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USA--Louisiana
Book chapter

USA--Louisiana

K. Meyer-Arendt and D.W. Davis
Artificial Structures and Shorelines, pp.629-640
GeoJournal Library , Volume 10, Kluwer Academic Publishes
1988
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2999-9_65

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Abstract

Louisiana’s 40,000 km2 coastal zone developed over the last 7,000 years by the progradation, aggradation, and accretion of sediments introduced via various courses of the Mississippi River (Frazier 1967). The deltaic plain (32,000 km2), through which the modern river cuts diagonally (Fig. 1), consists of vast wetlands and waterbodies. With elevations ranging from sea level up to 1.5 m, it is interrupted by natural levee ridges which decrease distally until they disappear beneath the marsh surface. The downdrift chenier plain of southwest Louisiana (8,000 km2) consists of marshes, large round-to-oblong lakes, and stranded, oak covered beach ridges known as cheniers (Howe et al. 1935). This landscape is the result of alternating long-term phases of shoreline accretion and erosion that were dependent upon the proximity of an active sediment-laden river, and a low-energy marine environment (Byrne et al. 1959).

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