Projects - The Water Institute

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.

Advancing Coastal Resilience Through Public-Private Partnerships in Walton County, FL

Like many coastal areas along the Gulf of Mexico, northwest Florida has been experiencing flooding exacerbated by sea level rise, as well as tropical ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Working along the Mississippi River

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Community Resilience Center at The Water Institute

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

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Louisiana Coastal Master Plans

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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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 li...

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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...

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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...

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Lowermost Mississippi River Management Program

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

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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...

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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...

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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...

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SmartPort

Safe and efficient navigation on the Mississippi River is vital to the U.S. economy and the movement of goods. Louisiana’s five ports on the Lower Mis...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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,...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Institute researchers author five journal articles in special issue of Shore and Beach journal “Deepwater Horizon 10 years later”

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 ...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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Coastal Hydrologic Consortium

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

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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“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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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