The Mississippi River delta is one of the most impacted coastal ecosystems in the world including four of the most significant national issues relative to the NOAA mission:

• climate change and sea level impacts on coastal resources,
• hazards including hurricane disturbance to cultural, economic and natural resources of coastal regions,
• habitat loss and ecosystem management including the loss of nearly one-third of the deltaic wetland landscape (4,500 km²) in the last one hundred years, and,
• water quality including the periodic occurrence of one of the largest hypoxic zones among coastal ocean regions.

source: http://www.lacoast.gov/maps/2003landloss/index.htm

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The immense challenges to promoting the resilience of this coastal region, including the urban, industrial, and natural landscape components, represents a laboratory to develop new technologies that reduce risks to both social and natural resources. The central tenet of the proposed research is that wetlands and adjacent waters associated with deltas are pulse-regulated ecosystems. Different spatial and temporal scales and the pattern of pulsed freshwater inputs are critical parameters controlling nutrient cycling, productivity, residence time and export, and trophic structure. The central objective of this DELTA research plan is to understand the different types of pulsing scenarios on coastal ecosystem dynamics.