Quantifying and Prioritizing Opportunities for Canal Backfilling in Louisiana
Abstract
Canal backfilling-degrading and replacing the spoil adjacent to canals-has a wide
range of potential benefits for the restoration of Louisiana coastal wetlands, but
is not incorporated into current coastwide-scale restoration plans. This report seeks
to characterize backfilling opportunities using GIS analysis of publicly available
datasets to quantify and prioritize the area and distribution of spoil currently suitable
for use as canal backfill. I used multiple filters to select backfillable spoil features
based on the stability of the surrounding landscape, feature size, and proximity to
Congressionally-authorized navigation channels or active oil and gas wells. Even
this much-reduced extent of spoil indicated significant opportunities for backfilling
distributed throughout the Louisiana coast. The Barataria, Mermentau, and Terrebonne
hydrologic basins contained most of a total prioritized backfillable spoil area of
approximately 10,775 hectares. The total is similar to the area of linear restoration
projects included in Louisiana’s 2012 Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable
Coast. Coastwide canal backfilling could be accomplished for less than a third of
the cost of those already-planned projects, and greater savings and performance could
be achieved by combining backfilling with master plan projects whose footprints they
intersect. Rough estimates of the value of wetlands that could be created through
canal backfilling are $1.33 billion, or $0.14 billion per year. Estimates of the
net present value of a crash program of coastwide backfilling ranged as high as $2.7
billion after 50 years.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8530Citation
Pate, Haigler (2014). Quantifying and Prioritizing Opportunities for Canal Backfilling in Louisiana. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8530.Collections
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