LSU Researchers: Coastal Restoration Efforts Doomed to Fail

[MountainLaurel]

Even under best-case scenarios for building massive engineering projects to restore Louisiana's dying coastline, the Mississippi River can't possibly feed enough sediment into the marshes to prevent ongoing catastraphic catastrophic land loss, two Louisiana State University geologists conclude in a scientific paper being published today.

The result: The state will lose another 4,054 to 5,212 square miles of coastline by 2100 -- an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

The reason: The Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers today carry only half the sediment they did a century ago -- between 400 million and 500 million tons a year then, compared with just 205 million tons today. The rest is now captured by more than 40,000 dams and reservoirs that have been built on rivers and streams that flow into the main channels.

Yet even if those dams were to be torn down and the river's full sediment load employed in restoration efforts -- a politically impossible scenario -- it would not be enough to turn back the tide of coastal erosion, write authors Michael Blum, a former LSU geologist now working for ExxonMobil Upstream Research Co. in Houston, and LSU geology professor Harry Roberts.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/_timespicayune_projects_on_coa.html

[villager]

1. Another "victory over nature" for homo "sapiens!"

n/t

[MountainLaurel]

4. That's the long and short of it

We've reached the tipping point with the Louisiana coast, and no amount of effort at this point is going to bring back all of the land mass lost to the Gulf.

[lindisfarne]

2. And with rising sea levels, that may not help (although increases will differ in different areas &

not sure of prognosis for gulf coast.

[cloudbase]

3. Goody!

We can pump more money into Army Corps of Engineers water projects.