A team of scientists and community experts has released key recommendations to maintain and build land in coastal Louisiana.
Their recommendations focus on operating Mississippi River sediment diversions and consider the needs of communities, wildlife and fisheries.
Seven LSU faculty served on the 12-member Sediment Diversion Operations Expert Working Group, which put forth these recommendations.
LSU faculty lent their expertise in hydrology, oceanography, estuarine ecology, fisheries, wildlife, biogeochemistry, natural resource economics, law and policy.
“Over the past 50 years, Louisiana has lost 20 percent of its wetlands – an area the size of Delaware. People living near the coast depend on the wetlands for their livelihoods. This land loss also affects resident fish and animals, migrating birds and shrimp, crab and oysters that comprise valuable stock for the U.S. seafood industry, ” said John Andrew Nyman, LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources professor and one of the leading scientists in the working group.
“Land loss over the next 50 years will be worse than it needs to be if we don’t manage the river to build new wetlands.”
Key recommendations include: