OUR PROJECTS

In Louisiana and around the world, the Institute’s team of researchers bring decades of accumulated coastal and water management knowledge to the challenge that face coastal communities, economies, and ecosystems. 

Defining the Environmental Benefits of Dredged Sediments in Benefit-Cost Ratio Calculation

Storms, sea level rise, subsidence, disruptions to sediment supply, and other natural and anthropogenic disturbances are driving coastal erosion, habi...

View Project

FEMA Cooperating Technical Partner (CTP)

With more than 20,000 communities across the country involved in the National Flood Insurance Program, there is a challenge in making sure flood hazar...

View Project

Avian Monitoring

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon explosion resulted in the largest oil spill in United States history discharging millions of barrels of oil into the Gu...

View Project

Mobile, Ala. Resilience Assessment and Plan

Like other coastal cities, Mobile, Alabama is facing unprecedented change from sea-level rise and more frequent and more extreme weather events. To en...

View Project

Enhancement of Seagrass at the Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana

The management team working to restore the Chandeleur Islands must make decisions on project design and monitoring in the face of multiple uncertainti...

View Project

National Offshore Sand Inventory (NOSI) Assets and Application

Over decades of offshore sand exploration, the BOEM MMP and its collaborators and predecessors have invested millions of dollars in identifying and ca...

View Project

Sustainable Sand Stewardship at The Water Institute

Sand and other types of sediment are the building blocks of land, forming the underlying foundation of all communities and ecosystems. Storms, sea lev...

View Project

Lake Borgne Gulf Sturgeon Monitoring and Habitat Characterization

Gulf sturgeon’s range includes areas of the northern Gulf of Mexico including Lake Pontchartrain and the Pearl River system extending east to the Suwa...

View Project

Integrated modeling to answer complex water/land interaction questions

Addressing how water and land interact, particularly when dealing with large-scale and complex systems, is essential for evaluating how projects will ...

View Project

Compound Flooding

The impacts of flooding transcend geospatial boundaries and is the most severe of natural disasters, accounting for billions in damages every year in ...

View Project

Cumulative effects of restoration on barrier islands and shorelines

Evaluation of coastal restoration project outcomes is mostly commonly focused at the project scale, and there are uncertainties and gaps in understand...

View Project

Evaluating Forecasts of Coastal Change

There are several uncertainties in understanding and forecasting the impacts of storms on the barrier islands and coasts of the northern Gulf. For thi...

View Project

Cape Lookout National Seashore Storm Characterization

North Carolina State University (NCSU) led the development of a decision-support framework, the Optimal Preservation (OptiPres) tool, to support NPS i...

View Project

Environmental Data and Model Catalog (EnDMC)

Organizations that commission the development of environmental models face several practical data management challenges: Once models and simulation o...

View Project

Guidance for Coastal Ecosystem Restoration and Monitoring to Create or Improve Bird-Nesting Habitat

The Water Institute was tasked by the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group to develop a guidance that could help answer the question, “How can coast...

View Project

Long-term strategic water sustainability plan

The Capital Area Ground Water Conservation District (CAGWCC) was created by the Louisiana Legislature through Act 678 of 1974 due to concerns in the r...

View Project

Quantifying Blue Carbon in Coastal Louisiana Wetlands for Potential Accreditation

Recent research on coastal wetlands indicates they play an important role in the global carbon cycle and have the potential to be an important compone...

View Project

Gulf Center for Equitable Climate Resilience

Coastal and inland communities along the Gulf are experiencing climate change firsthand in the form of rising seas and more frequent extreme rainfall ...

View Project

Evaluating and communicating stormwater risk in New Orleans

The City of New Orleans faces significant challenges in managing rainfall under current and future conditions. Present-day challenges include an inade...

View Project

Assessing climate-related disturbations and change on phytoplankton community compositions and hypoxia using color remote sensing

Ocean color remote sensing has revolutionized our understanding of coastal ecosystems processes by providing continuous mapping important biogeochemic...

View Project

Developing a harmful algal bloom threat index

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) in estuarine waters are those phytoplankton species that can produce a wide range of deleterious impacts to aquatic ecosys...

View Project

Barrier Island Topographic State: Indicators of Resistance vs Resilience

The LA TIG Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) Strategy has identified a need for barrier island creation, restoration, and maintenance (resilien...

View Project

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Research and Development Strategy

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has a trusted history of developing innovative solutions to the Nation’s toughest engineering challenges. Sin...

View Project

Louisiana FloodID

Louisiana is prone to damaging floods through tropical systems, heavy rainfall, or a combination of the two, known as compound flooding. In 2021, The...

View Project

Enhancing Benefits Evaluation for USACE Water Resources Projects

Currently, the benefit-cost analysis (BCA) places a substantial emphasis on the dollar value of the properties a proposed project would protect. Howev...

View Project

Partnership for Our Working Coast

In 2016, the Greater Lafourche Port Commission (GLPC) formally announced its plans to obtain federal regulatory approval to deepen Belle Pass and the ...

View Project

Advancing Offset-Enabling Technology for Blue Carbon Sequestration

Since the last major freeze event in south Louisiana (1989), black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) have been expanding into the salt marshes typicall...

View Project

City of Jacksonville Resilience Strategy

EVOLVING CHALLENGES REQUIRE NEW APPROACHES Jacksonville is a rapidly growing city. Its vast land area and diverse industries, along with mainstays l...

View Project

Texas General Land Office (GLO) Combined River Basin Flood Studies

The Texas General Land Office (GLO) issued a solicitation to develop a $100 million planning study, consisting of four regionalized studies based on T...

View Project

The Bay Denesse Living Lab

Despite the evident and urgent need for tools and techniques that can be deployed in diversion outfall areas to optimize sediment retention, the issu...

View Project

Lowermost Mississippi River Management Program

The Mississippi River has been traditionally managed under three separate “business lines”: Navigation, flood protection, and ecosystem restoration. A...

View Project

Connecting Local Knowledge and Scientific Understanding

Between 1932 and 2010, Louisiana’s coastal area lost more than 1,800 square mile of land through a variety of means including erosion, subsidence, lac...

View Project

Lower Trophic Level Inventory

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform exploded resulting in the most massive oil spill in American history. As part of the respon...

View Project

Chincoteague Inlet Modeling Study (CIMS)

The region surrounding Chincoteague Inlet and adjacent Chincoteague, Assateague, and Wallops islands is a dynamic system experiencing rapid change ass...

View Project

SmartPort

With grants from The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Agency, the State of Louisiana and other partners, The Water Institute of the ...

View Project

Louisiana Climate Action Plan

Governor John Bel Edwards established the Climate Initiatives Task Force (Task Force) by executive order in August 2020, launching Louisiana’s first-e...

View Project

NOAA Damage Assessment, Remediation and Restoration Program (DARRP)

In June 2019, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries announced a new five-year cooperative agreement with the Institute under t...

View Project

Louisiana Watershed Initiative

Rather than making decisions based on city or parish boundaries, Louisiana recognized that floods are not limited by these artificial lines. As a resu...

View Project

Quilmes-Rio de la Plata Research Project Risk and Resilience in Coastal Louisiana

The city is considering two major projects that will critically impact its future: The development of the coastal fringe and the work along the two “a...

View Project

Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary System Climate Change Adaptation Plan 2020

Coastal land loss in Louisiana, despite the best efforts of scientists, planners, and residents, is expected to continue. According to the State of Lo...

View Project

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Southwestern Division (SWD) Civil Works Strategic Plan

The Institute led a team with partners ILSI/Arcadis to aid the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) Galveston District (SWG) in conducting a Strengths,...

View Project

Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS)

The goal of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) is to improve the health, function, and connectivity of southeastern ecosystems by ...

View Project

Coastal Carbon Sinks

In August 2020, Governor John Bel Edward signed two climate change related executive orders with the first designed to improve coastal resilience by b...

View Project

System-Wide Assessment and Monitoring Program (SWAMP)

Since the early 1990s, a number of project-specific monitoring efforts have been established by state agencies and other entities. Comprehensive monit...

View Project

Louisiana Coastal Neotectonics and Subsidence Expert Panel

The Water Institute of the Gulf assembled an expert panel composed of recognized experts in the fields of neotectonics/subsidence and geomorphic/sedim...

View Project

FEMA Cooperating Technical Partners Special Project: Flood Insurance Public Service Announcements

The Institute is a FEMA Cooperating Technical Partner (CTP) for FEMA Region 6 and the State of Louisiana. The Institute’s CTP Program Management activ...

View Project

Louisiana Barrier Island System Management (BISM): Structured Decision-Making

There has been a multidecadal effort in Louisiana to restore these rapidly degrading barrier islands, which has been effective in preserving and prote...

View Project

Flood Risk Awareness System Development

Probabilistic weather forecasts provided to the public – e.g., a 30% chance of heavy rain showers that will likely causes localized flooding - are dif...

View Project

Louisiana Adaptive Management Status and Improvement Report: Vision and Recommendations

While the idea of using adaptive management as part of coastal restoration work has been around for years, it is complicated to implement. There are m...

View Project

Houston's Resilience Strategy

On Aug. 25, 2017, the Category 4 Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas causing widespread damage and flooding. According to the Harris County Flood ...

View Project

City of Covington: Flood Response Plan Development

In March 2016, heavy rainfall events created severe flash flooding in the city, prompting city leaders to look for a new approach in order to prepare ...

View Project

Dutch Dialogues® Charleston

Situated on a peninsula between two rivers and exposed on a third side to the Atlantic Ocean, Charleston, South Carolina, is increasingly exposed to n...

View Project

Connecting local knowledge and scientific understanding

Between 1932 and 2010, Louisiana’s coastal area lost more than 1,800 square mile of land through a variety of means including erosion, subsidence, lac...

View Project

Coastal Hydrologic Consortium

The Consortium intends to jointly develop, pursue and complete research projects that advance the science, engineering, modelling and understanding of...

View Project

Statewide Water Resources Framework

Louisiana isn’t normally known for a lack of water, but there are several aquifers around the state where demand has highlighted the need for better i...

View Project

Planning for ecosystem-based adaptation in the Pacific island countries

Pacific island countries and territories are highly vulnerable to climate change. In the next few decades, these countries will face increasing threat...

View Project

NWF Barataria Salinity Project

Understanding the historical temporal and spatial patterns of salinity in the Barataria Basin is important not only to better understand and manage th...

View Project

Supporting the Working Coast

Land loss, sea level rise, subsidence, and storms increasingly threaten the economic sustainability of Gulf coastal areas at a time when populations a...

View Project

National Center for EEcological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP) – Coastal Restoration Working Group

Conservation and development challenges around the world are complicated and cross the arbitrary borders between ecological conservation and sustainab...

View Project

RESTORE Act Center of Excellence for Louisiana

In the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Congress passed the Resources and Ecosystem Sustainability, Tourist Opportun...

View Project

The Natural Classroom Project

Bayou Gross Tete-Grand Bayou is impaired for both fish and wildlife propagation – due to problems with amounts of dissolved oxygen, nitrate/nitrite, t...

View Project

Mid-Barataria Engineering Modeling Support

In 2015, The Water Institute of the Gulf developed a basin-wide model for the Louisiana Coastal Area, which was applied to study various scenarios wit...

View Project

Lower Barataria Basin and Lower Breton Sound Sediment Diversion Feasibility Study

Diversion site selection required new in-depth knowledge of the morphodynamic and water constituent transport properties in both the lower river syste...

View Project

Hydrodynamic modeling for the Fritchie Marsh

This project was intended to gain insight into the hydrodynamics of Fritchie Marsh, a wetland system on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain region w...

View Project

“This is your shield…this is your estuary”

Although coastal restoration and protection is sometimes thought to only require technical input, coastal communities around the world also hold valua...

View Project

Looking for blue crab preferences in a changing coastal environment

Despite coastal land loss, Louisiana’s coastline and estuaries support some of the most productive and economically important fisheries in the Gulf of...

View Project

Impact of black mangrove expansion in coastal Louisiana

With fewer winters experiencing extended periods of freezing temperatures, the black mangrove has been expanding in south Louisiana for the past 20 ye...

View Project

Relationships between salinity and short-term soil carbon accumulation rates from marsh types across a landscape in the Mississippi River Delta

Many of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands depend upon the annual cycle of birth and death of plant material to help build up soil height as a way of trying...

View Project

Calcasieu Ship Channel salinity control project

The Calcasieu Ship Channel connects the Gulf of Mexico to the Port of Lake Charles, but it also serves as a conduit for salt water to move into Calcas...

View Project

Identifying how communities respond to disasters

Although there has been good work (see the Louisiana Coastal Atlas) on defining when and where Louisiana’s residents have moved throughout the state o...

View Project

A Louisiana Coastal Atlas: Resources, Economies, and Demographics

Although tropical storms loom large in Louisiana’s history and in dictating population shifts over time, it really only tells a small portion of the s...

View Project

Identifying the vulnerability of critical infrastructure

When storm surge and extreme rainfall events innundate an area of coastal Louisiana, it’s not just homes and businesses that receive damage. Critical ...

View Project

Development and application of a hydrological model in the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge

In 2011, an extended drought in southeastern Texas led to elevated salinity levels in a number of locations throughout the Anahuac National Wildlife R...

View Project

Tracing Amite River sediment in the wake of the August 2016 flood

A heavy rain turned into a deluge in August 2016, ultimately resulting in more than 19 inches of precipitation falling in Baton Rouge and more than 31...

View Project

Finding the right flow

Estuaries, wetlands, and swamps depend upon the constant inflow of fresh water to sustain the ecosystem’s balance of plants and animals as well as pro...

View Project

Transport Thresholds for Fine Sediment in Vegetation

The primary objective of this project was to develop a standardized data collection methodology for monitoring fine sediment transport and retention w...

View Project

Assessing Risk and Resilience in Coastal Louisiana

Existing risk assessment frameworks commonly use engineering approaches to address economic damages. Societal risk information can be quantified and m...

View Project

Finding the Means: Investment and Adaptation in Vulnerable Communities

The study sought to identify the main social tipping point(s) in the implementation and/or funding process for nonstructural residential programs at w...

View Project

Social Return on Investment

The Water Institute team has completed multiple SROIs and each have undergone rigorous third-party review and been accredited through Social Value Int...

View Project

COAST (Coastal Advocacy through Science Training) Program

To support the long-term sustainability of Louisiana’s coast, community and culture, this program was designed to bring together native communities in...

View Project

Environmental Competency Groups and Participatory Modeling

This separation has resulted in planning- and project-level models built solely on technical observation and analysis of natural processes. Despite it...

View Project

Models and Coastal Project Prioritization: The ICM, CLARA, and Planning Tool

The Water Institute worked collaboratively to co-develop the ICM which predicts environmental changes within Louisiana’s delta and chenier plain wetla...

View Project

Louisiana 2017 Coastal Master Plan: Coastal Louisiana Social Vulnerability Index (SVI)

The Water Institute of the Gulf actively supported the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana (CPRA) in bringing the best research ...

View Project

Investigation of Sediment Infilling of Channel Bars in the Lower Mississippi

The Water Institute was tasked by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) to identify, investigate, and summarize the physical process...

View Project