Louisiana's coastline is changing — and changing fast, as you can see in the above map which shows the coastal land lost between 1922 and today. And the losses are only getting faster.
Bob Marshall of The Lens and Brian Jacobs and Al Shaw of ProPublica put together a comprehensive look at the state of Louisiana's rapidly disappearing coastline — at the rate of 16 square miles each year or about a football field's worth of land, they say, an hour — and just what it might mean for the coast's future.
The loss of coastal lands is likely to drastically change life in the area, and well beyond it, too:
This land being swallowed by the Gulf is home to half of the country's oil refineries, a matrix of pipelines that serve 90 percent of the nation's offshore energy production and 30 percent of its total oil and gas supply, a port vital to 31 states, and 2 million people who would need to find other places to live.
If current trends continue, says the report, we could be seeing a rise of more than 4 feet in the Gulf by 2100. Go check out the whole thing over at ProPublica.
Image: Propublica