Subsidence

Geologic proxies may shed light on long-term environmental trends and stability of the Louisiana coastal marsh. The combined processes of accretion, sea-level rise and subsidence influence wetland elevation and determine marsh stability.

Quantifying changes in morphology and sediment distribution over short time scales will demonstrate how geologic variability influences medium-term barrier island response and near-term barrier island trajectories and help to refine sedimentological boundary conditions for morphologic evolution models.

A combination of geophysics, sediment sampling, and chronology techniques are used to characterize the regional geomorphologic response of coastal systems to environmental changes.