![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/52\/files\/2018\/09\/new-orleans-wetlands-disappearing.jpg.650x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg\")
<\/a>Where I work in Louisiana, the Mississippi River Delta is facing an ongoing land loss crisis, due to a host of man-made and natural causes that is further exacerbated by the increasing effects of climate change.<\/p>\n
To face this challenge, my Restore the Mississippi River Delta<\/a> coalition colleagues and I, in collaboration with Tulane University, University of New Orleans and The Water Institute of the Gulf, began an effort to improve the future performance of coastal restoration projects. We started by identifying approaches and investment opportunities that support the long-term viability of the ecosystem \u2013 and the communities and industries that depend on it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s our hope that this work will help Louisiana and other coastal areas around the country better plan for the future.<\/p>\n Louisiana\u2019s future without action<\/strong><\/p>\n Louisiana\u2019s 2017 Coastal Master Plan<\/a> is the state\u2019s 50-year, $50-billion blueprint for coastal restoration and protection efforts. Under the plan, projects were selected based on their ability to build land and reduce risk to coastal communities.<\/p>\nWhy coastal communities must plan for the future instead of planning from the past. <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n The goal is to create and sustain as much land as possible in areas where land existed in the past. But the future sustainability of the marsh creation projects were not evaluated for how they might perform as part of a system of synergistic projects.<\/p>\n To help improve this process for the next iteration of the plan, our team of experts is currently reviewing data generated from the plan\u2019s \u201cfuture without action\u201d scenario \u2013 a prediction of what the coast will look like if we do nothing to restore it.<\/p>\n This review will help us determine the causes of land loss in the model simulations, with a focus on when those losses happened and how past and current conditions converge to result in land loss. Factors we are looking at include salinity changes, progressive inundation, storms and increasing sea level rise.<\/p>\n We are applying this approach coast-wide, but we are posing questions at the basin scale as a means of establishing localized patterns and \u201cdiagnosing\u201d predicted land loss. This will help us assess the types of projects that are effective in either restoring or maintaining systems in the future.<\/p>\n Making recommendations to decision makers<\/strong><\/p>\n Following the modeling and analysis, experts have been gathering to review the results and assess synergies, key assumptions and any other relevant information. This will culminate in the identification of improved coastal restoration approaches and projects that have the potential to achieve sustainable restoration in each basin into the future given climate predictions.<\/p>\n The project team will develop a final report documenting details of the project\u2019s conception and development, methods, assumptions and model results. This will be circulated among outside experts, and then it will be submitted to the state\u2019s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority for consideration of project ideas for the next Coastal Master Plan in 2023.<\/p>\n We hope this effort helps other coastal areas improve their restoration and resilience planning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If we\u2019re to continue living in coastal areas, we need a shift from restoration projects that solve past problems to those which address future conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128435,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107017],"tags":[37659,92579,92482,107019,250,107151],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coasts-watersheds","tag-coastal-master-plan","tag-coastal-protection","tag-coastal-protection-and-restoration-authority","tag-coastal-resilience","tag-louisiana","tag-louisiana-coastal-master-plan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9798"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>