Louisiana

The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s Coastal Master Plan is a blueprint for responding to environmental changes. As part of the agency’s continued engagement, USGS supports model developments and improvements for the 2023 Coastal Master Plan.

The goal of the State of Louisiana Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring (BICM) program is to provide long-term data on the barrier islands of Louisiana that could be used to plan, design, evaluate, and maintain current and future barrier-island restoration projects.

Breton Island, located at the southern end of the Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana, is part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) established in 1904 by Theodore Roosevelt. Breton NWR is recognized as a globally important bird habitat because of the resources it provides, and hosts one of Louisiana's largest historical brown pelican nesting colonies. Without actions to restore sand to the...

CRMS uses a multiple reference approach to biological monitoring and uses aspects of hydrogeomorphic functional assessments and probabilistic sampling that address the limited effectiveness of the traditional paired-reference monitoring approach in Louisiana. This approach includes a suite of sites that encompass the range of ecological conditions for each stratum, with projects placed on a...

In response to storms, reduced sediment supply, and sea-level rise, Breton Island is rapidly deteriorating, impacting the available nesting habitat of endangered seabirds. This study provides critical information regarding the physical environment of the island system.

USGS uses weather surveillance radar data and landscape-scale habitat metrics to model bird-habitat connections along the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Coastal wetlands provide valuable ecosystem services such as wave attenuation, surge reduction, carbon sequestration, wastewater treatment, and critical habitats for endangered fish and wildlife species. However, wetland loss threatens the capacity of coastal wetlands to provide these ecosystem services.

The Coastwise Reference Monitoring System was designed to monitor the effectiveness of restoration actions at individual sites, as well as across the entire Louisiana coast.

The federally threatened piping plover relies on sand-beach habitat year-round for nesting, foraging, and roosting, habitat that is particularly vulnerable to loss and degradation from coastal development, recreation activities, erosion, and sea-level rise.

Wetlands are often classified by their vegetation, which can help scientists track how these landscapes change over time. USGS turns to unsupervised artificial neural networks to help guide this classification process.