Impacts of water level fluctuations, land area change, and demographic change in the Gulf of Mexico

[mbjones]

Author: Alexander S. Kolker Topics: Sea level change, human demography, economics

Summary of synthesis

This group data synthesis project will examine the impacts of water level fluctuations, land area change, and demographic change in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past ~70 years, the northern Gulf of Mexico has witnessed major environmental changes, including high rates of relative sea level rise along the Louisiana and Texas coasts, which have contributed to land loss in these areas. At the same time, there have been major demographic changes in the northern Gulf, including large population increases - particularly in Florida and Texas, and population declines in large areas of coastal Louisiana. During this time period, there has also been episodes of intense energy production in coastal Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, while drilling has been absent in coastal Florida.

Data needs

This proposed project will look at the interactions between these environmental, demographic, and economic changes. To examine water level changes, it will use data from tide, and river gauges- which is collected by agencies such as NOAA, the USGS, the US Army Corps of Engineers, as well as state-level environmental agencies. Data on land-area change will come from agencies such as the USGS and state agencies that monitor this. (These data come from outputs from aerial photographs and satellite images- given the time constraints of this course we will only use data that have already been processed.) Data on oil production will come from natural resources agencies, and demographic data will come from the US Census.

Analysis

In this analysis, we will look for spatial correlations between the environmental, economic (production) and demographic data. This analysis will look at where and when increases and decreases in hydrocarbon production lead to increases or decreases in populations. Additionally, this project will examine how changes in water level (either short-term storm driven or long-term climatically or subsidence driven) leads to changes in population. This will largely be done using open source GIS software, such as QGIS, and analytical tools such as Python and R.

Impact

Ultimately, this research will advance the Gulf Research Program’s goal of understanding how the human and environmental spheres interact in the Gulf of Mexico- particularly with regards to energy production. This work will help highlight human communities that are particularly sensitive (either beneficially or negatively) to changes in water level or energy production.

[Yassin22]

Your proposal should provide valuable information in terms of understanding how human activities would impact the environment. In the proposal you attributed land loss in coastal areas to sea level rise. There are other factors that could contribute to land loss, such as building hydraulic structures (e.g. canals) in coastal wetlands. Is this something you were planning to include in your evaluation? Mississippi Office of Geology studied similar issues years ago. Here is a link to what they reported - https://geology.deq.ms.gov/coastal/

[kdorans]

I also think this is a good proposal. I wondered whether you have thought about ways to perhaps account for (or adjust for) other factors that might lead to population change, such as fluctuations in other coastal economies (like fishing, tourism) and fluctuations in job availability in regions near, but not on, the coast? (For example, if there are more jobs available a few hours from the coast, perhaps people will start to move there?). I thought you would also be interested in this book, which addresses many of the issues you discuss: http://lsupress.org/books/detail/louisiana-coastal-atlas/

[vdtobias]

I like that this proposal makes the connection between water levels and human factors such as demography and economics. I think this paper could make connections that are important from both an ecological perspective and a social science perspective. I'm thinking about it from the ecological perspective, but it seems like this could be a timely paper for broader discussions as well.

[pvarelag]

This project is very interesting and could provide important contributions to the understanding of human-nature interactions. To add on Yassin22's comment, part of the land loss across the GoM coast is also influenced by sediment starvation given the installation of multiple dams (most of them within the past 70 years referenced on the summary) on the rivers flowing towards the gulf. A good geoscientific approach to include the trade-off between eustatic changes, sediment control and landforms dynamics (e.g. subsidence) would be a good control to quantify the human impact on water level fluctuations.

[samendrasherchan]

This proposal aligns with #28 and #32

[askolker]

Thanks for the comments and feedback all. Kristen- your comment about other economic drivers of change is well taken, and certainly one we will have to consider moving forward. Yassin22 and pvarelag- the goal here is not to look into every possible cause of land loss (that's been done by other scientists in other locations) but instead to look more closely at how changes in the physical environment are influencing human populations in the area.

[CourtneyPageTan]

I really like this proposal! This proposal is an excellent complement to my proposal #29, which looks at communities in the Gulf who are both physically and socially vulnerable. There is some exciting research on social capital and climate change, but much work still needs to be done.*,** Communities with higher levels of social capital are capable of coping with disturbances and change to their environment. There is now data available that enables us to map indicators of bonding, bridging and linking social capital based on administrative units, such as block groups, census tracts, counties. By overlaying this data with environmental data that traces change and degradation over time, we can examine interactions of environment with social capital.

*Aldrich, D. P., Page, C. M., & Paul, C. (2016). Social Capital and Climate Change Adaptation. ORE Climate Science. **Adger, W. N. (2010). Social capital, collective action, and adaptation to climate change. In Der klimawandel (pp. 327-345). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften

[cnglaspie]

I think this is a great project that can also benefit from perspectives of other course participants (like #29). I wonder if forest health metrics from proposal #9 could also be one of the response variables included in this type of analysis.

[fawda123]

Merging this project (#11) with #28, #32, #34 makes the most sense to me, although the exact issue for data synthesis needs to be determined. Ecosystem services (#34) and sea level rise (#11) can be linked very well, and I particularly like the use of demographic data as a quick proxy for social data/change. It would not be too difficult to link the datasets described in this proposal with some of those described in the others, especially in the three-week time frame of the workshop. A temporal component to evaluate change over time would also be valuable and many of these datasets have information on an annual period.