As we watch the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the body count rises, Hurricane Rita is churning its away across the region posing yet another threat to New Orleans and the Gulf coastal region.
The loss of coastal wetlands and the lack of infrastructure investment in the New Orleans levee systems, combined with a catastrophic hurricane, brought to reality the nightmare scenario many had feared for years.
This month, Earthscape highlights publications which show the extensive human effort made in research, planning, engineering, budgeting, policy making, lobbying and education, in the hopes of preventing this human, environmental and economic tragedy.
About 1,900 square miles of wetlands have disappeared from the New Orleans area since the 1930s, and the receding continues at a rate of about 24 square miles per year. The erosion has a direct impact on New Orleans' ability to absorb the blow of a storm like Katrina. For every 2.7 miles of wetlands, storm surges are reduced by about one foot.
- Sidney Coffee, executive assistant to Louisiana governor for coastal activities
From the Earthscape Archives
A Wetlands Climate Change Impact Assessment for the Metropolitan East Coast Region
Coast 2050: Toward a Sustainable Coastal Louisiana
Sea-level Rise & Global Climate Change: A Review of Impacts to U.S. Coasts
Educational Resources
NOW with Bill Moyers broadcast this comprehensive report on the Disappearing Mississippi Delta; New content added in the wake of Katrina.
"Create-a-cane" activity - set the weather variables to create a hurricane.
"Move-a-cane" activity - position high and low weather fronts to aim a hurricane in different directions.
Wetlands Reading list for Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12
The Young Scientist's Introduction to Wetlands - US Army Corps of Engineers
What's new:
A "Hot Tower" Above the Eye Can Make Hurricanes Stronger
The West Gulf Coastal Plain Ecoregional Conservation Plan
NASA Predicts More Tropical Rain in a Warmer World
Earthscape Welcomes Three New Contributors:
Renewable Energy Policy Project
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
NASA - Life on Earth
Policy
Papers and Conferences
U.S. Climate Change Science Program
Research
Papers and Conferences
NASA: The Digital Earth Vision
- A "Hot Tower" Above the Eye Can Make Hurricanes Stronger
- NASA Predicts More Tropical Rain in a Warmer World
- Satellites Act as Thermometers in Space, Show Earth has a Fever
- Nasa Data Shows Hurricanes Help Plants Bloom in "Ocean Deserts"
- Scientists Confirm Earth's Energy Is Out of Balance
- Scientists Get a Real
- NASA Offers a Real-Time 3-D Look at the Inside of Hurricanes
- Sea Ice May Be on Increase in the Antarctic: A Phenomenon Due to a Lot of 'Hot Air'?
- NASA/NOAA Announce Major Weather Forecasting Advancement
- Introduction to TRMM
- A Climatology of Recent Extreme Weather and Climate Events
- The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
- Tropical Cyclone Report
- 2005 Hurricane Season Outlook
- NOAA: August 2005 Update to Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook
United States Geological Survey Center for Science Policy
- National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Future Sea-Level Rise
- Sea-level Rise and Coastal Forests on the Gulf of Mexico
- Coastal-Change and Glaciological Maps of the Antarctic Peninsula
- The Sea-Floor Mapping Facility at the U.S. Geological Survey Woods Hole Field Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
- Vulnerability of U.S. National Parks to Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Change
- An Overview of Coastal Land Loss: With Emphasis on the Southeastern United States
- National Assessment of Shoreline Change: Part 1 Historical Shoreline Changes and Associated Coastal Land Loss Along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico
- Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World
- Coastal Louisiana
Journals