Assessing Resilience and Sustainability of the Mississippi River Delta as a Coupled Natural-Human System

Abstract

This book contains 14 articles selected from a special issue on the assessment of resilience and sustainability of the Mississippi River Delta as a coupled natural-human system. This effort is supported in part by a U. S. National Science Foundation grant. The goal of this book is to present some of the recent advances in research and research methodologies, major discoveries, and new understanding of the Mississippi River Delta, which represents one of the most challenging cases in finding the pathways for coastal resilience and sustainability because of the complexity of environmental and socioeconomic interactions. The articles are contributed by 39 researchers and they studied the deltaic system from five aspects including 1) riverine processes and sediment availability, 2) sediment deposition and land creation, 3) wetland loss, saltwater intrusion, and subsidence, 4) community resilience and planning, and 5) review and synthesis. As editors, by reviewing and putting these papers together, we have realized a major challenge in conducting an interdisciplinary assessment of resilience: How to identify a “Common Threshold” from different scientific disciplines for a highly nature-human intertwined river delta system? For instance, the threshold for sustaining a river delta in the view of physical sciences is different from that of social sciences. Such a common threshold would be a radical change and/or a collapse of a coupled natural-human delta system if nothing can be or will be done. Identifying the common threshold would help guide assessment and evaluation of the resilience of a CNH system as well as the feasibility and willingness of protecting the system’s resilience. We hope this book will be a first step toward inspiring researchers from different disciplines to work closely together to solve real problems in sustaining precious river delta ecosystems across the globe.

Strategies for a resilient, sustainable, and equitable Mississippi River basin

“…Over time, a plethora of strategies and plans have been conceived to fulfill various managerial goals and objectives pertaining to the Mississippi River basin. These have been documented by numerous researchers and organizations such as Mitsch et al (2001); the US Army Corps of Engineers (2008); the National Research Council (2012); Niebling et al (2014); Xu et al (2018); Gonzalez and Kuzma (2020); Ahlering et al (2020), Kim and Marcouiller (2021); Reed et al (2021); and US Environmental Protection Agency (2022).…”

Improving ecosystem health in highly altered river basins: a generalized framework and its application to the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin

“…Within the Lower Mississippi River Basin, the former river floodplain-the Mississippi Alluvial Valley-has been transformed by large-scale levee creation for river transportation and flood control (Munoz et al, 2018), and by the replacement of almost 8.1 million hectares of floodplain forest by agricultural production, the latter supported by large-scale groundwater withdrawals (Yasarer et al, 2020). In the lowermost MARB, the Delta region has been transformed by a combination of coastal erosion, land subsidence, global sea-level rise, oil and gas extraction, and re-engineering of river channels (Xu et al, 2018).…”

River Sand Characterization for Its Use in Concrete: A Revue

“…It is worth noting that the use of river sand in concrete production is a contentious issue in some regions, particularly in Southeast Asia, where rapid urbanization has led to a significant increase in demand for sand [15]. The high demand for sand has led to unsustainable mining practices, causing environmental degradation, and social conflicts in some areas.…”