dike

The decision was largely informed by alarmingly low salmon runs as a result of heavily dammed, diked and channeled streams struggling to maintain healthy flows in the face of droughts and warming summers.

When the river basin was diked and drained for agriculture, the river became rigid and channeled, acting as a firehose for sediment headed downriver from the stream’s upper reaches.

Estuaries — a refuge for growing juvenile salmon — have been diked and drained to create farmland.

In the early 1900s, this land was diked and drained to create farmland.

The delta was once filled with vast tidal marshes but was dramatically altered as wetlands were diked, drained and converted to farmland.