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Mapping Coastal Wetland Change in Louisiana's Gulf Coast
Citation:
Lin, J. T., J. CHRISTENSEN, AND R. D. LOPEZ. Mapping Coastal Wetland Change in Louisiana's Gulf Coast . Presented at 5th International Workshop on the Analysis of Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Images, Groton, CT, July 27 - 30, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
Poster Presentation
Description:
Tidal wetlands and estuaries carry out several specific and unique ecosystem functions, which provide humans with goods and services that contribute to their wellbeing. In areas of natural adjacent land cover, tidal marshes can incrementally move inland as sea levels gradually rise, resulting in no net loss. However, tidal marshes abut human-developed areas are unable to expand/develop further inland and wetlands acreage is lost. Anthropogenic coastal areas can also result in the loss of wetlands through infilling, dredging, and increasing erosion rates due to boat traffic. Analyses of change from the 1970’s through present are performed using Landsat satellite MSS, TM, and ETM data from each decade with coverage of the Louisiana’s gulf coast. NOAA C-CAP database are also used to aid the identification of tidal wetland and estuary classes of coastal Louisiana. These images and the database would determine the percent change in wetlands and estuaries for this time period. Large changes in wetland and adjacent land cover/use, including urbanization and agricultural development, would be an important component in the determination of change since the 1970’s. Finer scale analysis using airborne multispectral/hyperspectral data would be used to map details of the adjacent land cover/use. Selected wetlands along several biophysical gradients would then be investigated to determine correlations between land cover/use and wetland quality. Initial findings showed a significant decrease in size of coastal wetland since the 1970’s. Increased risk or vulnerability of coastal areas to storm surge can be further explored using these historical analyses of wetland change and land cover change of areas adjacent to coastal wetlands as wetlands are often cited as capable of reducing storm surges. Empirical data for storm surge reduction are few, and may be dependent on the magnitude of the storm. Hurricane-storm surge models explored the difference in storm surge height if the same storm were to hit a portion of the Louisiana coast in 1950, (largest extent of wetlands) versus 1990 and 2020 (based on current trends of wetland loss).