The Northern Gulf Institute at LSU will contribute significantly to a number of scientific and management issues at local, regional, and global scales. Coastal wetland sustainability, eutrophication, sea level rise, freshwater inputs to coastal areas, and fishery productivity can all be addressed by evaluating their current and potential status and functioning in a major river system, such as at the Mississippi River.

• Breton Sound (impacted by the Caernarvon Diversion) and the
• Barataria Basin (impacted by the Davis Pond Diversion).

The central objective of choosing these two basins is to understand the different types of pulsing scenarios on coastal ecosystem dynamics.

1. pulsing of controlled river diversion structures that simulate specific frequency and duration events on ecosystem state change (Breton Sound);
2. pulsing of river water in basin with much longer freshwater residence time (Barataria Basin).