1850 1950), aquatic and estuarine habitats within portions of Coos Bay were chronically degraded by growing urbanization and the cumulative effects of sedimentation, log storage, bark decay, dredging, deposition of dredge spoils, diking, filling, domestic and industrial pollution, commercial mariculture, and by the colonization of estuarine habitats by nonindigenous aquatic species.

In the Nisqually watershed of Washington, development in the 1800s--the diking of large areas of the delta at the mouth of the river at Puget Sound to create fast land for cattle and pig farms--had ruined especially valuable salmon habitat.

Throughout the Mississippi River basin and watershed, whole cities established themselves with the help of government-funded channelization and diking of the river, with adjacent natural flood plains obliterated, reducing the ability of these areas to absorb heavy rains and leading to regular massive flooding.