LUMCON: Louisiana's University-Based Solution to its Coastal Science Concerns

By Paul C. Focazio, Web Content Manager, New York Sea Grant

On the final day of the New York State Marine Education Association (NYSMEA) and New York Sea Grant (NYSG)-led restoration and wetlands trip in southern Louisiana, our educators (pictured in (2) below) and students from Massachusetts' Brandeis University toured the facilities at LUMCON, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. LUMCON was established in 1979 by an act of the Louisiana Legislature to coordinate and stimulate marine research and education in the state. The Consortium's base of operations is at the W.J. DeFelice Marine Center (pictured in (1) above) in Cocodrie, which lies within the expansive wetlands of the Mississippi River deltaic plan between the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers. The Marine Center offers coastal field and laboratory space to researchers, educators, students and public groups.

"We're here to increase society's awareness of the environmental, economic and cultural value of Louisiana's coastal and marine environments," said Dr. Nancy Rabalias, LUMCON's Executive Director. LUMCON accomplishes this by (1) conducting research and education programs directly relevant to Louisiana's needs in marine science and (2) serving as a facility for all of the state's schools interested in marine research and education.

One of the many other hats Rabalias wears is as Chair of the National Sea Grant Advisory Board, which is comprised of 15 members, all with diverse backgrounds in marine affairs. This board advises the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Secretary of Commerce, the undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere, and the director of the National Sea Grant College Program on scientific and administrative policy.


LUMCON owns and operates two research vessels - the R/V Pelican, a 115-foot University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) vessel used for oceanographic research in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and Western Atlantic, and the R/V Acadiana, a 58-foot vessel used for short trips offshore and extended cruises in coastal bays, rivers and estuaries.

The R/V Pelican (a model of which is pictured in (3) below) was named in honor of the Louisiana state symbol, the brown pelican, as well as two earlier vessels of the same name. In addition to these research vessels, LUMCON also has a fleet of small boats for use by researchers and educators in nearshore waters.



LUMCON's marine education program raises awareness about coastal Louisiana through programs tailored for K-12, university, teacher and public audiences. K-12 students engage in field and laboratory activities. The youngest of these "scientists-in-training" help identify species first-hand and draw them on LUMCON's "Wall of Organisms," as pictured in (4) - (5) below. University students can earn credit at Louisiana colleges for courses and internships completed at LUMCON. Teachers can take part in programs to better understand the scientific process, learn marine and coastal science and gain confidence in active learning methods. As for the general public, groups of 10 or more people can request a guided tour and may also schedule an educational cruise or overnight activity session.





The Consortium's educators highlight the research conducted by its scientists and relate the importance of their work toward developing a better understanding of the environment. About a half dozen resident marine scientists and their research teams focus on themes such as: river/ocean interactions, coastal productivity, processes influencing coastal change, human and industrial environmental impacts, and living resources. Some "hot topics" include harmful algal blooms and the influence of oil and gas platforms on the expansion of corals in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

LUMCON's environmental monitoring system (see related research posters (6) - (7) below) collects and provides real-time and long-term environmental data to a broad community of scientists, educators and the public. Stations at the Marine Center, off-shore, and in local bays, estuaries and the Mississippi River record wind speed and direction, precipitation, water height, air and water temperature, salinity, oxygen, nutrients and other data. LUMCON posts current environmental data at weather.lumcon.edu. This Web site also displays current weather conditions at the Marine Center as recorded through two cameras located in the observation tower.





In addition to providing stellar views of the natural environment surrounding LUMCON's facilities (see pictures (8) - (10) below), the observation tower serves as an educational outpost, filled with informative panels on everything from Louisiana's changing wetlands, salt marshes and industries to its cultural influences and resident and migratory species. Also featured is a history of the Marine Center, which once suffered from water levels of almost seven feet due to storm surge associated with 1992's Hurricane Andrew. Even though the eye of Andrew hit landfall in a sparsely settled area just west of Cocodrie, storm damages reached a total of $2.5 billion, with widespread destruction in the area's Terrebonne parish.







Another issue being addressed at LUMCON is hypoxia, or low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water (see related map in (11) below). It's an issue that our educators were reminded is rather common, also occurring in parts of Long Island Sound (LIS) and other waters back home in New York (as illustrated in (12) - (13) below).



During the summer, surface water heats up and forms a distinct layer "floating" over the bottom water, which is denser due to greater salinity and cooler temperatures. The layers lead to a sharp density gradient that restricts the oxygen-rich surface waters from mixing with bottom waters. At the same time, nutrients, particularly nitrogen, fuel the overgrowth of planktonic algae. As the algae and the microscopic animals that feed on the algae die and sink to the bottom, they are consumed by bacteria, which also take up oxygen in the process. A significant loss of oxygen in the bottom waters results in hypoxia, a condition that impairs the feeding, growth and reproduction of aquatic life.




For more information on hypoxia in Long Island Sound, check out these resources: "LIS Water Quality: Hypoxia" and "LIS Environmental Indicators: Frequency of Hypoxia"


One of LUMCON's current researchers is Alex Kolker (pictured at right in (14) below), a coastal geologist focusing on wetlands loss. Kolker is a former Sea Grant scholar who once worked under Stony Brook University marine geologist Steven Goodbred and fellow investigator Kirk Cochran. Kolker presented his findings on the disappearing marshes of New York City's Jamaica Bay at a March 2004 symposium (see NYSG's Summer 2004 story, "Are Marshes Losing Ground?").

Last October, a NYSG co-sponsored follow-up symposium, "State of the Bay: Past, Present and Future—Revisited," was held at Brooklyn College. There was much discussion amongst scientists in attendance at this event about what could be done to restore the bay's salt marshes, which are being lost at a rate of 44 acres per year. For more, see NYSG's related news item, "NYSG partners with the National Park Service and other organizations to revisit Jamaica Bay's restoration issues" (click here).

Educators Learn the Value of Southern Louisiana's Maritime Forest Ridges

By Paul C. Focazio, Web Content Manager, New York Sea Grant

"Healthy wetlands support our fisheries, our industry, and our communities,” said Mel Landry (pictured in (1) above), sitting on a boat heading to Port Fourchon's Maritime Forest Ridge from the mainland's marina. “By restoring habitat, we are preserving an engine of job-creation and economic growth.”

Landry, a Marine Habitat Resource Specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Restoration Center, joined up with the educators on the New York State Marine Education Association (NYSMEA) and New York Sea Grant (NYSG)-led plant restoration and wetlands education trip during their final days in the region in late February around Port Fourchon, Louisiana's southernmost port.

This sea port shows significant petroleum industry traffic from offshore Gulf oil platforms and drilling rigs as well as the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port pipeline. With primary service markets in domestic deepwater oil and gas exploration, drilling, and production in the Gulf of Mexico, Fourchon has earned the tagline "The Gulf's Energy Connection" for several reasons: (a) it has over 600 oil platforms within a 40-mile radius, (b) it's port currently services over 90% of the Gulf's deepwater oil production, and (c) this area furnishes 16-18% of the U.S. oil supply.

In addition to being noted as an economic asset for its abundance of fossil fuels, Port Fourchon is also home to some unique environmental projects. For over 10 years, the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) has partnered with the Greater Lafourche Port Commission and other organizations for a plant re-establishment effort on a maritime ridge located just offshore from the Port Fourchon Marina. Ridges such as this one are extremely important to many animals, including the millions of migrating birds that cross the Gulf of Mexico in the spring each year on their way back to their breeding grounds in the eastern United States and Canada.



Landry, a former BTNEP Public Involvement Coordinator, was accompanied by several current BTNEP staff for this habitat restoration trip, including their Plant Materials Coordinator Matt Benoit (pictured in (2) above)

"We'd like to establish a maritime forest here [on the ridge, pictured in (3) below]," said Benoit. If successful, BTNEP and its partners will help to minimize the impacts of strong storms, including wetlands loss, among other issues. These efforts don't come without their own set of challenges, though.

"We're trying to determine which species will thrive on the ridge, the ones that will do best giving the high salinity in this environment," says Benoit. BTNEP works through this process via a volunteer program where numerous groups, including ours, pitch in each year.



During our group's first effort with BTNEP in February 2011, the educators planted nearly 800 salt matrimony vine tree/shrubs on this rather vegetatively-bare ridge. These small, native evergreens have a high success rate in most soils and are also tolerant of salt spray and drought conditions. Other plants found on the ridge, including marsh hay, bitter panicum and Spartina patens, exhibit similar endurance qualities.

While most of last year's overall plantings didn't survive on the ridge due to severe drought conditions in the area, ours made it through. This year, with the help of about a dozen students from Massachusetts' Brandeis University, we planted 480 plants, including hagberry, salt matrimony vine, live oak and sand oak.



Prior to this year's planting, the educators and students unloaded the boats, which were filled with numerous racks of the various plant species (pictured in (4)-(5) above). Benoit then showed the educators and students how to prepare and plant the different species (as shown in (6)-(10) below). After holes were drilled deep enough to support the roots, the plant's soil needed some loosening up before placing it in the ground. Dirt filled in around the plant was mixed with a growing agent (such as gypsum, bag asse or a fertilizer tablet) or, in some cases, nothing (to serve as a control in the study), depending on the plant's location in the test plots laid out on the ridge (as shown in (11) - (15) below).













In order to document the success of this and other BTNEP plantings on the ridge, baseline data was gathered once all the plants were in place in the various test plots (as shown in (16)-(20) below). This information - which includes statistics on height, leaf spread and stem width - will be used as a measure of growth and survival after the plants are in the ground for a year.





"If we get a steady rain this year, maybe 20 percent of these plants will survive," said Benoit. And, though the soils on the sparsely-growing maritime forest ridge (pictured in (21) below) aren't yet optimal for large-scale survival, BTNEP staff and volunteers are making strides through this project to find the right combination of factors needed to combat the area's range of issues.



Following the planting with BTNEP on this ridge, the educators returned back to mainland and headed to Grand Isle, a barrier island in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish located at the mouth of Barataria Bay where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. On the Isle is a good example of what they helped work towards in Port Fourchon - a more robust and, hopefully one day, full maritime forest ridge.

Throughout its history, Grand Isle has been repeatedly pummeled by hurricanes. On average, Grand Isle has been affected by tropical storms or hurricanes every 2.68 years since 1877, with hurricane direct hits on average every 7.88 years.

In 1860, a 6-foot storm surge and great winds resulted in the total devastation of the island. More recently, 2005's Hurricane Katrina hit Grand Isle very hard, destroying or damaging homes and camps along the entire island. Katrina's surge reached 5 ft at Grand Isle, with large waves severely damaging the only bridge linking Grand Isle to the mainland.



The Nature Conservancy's Jean Landry took our educators on a tour of the 20 acres of undeveloped land that comprises Grand Isle's Landry Le Blanc Tract (pictured in (22) above and (23)-(24) below). "There are no other undeveloped lands on this Isle like this anymore," she said.





There are many old trees in this maritime forest ridge, some well over 100 - 500 years old (such as the one pictured in (25) below). "They're seen a lot of weather changes," says Landry. They also serve as shelter for animals and filter salt water that comes through from the Gulf during storm events.

One of the challenges facing the Nature Conservancy in this more mature maritime forest ridge is the removal of plant invasive species. The Chinese tallow tree was introduced as an ornamental tree about 150 years ago because of its colorful and shades well. But, it spreads a great deal of seeds, leading to it being quite pervasive and out-competing the area's native species. Potato vine and lantana, the latter bearing bright orange and yellow flowers (as seen in (26) below), are two other key invasives that the Nature Conservancy is working diligently to remove.

In Louisiana, Trip a Lesson in Wetlands Recovery for New York Educators

The New York Marine Education Association and New York Sea Grant's 2012 trip to the Louisiana coast made the paper yesterday (Sunday, March 18). Check out the article, "In Louisiana trip a lesson in wetlands recovery," in Newsday - see pdf of article (click here) or text version below. Newsday is one of the most popular suburban daily papers in the country, with most current circulation numbers for its Sunday paper set at around 671,820 print subscribers.

In Louisiana, trip a lesson in wetlands recovery
Newsday / March 17, 2012 by TED PHILLIPS

Educators who spent Presidents Week restoring Louisiana wetlands are bringing that knowledge back to Long Island, to work with local groups to organize wetland preservation and restoration projects here.

"What's going on there is really dire because the wetlands are being lost so quickly, but it's going on here, too," said Meghan Marrero, president of the New York State Marine Education Association, a nonprofit that promotes marine education and research and co-organized the trip.

Marrero said many people do not realize how much of Long Island, Brooklyn and Queens used to be marshes and how much we rely on what's left. "We're really trying to bring the wetlands back to what they once were because they're really important to catching pollution and preventing flooding," Marrero said.

The New York Sea Grant, a joint federal and state program run by Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and Cornell University, was the other organizer.

The U.S. loses about 60,000 acres of wetlands each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Construction, dredging, pollution and farming are major causes. Hurricanes, such as Katrina, and other natural causes, can also be factors.

Fourteen educators, mostly from Long Island and the New York City area, traveled last month to New Orleans and a federal conservation center in Galliano. Together, the volunteers planted more than 1,700 plants, and they potted grasses and other vegetation for eventual planting.

"It was a good opportunity for them to see the problem down there to really become inspired to do work up here," said Larissa Graham, outreach coordinator for the Long Island Sound Study at the New York Sea Grant. Some volunteer projects that are likely to be organized on Long Island include planting native species in wetlands and pulling up invasive species, she said.

Elizabeth Platt, a science teacher at Smithtown High School West who went on the trip, said she wants to involve her students in a project to restore the tidal flow in Sunken Meadow State Park. "When they see how much effort it takes to try to restore something, that makes us more sensitive to disturbing things in the first place; and to be more concerned about protecting it," Platt said.

New York Educators Help Restore Threatened Coastal Habitats in Louisiana and at Home

Louisiana’s wetlands are being lost at an alarming rate—approximately one football field of wetlands is lost every 38 minutes due to the canals that have been dug for oil transportation, the floodwaters that have ripped through the area during hurricanes, and the damming and channelization of the Mississippi which used to supply sediment to replenish these vital areas. If these rates continue, an additional 800,000 acres of wetlands will disappear by 2040, and the Louisiana shoreline will advance inland as much as 33 miles in some areas.

Similar concerns over wetland loss are mirrored in New York wetlands such as Jamaica Bay, a 39-square-mile estuary that includes portions of Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island's Nassau County. During the "State of the Bay: Past, Present and Future—Revisited" symposium, a New York Sea Grant (NYSG) co-sponsored event held at Brooklyn College this past fall, scientists discussed restoration plans for the bay's salt marshes, which are being lost at a rate of 44 acres per year.

To learn about wetland loss in Louisiana and how it relates to the habitat loss occurring in New York, a group of fourteen educators traveled to Louisiana for five days late last month to rebuild habitats devastated by recent natural and man-made events. The group was organized and led by Larissa Graham, New York Sea Grant’s Long Island Sound Study (LISS) Outreach Coordinator and Meghan Marrero, the President of New York State Marine Education Association (NYSMEA) and faculty at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY.

In addition to providing crucial resources to the nation, wetlands are extremely important in an ecological sense as they serve as feeding, breeding, and nursery grounds for thousands of native animals. "Healthy wetlands support our fisheries, our industry, and our communities,” said Mel Landry, Marine Habitat Resource Specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Restoration Center. “By restoring habitat, we are preserving an engine of job-creation and economic growth.”

To rebuild wetland habitats in Louisiana, the group of educators volunteered at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service Golden Meadow Plant Materials Center in Galliano where they planted more than 1,700 gulf bluestem plants, harvested seeds, and prepped planting materials. They also worked with Louisiana Sea Grant at the Wetland Plant Center in New Orleans to pot native wetland vegetation which will be planted at various wetlands around Southern Louisiana.

Working with the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, the group planted nearly 500 live oak, sand oak, and hackberry trees on a restored ridge re-created from dredged sediments that were excavated during dredging in Port Fourchon. With this and future plantings, this ridge will one day become a mature maritime forest—a crucial habitat that provides food and shelter for birds during their migration routes.

While they worked, participants learned from local experts about the natural history of Louisiana’s wetlands and the natural and man-made processes that affect them today. Marrero and Graham hope that this trip will motivate these educators to protect and restore their New York coastline.

Similar to Louisiana, New York struggles with many of the topics that the educators learned about during their restoration trip. Marrero and Graham taught the group about wetland loss and current restoration projects in Jamaica Bay and Long Island Sound, and other issues such as problems with hypoxia, or a level of low dissolved oxygen, that occurs in both the Gulf of Mexico and Long Island Sound. They provided science-based information, highlighting much of the research that has been funded by NYSG and LISS.

“Our expectation is that these educators will see how the environmental problems effecting Louisiana are also very real here, at home, and will use what they have learned during this trip to become stewards of our New York coastline,” said Graham.

As part of the follow-up to the trip, each participant will lead a restoration project of their own over the next few months in their New York neighborhoods. Educators will involve community members and their students in invasive species removal, beach cleanups, plantings, and other projects with local environmental groups.

The group also hopes to educate others about habitat loss and other environmental problems by giving presentations to their classes and community groups and by encouraging people to visit this blog, which tells of their adventures, lessons learned, and inspirational experiences during and after the trip. Additional blog posts documenting the trip will be added throughout this month.

“NYSMEA’s goal is for our members to be stewards of the marine environment, and to ‘pay it forward’,” said Marrero, “Our students and the public will benefit from what we’ve learned in Louisiana, and engage in stewardship projects closer to home, where the environment also needs our help.”

To learn more about wetland loss along the Louisiana coast, visit www.btnep.org or gulfseagrant.tamu.edu/oilspill/index.htm.

Restoration Efforts in the City with a Ring Around It

By Paul C. Focazio, Web Content Manager, New York Sea GrantThe greater New Orleans area is a melting pot of complex issues that often overlap and sometimes conflict. We've seen the impact that major hurricanes (like those in the 2005 season, Katrina and Rita) have had on the area, which are only heightened because of accelerated wetlands loss. According to data from partners of the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act initiative, "If nothing more is done to stop this land loss, Louisiana could potentially lose approximately 700 additional square miles of land, or an area about equal to the size of the greater Washington D.C.-Baltimore area, in the next 50 years."

Overall, these wetlands serve a vital purpose, both as physical habitat and nursery grounds for a wide variety of marine organisms as well as storm buffers by reducing wind and wave action in shallow shoreline areas. But, over the years, their presence in the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary System (BTES) has declined, mostly due to subsidence, a complex process in which marsh sediments compact and sink under their own weight. Historically, annual floods over the banks of the Mississippi River provided freshwater and sediment inputs to BTES marshes and kept them above water. But, the levees that have been constructed to protect shoreline communities from these floods are also preventing water and sediment from reaching BTES marshes.

Over time, the process of subsidence drowns coastal marshes, causing chemical changes in wetland soils which, eventually, kill marsh vegetation. Without plant roots to hold it together, marsh soil breaks up and is carried away by wave action. The end result? Marsh is converted to open water. This additional volume of water causes an increase in the tidal prism, forcing passes to enlarge and reducing the lengths of barrier islands such as Grand Isle, which protect interior marshes from wave action and hurricanes.



"From hurricane flooding to wetlands loss and subsidence, these are complex issues that we're facing as a city," says Caitlin Reilly [pictured above in (1) with an educator from our NYSMEA / NYSG trip]. Reilly, a Sea Grant extension specialist at Louisiana State University (LSU), led the group during a morning of plant propagation and re-potting at the Pelican Greenhouses and Wetland Plant Center [pictured below in (2)] in City Park, New Orleans, LA.

Before beginning their work at the Center, the educators [pictured below in (3)] asked Reilly a series of questions that are likely on the minds of people outside of the area ...

"Why should I care?" ... "A lot of the area's natural resources are in peril," says Reilly, citing oil at the top of that list. One-quarter of all of the U.S.’s crude oil comes from the Gulf. And, Louisiana relies on oil for more than just the day-to-day luxuries of life. One out of every 13 Louisianans work on the drilling and production platforms off the coast. So, without the drilling off the Gulf a lot of people would be out of a job. New York Sea Grant's Long Island Sound Study specialist Larissa Graham discusses the facts, figures and concerns comprising this 'big picture' issue in her February 2011 blog post, "The Louisiana Coast: Oil spills and more."

"So how do we teach sustainability when our economy doesn't dictate it?," one educator asked, using how the oil industry drives the local economy as an example. "Show all sides of the issue and let the students decide for themselves," says NYSG's Graham. "It's something we haven't figured out how to incorporate into our economies," adds Reilly, "but we're going to have to as issues related to and the effects of climate change play a greater part in situations affecting millions of people."

"What can I do at home, focusing on my habitats, to make a difference?," the educators asked. "People are largely unaware of the resources here," says Reilly, "so it's hard to understand what, if anything should be restored." She encourages people to learn more about the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act and decide for themselves.

The other big question on the minds of the educators was something they said they don't hear much, if anything about, in the news anymore: the oil spill. As we're all aware now, on April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded, flooding the surrounding waters with crude oil. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil were estimated to have flowed into the Gulf before it was completely sealed in September 2010. During the cleanup process, 6.8 million liters of soap-like dispersant were used at depth and surface levels to break up the oil. The Deepwater Horizon incident was the largest oil spill to date—in the world.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions," says Reilly, such as the level and effects of the dispersant used, the distribution of oil in the water column, how much oil either evaporated from or was consumed by microbes in the waters of this warm climate. "Compared to all the other issues we're dealing with, the impacts seem relatively negligible at this point," she says, "though large-scale systemic implications may arise down the road."

Like many people in the country, the educators wondered how the seafood industry has been faring through all of this. According to February 2012 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Fisheries Service, Gulf seafood is safe to eat since 2010's Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill. The report was published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and outlines the steps that federal and state experts used to safeguard seafood safety. The report, co-authored by Gina Ylitalo of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and others from NOAA and the Food and Drug Administration, shows that the public can be confident about the seafood they eat, solely based on the integrity of the science process. For more on the report, see NOAA Fisheries Service's related news release, "Study: Seafood Safe After Deepwater Horizon."


While at the Pelican Greenhouses and Wetland Plant Center [see pictures (4) - (5)], the educators propagated some 612 plantings of bitter panicum, one of a variety of commonly used more salt-tolerant plant species used in and around New Orleans restoration sites [see pictures (6) - (9)].

“We have a lot of salinity issues in this part of the country, so we’re always trying to figure out what will stay in place once we get it in there,” says Reilly.

Other plant species include Gulf bluestem, bullrush, oyster grass and Spartina patens (marsh hay), the latter of which the group also helped to re-pot in larger planters for a future restoration effort [see pictures (10) - (16)]. All weeds were removed from each Spartina plant, as the plants do not compete well once planted. Also, the plants were re-potted using a mixture of mostly sand with some mulch and peat moss.









Following their time at the Center, the educators took a tour around the greater New Orleans area to get a better sense of why restoration efforts are so important in this region. At the heart of discussions was the newly-constructed ring around the city.

In June 2011, a $14 billion effort was completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that put a 350-mile ring of levees, 20-foot flood walls, gates and pumps around the greater New Orleans area to defend against the effects of a severe storm. The comprehensive system - outlined in the map below - is a marked improvement from the patchwork of levees and walls that were breached during Hurricane Katrina. This map also features some of the key areas the educators visited, including the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge (A), Bayou Bienvennue (B), the French Quarter (C), the Lower 9th Ward (D) and one of the system's southernmost flood walls (E). For a larger view of this map, click here.



During the tour, the educators discussed with Reilly some of the problems facing the region. They began at Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge [as seen in pictures (17) - (19), its muds cracked from recent rains after a long spell of severe droughts in southern Louisiana]. Established in 1990, Bayou Sauvage encompasses approximately 25,000 acres in New Orleans. It is the largest urban wildlife refuge in the country and one of the last remaining marsh areas adjacent to Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne.

Lake Pontchartrain is part of the area’s estuary system north of New Orleans, which also includes Lakes Borgne and Saint Catherine. These spots, along with the eastern side of the city of New Orleans, are where much of the storm surge swept into New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

“New Orleans is in a bowl, so the [Mississippi] River is actually where the high ground is,” says Reilly. “So, when Katrina was happening, you could actually still walk along the River. They called it ‘The Isle of Denial” or ‘The Sliver By the River.’ There are also some ridges near the bayou that are high ground that didn’t flood.”

Historically, it was flooding from the Mississippi River that was the issue of concern. But, with all the modifications to the River’s hydrology in the last 100 years, “it’s changed to where we don’t have as much protection against hurricane storm surges,” says Reilly.

In the French Quarter, you might have seen some short-term flooding of rainwater. But, all of that went down really fast. “The real problems came from sitting water over time,” says Reilly. “So, there was minimal damage to the French Quarter and right along the [Mississippi] River. It was in the areas closer to where the levees breached throughout southeast Louisiana and Mississippi that the main thrust of damage occurred.”



Hurricane flooding in the modern era has been contributed to largely by die-offs of areas like the Cyprus Triangle, near the Ninth Ward, which is located in the easternmost downriver portion of the city of New Orleans. Such locales, including Bayou Bienvenue [as seen in (20), below] never recovered after the opening of the Mississippi River limited sediment transport to keep plants and grasses in place. This move also prevented freshwater from flushing out the land after flooding from severe storms like 1965’s Hurricane Betsy, which left considerable salt staining. All this has caused not only more flooding, but sinking as well.

“This land has been sliced and diced, with nothing to help build the land back up,” says Reilly. “So, there are a good number of dedicated dredging and restoration projects that continue to this day to help combat these issues.”

Adding additional stress to already troubled areas such as the former cyprus forests of Bayou Bienvenue are non-native species such as nutria, a semi-aquatic rodent introduced from South America that has literally eaten up Louisiana's coastline [as seen in (21), below, which was taken during the first NYSMEA/NYSG tour of this area in February 2011].

Nutria live in fresh, intermediate, and brackish marshes and wetlands and feed on vegetation that is vital to the area's coastline. Their "eat-outs" create opening in the marsh vegetation, and, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, they are currently affecting an estimated 100,000 acres of coastal wetlands. With Louisiana's coastal wetlands converting to open water at an annual rate of 25-35 square miles, nutria are an additional burden to an already stressed ecosystem.







One of the areas in the New Orleans area hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, which set down in late August 2005 [(22, above], was the Lower 9th Ward. As seen in the diagram above, damage to the Lower 9th Ward was extensive - pre-Katrina houses noted in red, post-Katrina houses in black. With sustained winds of 130 miles per hour in New Orleans, this area accounted for 1,000 of the 1,836 total fatalities and more than 4,000 homes destroyed. And, with estimated damages in 2006 totaled $84 billion, some much needed help has continued to come in the form from Make It Right Foundation and Common Ground Relief, among others.



The educators visited one of the southernmost 20-foot flood walls [(23), above] from The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently-completed comprehensive system of levees, flood walls, gates and pumps around the greater New Orleans area. Another flood wall can seen around the Lower 9th Ward [see in the distance in (24), below]





During our visit to the Lower 9th Ward, we came across a mixture of damaged or abandoned homes [(26), below], empty house plots and homes currently under construction [(27), below]. NYSG's Larissa Graham, one of this year's tour facilitators, had a personal connection to the area's rebuilding, having traveled to New Orleans with a group of students from Virginia Tech in 2006, some six months after Hurricane Katrina. Graham was then a graduate student volunteering with Common Ground Collective. Here, in her words, is the work she took part in at a church on Egania Street [see (25), above].

"In Tyvex suits and respirators, we spent four days removing debris from the church and gutting it. The pastor would stop in on us every now and then and bring us Gatorade and water to thank us for our hard work. Once we were finished, the Common Ground staff that were with us said that there was termite damage and they weren't sure if the church would be saved. So, you can imagine why it brought tears to my eyes when I saw that it was reopened. The men rebuilding the house next door said that the pastor had just left for the day - seeing him would have been the icing on the cake. The rebuilding in the area has taken years and still has a long way to go. Although it's just one, little piece, it's nice to know that our hard work wasn't wasted."



Now, we're heading further south for a habitat restoration planting at the Port Fourchon Maritime Forest Ridge and a return visit to a very unique mature maritime forest on Louisiana's Grand Isle.