Linking the historic 2011 Mississippi River flood to coastal wetland sedimentation

Nature Geoscience

Volumn 5, Issue 11, 2012, Pages 803-807

  Falcini, Federico ^a,b,c   Khan, Nicole S ^a   Macelloni, Leonardo ^d   Horton, Benjamin P ^a   Lutken, Carol B ^d   Mckee, Karen L ^e   Santoleri, Rosalia ^b   Colella, Simone ^b   Li, Chunyan ^f   Volpe, Gianluca ^b   D'emidio, Marco ^d   Salusti, Alessandro ^a,g   Jerolmack, Douglas J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

^b CNR   (Italy)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI   (United States)

^e NATIONAL WETLANDS RESEARCH CENTER   (United States)

^f LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^g ROMA TRE UNIVERSITY   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COASTAL WETLAND; DELTAIC SEDIMENTATION; HISTORICAL RECORD; HYDRODYNAMICS; MOMENTUM; RIVER DISCHARGE; SATELLITE DATA; SHORELINE;

ATCHAFALAYA BASIN; LOUISIANA; MISSISSIPPI RIVER; UNITED STATES;

EID: 84868585642     PISSN: 17520894     EISSN: 17520908     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1615     Document Type: Review

References (58)

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30. Couvillion, B. R. et al. US Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3164, scale 1:265,000, 12 p. pamphlet (2011).
31. Day, J. W. et al. Restoration of the Mississippi Delta: Lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Science 315, 1679-1684 (2007).
32. Kim, W. et al. Is it feasible to build new land in the Mississippi River Delta? Eos Trans. AGU 90, 373-374 (2009).
33. Paola, C. et al. Natural processes in delta restoration: Application to the Mississippi Delta. Annu. Rev. Mar. Sci. 3, 67-91 (2011).
34. http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/bcarre/floodfight.asp. 6. Blum, M. D. & Roberts, H. H. Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise. Nature Geosci. 2, 488-491 (2009).
35. Kearney, M. S., Riter, J. C. A. & Turner, R. E. Freshwater river diversions for marsh restoration in Louisiana: Twenty-six years of changing vegetative cover and marsh area. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L16405 (2011).
36. Falcini, F. & Jerolmack, D. J. A potential vorticity theory for the formation of elongate channels in river deltas and lakes. J. Geophys. Res. 115, F04038 (2010).
37. Batker, D. et al. Gaining Ground-Wetlands, Hurricanes and the Economy: The Value of Restoring the Mississippi River Delta (Earth Economics Tacoma, WA, 2010). Available at http://www.eartheconomics.org/FileLibrary/file/Reports/ Louisiana/Earth-Economics-Report-on-the-Mississippi-River-Delta-compressed.pdf.\
38. Törnqvist, T. E. et al. Mississippi Delta subsidence primarily caused by compaction of Holocene strata. Nature Geosci. 1, 173-176 (2008).
39. Kirwan, M. L. & Murray, A. B. A coupled geomorphic and ecological model of tidal marsh evolution. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 6118-6122 (2007).
40. Kirwan, M. L. et al. Limits on adaptability of coastal marshes to rising sea level. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, 1-5 (2010).
41. Donoghue, J. Sea level history of the northern Gulf of Mexico coast and sea level rise scenarios for the near future. Climatic Change 107, 17-33 (2011).
42. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana Louisiana's Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana. Baton Rouge, LA (2012); available at http://www.coastalmasterplan.louisiana.gov/2012-master-plan/final-master-plan/.
43. http://la.water.usgs.gov/MississippiRiverFlood2011.html#.
44. Hu, C. et al. Mississippi River water in the Florida Straits and in the Gulf Stream off Georgia in summer 2004. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L14606 (2005).
45. Shi, W. & Wang, M. Satellite observations of flood-driven Mississippi River plume in the spring of 2008. Geophys. Res. Lett 36, L07607 (2009).
46. Peckham, S. D. A new method for estimating suspended sediment concentrations and deposition rates from satellite imagery based on the physics of plumes. Comput. Geosci. 34, 1198-1222 (2008).
47. Walker, N. D., Rouse, L. J. Jr, Fargion, G. S. & Biggs, D. C. The Great Flood of summer 1993: Mississippi River discharge studied. Eos Trans. AGU 75, 414-415 (1994).
48. Schiller, R. V., Kourafalou, V. H., Hogan, P. J. & Walker, N. D. The dynamics of the Mississippi River plume: impact of topography, wind and offshore forcing on the fate of plume waters. J. Geophys. Res. 116, C06029 (2011).
49. Round, F. E., Crawford, R. M. & Mann, D. G. The Diatoms, Biology And Morphology of the Genera 747 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
50. White, J. R. et al. Mississippi River flood of 2008: Observations of a large freshwater diversion on physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of a shallow estuarine lake. Environ. Sci. Technol. 43, 5599-5604 (2009).
51. Bagnold, R. An approach to the sediment transport problem from general physics. US Geol. Surv. Prof. Paper 422-I (1966).
52. Bignami, F. et al. On the dynamics of surface cold filaments in the Mediterranean Sea. J. Mar. Res. 74, 429-442 (2008).
53. Narimousa, S., Maxworthy, T. & Spedding, G. R. Experiments on the structure and dynamics of forced, quasi-two-dimensional turbulence. J. Fluid Mech. 223, 113-133 (1991).
54. Stern, M. E. & Austin, J. Entrainment of shelf water by a bifurcating continental boundary current. J. Phys. Oceanogr. 25, 3118-3131 (1995).
55. Wood, R. B. & McIntyre, M. E. A general theorem on angular-momentum changes due to potential vorticity mixing and on potential-energy changes due to buoyancy mixing. J. Atmos. Sci. 67, 1261-1274 (2010).
56. Dritschel, D. G. & Scott, R. K. Jet sharpening by turbulent mixing. Phil. Trans.R. Soc. A 369, 754-770 (2011).
57. Nittrouer, J. A. et al. Mitigating land loss in coastal Louisiana by controlled diversion of Mississippi River sand. Nature Geosci. 5, 534-537 (2012).
58. Day, J. W. et al. Vegetation death and rapid loss of surface elevation in two contrasting Mississippi delta salt marshes: The role of sedimentation, autocompaction and sea-level rise. Ecol. Eng. 37, 229-240 (2011).