louisiana's delta region is a national
resource providing much of this country
shrimp and other fish products as well
as oil and natural gas
but many of the wetlands which serve as
spawning grounds for its major fish
crops are rapidly disappearing
what makes the situation even more
striking is that other parts of this
same shoreline are actually growing
it's this dual set of circumstances that
has caught the attention of geologists
doug rickman from nasa's stennis space
center and louisiana state university's
oscar hugh
their focus today is a part of the coast
where mud is accumulating and forming
new land
the mud is sediment from rivers which
flow into the gulf but why it's washing
ashore in certain areas and not in
others is not well understood
that's why hue also leads expeditions
into the gulf itself the ocean floor in
this area is essentially a broad
featureless plane of sediment deposited
by the echapolaya river a major branch
of the mississippi
using a variety of techniques hugh and
his colleagues map the muddy bottom to
determine the patterns by which sediment
moves and land is gained to manage this
environment we must understand how it
naturally operates levying has gone on
uh there are locks in the control
structures going on some of these have
been very valuable and others have had
very serious negative consequences and
as these environments change as land is
lost or land is gained or
land erosion takes place
it has a serious effect on the economy
here
this scanner called cams at the nasa
stennis center provides another
perspective on the problem when
installed on the learjet and flown over
the study site cams produces imagery
which with doug rickman's expertise
clearly shows a growing delta at the
mouth of the atchafalaya
the yellow areas are exposed mud flats
the image on the top is from march 1987
below it is the same area less than a
year later
as rickman illustrates with this
geologic map of the state sediment-rich
waters from the mississippi being
channeled down the atchafalaya are
helping form this new delta
the problem to the east near new orleans
is that old delta regions levied off
from the mississippi to prevent flooding
are dying
the goal is to reverse this trend or at
least prevent further damage by better
understanding sediment transport once we
can understand that then we can tell
people if you do this kind of action if
you put a levee here if you'd like this
or if you divert the water here
this is the impact you're going to have
this information could have applications
in other coastal areas around the world
and provide an important model for
dealing with rising sea levels should
global warming occur
studying louisiana's delta
nasa and lsu teaming up to preserve an
important national resource