Combination Of Rising Sea Levels And Subsiding Land Endanger Louisiana Coast

GRAND ISLE, LA - AUGUST 24: A fisherman hauls in a bull redfish while competing in the Ride the Bull Kayak Tournament in the waters between Caminada Bay and the Gulf of Mexico on August 24, 2019 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. The Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) of Louisiana hosts the event and it's billed as the world's largest kayak fishing tournament. According to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Louisiana's combination of rising waters and sinking land give it one of the highest rates of relative sea level rise on the planet. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost over 2,000 square miles of land and wetlands, an area roughly the size of Delaware. In the past 30 years, as subsidence continues and the effects of climate change increase, Louisiana has been losing its coastal landscape at the rate of almost a football fields worth of land every hour. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)