This article is part of a series about south Louisiana wetlands loss and the BP Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The first article is located here:

• BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster

Today is day 74 of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill disaster.

Have you ever seen a wetland? Have you ever visited one? Been fishing or boating in one? Water skiing in one? I’m guessing probably not, unless you live in South Louisiana or around the Florida Everglades.

Without knowing what a wetland is and what it does, it’s hard to know and understand why wetlands are so vital to Louisiana and America.

This post will show you what wetlands look like, what they are, the incredible biodiversity they contain, and how important wetlands are to the economy of the Gulf of Mexico and storm protection of South Louisiana, New Orleans in particular. Wetlands literally mean life or death for people, communities, tourism, and our fishing, shrimping and crabbing industries.

Please be sure to watch the videos and visit the interactive map or you won’t be able to understand what I’m trying to explain. Words alone don’t do this environmental problem justice. You’ve got to see it.

Introduction and the story in short (4 min.):

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To recap, 1 foot of hurricane storm surge is absorbed by 2.7 square miles of wetlands. Four linear miles of wetlands between two points also absorbs 1 foot of storm surge. A 2.7 square mile area must be the shape of a long, skinny rectangle 4 miles long x 0.68 miles wide. A whole bunch of those rectangles have to be lined up side-by-side to take a storm surge down one foot. Lines of rectangles stacked in rows between the Gulf and the inland areas needing protection take down multiple feet of storm surge, depending on how many rows there are.

As the crow flies, Slidell is about 20 miles north northwest of Chalmette. You can see the difference between the damage Katrina did to both towns, and Chalmette fared far worse.

Barataria Preserve at Jean LaFitte National Park

Rachel Maddow interviews David Muth, chief of planning and resource stewardship at the park, and Dr. Larry McKinney of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christie, Texas. Notice the large diversity of plant life.

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Let’s slow down a moment. Dr. McKinney didn’t go into the process of exactly how wetlands are built or how they are lost. NOLA.com published a series by the Times-Picayune about the disappearing wetlands, and here is a 7-min. audio-slide show presentation and interactive map showing how south Louisiana came to be about 6000 years ago, how the wetlands were built, and maps of what they looked like over 75 years ago, what they look like now, and what is expected by 2020 and 2100 if we don’t do enough to stop the loss.

Be sure to click on each of the black buttons across the top of the map to see how the causes of land loss occur. At the end of the presentation you can click on date buttons and toggle the map between the 1930’s, 2005, and what is expected by 2020. The land loss is extremely clear if you start at 1930 and then click on 2005 and see how much land disappears. Then toggle back to 1930. Visualizing the land loss so clearly demonstrates just how serious the problem is.

The link to the article series is located here: Last Chance

Rachel continues her interview with David Muth and Larry McKinney on a boat out in the bayou.

On top of the other causes of wetland loss, add coating this extremely fragile ecosystem with crude oil.

Depending on how much oil gets into the wetlands, it will at least partially suffocate anything it coats. It will kill the wildlife and the plants to at least some extent. We have to hope we can keep the oil out of the wetlands. If we can’t, we have to hope that’s the worst that will happen and that the wetlands will be resilient and rebuild themselves over time, the parts that aren’t lost to other causes that is.

If oil gets into the marshes and swamps, there is no way to clean it up without doing more harm than the oil itself.

As of today, the oil is being kept out of the estuaries with booming and oil skimming. Oil is getting onto barrier islands, but so far, just around the edges and up on beaches. My next post will cover barrier island impact and preventing oil from getting further into the wetlands. We should also know soon what damage, if any, the higher tides from Hurricane Alex caused.

As Larry McKinney says, if enough oil gets into the estuaries, it could kill the plants all the way down to their roots, and that would spell the beginning of total destruction of the wetlands. It will take a few years to see them all disappear, but the oil killing the vegetation will throw the ecosystem out of balance and start the process of the wetland fauna eating the dying vegetation until it’s gone. All the sediment once anchored by the vegetation would erode into the gulf. The plants are what keep the soils and sediments in place. When the plants disappear, the soils erode quickly.

If (worst case scenario) the wetlands become open water, the habitat for all the animal life will be gone, and so will a very large part of America’s fish and seafood supply. Thousands of people will lose their livelihoods of fishing and tourism, and the inland areas that were once surrounded and protected by the wetlands will be so vulnerable to hurricane storm surges that they may have to be abandoned permanently.

I can’t imagine a world without New Orleans in it, but it may come to pass in my lifetime if we don’t stop the wetland loss and rebuild them back to the way they were before man interfered with nature.

Here is an example of the human encroachment problem:

References:
Photo: Maddow Blog
Video: The Rachel Maddow Show
Interactive map presentation: Last Chance Graphics
Times-Picayune South Louisiana land loss and restoration article series: Last Chance Series

Technorati Tags: David Muth, Importance of Wetlands, Jean LaFitte National Park, Larry McKinney, Louisiana, Louisiana Coastline, New Orleans, Rachel Maddow, Wetlands

Justice delayed has turned out not to be justice denied. On November 18, 2009, the Federal District Court in New Orleans ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for the massive flooding of the 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish from poor maintenance on the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a navigation channel.

Please watch the following short videos about the breaking news:

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Here are the background articles Rachel Maddow refers to in the above show segment:

Time Magazine Article by Michael Grunwald: Hurricane Katrina Two Years Later, Aug. 2, 2007

Michael Grunwald on the hubris of the Army Corps, March 18, 2008; Grist

Corps’ operation of MR-GO doomed homes in St. Bernard, Lower 9th Ward, judge rules; NOLA.com

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Here are some more web links on the issue:

Katrina Canal Breaches Consolidated Litigation

U.S. District Court Eastern District of Louisiana Findings

This is the first article in a series devoted to exploring the history, science, and flood protection in New Orleans. Future articles will explore the geology and environment of wetlands and river deltas, how wetlands protect against hurricanes, the effects of erosion and subsidence, the damage done by humans to destroy the natural protections New Orleans used to have, and what will need to be redesigned and rebuilt to really protect the city from the inevitable next big hurricane.

References:
Special Thanks to The Rachel Maddow Show Video embedding feature and TRMS Link Blog!

Technorati Tags: Army Corps of Engineers, Causes of Katrina Disaster in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, infrastructure failure, Michael Grunwald, Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), MRGO, MSNBC News, Rachel Maddow, St. Bernard Parish

I just ran across an interesting article from 2008 on the Think New Orleans blog entitled Truth Stranger Than Fiction: Army Corps of Engineers Building Levees Out of Newspaper

It’s a fascinating and damning story of “maintenance and repair” of the New Orleans levee system after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I encourage you to read the article. It’s not long and it’s very compelling.

This picture is priceless:

Why is it we wonder how our infrastructure fails? With design and building like this, failure is imminent.

The Army Corps of Engineers had a large amount of responsibility in the flooding of New Orleans and the loss of 1400 lives. The oil and gas industry and residential and commercial construction industries also contributed significantly to damage and loss of barrier islands and wetlands.

But the biggest failure of all is humankind’s lack of understanding of the complex, multifaceted ecosystem of south Louisiana. Many factors converged over time to cause this catastrophic event.

The question is will the city of New Orleans, state of Louisiana, and Federal Government address the root causes of this catastrophe. I’m not holding my breath, but I am hopeful that we the people of Louisiana have had enough and will demand that the root problems will be properly repaired, or even redesigned and rebuilt from scratch if needed.

Technorati Tags: Army Corps of Engineers, Hurricane Katrina Pictures, newspaper as building material