Satellite images of Louisiana taken earlier than and after Hurricane Ida present a dramatically altered shoreline, with many low-lying areas nonetheless inundated with water. Scientists are fastidiously monitoring the panorama to see the way it evolves over time, and whether or not some adjustments are everlasting.

Hurricane Ida made landfall on August 29—the sixteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The class 4 storm made a multitude of Louisiana, battering the state with sturdy winds, heavy rain, and storm surges. Ida was one of many strongest storms to hit the state, inflicting mass energy outages, wrecking houses and companies, damaging roads and bridges, and inflicting 26 deaths within the state.

It additionally reshaped the panorama, although for a way lengthy we have no idea. Ida swept by way of the Mississippi Delta, a area already weak to the regular encroachment of the Atlantic Ocean. Levees, upstream dams, and rising sea ranges as a consequence of human-instigated local weather change are inflicting wetland areas to slowly shrink and even vanish. Other human actions, such because the pumping of groundwater and oil, are additionally contributing to this course of, as is the pure sinking and settling of latest delta sediment, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Images from house taken earlier than and after the hurricane present an altered river delta. A Landsat 8 satellite tv for pc photograph exhibits the New Orleans area because it was on September 19, 2015, after which because it seemed on September 3, 2021, 5 days after Ida hit the area.

Water teeming with sediments seems mild blue in these false-colour photos. A pure colour picture of the identical area (beneath) exhibits these sediment-filled waters in an unpleasant brownish hue, significantly Lake Maurepas, Lake Pontchartrain, and the northwest coast of Lake Borgne.

The floodwaters have been nonetheless current 5 days after the storm. Rivers, coastlines, lakes, and marshes within the Lafourche, Jefferson, and Plaquemines parishes are barely recognizable. A sobering satellite tv for pc picture of space in Lafourche Parish close to Larose exhibits the soggy panorama close to a low-lying farm.

“A combination of flooding, erosion, and defoliation during Ida likely created many of the new patches of open water visible in the Landsat image,” Marc Simard, principal investigator for NASA’s Delta-X mission, informed Earth Observatory.

The Delta-X discipline marketing campaign alongside the Mississippi Delta is at present monitoring adjustments to sediment and marsh dynamics on account of Hurricane Ida. Later this month, when the waters have receded additional, the staff will conduct floor visits and use boats to examine the world, along with utilizing aerial radar.

“One of the interesting things to watch will be to see if the stark changes you see in this Landsat image prove to be temporary or long lasting,” Simard mentioned. “Some of the losses may have been floating plants that washed away or plants that simply lost their seasonal leaves and will probably grow back. Others were uprooted and will no longer offer the coastal protection they once did.”

The Delta-X staff plans to trace salinity ranges to see if saltwater marshes may supplant freshwater marshes. They’re additionally hoping for an inflow of river sediment, which may replenish eroded coastal areas and provides crops a spot to reside.

“I think we’ll see that healthy wetlands with plenty of incoming sediment will be far more resilient than wetlands which receive little or no sediment from river discharge,” Simard mentioned. “Our hope is that the models being developed by Delta-X scientists will provide a realistic insight into the vulnerability and resilience of wetlands in this region in the long-term.”

Realistic being the important thing phrase. Human-caused local weather change means the Mississippi Delta is now underneath assault from the surroundings, and it might by no means bounce again. And in fact, there’s all the time the following hurricane to dread.

More: Hurricane Ida is hitting Louisiana amid a covid-19 surge. It’s a nightmare within the making.