NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — A science professor at the University of New Orleans has been granted enough money to conduct a study of Louisiana’s coastline.
UNO leaders announced on Thursday, March 8 that earth and environmental science professor Mark Kulp was recently awarded a two-year $814,000 grant from the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority to conduct sediment sampling along the coast.
According to university officials, the work will be done in support of the Louisiana Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring program. The program was established to provide long-term data on the state’s island system for planning design, evaluation, and maintenance of restoration projects.
The work will be conducted by researchers from UNO’s Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Science as well as graduate and undergraduate students. According to university officials, all collected samples will be compared to samples taken over the last 20 years.
“These comparisons will allow us to develop an understanding of changes in the distribution of sediments along the coast in response to coastal sediment re-nourishment projects and natural sediment transport processes, such as tropical cyclones,” said Kulp.
Based on data from the comprehensive monitoring program, this will mark the third round of data collected through the program. The first interval was done from 2005 to 2010 and the second happened from 2015 to 2019.
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