Abstract
For more than half a century, scientists in Louisiana (USA) have been mapping coastal land loss. Cartographic depictions were initially important to expose potential loss of off-shore oil revenue tied to the retreating shoreline. For the last 40 years, attention has shifted to issues related to preserving a valuable ecology and protecting the coastal society from rising seas and storm surge. This paper reviews 60 years of land loss mapping as a tool to drive public policy directed at preserving and restoring the state’s coastal wetlands. It highlights the power of visualizations in fostering public awareness in an environmental crisis and their value in motivating more sustainable public policies. It also provides a critique of the shifting emphasis in the public narrative away from the factual history of land loss to imagined future losses.
Highlights
Louisiana (USA) faces a perilous future due to a combination of climate-driven rising sea levels and a subsiding coastal territory
This paper analyzes the emergence of cartographic visualizations of the coastal land loss situation in Louisiana and considers how those maps have been used to transform a virtually invisible environmental process into a major focus for state investments
The central lesson learned from this enduring process is that public awareness and public policy rested on a foundation of dramatic geographic depictions of a changing environment
Summary
Louisiana (USA) faces a perilous future due to a combination of climate-driven rising sea levels and a subsiding coastal territory. I will examine how depictions of land loss changed since the early 1980s and how corresponding developments in ecological science and public policy along with dramatic hazard events shaped understanding of the possibilities for coastal renewal, and how the combination of all these elements contributed to the emerging discussion about coastal restoration. This discussion demonstrates how effective cartographic presentations can expose critical issues facing coastal societies in other regions of the world and motivate efforts toward more sustainable policies
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