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In the wake of Hurricane Katrina,
it is clear that flooding, storm
damage and loss of life in Mississippi
and Louisiana could have been
less severe. Decades of damage
to wetlands in the region had
damaged the natural storm buffering
capacity of barrier islands and local ecosystems.
Earth Economics is working
with a team of scientists from
Louisiana and around the nation
to research Hurricane Katrina
using tools from ecological
economics.
- New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will be more vulnerable to hurricanes with warmer Gulf of Mexico waters, sea level rise and subsidence. This threatens the ecosystems, communities, economy and lives of people in coastal Louisiana.
- If the fresh water and sediment of the Mississippi River were diverted back into the wetlands they would clearly expand and provide storm buffering.
- Earth Economics is examining the dollar value of storm protection, carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services provided by the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta.
- Protection and restoration of wetlands with smaller levees is more economically efficient in providing hurricane protection than levee construction alone.
Click
an image to enlarge the view
Click
here to view an image of
Hurricane Katrina from a NASA
satellite.
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