Mississippi Delta: Chapter G in Emergent wetlands status and trends in the northern Gulf of Mexico: 1950-2010

The Mississippi River Delta, the tip of the longest river in North America, is located in the coastal plains of southeastern Louisiana. The study area included in the Mississippi River Delta vignette of southeastern Louisiana follows the Mississippi River southward from Port Sulphur within the modern Plaquemines-Balize Delta lobe (Figure 1). It extends eastward through Long Bay into California Bay and then encapsulates most of the land to the east of the river; it extends south into Lake Washington and Lake Robinson, then to the Gulf of Mexico, and includes the land to the west of the river. All of this area is within Plaquemines Parish. The mouth of the Mississippi includes four subdeltas (West Bay, Cubit’s Gap, Baptiste Collette, and Garden Island Bay) which began formation between 1839 and 1891 (Coleman and others, 1998). As of 2010, the total land area from Venice, LA to the gulf was 357.50 square km (138.03 square miles) and had ranged from 208.08 square km (80.34 square miles) to 393.70 square km (152.01 square miles) since 1973 (Couvillion and others, 2011).