Combination Of Rising Sea Levels And Subsiding Land Endanger Louisiana Coast

LEEVILLE, LA - AUGUST 25: The Louisiana Highway 1 Bridge, also known as the Gateway to the Gulf Expressway, rises above the marshland and coastal waters on August 25, 2019 in Leeville, Louisiana. The state of Louisiana erected the 19-mile long elevated roadway in 2009 after flooding become a constant issue on old Louisiana Highway 1 during storms and high tides. The new roadway is a critical resource for residents and for the oil and gas industry as it connects the booming Port Fourchon to the rest of the nation. According to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Louisiana's combination of rising waters and sinking land give it one of the highest rates of relative sea level rise on the planet. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost over 2,000 square miles of land and wetlands, an area roughly the size of Delaware. In the past 30 years, as subsidence continues and the effects of climate change increase, Louisiana has been losing its coastal landscape at the rate of almost a football fields worth of land every hour. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)