Coastal zone management

Increasing sea levels have the potential to place important portions of the infrastructure we rely on every day at risk. The transportation infrastructure relies on roads, airports, and seaports to move people, services, and goods around in an ever connected global economy. Any disturbances of the transportation modes have reverberating effects throughout the entire economic spectrum. The effects include delays, alterations of routes, and possible changes in the origin and destinations of services and goods. The purpose of this project is to develop an improved methodology for a sea level rise scenario vulnerability assessment model. This new model uses the groundwater elevation as a limiting factor for soil storage capacity in determining previously underestimated areas of vulnerability. The hope is that early identification of vulnerability will allow planners and government officials an opportunity to identify and either remediate or create alternative solutions for vulnerable land areas before high consequence impacts are felt.

The submerged paleodrainage system of the early Balize delta complex that extended onto the inner continental shelf at 1500 YBP has not been completely studied in great detail. This study interprets the environmental deltaic facies of the Balize Delta, in the Sandy Point region offshore the southeastern Louisiana coast from 120 km of seismic data and 48 vibracores. The stratigraphic and environmental units established in this study provide a geological framework for this area. Overlying Holocene deposits interpreted to be muds of prodelta and lower delta front origin were interpreted as having been deposited from the retreating delta sit atop a transgressive surface, indicated by the toplapping seismic reflectors, the ravinement surface. The deltaic facies below the ravinement surface are of regressive origin an inner shelf delta with widespread delta front sheet sands from a dense group of many distributaries. This research provides a concise methodology adapted from multiple studies for modeling deltaic facies of offshore sand resource targets.