CEAC-2021-07-July

the Mississippi River), and houses one of the world’s largest
movable bed physical models. Through this project and others,
his group also applies hydrology and hydraulics models
to study how overland and riverine flows are impacted by
natural and human systems, including land use and land
cover, river geometry, and sea-level rise.
Twilley, who is the executive director of the LSU Coastal
Sustainability Studio and the project’s principal investigator,
has researched the Wax Lake Delta ecosystem over the past
20 years, and is an internationally recognized expert for his
systems ecology research in coastal wetlands, including mangrove
systems in the Gulf of Mexico and around the world.
Since January 2015, these three professors have worked
together with numerous other LSU faculty and staff on a
$1.6 million NSF Coastal SEES grant and, more recently, have
contributed to the $3 million “Inland from the Coast” project
led by the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio and Willson as
co-PI.
“It’s our individual and collective efforts that gave us a
profile where the University of Delaware and the U.S. Army
ERDC-EL looked at that and said we’re the missing piece,”
Twilley said. “We have scholarly work that culminated in an
effort where we’re translating systems ecology, large-scale
physical modeling, and the coastal dynamics of sea-levelrise
paradigm to develop collaborative ecosystem design
approaches to restoring coastal land-margin regions here in
Louisiana and around the U.S. coasts.”
Hagen said that how core flooding processes change is critical.
“If you don’t understand how water flows or its changing
salinity levels, you cannot construct a robust ecological model,”
Hagen said. “Whenever we as civil engineers build an
infrastructure, whether it’s a bridge, seawall, roadway, structure,
or ideally, a nature-based infrastructure, one of the first
things we do is assess the soil properties. If we don’t understand
the water cycle and ecological systems that influence
how these soil properties can change, we can’t rigorously
design for the future.
“Dr. Twilley can take our results and use them from a systems
ecology perspective in order to express how they’re going to
respond over time,” Hagen continued. “Then the U.S. Army
ERDC-EL and University of Delaware can use that information
to say if soil properties are going to change based on those
conditions. When the soil properties change, there is potential
for having to rethink how the Army and society deals
with the coastal land-margin. It’s not only about the military
responding to sea level rise, but also societies. Huge population
migrations will happen, which we’ve already seen with
some Louisiana fishing communities.”
“Ultimately, all of this applies to communities,” Willson said.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s an Army base or a facility
along the coast. They still have to think about how their resource
is going to be affected by changes in riverine flooding
or whether it’s increased precipitation or flow from storm
surge.”
Willson said a lot more is known about the climate now than
before, and with that understanding is a broader recognition
of the uncertainties needed to design within.
“Do we know what it’s really going to be like in 20 years?”
Willson said. “No, but we have better tools, data and modeling
now. However, we still have the problem of how do
we move forward thinking about planning and designing
systems, which could be roads, installations, or training areas.
How do we design those so we can adapt as we move forward,
or can we better manage what’s going on to maintain
the effectiveness of whatever the system was? This is exactly
why we developed a new master’s program in coastal and
ecological engineering in 2012.”
The M.S. in Coastal and Ecological Engineering, a joint
program through the LSU Departments of Civil and Environmental
Engineering and Oceanography and Coastal Sciences,
focuses on integrating collaborative ecosystem design with
traditional coastal and water resources engineering concepts
and methodologies. The objective of the program is to
produce masters-level students who have the background
and skillsets to design systems that will perform to not only
current or future design standards but are able to adapt and
continue to function under dynamic and uncertain future
conditions.
What happens with the eroding coastline, climate and less
predictable storm systems each year remains to be seen.
However, the LSU team will spend at least the next four years
researching how to bring all this together so that coastal
communities and military bases can better plan for an uncertain
future.
“It’s not a simple problem to solve,” Willson said.
“The work we’re going to be doing can’t be done simply
with a multidisciplinary team,” Hagen said. “One needs to
understand and have the component of the other in order to
get from point A to point B. It requires collaborative ecosystem
design, which with curriculum enhancements like the MS
program and the direct involvement of our stakeholders can
be a truly convergent research process.”
Willson said that the Department of Defense has many installations
along the coast. This project takes those facilities and
training areas into consideration, which could affect future
military operations.
Volume 86 · Number 7 | 19