This photograph, one of three used on the cover of Side Channels: A Collection of Nature Writing and Memoir, shows water from the Illinois River, in the summer of 2007, flowing over a spillway into the south pool of Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge. In the unaltered river system, summer floods would have been rare; low summer water levels, then, would have allowed marsh vegetation to grow on the floodplains. The present system, though, was designed to allow larger floods to connect the south pool and its bottomlands with the river. Such floods during the summer, however, are detrimental to the wetland communities in the refuge because plants may be completely drowned or seed production may be hampered. If this happens, migratory birds later in the year will find less food. If mudflats are flooded over when the shorebirds are migrating, they will fly elsewhere. The spillway also allows non-native Asian carp and common carp to enter the refuge, both of which are undesirable.
Chapters 9, 15, and 18 in Side Channels discuss the Illinois River's hydrological cycle in more detail.
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[Photograph by Thomas V. Lerczak.]