Gulf Coast Demise?: Climate Change, Conservation, and Saving the American Sea

The once formidable Rio Grande Delta has vanished, and unsustainable land loss in south Louisiana will result in the virtual loss of the Mississippi River Delta by 2050. Barrier islands, peninsulas, and chenier plains across the Gulf Coast are experiencing unprecedented erosion; fragile wetlands and seagrass meadows are vanishing rapidly; and the Gulf’s largest estuaries are at a tipping point where their bayhead deltas will experience rapid landward retreat in the next few decades. These alarming trends are a reversal from the coastal stability and growth that occurred during the past few thousand years—a reversal caused mainly by human alterations of natural sediment supply and dispersal systems coupled with a six-fold increase in sea-level rise in historic time.

Meanwhile, warmer surface water temperatures are fueling larger, more powerful hurricanes that rapidly intensify before making landfall. Gulf Coast states have been slow in recognizing the magnitude of this problem and are unprepared to alter these dramatic changes. In Gulf Coast Demise? Climate Change, Conservation, and Saving the American Sea, author John B. Anderson provides both scientific documentation of the ongoing demise of the United States Gulf Coast and a call to action.

JOHN B. ANDERSON is the W. Maurice Ewing Professor of Oceanography Emeritus at Rice University. Anderson and his students have conducted 22 scientific expeditions to Antarctica, and he has authored more than 280 peer-reviewed publications and numerous books, including The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast and Antarctic Marine Geology. Anderson is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and served as president of the Society of Sedimentary Geology, 2003–04. A Houston resident, he also received the 2007 Shepard Award for excellence in Marine Geology.