Dear colleagues,
Please consider submitting an abstract to the 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting session: "Moving the Mississippi River Delta towards Long-Term Sustainability: Opportunities and Limitations" (https://agu.confex.com/agu/os16/preliminaryview.cgi/Session9322). Submission deadline is in 5 days, the 23rd of September. Three teams selected as finalists for the Mississippi River Delta Design Competition by Changing Course (http://changingcourse.us/team_finalists/) will also be present at the session to demonstrate their bold ideas on Mississippi River Delta restoration. ***Session details*** (Session ID#: 9322): The Mississippi River Delta (MRD) region contributes an estimated $45 billion in revenue annually and has a natural capital asset estimated $1.3 trillion. The existence of the economy and associated jobs are being threatened by the rapid coastal land loss. Solutions to the problems are complicated by many challenges including riverine sediment supply, sea level rise, and maintaining navigation safety, flood control, ecological integrity, energy security, and socioeconomic/cultural assets. Despite a large number of research in the past, fundamental questions remain - Do we have sufficient scientific knowledge about the MRD? What else must we know in order to develop a sustainable solution for saving the sinking coast? How can science and policy work together to support the solution? This session aims at bringing together the endeavors of research and practices on the Mississippi River Delta as a complex dynamical system between the natural and human environments. We encourage submissions reporting results from field, modeling, and synthetic studies concerning river hydrology, sediment transport, sedimentation, coastal wetlands, energy infrastructure, population dynamics, real estate development, and policy making in the vulnerable MRD. We especially encourage presentations that stimulate intellectual discussion and critical thinking pertinent to finding an answer to the above questions. Index Terms: 4217 Coastal processes [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL] 4558 Sediment transport [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL] 4815 Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling [OCEANOGRAPHY: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL] 6349 General or miscellaneous [POLICY SCIENCES] Co-Sponsor(s): B - Biogeochemistry and Nutrients EC - Estuarine and Coastal HI - Human Use and Impacts Primary Chair: Yi-Jun Xu, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, United States; Email: y...@lsu.edu http://www.rnr.lsu.edu/hydrology/people/xu/default.htm Chairs: Nina Lam1, Brian J. Marks1 and Christopher Swarzenski2, (1)Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, United States; (2)United States Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, LA, United States
