The Giving Delta- A “Systems Approach” To a Consolidated and Sustainable Lower Mississippi River Delta

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hird ◽  
Jeff Shelden ◽  
Tim Denton ◽  
Robert Twilley ◽  
Ioannis Georgiou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mississippi River ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Mississippi River Delta ◽  
Lower Mississippi River

scholarly journals Understanding the Mississippi River Delta as a Coupled Natural-Human System: Research Methods, Challenges, and Prospects

Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Lam ◽  
Y. Xu ◽  
Kam-biu Liu ◽  
David Dismukes ◽  
Margaret Reams ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mississippi River ◽  
Population Change ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Mississippi River Delta ◽  
Land Loss ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Human System ◽  
Lower Mississippi River ◽  
Coastal Resilience

A pressing question facing the Mississippi River Delta (MRD), like many deltaic communities around the world, is: Will the system be sustainable in the future given the threats of sea level rise, land loss, natural disasters, and depleting natural resources? An integrated coastal modeling framework that incorporates both the natural and human components of these communities, and their interactions with both pulse and press stressors, is needed to help improve our understanding of coastal resilience. However, studying the coastal communities using a coupled natural-human system (CNH) approach is difficult. This paper presents a CNH modeling framework to analyze coastal resilience. We first describe such a CNH modeling framework through a case study of the Lower Mississippi River Delta in coastal Louisiana, USA. Persistent land loss and associated population decrease in the study region, a result of interplays between human and natural factors, are a serious threat to the sustainability of the region. Then, the paper describes the methods and findings of three studies on how community resilience of the MRD system is measured, how land loss is modeled using an artificial neural network-cellular automata approach, and how a system dynamic modeling approach is used to simulate population change in the region. The paper concludes by highlighting lessons learned from these studies and suggesting the path forward for analysis of coupled natural-human systems.

NUMERICAL MODELING OF OIL SPILLS IN THE INLAND WATERWAYS OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA

2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (1) ◽  
pp. 887-891 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Danchuk ◽  
C.S. Willson
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Fate And Transport ◽  
Wildlife Habitat ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Mississippi River Delta ◽  
Inland Waterways ◽  
Freshwater Diversions ◽  
Lower Mississippi River

ABSTRACT The demand for fossil fuels is driving the rapid expansion of the petroleum industry'S infrastructure. Louisiana'S wetlands are the most industrialized in the world. The oil industry has infiltrated every part of the Lower Mississippi River Delta (LMRD) from the fixed facilities and transport vessels traveling along inland waterways, the pipelines and canals running through the wetlands, and the offshore platforms along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. An oil spill could seriously damage the coastal wetlands that are already rapidly degrading, pollute the water supply, destroy wildlife habitat, and impact other natural economic and social resources. Additionally, proposed coastal restoration initiatives such as freshwater diversions could provide a conduit for spills to travel from the river to open wetland areas. Current inland oil fate and transport models cannot automatically be applied in the deltaic environment because they do not represent the high degree of minerals and fines in suspension, the unique characteristics of the shorelines, or the potential flow into the wetland areas. Thus, a three- dimensional oil fate and transport model was developed to investigate the behavior of oil spilled in the unique environment of the LMRD, assess the vulnerability at specific locations such as freshwater diversions from the river, and provide information for contingency and remediation plans. Simulations of the hydrodynamics of the LMRD were generated using the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Adaptive Hydraulics (ADH) modeling code. The model simulates the physical and chemical processes affecting the fate of a surface oil spill including slick advection and spreading, the vertical transport of dissolved and emulsified parcels, evaporation, dissolution, adsorption, sedimentation, re-suspension and degradation. The model estimates the distribution of oil in the surface slick, water column, sediments and atmosphere. Almost seventy percent of the Mississippi River'S sediment load is comprised of finer materials. The model is unique in using empirical predictions to describe oil'S interactions with fine suspended material and muddy shorelines. Hypothetical spills representative of the type and location of spills commonly occurring in the region were simulated to investigate the sensitivity of the system to the unique parameters. This model was developed to take advantage of the latest advances in computational fluid dynamics and weathering algorithms, while focusing on the complex hydraulics and sediment characteristics local to the Lower Mississippi River Delta.

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