Bayou Meto Basin of Arkansas Potential Natural Vegetation

The Bayou Meto Basin drains most of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley lowlands immediately north and east of the Arkansas River as well as part of the Grand Prairie.  Bayou Meto and Bayou Two Prairie are the only major streams in the basin.  The Bayou Meto Basin is the smallest of the four major basins in the Delta Region of Arkansas, comprising approximately 827,000 acres.

There are three distinct geomorphic surfaces within the Bayou Meto Basin, although all are products of the Arkansas River and all are composed of features typical of meandering rivers, such as point bar, backswamp, natural levee, and abandoned channel deposits.  The lowest and most recent surface is sometimes called the Arkansas Lowlands.  It is made up of Holocene deposits of the Arkansas River, and prior to construction of the modern levee system along that river, the entire area was subject to frequent flooding. Immediately to the west of Stuttgart, on the northern perimeter of the Arkansas Lowland, is a former floodplain area that is now somewhat elevated above the modern floodplain.  This is the Deweyville Terrace, which formed in the Late Pleistocene during a dramatically different climatic period when the flow of the Arkansas River was much greater than it is today.  As a result, the remnant abandoned channel segments on that terrace–oxbow lakes and depressions–are larger than the same types of features found on either younger or older sites in the region.  Still higher in the landscape is the Grand Prairie, a remnant of the Arkansas River floodplain that existed much earlier in the Pleistocene.  Erosion has muted the meander belt features on that terrace, and streams transitioning down to the lowlands have cut small valleys into the escarpment, effectively draining the perimeter of the terrace.  Much of the rest of the area remains flat and the poorly-drained alluvial soils pond sufficient precipitation to support wetland forests and prairie.