was far less centralized. Another example of a historical levee that protected the growing city-state of Mēxihco-Tenōchtitlan and the neighboring city of Tlatelōlco, was constructed during the early 1400s, under the supervision of the tlahtoani of the altepetl Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl. Its function was to separate the brackish waters of Lake Texcoco (ideal for the agricultural technique Chināmitls) from the fresh potable water supplied to the settlements. However, after the Europeans destroyed Tenochtitlan, the levee was also destroyed and flooding became a major problem, which resulted in the majority of The Lake being drained in the 17th century. Levees are usually built by piling earth on a cleared, level surface. Broad at the base, they taper to a level top, where temporary embankments or sandbags can be placed. Because flood discharge intensity increases in levees on both river banks, and because silt deposits raise the level of riverbeds, planning and auxiliary measures are vital. Sections are often set back from the river to form a wider channel, and flood valley basins are divided by multiple levees to prevent a single breach from flooding a large area. A levee made from stones laid in horizontal rows with a bed of thin turf between each of them is known as a spetchel. Artificial levees require substantial engineering. Their surface must be protected from erosion, so they are planted with vegetation such as Bermuda grass in order to bind the earth together. On the land side of high levees, a low terrace of earth known as a banquette is usually added as another anti-erosion measure. On the river side, erosion from strong waves or currents presents an even greater threat to the integrity of the levee. The effects of erosion are countered by planting suitable vegetation or installing stones, boulders, weighted matting, or concrete rev.... Discover the Justin Dike popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Justin Dike books.

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  • How to Draw Giant Robots With Adobe Flash synopsis, comments

    How to Draw Giant Robots With Adobe Flash

    Justin Dike

    Learn how to draw realistic robots with professional illustrator and instructor, Justin Dike. This book contains over 10 hours of video tutorials, teaching vector illustration usin...

  • The Mows synopsis, comments

    The Mows

    Jay Dyke

    From 2003 to 2008, over thirteenhundred Mows comic strips were posted online. The fictional (sometimes notsofictional) adventures of three sibling cats and their neighbor were writ...

  • IOS Game Programming With Xcode and Cocos2d synopsis, comments

    IOS Game Programming With Xcode and Cocos2d

    Justin Dike

    Professional instructor, Justin Dike teaches iOS game programming with Xcode and Cocos2d v2. Learn with HD images, interactive galleries, video examples, and color coded examples. ...

  • Story Tellers iOS Starter Kit Setup Guide synopsis, comments

    Story Tellers iOS Starter Kit Setup Guide

    Justin Dike

    Learn how to setup a highly interactive "Story Book" style iOS Application. Your book can include animation, interaction, sounds, special FX like particle systems and tons of fun f...

  • How to Fake Great Animation synopsis, comments

    How to Fake Great Animation

    Justin Dike

    Professional instructor and owner of Cartoon Smart, Justin Dike, teaches how to fake great animation using Adobe Flash. What exactly is "fake" animation? It's what we are terming a...

  • IOS Game Programming with Xcode and Cocos2d synopsis, comments

    IOS Game Programming with Xcode and Cocos2d

    Justin Dike

    Professional instructor, Justin Dike teaches iOS game programming with Xcode and Cocos2d v2. Learn with HD images, interactive galleries, video examples, and color coded examples. ...