Abstract

Hurricane Katrina made landfall August 29, 2005 becoming the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history. Katrina caused widespread loss of life, with over 700 bodies recovered in New Orleans by October 23, 2005. Before Hurricane Katrina, the region supported approximately one million non-farm jobs, with 600,000 of them in New Orleans. The ecological consequences were considerable including storm surge floods into coastal areas. These ecological impacts are still being felt throughout the region through human-driven coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion—issues that have long been damaging the region's natural storm buffers—were made worse by the hurricane. Specifically this research will: (1) provide current updates of the economic and ecological impacts from Katrina (2) review the current literature relating to salt water intrusion and (3) identify the economic impact of salt water erosion from hurricane Katrina.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.