Whether analyzing the carbon capture potential of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands or supporting the development of a conservation blueprint for the northern Gulf of Mexico, the understanding of these complex ecological systems requires an integrated, multidisciplinary approach.

The Water Institute’s coastal ecologists work across a range of geographies and habitats to support both conservation initiatives and coastal restoration initiatives in the southeastern United States. The team works to provide ecosystem assessment and modeling, restoration management, data synthesis, and decision technical support to clients and partners. In doing so, the Water Institute coastal ecologists collaborate with professionals from across the Water Institute to integrate expertise in human dimensions and applied geosciences into their work.

Addressing the complex challenges facing communities within dynamic coastal and deltaic regions requires an understanding of the processes that shape the landscape. With a limited supply of financial and natural resources, it is essential to use science to understand how sediment and water interact in the coastal zone. In addition, it’s vital that these limited resources – whether that’s money or sediment – be optimized in restoration and conservation projects to provide the greatest benefit.

The Water Institute’s geologists and oceanographers provide expertise in applied geosciences to support work such as state coastal restoration initiatives, barrier island nourishment projects, flood management projects, or in the selection of optimal placement of dredged materials for restoration, habitat creation, and community and infrastructure protection.

Increasing threats from rain-induced flooding, coastal land loss, storms, sea level rise, climate change, and subsidence challenge communities, and the economic infrastructure that sustains them, around the world. Communities, industries, and governments face difficult decisions about how to use limited resources to address these challenges for a more stable and resilient future.

The Water Institute is at the forefront on thinking about holistic approaches to community resilience that focus on social needs while considering local and regional infrastructure. These considerations include the vulnerability of facilities that support the workforce, access to critical and essential infrastructure, and examining how changes in ecosystems can affect natural resource-dependent communities and other aspects of social wellbeing.

Our skills in this area include expertise in fostering community engagement to inform decisions, local knowledge mapping, social vulnerability analysis, assessment of social and environmental justice, Social Return on Investment calculations, GIS analysis, effects of a changing coastline on community valued ecosystem functions, and participatory modeling to bring scientists and communities together for a common goal.

Working to better understand the complexity of coastal and deltaic systems involves bringing together the connectivity of how water, sediment, weather, climate, habitat, ecology, and man-made features interact in an ever-changing environment.

Understanding and analyzing these systems in an integrated manner is essential to predicting and anticipating future changes and improving management decisions. Analytical tools and numerical models allow the effects of management actions to be “virtually tested” prior to implementation for a more complete understanding of how human activities influence and interact with natural system dynamics. The future will not be the same as the past, and incorporating the effects of climate change and extreme weather into models can support researchers and managers alike in assessing future system sustainability and the effectiveness of coastal restoration and protection strategies.

The Water Institute develops and applies world-class integrated hydrologic, morphodynamic, and ecosystem numerical tools to understand short- and long-term dynamics of complex riverine, coastal, and deltaic systems. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the Water Institute strives to give decision makers, community leaders, and community residents the information and support they need to make the hard choices to ensure their long-term sustainability.

Climate and environmental changes are creating ever-evolving flood risk challenges for many communities both coastal and inland. The Water Institute uses an interdisciplinary approach to bring communities together for meaningful engagement, run numerical model simulations of potential solutions, and synthesize information from various agencies and sources to create a more complete picture of the challenges. By looking at flood risk challenges through a community, science-based, modeling, and data analysis, the Water Institute team provides a more complete picture of the complex web of circumstances that impact flood risk.

As coastal regions face complex environmental challenges, the Water Institute works to support communities in the need to enhance local resilience. An interdisciplinary approach, which incorporates the expertise of planners, anthropologists, and social scientists, helps to inform a range of resilience support projects conducted by the Water Institute. Informed by community input and through collaboration with partners in nonprofits and at universities, the Water Institute works to bring the best science to communities facing difficult decisions with limited resources.