BECAUSE LIFE HAPPENS AT THE WATER'S EDGE

Collaboration is Essential to Louisiana's Coastal Future

The unveiling of the state’s draft Coastal Master Plan earlier this year by our partners in Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and the subsequent wide-spread support the plan has received as it moves through the state legislature, was greeted by a feeling of pride by our team. This plan represents years of work by our talented scientists on model development as well as extensive research on sediment transport and ecological responses to help the state identify the suite of projects included in the Coastal Master Plan.

But this feeling of pride is not ours alone. Countless scientists, NGOs, private sector partners, residents, state and federal agencies, and university researchers worked to produce this remarkable body of work for coastal Louisiana’s future. It’s the type of collaboration that is essential as Louisiana, and the world, moves into a time when the best science and planning will play such a crucial role in helping communities become more sustainable in the face of change.

When The Water Institute of the Gulf was formed in 2011, some were concerned that the Institute was nothing more than a new competitor for the limited resources allocated to coastal work. Our true competition is sea level rise, subsidence, flooding, community vulnerability, and the shared imperative to get this right. Saving our coast and exporting our knowledge around the world requires an all-hands-on deck approach. We need the best minds to work together to save our way of life.

During my tenure as the inaugural executive director of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, my job was to find common ground between five governors and six federal agencies. It wasn’t easy but we made great progress and got the job done. I bring that attitude—consensus and collaboration is possible when good people come together to tackle the hardest problems—to the Institute.

Over the past three months, I have had the opportunity to speak to many groups, from the national Council on Foundations to Louisiana’s Sea Grant Advisory Council to the American Council of Engineering Companies of Louisiana (just to name a few). It’s my privilege to reiterate the Institute’s mission to conduct applied research to help policy makers arrive at decisions informed by the best available science. Together, we want to provide practical answers, through cutting-edge science, to allow those critical decisions, engineering plans, and construction schedules to move forward.

I have truly enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues from across the Gulf of Mexico and come to know many new people and organizations that the Institute has worked closely with for years including nonprofits, universities, and private sector firms.

The Institute does foundational science in conjunction with many of our university partners and my conversations with the leadership of LSU, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, UNO, Tulane University and others indicate those partnerships will grow even stronger. Part of that growth will be through the Institute’s role as the RESTORE Act Center of Excellence for Louisiana. While the Institute is not eligible for Center of Excellence research funding, we are charged with the critical mission of administering a grant program to support cutting-edge research in furtherance of the State’s Coastal Master Plan.

These, and many other partnerships, represent an exciting future that we can all build together. As we move forward, please contact me if you’d like to collaborate with our team. To get this right, we need your help. Please step up and join the effort to bring the best science in the world to bear in saving our coast.

Justin Ehrenwerth
President and CEO

225-227-2710
jehrenwerth@thewaterinstitute.org

Featured Project

Bringing community input to coastal response

Bridging scientific working groups with community input, a new report from the Institute, “Building community and coastal resilience to a changing Louisiana coastline through restoration of key ecosystem functions,” looks at how local knowledge and values can be used to maximize benefits from ecosystem restoration investments.

Many times, coastal residents feel that their local knowledge is discounted when it comes time for coastal restoration planning, however the approach outlined in this study shows how these two can work together for better solutions. Report authors Tim Carruthers, Director of Coastal Ecology, and Scott Hemmerling, Director of Human Dimensions, wanted to find a way to not only listen to residents of coastal communities, but find a way to capture their knowledge in a measurable way and show how it could be incorporated with technical scientific knowledge into restoration planning.

As part of the study, researchers first convened a workshop with more than 40 social and ecosystem scientists in late 2015 to summarize the value of seven coastal habitat types (such as forested wetlands, marsh, oyster reefs) in terms of the ecological functions they support and how these can provide value for local communities including things like protection of property, economic worth, cultural identity, and employment. Possible ecosystem-based restoration options for each coastal habitat type that could help increase the use, or value, of these areas to communities were also identified.

This science-focused meeting was followed up by four community meetings and mapping workshops in the spring of 2016 in Delcambre (Iberia/Vermillion parishes) and St. Bernard (St. Bernard Parish).

In addition to small group meetings, the researchers set up mapping tables at the Delcambre Seafood and Farmer’s Market and the Sippin’ on the Bayou Festival in St. Bernard. During these events, researchers asked residents to identify places of value and those places that were currently at risk from a number of factors including land loss or storm damage, as well as to identify areas best suited to different restoration actions.

The community input helped researchers develop a “value-threat” matrix to map areas in each community seen by residents as high value, high threat, and a combined high value and high threat.

This project was funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Commerce through NOAA’s Sea Grant program. Additional funding was provided by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, as part of The Water Institute of the Gulf’s Science and Engineering Plan.

The full report can be found here.

In the News

The Institute has been making waves! Check out a few recent news highlights below. Topics include a recent study about salt water impacts on Louisiana wetlands, Gulf of Mexico hypoxia, a Louisiana land loss segment on CBS, and progress on the Institute's new home.

For a full list of press releases and news article, please visit the Institute's website.

Follow @TheH2OInstitute

Staff Spotlight

Scott Hemmerling

It was the melted gloves that finally proved to be the last straw.

Fresh from his undergraduate degree in environmental science, Scott Hemmerling was working in hazardous material response in Buffalo, N.Y. in the dead of winter. During a brief moment in his 12-hour shift on a water treatment project, he tried to get a little warmth from an exhaust pipe and the gloves succumbed to the heat.

Hemmerling promptly turned in his two week notice, headed for the warmer climate of New Orleans, and back to school. His interests in environmental science, as well as how environments and people interact, led him to receive a master’s degree in urban studies at the University of New Orleans and then a Ph.D. in Geography from LSU.

Hemmerling brings that fascination about what happens at the intersection of people and the environment to his work at The Water Institute of the Gulf as the Director of Human Dimensions. His work has ranged from examining what Louisiana coastal land loss could mean for potential relocations of whole communities to the publishing of a new book this year that catalogues the decades of Louisiana population shifts that have shaped the state.

The integration of natural and social landscapes formed the foundation for his work on Louisiana’s System-Wide Assessment and Monitoring Program (SWAMP) and in a water budget resource assessment done for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

Hemmerling also teamed up with Institute team member Tim Carruthers, Director of Coastal Ecology, to produce two recent reports looking at how people value the Louisiana coastal landscape in which they live and how that coastal landscape impacts their lives.

The first of these “synthesis reports” looked at trends in oil and gas infrastructure, ecosystem function, and socioeconomic wellbeing in coastal Louisiana. The project, funded by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, brought together information from multiple sources to look at coastwide trends.

The second of these reports, “Building community and coastal resilience to a changing Louisiana coastline through restoration of key ecosystem functions,” highlights how local knowledge, and how communities value the environment around them, can add valuable insights to restoration priorities.

Currently, Hemmerling is working on a project funded through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to examine the projected flood risk of selected Louisiana communities into the future. Another study, funded through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, tries to answer the question of “why” populations have moved in or out of coastal areas.

“We see all the projected land loss maps and the historical land loss, but those stories don’t really talk about what it means for the people living on the coast,” Hemmerling said.

Scott is married to Nicole, who is a biologist at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and they have one 15-year old daughter, Phoebe, who is a freshman at Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

To contact Scott Hemmerling, email shemmerling@thewaterinstitute.org.

Each quarter, we will feature a different member of our distinguished team to highlight the diversity and strength of competencies housed at The Water Institute.

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