Combination Of Rising Sea Levels And Subsiding Land Endanger Louisiana Coast

BURAS, LA - AUGUST 22: With the Mississippi River to the far left and the Gulf of Mexico to the far right, an aerial view shows a successful terracing project (bottom right) that converted what was previously open water into new marshlands near Fort St. Philip on August 22, 2019 in Buras, Louisiana. 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 relative sea level rise on the planet. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost over 2,000 square miles of land, an area roughly the size of Delaware. In the past 30 years, Louisiana has been losing land at the rate of almost a football fields worth of land every hour. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)