Combination Of Rising Sea Levels And Subsiding Land Endanger Louisiana Coast

TERREBONNE PARISH, LA - AUGUST 28: A dead alligator is pulled into the boat after being hunted in bayou waters in Terrebonne Parish near Houma, Louisiana on August 28, 2019. Wednesday is the first day of Louisiana's alligator hunting season, which runs for only 30 days. 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)