High Water, Low Land

South Louisiana is sinking, says Tulane geoscientist Torbjörn Törnqvist, but rapidly rising sea levels might be a bigger threat to the region. Törnqvist's study of marsh peat samples from an area near New Iberia, La., was published in a recent edition of Eos, the world's most widely read geoscience periodical.

"The emphasis in the whole debate over the past couple of years about the future of coastal Louisiana has been strongly focused on the question of how rapidly the land is sinking, but there has been too little concern about sea-level rise, which is a global problem that could have a big impact here. I think we should be more worried about that than we are," says Törnqvist

from Tulane Daily News