Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2007LA52B

Information Transfer Symposia: Mitigation of Storm Surge using Vegetation (Spring, 2007) and Resilient Environmental Infrastructure for Coastal Communities (Fall, 2007)

Institute: Louisiana
Year Established: 2007 Start Date: 2007-03-01 End Date: 2011-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $73,640 Total Non-Federal Funds: $147,780

Principal Investigators: John Pardue, Nedra Korevec

Abstract: The Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute is making a concerted effort in the 2007/2008 funding cycle to improve and expand outreach efforts to increase visibility in the Louisiana water/environmental community. In Louisiana, limited opportunities exist for exchange between university water scientists, state and federal agencies over water issues. A state water conference or summit has not been organized and only the state environmental agency, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, sponsors a scientific/policy conference on environmental issues, some of which involve water. After discussions with the advisory board, the Institute thought this could best be accomplished by sponsoring 2, 1 day symposia/workshops to focus on a specific science/engineering issue important to the state. One symposium would be conducted in the Spring and one in the Fall to different target audiences on different topics. The 2 topics selected for this funding cycles were: Mitigation of Storm Surge using Vegetation (Spring, 2007) and Resilient Environmental Infrastructure for Coastal Communities (Fall, 2007). The Spring symposium (to be held April 13, 2007) will address an important issue to state and federal coastal planners. Following the Hurricane season of 2005, Louisianas coastal restoration focus was altered to consider the effect of wetlands on hurricane storm surge. This was modeled around a similar conference organized by the Maryland Water Resources Research Institute that the Louisiana director participated in during 2006.