# Presentation: 034859

## Slide 1

## Elevations of Louisiana Dependent on Two Critical Issues

- Elevations of Louisiana Dependent on Two Critical Issues

- The Elevations of the Land within each Parish
- The Elevations of the Water along the Coast

**Assessing Sea Level Rise**

**COASTAL Program**

**Notes:**
Now I am going to switch gears and discuss a project in LA dealing with storm surge and emergency preparedness. 

NOAA is assessing Sea Level Rise due to subsidence (or land movement) as well as from climate change.
This is the long-term sea level curve for Grand Isle going back to about 1947 – Note the obvious upward trend.
The relative MSL trend is 9.85 mm/yr.
Grand Isle is the only long-term water level station that we have in LA.

## Elevation Movementin Louisiana

**Elevation Movement****in Louisiana**

## The State is Growing and Industry and the Economy of Louisiana is focused in Many Ways in Coastal Louisiana

## Working with Emergency Managers 

***St. Charles Parish Water Level ***
***Monitoring System***

**Working with Emergency Managers **

**COASTAL Program**

**Notes:**
The St. Charles Parish Water Level Monitoring System consists of the 2 new real-time stations and 2 existing long-term stations in LA – Grand Isle and SW Pass.  All 4 of these stations are displayed in real-time in the Parish’s Emergency Operations Center so that emergency managers can monitor the data and make better evacuation route decisions.  
The display looks like this.  These plots happen to be from Tropical Storm Bill about 1 month after the system was established.  The emergency managers can click on any plot to zoom in and to see plots of salinity.  These plots are also available on our web site shown at the end of this presentation. 
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can save lives and minimize property damage through planning and preparation. 
being prepared for hurricane season is key in reducing the loss of life and property.

These real-time water level stations will provide key information to emergency managers for evacuation decision-making and storm surge assessment.

This station will also provide critical information for the restoration and modeling efforts of the LaBranche wetlands.

Both stations will be used to assess sea level trends and changes, and will provide data to the Weather Service and help improve storm surge and hurricane models.

Quad 3 Tire fields
These shots epitomize the area (LaBranche Wetlands restoration area).
- south of the RR but all quite near it (not in the south end of the southern quads).

## LaBranche Wetlands, LA

**Emergency Command Center**

**COASTAL Program**

**Notes:**
On June 1, we established the St. Charles Parish Water Level Monitoring System.
Through a partnership with the St. Charles Parish government, we established 2 new real-time water level stations in the Parish – one in Lake Pontchartrain and one in Lake Salvador.  It just so happens that the Lake Pontchartrain station is also supporting the LaBranche wetlands restoration effort.

## Measuring Subsidence, Sea Level & Storm Surge

**Measuring Subsidence, Sea Level & Storm Surge**

**COASTAL Program**

**Notes:**
But tidal datums need to be connected to geodetic datums and land elevations.  You can see how flat LA is.  This is a photo of Airline Dr. or Rte 61 which is the main evacuation route for St. Charles Parish.  You can see that the water is right there.  These plots are from a storm surge report that we put out for all major storms and hurricanes, this one is for TS Bill.  You can see this road from a nearby Parish flooded during TS Bill.  NGS conducted GPS surveys of Airline Dr. and made geodetic ties to the tide stations in August.  Now the Parish emergency managers will have the complete picture.  They will be able to monitor the water level data and know at what levels the road would be flooded and decide when to evacuate.
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Hurricanes and tropical storms wreak havoc in other ways as well; essentially, they have damaging and potentially deadly effects in the Gulf each year.  They can flood evacuation routes (as seen here, Hurricane Lili flooded LA-1, one of the area’s major evacuation routes).  Storm damage caused by Lili were estimated at over $1 billion. 

The winds associated with hurricanes can cause damage ranging from damage to vegetation and unanchored mobile homes-to-structural damage to small buildings-to-complete failure of roofs and complete building failure. 

GPS and leveling techniques allow land elevations to be related to geodetic datums.
Tidal datums and other water level information must be linked to geodetic datums. 

## Slide 9

## Elevation Surveying Summary

- GPS based surveying for two weeks of Airline Highway
- GPS surveying of the two new tide and water level stations in St Charles Parish
- DOTD surveying of Highway 306 by Bayou Gauche
- Land Surveying Elevation Work on three newly published benchmarks in the Parish associated with wetland restoration projects

## Slide 11

## Slide 12

## Slide 13

## New CORS Stations for St Charles Parish

## NEXT STEPS – St Charles Parish Project

-  **Compute Geodetic Datum Elevations on Tidal Bench Marks**
**at St Charles Parish Tide Stations**
**   ****Connect Tidal Datum Elevations to Geodetic Datums and to**
** ****Elevations of the Road Surface**
**   ****Perform Inundation Analyses of High Waters and **
** ****Relate those Elevations to Road Surface**
**   ****Determine Sections of the Highway that are most at Risk for**
** ****Inundation due to Storm Surge and Future Sea Level Rise**
**   ****Using real-time data from the water level stations and knowing**
** ****the water level elevations relative to the road surface, emergency **
** ****managers can determine when to evacuate**
- _[http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/](http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/)_** **
- _[http://www.co-ops.nos.noaa.](http://www.co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/)__[gov](http://www.co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/)_
- _[http://www.csc.noaa.gov/](http://www.csc.noaa.gov/)_
- _[http://www.c4g.lsu.edu/](http://www.c4g.lsu.edu/)_