A vast swath of the coastal lands around New Orleans will be underwater in 90 years because of rising sea levels due to climate change, according to a study published this week in Nature Geoscience. The new report suggests that up to 13,500 square kilometers — an area the size of Connecticut — could be lost to the sea, which is much greater than earlier estimates. The findings suggest that some hard decisions will have to be made about how best to protect coastal areas under threat from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and an expected increase in hurricane intensity.
Hurricane Katrina started the ball rolling in 2005 by seriously reducing the land mass of the barrier island chain sheltering New Orleans, and that loss of protection is much greater than expected. Rising waters and thousands of dams are also affecting the Mississippi’s ability to bear sediment downstream, and that too is weakening the region’s natural defenses. Up to 24 billion tons of sediment would be required to shore up the coastline, and that’s just outside the realm of possibility.
“I think every geologist that has worked on this problem realises the future does not look very bright unless we can come up with some innovative ways to get that sediment in the right spot,” said Professor Harry Roberts, one of the study’s co-authors. “For managers and people who are squarely in the restoration business, this is going to force them to make some very hard decisions about which areas to save and which areas you can’t save.”
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* Le Grand Dérangement of 1755 sent many of my Acadian forebears to Louisiana.
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