• Water

Environmental Assessment Furthers Louisiana’s Climate Adaptation Goal

• climate adaptation
• diversions
• marshes
• Mississippi River
• New Orleans
• sediment
• wetlands

The Army Corps of Engineers last week released an environmental impact assessment for the nation’s largest climate adaptation plan to date, which would help to restore the Louisiana coastline using money paid by BP as part of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill settlement. 

Why This Matters: The Louisiana coastline is sinking at an alarming rate — a football field an hour. 

• Water

Mississippi River Delta Is In Jeopardy – Undoing Decades of Flood Protection Could Save It

• Delta
• Flooding
• Louisiana Coastal Master Plan
• Mississippi River
• sea level rise
• wetlands

A new study released earlier this summer found that the “marshes in the Mississippi River delta have hit a tipping point.” While the study concluded we are past the tipping point, the lead author Torbjörn Törnqvist told Nola.com that this cannot paralyze us into inaction. One important step towards that would be to build on and execute Louisiana’s 2023 Coastal Master Plan, which builds on a previous plan of the same name.

Why This Matters: Coastal marshes are “among the most valuable ecosystems on the planet” due to their vital contributions to storm protection, nutrient cycling, and more.

• Ocean

Louisiana Marshes May Be A Goner Due To Expected Sea Level Rise

• conservation
• fisheries
• habitat
• Mississippi River
• oil and gas
• sea level rise
• wetlands

A new study in the Journal of Science Advances concludes that the “drowning” of the roughly 15,000 square kilometers of remaining marshland in the Mississippi River Delta of Louisiana is “past the tipping point” and now “probably inevitable,” according to The Washington Post. 

Why This Matters:  Louisiana has already lost one-fourth of the land in the Delta at the beginning of the last century.

• Water

Spring 2019 Floods Were BAD, Midwest Farmers Brace for More in 2020

• farming
• Flooding
• Mississippi River
• Missouri River

This past spring more than 1 million acres of land flooded across five states in the Midwest.

However, now that it’s nearly winter, Midwest farmers are still very much feeling the effects of the floods and are worried about another round of flooding in 2020.

• Ocean

All 21 Beaches in Mississippi Closed Because of Toxic Algae

• algal bloom
• beach closure
• fertilizer
• Mississippi River
• toxic algae

Beachgoers in Mississippi over the long Fourth of July weekend were sorely disappointed — all 21 of the state’s beaches were closed due to a toxic algal bloom that has made the water unsafe for swimming.  The “blue-green” bloom, which has been growing and resulted in beach closures there since June, is caused by the […]

• Ocean

Experts Predict Huge Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico this Summer

• #Cleanwater
• dead zone
• Gulf of Mexico
• hypoxia
• Mississippi River
• nitrogen
• phosphorus
• runoff

Yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its annual prediction of the size of the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic or “dead” zone and it is expected to be nearly 8,000 square miles (roughly the size of the State of Massachusetts) and could rival the largest one ever, which happened in 2017.  This year’s […]