Rise in Sea Level, Loss of Wet Lands May Account for Unstable Ground in Mississippi Delta

While erosion and wetland loss have become huge problems along Louisiana's coast, the land 30 to 50 feet beneath much of the Mississippi Delta has been very stable for the past 8,000 years, with low to nonexistent subsidence rates. So say geoscientists from Tulane University and Utrecht University in the Netherlands, challenging the notion that subsidence, or sinking of the earth, bears much of the blame for Louisiana's coastal geology problems.

A research team led by Tulane's Torbjörn Törnqvist suggests instead that compaction of the shallowest and most-recently formed delta sediments is the main cause of subsidence in that area.

from the National Science Foundation

from the Geological Society of America