re: Did you know that Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf?

quote:

---

Actually, it's not. South Louisiana is a giant tidal delta. As the Mississippi River and its distributaries like the Bayou Lafouche would flood in the spring, they would deposit sediment. As that sediment piles up, the land "rises". However, that sediment is generally pretty wet when it's deposited, so over time, it's volume goes down as water is squeezed out of it by land deposited on top. As long as there were annual floods, the land kept rising. However, after the Army Corps of Engineers levied off the entire river system, the sediment was completely cut off from replinishing the delta. Instead of new soil being added every year, what was there has slowly dried out and shriveled in volume. Couple that with the natural wave action along the coast that is constantly eroding away land, and the fact that nearly all of the Mississippi River's sediment is now being deposited off the continental shelf, and you have a recipe for subsidence no matter what the ocean does.

---