Supersized: Coastwide Scale Wetland Monitoring to Support Large Scale Restoration in America’s Delta

USGS WEBINAR EVENT

Friday’s Findings – Supersized: Coastwide Scale Wetland Monitoring to Support Large Scale Restoration in America’s Delta

Date: July 23, 2021, from 2-2:30 p.m. eastern time

Speaker: Sarai Piazza, Ecologist, USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Summary: Due to human and natural forces, Louisiana has lost approximately 25% of its coastal wetland area since 1932 and experiences greater coastal wetland loss than all other States in the contiguous United States combined (Couvillion et al, 2017). To address this land loss crisis, the State of Louisiana has developed a Master Plan to guide the construction of restoration projects aimed at building and maintaining land and reducing flood risk for 50 years. In 2005, the USGS and the State of Louisiana implemented a comprehensive wetland monitoring program at nearly 400 sites within extensive herbaceous and forested wetlands encompassing much of the area south of Interstate 10. The Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS) was designed as a network of sites to monitor the effectiveness of restoration actions implemented by the Coastal Wetlands, Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA). The CRMS network is routinely used to plan and evaluate large scale restoration projects and support ecosystem scale modeling associated with the Master Plan.