The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has received a $19.5 million grant from the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council for design and implementation of the final phase of the System Wide Assessment and Monitoring Program under CPRA’s Adaptive Management program.
This is the first Spill Impact Component project grant to be awarded by the RESTORE Council under the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States Act of 2012 (RESTORE Act).
“This is a significant milestone for our Adaptive Management program and will result in comprehensive long-term monitoring across coastal Louisiana,” said CPRA Chairman Johnny Bradberry . “These funds will be put to immediate use to complete the final increment of the SWAMP program from Bayou Lafourche to the Louisiana-Texas border.”
CPRA has developed SWAMP as a long-term monitoring program to ensure a comprehensive network of coastal data collection activities are in place to support the development, implementation, and adaptive management of the coastal protection and restoration program within coastal Louisiana, in addition to monitoring the recovery of coastal resources from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.
The Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS) and Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring (BICM) programs have been incorporated into SWAMP, while other aspects of system dynamics, including sedimentological, geological, geophysical, water quality, vegetative biomass, waves, currents, weather, and climate data, some of which have not traditionally been a part of CPRA’s monitoring strategy, have been designed into SWAMP to fill critical data gaps.