The Magic Trick of the Century!
Want to see a magic trick 100-years in the making? You won't believe it until you see it!
On December 29, 1916, the very first oil well in the Terrebonne-Timbalier Bay area of South Louisiana broke ground. In the century following, more than 52,000 oil and gas wells would litter the landscape, altering the hydrology and land cover of the fragile marsh environment.
Companies dredged canals to reach remote pockets of carbon fuel, splitting the once cohesive marsh into isolated fragments of marsh grass. Once the marsh was split, the increased wave action from the boats going to and from the well sites, in addition to localized and regional subsidence and sea level rise, allowed salt water to penetrate farther into the land.
The surviving lands, now inundated with salt water, started to shed their vegetation - the life-source of coastal ecosystems. Without the plants to trap and hold onto the sediment moving across the land, the marsh began to wash away.
Once the edges washes away, the interior areas of the marsh became more exposed to the intruding salt water - both as a result of sea level rise and hurricane storm surge. Thus a feedback loop from Hell began, and more than 90% of the land in Terrebonne Bay on that day in December 1916 still stands today. The rest has been taken by the ocean, and all projections show this processes speeding up as the ocean continues to encroach upon communities still living on the last few ridges and levees that reach into the Bay like the flesh-less fingers of a hand.
The coastal land loss crisis in Louisiana stems from a lethal mix of oil and gas production, dredging for navigation, and the combined forces of subsidence and sea level rise. This video shows the oil and gas development in the region from the first well in 1916, to the most recent well permitted in June 2016.
Land loss over time was analyzed using aerial and satellite imagery, land surveys and topographic maps throughout the display period (USGS,NOAA). The causes of land loss over time, previously investigated by USGS/NOAA, have been paired with the well site and canal permits granted by local, parish, state and federal authorities. This video shows the finest resolution of land loss by cause to date, and the results are a startling, almost unbelievable erasing of land along the coast.
To learn how one Native American community still standing on the coast is coping with and adapting to these changes, visit our online interactive story map: http://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/...
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